deviantART: Popular Privateer Press

Battletech - Set 8 complete

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:11:32 PDT

Finished my final project today, and had some extra time to draw again. I haven't drawn in over a month thanks to school work. :/

I've taken the time to begin the 8th set of Battletech drawings, starting off with a commission. I will add some of my newer designs here as well; ones that I've sketched but never completed.

NOTE: DA auto-fits the image to your monitor's resolution. Press 'Download Image' to get the full-resolution version.
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INFO:

1) Scorpion II - 3063: This is a commission for the 3063 TRO. It's also the first quad-mech I've drawn. I'm surprised that it didn't turn out like ass like all previous attempts. This thing has a Gauss Rifle, 2 Med Lasers, 2 ER Med Lasers, 2 AMS, and 4 jump jets.

2) Culverin Prime - 3063: This is a redrawn version of an older mech I made for the 3063 TRO. Was originally something of my own, but then it looked too heavy. Thus it was converted as a replacement. The Culverin Prime carries a AC/10, A ER-PPC, LRM-10, and 2 ER Med. Lasers.

3) Fighting Falcon: One of the newest commissioned mechs I've finished. The thing is 55 tons with a AC-5, LRM-5, SRM-6, a ER Large Laser, and a Targeting computer. The cockpit is large because it's a double. Was trying slightly different styles on the Battletech 'mechs to see how they fit together. I didn't want to make it too anime-like, or it loses some of the BT feel.

4) Myrmidon: Was originally a custom Wolverine, but it looked too different to bare that name. This thing carries a Heavy-PPC, MML-7, and ER Medium Laser. Has 5 Jump jets (JP-5). The design looks a bit too anime for BT, but think the drawing turned out decently.

5) Sorcerer - A mech of my own design that I tried to sketch out over half a year ago. The original sketch was a total failure, although the design looked similar to this one. I retried it last night and it came out ok. This is a 75-tonner IS mech with a ER PPC, HPPC, 3 Medium Lasers, and a LRM-15.

6) Battle Axe - This is a commissioned Battle Axe. The drawing is based on a mini-figure made by the client, not the canon TRO 3075 version.

7) Privateer (PV1k) - First of 2 models of the same mech. It's designed after the MekTek mech of the same name (which the original art was derived from). This version of the 3063-Privateer is 75 tons, armored with 2 UAC-5s, 2 MRM-20s, 2 Med. Lasers, and a ER-PPC. It's go 3 jump jets, but I didn't bother showing those in this picture.

8) Privateer (PV2L) - The second version of the 3063-Privateer. This variant has 2 ER Large Lasers, 2 ER Med. Lasers, and a LBX-10. This one has 4 Jump jets, which I didn't bother showing.

9) Isometrus (v.4) - took me 3 tries to redesign one of the first mechs that I made for the 3063 TRO. This came out the best of the 3. Starting to move away from the blocky look that my other mechs are based on and moving towards more of an smoothed out aerodynamic look to slowly ease my way into drawing airplanes. The war load on this thing is the same as before, 4 ER-Sm lasers, 2 Flamers, and 2 MGs.

10) Halberd - Was originally a custom Warhammer, but it looks different enough to get a new name. Took several attempts, and a long time to sketch and ink. This mech has 2 ER-PPCs, 2 SRM-6s, 2 ER-Med. Lasers, and 2 MGs.

11)Orochi - 3085: One of the 2 pieces I made for official CGL TRO 3085. The other was a tank, but I don't have enough of other tanks to upload it with. This is a Long-Bow based mech' with 2 Thunderbolt-20s, 2 SSRM-4s, and a ER Small Laser. The design is based on the MechWarrior 4 Longbow, by *Mecha-Master (David White).
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Battletech (c) Catalyst Game Labs
3063 TRO stuff (c) ~Centurion13
All other Mechs (c) their respective owners
Art and Design by me

Happy Holidays, 2008

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:03:26 PST

“Hani Onee-san!” called Tenten.

Hani turned to see the younger members of Team Gai huddled in what looked like a private powwow. She lifted her eyebrow in curiosity. “What’s going on?” she asked as she approached the teens.

Lee was all smiles, Tenten had a case of the giggle-fits and Neji was his usual moody self. “Onee-san!” said Lee. “Look, over there!”

Hani turned to where the boy indicated. Just above Gai’s head was a small bundle of mistletoe, probably placed there strategically by some shop owner, or maybe some crafty, plotting ninjas. The Jonin, on the other hand, appeared to be completely oblivious of its existence. She looked back at the students, “So?”

“Soooo?” whined Tenten. “It’s bad luck not to kiss someone when they are under the mistletoe!”

Hani tented her eyebrows, “Well, why don’t you give him a kiss then?”

Tenten recoiled, “I can’t do that! I’m his student!”

“What about you, Lee?” asked Hani with a small grin.

“I would do anything to keep misfortune from befalling Gai-sens – eh!” he squeaked as Tenten rammed her heel into the boy’s foot.

“He’s … got a mouth fungus.”

“Eww,” cringed Hani.

The group turned to Neji.

“What about you Sourpuss?” asked Hani with a casual look.

Neji glared in returned.

“That only leaves you, Onee-san,” said Tenten – goading the woman.

“I’m not going to—“

“ Puuuuhllleeeeeaaase?!” begged Tenten and Lee in unison.

Hani rolled her eyes in defeat, “Fine, but just this once!”

It took all of Lee and Tenten’s self control to not squeal in excitement; their scheme was coming to fruition.

Hani nonchalantly walked to Gai’s side. He was standing in front of a booth, watching how the merchant made sweet dumplings. It had been the Jonin’s idea to take his students out to a small festival as a treat for their hard work and for recently making Chunin. He had planned on it being just him and his team; but Tenten had begged so admittedly that they ask Hani to come along – and when one of his precious, adorable students asks something of him so sweetly, he can’t help but say ‘yes’.

“ Psst, Gai,” said Hani, bumping him with her elbow.

Gai turned to her, “Hmm?”

“Bend down here; I want to tell you something.”

Gai eyed the woman, “Why can’t you tell me from where I am?”

Hani tried to think of a suitable excuse. She looked over her shoulder, “I don’t want your students to hear.”

Gai furrowed his brows at her and then looked over his own shoulder at the teens. They went from staring at him and Hani intently to whistling and trying their hardest to act nonchalant – even Neji. “What’s going on?” he asked, his suspicion building.

Hani sighed, “Bend down here and I’ll tell you.”

“You’re not going to do something weird are you?” he asked, eyeing her cautiously.

She rolled her eyes, “Why do you always think I’m going to do something inappropriate?”

“Uh, because you usually do.”

Hani waved him off, “That’s in the past … now, bend down.”

“Hani—“

“Just do it! Geez, are you scared of me or something?” she asked with a mischievous grin.

“Of course not!”

“Then what’s stopping you?” This was becoming quite the chore.

Gai sighed, “Fine.” He bent down low enough for her to reach him.

Hani brought her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Mistletoe.”

Gai furrowed his brows in confusion. What kind of cryptic message was that? Before his mind could come to a reasonable answer, he felt two lips press softly against his cheek. He froze in shock at the contact. Over his shoulder he could actually feel Lee beaming at him. Then he heard Tenten laugh and turn to Neji, “Ha, she did it! Neji, you owe Lee and me $10 bucks each!”

So, this had been a youthful bet? But even so, there was something in how Hani had lingered into the kiss for longer than would be considered ‘chaste’; how she had grabbed his shirt, pulling him into her and how her lips had been slightly parted – maybe not quite as innocent as it appeared from his student’s vantage point?

It may have been just an innocent wager; but Gai couldn’t help but feel it may have meant something more.

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Happy Holidays everyone!

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Maito Gai, Rock Lee, Neji Hyuuga, Tenten (c) Kishimoto
Hachi Hani (c) *mongrelssister

One Promise

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:56:40 PDT

lkasjfdalk such an epic rp with ame i just had to draw it ; - ; <3333
also thanks to those who kept me company while I livestreamed it and for the suggestions <333

insert from part of an rp between white and one. it started with One throwing a private tea party for White in order to cheer her up since she was down that day. ( she was almost attacked by a group of men which caused her to flashback to a tragic childhood memory )

Never happen again...ever.

Kara Sloan sketch

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:22:03 PST

Kara Sloan is a character from the game Warmachine of Private Press, I just loved the character for it`s huge rifle XD

here you can see her preparing for melle combat after firing it`s rifle, well it`s only a quick sketch but hope you like it

not much time for anything else now XD

Happy Birthday Zorah-sama :3

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 04:46:24 PDT

A slightly late birthday present for

I threw in a bit of a mix with this drawing, adding his Oc Kate who is having "fun" with me in my quicksand form :3

Along with her I also captured Miss Yuki Nagato for an added bonus :3

Happy Birthday Zorah!!!

I hope this is to your liking :3

Let me know what you think!

L.o.M.

P.s. Go and check out his gallery :3 He has a nice selection of quicksand drawings to see ^_^
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A small Story written about this by <3

Ellohem continues to fondle Kate while tentacles molest the helpless Yuki.

The quicksand girl turns herself and Kate to watch Yuki's descent as the tentacles massage her breasts. Yuki's eyes grow wide as she feels something invade her most private area beneath the surface and the sounds she makes are a mixture of muffled cries and moans. She can feel the tentacle moving inside her in a love making manner and despite her wish to escape, she can't deny that it feels soooo good.

Ellohem giggles and whispers to Kate, "I've had a lot of practice."

Kate rolls her eyes and tries to whack Ellohem with her head but misses. This isn't the first time the quicksand girl captured and molested her but she would have liked it if she took Ellie instead of her.

As Yuki continues to sink deeper into the mud, she can feel the signs of an approaching orgasm. She tries to resist but... the caressing touch of the tentacles, the warmth of the mud and the expert thrusts of the penetrating tentacle inside her erodes her willpower. Time passes and soon her only wish is for a release.

Ellohem begins charging the mud with erotic energy. The very texture of the mud is stimulating and Yuki's body starts shaking from the sudden orgasm. The mud frames her face as she descends, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as she releases again and again and so on as she slips under. Ripples mark her descent as her body quakes from multiple orgasms.

Kate, however, is able to resist the pleasureful sensations of the mud, letting her anger cloud any erotic feelings her body tries to generate. She renews her futile struggles only for the purpose of not letting the quicksand girl get the satisfaction of making her cum.

Ellohem moves around Kate until she's in front of her. She slowly moves in closer and presses her muddy body against Kate's as they sink past their shoulders. Kate stares defiantly past her stolen glasses into Ellohem's eyes. The Lady of Mud whispers to Kate,

"I think I'll take my time with you... under the surface."

Then a tentacle-like tongue produces from where a mouth should be on Ellohem and moves past the mud covering Kate's mouth. Ellohem presses herself against Kate as they kiss. Tentacles rise from the surface and gently wrap around Kate's shoulders and head. Kate closes her eyes as the tentacles push her and Ellohem beneath the mud surface. Their hair fans out for a moment before it too follows them below...

A couple of bubbles pop the surface, followed by ripples.

Marked

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:02:59 PST

Time: 1 hour
Program: Photoshop CS3
Stock:~Dagwanoenyent-Stock
Book1 : Marked - House of Night

I kinda like how this picture turned out, its how i think Zoey Redbird would look if she was real.I personally love her marks, they make her look awesome.I'll place chapter one below so you guys can read what the books about.

Chapter 1 :

_{MARKED (Chapter 1)

Just when I thought my day couldnt get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was talking nonstop in her usual K-babble, and she didnt even notice him. At first. Actually, now that I think about it, no one else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in.

No, but Zoey, I swear to God Heath didnt get that drunk after the game. You really shouldnt be so hard on him.

Yeah, I said absently. Sure. Then I coughed. Again. I felt like crap. I must be coming down with what Mr. Wise, my more-than-slightly-insane AP biology teacher, called the Teenage Plague.

If I died, would it get me out of my geometry test tomorrow? One could only hope.

Zoey, please. Are you even listening? I think he only had like fourI dunnomaybe six beers, and maybe like three shots. But thats totally beside the point. He probably wouldnt even have had hardly any if your stupid parents hadnt made you go home right after the game.

We shared a long-suffering look, in total agreement about the latest injustice committed against me by my mom and the Step-Loser shed married three really long years ago. Then, after barely half a breath break, K was back with the babbling.

Plus, he was celebrating. I mean we beat Union! K shook my shoulder and put her face close to mine. Hello! Your boyfriend

My almost-boyfriend, I corrected her, trying my best not to cough on her.

Whatever. Heath is our quarterback so of course hes going to celebrate. Its been like a million years since Broken Arrow beat Union.

Sixteen. Im crappy at math, but Ks math impairment makes me look like a genius.

Again, whatever. The point is, he was happy. You should give the boy a break.

The point is that he was wasted for like the fifth time this week. Im sorry, but I dont want to go out with a guy whose main focus in life has changed from trying to play college football to trying to chug a six-pack without puking. Not to mention the fact that hes going to get fat from all that beer. I had to pause to cough. I was feeling a little dizzy and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths when the coughing fit was over. Not that K-babble noticed.

Eww! Heath, fat! Not a visual I want.

I managed to ignore another urge to cough. And kissing him is like sucking on alcohol-soaked feet.

K scrunched up her face. Okay, sick. Too bad hes so hot.

I rolled my eyes, not bothering to try to hide my annoyance at her typical shallowness.

Youre so grumpy when youre sick. Anyway, you have no idea how lost-puppy-like Heath looked after you ignored him at lunch. He couldnt even . . .

Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick that he wasnt technically dead. He was undead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same. There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadnt felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire-blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, and worse. He was a Tracker.

Well, crap! He was standing by my locker.

Zoey, youre so not listening to me!

Then the vampyre spoke and his ceremonial words slicked across the space between us, dangerous and seductive, like blood mixed with melted chocolate.

Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!

He lifted one long, white finger and pointed at me. As my forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened her mouth and screamed.

When the bright splotches finally cleared from my eyes I looked up to see Ks colorless face staring down at me.

As usual, I said the first ridiculous thing that came to mind. K, your eyes are popping out of your head like a fish.

He Marked you. Oh, Zoey! You have the outline of that thing on your forehead! Then she pressed a shaking hand against her white lips, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a sob.

I sat up and coughed. I had a killer headache, and I rubbed at the spot right between my eyebrows. It stung as if a wasp had bit me and radiated pain down around my eyes, all the way across my cheekbones. I felt like I might puke.

Zoey! K was really crying now and had to speak between wet little hiccups. Oh. My. God. That guy was a Trackera vampyre Tracker!

K. I blinked hard, trying to clear the pain from my head. Stop crying. You know I hate it when you cry. I reached out to attempt a comforting pat on her shoulders.

And she automatically cringed, and moved away from me.

I couldnt believe it. She actually cringed, like she was afraid of me. She must have seen the hurt in my eyes because she instantly started a string of breathless K-babble.

Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? You cant go to that place. You cant be one of those things. This cant be happening! Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?

I noticed that all during her tirade she didnt once move any closer to me. I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside that threatened to make me burst into tears. My eyes dried instantly. I was good at hiding tears. I should be; Id had three years to get good at it.

Its okay. Ill figure this out. Its probably some . . . some bizarre mistake, I lied.

I wasnt really talking; I was just making words come out of my mouth. Still grimacing at the pain in my head, I stood up. Looking around I felt a small measure of relief that K and I were the only ones in the math hall, and then I had to choke back what I knew was hysterical laughter. Had I not been totally psycho about the geometry test from hell scheduled for tomorrow, and had run back to my locker to get my book so I could attempt to obsessively (and pointlessly) study tonight, the Tracker would have found me standing outside in front of the school with the majority of the 1,300 kids who went to Broken Arrows South Intermediate High School waiting for what my stupid Barbie-clone sister liked to smugly call the big yellow limos. I have a car, but standing around with the less fortunate who have to ride the buses is a time-honored tradition, not to mention an excellent way to check out whos hitting on who. As it was, there was only one other kid in the math halla tall thin dork with messed-up teeth, which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was standing there with his mouth flapping open staring at me like Id just given birth to a litter of flying pigs.

I coughed again, this time a really wet, disgusting cough. The dork made a squeaky little sound and scuttled down the hall to Mrs. Days room clutching a flat board to his bony chest. Guess the chess club had changed its meeting time to Mondays after school.

Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyre dorks? How about Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders? Did any vampyres play in the band? Were there vampyre Emos with their guy-wearing-girls-pants weirdness and those awful bangs that cover half their faces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids who didnt like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into a Goth kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didnt particularly like wearing black, at least not exclusively, and I wasnt feeling a sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap and water, nor did I have an obsessive desire to change my hairstyle and wear too much eyeliner.

All this whirled through my mind while I felt another little hysterical bubble of laughter try to escape from my throat, and was almost thankful when it came out as a cough instead.

Zoey? Are you okay? Kaylas voice sounded too high, like someone was pinching her, and shed taken another step away from me.

I sighed and felt my first sliver of anger. It wasnt like Id asked for this. K and I had been best friends since third grade, and now she was looking at me like I had turned into a monster.

Kayla, its just me. The same me I was two seconds ago and two hours ago and two days ago. I made a frustrated gesture toward my throbbing head. This doesnt change who I am!

Ks eyes teared up again, but, thankfully, her cell phone started singing Madonnas Material Girl. Automatically, she glanced at the caller ID. I could tell by her rabbit-in-the-headlights expression that it was her boyfriend, Jared.

Go on, I said in a flat, tired voice. Ride home with him.

Her look of relief was like a slap in my face.

Call me later? she threw over her shoulder as she beat a hasty retreat out the side door.

I watched her rush across the east lawn to the parking lot. I could see that she had her cell phone smashed to her ear and was talking in animated little bursts to Jared. Im sure she was already telling him I was turning into a monster.

The problem, of course, was that turning into a monster was the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into a vampyre, which equals a monster in just about any humans mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever.

So the good news is that I wouldnt have to take the geometry test tomorrow.

The bad news was that Id have to move into the House of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsas Midtown, known by all my friends as the Vampyre Finishing School, where I would spend the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up. And thats only if the whole process didnt kill me.

Great. I didnt want to do either. I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister. I wanted to pass geometry. I wanted to keep my grades up so that I could get accepted into the veterinary college at OSU and get out of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. But most of all, I wanted to fit inat least at school. Home had become hopeless, so all I was left with were my friends and my life away from my family.

Now that was being taken away from me, too.

I rubbed my forehead and then messed with my hair until it semi-covered my eyes, and, with any luck, the mark that had appeared above them. Keeping my head ducked down, like I was fascinated with the goo that had somehow formed in my purse, I hurried toward the door that led to the student parking lot.

But I stopped short of going outside. Through the side-by-side windows in the institutional-looking doors I could see Heath. Girls flocked around him, posing and flipping their hair, while guys revved ridiculously big pickup trucks and tried (but mostly failed) to look cool. Doesnt it figure that I would choose that to be attracted to? No, to be fair to myself I should remember that Heath used to be incredibly sweet, and even now he had his moments. Mostly when he bothered to be sober.

High-pitched girl giggles flitted to me from the parking lot. Great. Kathy Richter, the biggest ho in school, was pretending to smack Heath. Even from where I was standing it was obvious she thought hitting him was some kind of mating ritual. As usual, clueless Heath was just standing there grinning. Well, hell, my day just wasnt going to get any better. And there sat my robins eggblue 1966 VW Bug right in the middle of them. No. I couldnt go out there. I couldnt walk into the middle of all of them with this thing on my forehead. Id never be able to be part of them again. I already knew too well what theyd do. I remembered the last kid a Tracker had Chosen at SIHS.

It happened at the beginning of the school year last year. The Tracker had come before school started and had targeted the kid as he was walking to his first hour. I didnt see the Tracker, but I did see the kid afterward, for just a second, after he dropped his books and ran out of the building, his new Mark glowing on his pale forehead and tears washing down his too white cheeks. I never forgot how crowded the halls had been that morning, and how everyone had backed away from him like he had the plague as he rushed to escape out the front doors of the school. I had been one of those kids who had backed out of his way and stared, even though Id felt really sorry for him. I just hadnt wanted to be labeled as that-one-girl-whos-friends-with-those-freaks. Sort of ironic now, isnt it?

Instead of going to my car I headed for the nearest restroom, which was, thankfully, empty. There were three stallsyes, I double-checked each for feet. On one wall were two sinks, over which hung two medium-sized mirrors. Across from the sinks the opposite wall was covered with a huge mirror that had a ledge below it for holding brushes and makeup and whatnot. I put my purse and my geometry book on the ledge, took a deep breath, and in one motion lifted my head and brushed back my hair.

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really dont? Now she was methe familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hairlong and straight and almost as dark as my grandmas had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouthmore features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. Id always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasnt that my skin was suddenly so white . . . maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness . . . as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger . . . more barbaric.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a momentjust an instantI forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmothers people rejoiced.

Copyright © 2007 by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast. All rights reserved.}

Warmachine certificate

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:01:14 PDT

Just a little certificate for a first place in a tournament.
Done with Photoshop.

Warmachine (c) Privateer Press

Doomshaper-Hordes

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 09:05:50 PDT

Noninked pencil work. I'm never happy after I've inked a drawing of mine, so I decided to scan the pencil work before I do it.

Hoarluk Doomshaper trollkin warlock from Privateer Press's game-Hordes
[link] for more info

PEN1S: It's ART

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 22:17:52 PDT

I noticed a surprising image on the popular page yesterday - it was a super close up picture of a woman's vagina, creatively entitled "red shoe and pussi". Real classy, right? So I reported it, just to see what would happen. But alas, it looks like I had way too much faith in the system, because I just received a note back saying that the picture - which I might remind you, was nothing more than a low-quality snapshot of some girl's lovetackle - was NOT pornography.

Look, I'm sorry, but that is just bullshit. Now, I have nothing against the human body, and I think I'm fairly desensitized to seeing a slew of naked women on the main page these days. Hell, I draw a lot of scantily clad ladies myself. But to post a close-up picture of some chick's va-jayjay and call it "art"? Bullshit. Anyone can take a picture of their cooter and put it on the Internet. That is NOT art. It wasn't even like there was any artistic merit to the picture - there wasn't any creative lighting, or interesting colors, or underlying political message or whatnot. Just genitals. Shall I say it a third time? Bullshit.

And if we're going to delve in to the idiocy that is Deviantart's porn policy, let's try this on for size: how come a picture of an erect penis is considered pornography, but a zoomed in snapshot of a woman's nether regions is not? Isn't that hugely sexist? Any guy on Deviantart who wants to get up close and personal with the female land-down-under can do so with ease, but if for some reason I wanted to look at a picture of a guy's wang, I'd be hard-pressed to find one. This isn't intended to be a comment on the frequency that man look at porn versus women; rather, it is just intended to point out the absurdity of what Deviantart considers "porn" and what it does not.

So, since private parts can apparently be considered "art", I've decided to make FULL USE of this privilege and showcase my artistic skill to the world. Behold! As many euphemisms for the word "penis" as I could possibly conjure up. This is not an exhaustive list - feel free to share you favorites with me!

I will laugh very, VERY hard if this gets deleted by Deviantart.

Dedicated to , who I shall from this day forth refer to as "the Ramburgler".

EDIT: Apparently, the random chibi looks like Wanda from the Fairly Oddparents. I assure you, this was not intentional.

QG: Elizabeth Glown

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:46:26 PST

Did Sireine really wrote a character info wall for a group..?
Oh god it's so boring and long. OTL

C-chibi I'm sorry she's so ugleh and horriblelooking and- *tear.*

EDIT: Added the stupid quickdoodle of that-... I can't even call it as swan. OTL Just quick doodle like I said..

_{✧ Name: Elizabeth Glown

✧ Age: 18

✧ Gender: Female

✧ Title: Princess

✧ Weapons: Knife (I know you see where it is- xD)

✧ Likes:
- Nature
- Woods
- Trees
- Her prince
- Animals
- Nice sceneries
- Jumping on people back

✧ Dislikes:
- Fairytales Princesses
- Weaklings
- Being noticed
- Forced on doing something
- Her prince enemies
- Bad food

✧ Personality: Elizabeth is a typical loud and noisy tomboy; she loves adventures, running around and figure out secrets of others. She isn't those people who can focus on one thing, she goes to do when she wants, what she wants, able to multitask. Troublemaker, what she is, it's easy for her not caring about her surroundings, which can be such a trouble to her prince, who has to go around and round to look for her. Elizabeth can easily get on problems; she has always been relying on her prince, who comes to save her wherever situation she has made.. again. Actually, her intentions are only to make Vincent's so called "stiffness" away.. failing. Though Elizabeth seems to be close with her prince, she rarely hands her trust to other people. Also she doesn't love attention, though it seems like it; when she has to do something serious, she can easily become nervous. Also she isn't really familiar to intimate things, like hugging or holding hands, which makes her actually nervous and flustered, especially around her prince..

✧ History:
From a young age, Elizabeth grew up to a wealthy, average family; nothing speacial actually. No siblings, just she and her pets who naturally didn't seem to like her, as much as she tried to be a perfect "mother to them." It was actually sad for her, she loved animals from her heart, they just seemed to avoid her like a thief police officers.
She was always told fairytales from her stepmother; how perfect, kind and helpless princesses were. Elizabeth.. disliked it very much. How females were supposed to be elegant like that. Even at that age she was strong-willed to show what she was made of. Though her stepmother who she liked a lot, and father didn't seem to accept it; she was learnt how to read, speak formally. write, and sew clothes, but secretly she took lessons from the neightbour boys outside, also learning how to fight on the mud or any sitution, when she eventually grew up, the boys also teach how to handle a knife, though at the same time she was teach how to play instruments. Elizabeth, enjoying her life as multitalented, her life wasn't perfect. She was never best at something, what bothered her.. a lot. She wanted to be at least be better at something than her male friends, or those ladies who she sip tea and coffee with; though, sadly she prefers limonade over tea and coffee. "Tea is tasteless, coffee is bittersweet.." She always though and still does.

Her father seemed to have a cancer- which ended badly like her mother, and he passed away; Elizabeth who was afraid of showing her real feelings, because boys don't cry.. right?
At her father funeral she just blankly stare at her father body, being those rares who hold their tears; after that Elizabeth stepmother became even closer, of course she had a heart and didn't throw that poor girl out who's father died, and of course she liked her too, Elizabeth.. bit troubled from her obsession to make her lady like was her only bother.. And soon she tried to just forget her sadness for her father. Due her multitalents she soon had her first performing to crowds, but that's one of her weak points. Standing infront of large groups make her head spink and the feeling of feeling awful was too rough for her. Sadly, her first performing was for her new private school where she attented.. after that her school times weren't pleasent.

After the embarrassing performer, with the faint and flying violin she was a laughter for her school. Everytime she started trusting a female, she was got the bittersweet end; feeling betrayed every single time she tried making friends, she got enough from it and though hanging with boys would be better. Of course, some of the males though her performance was actually cool and due her tomboyness she got friends. Now she got friends, but still didn't want to give any of them her trust. It was something she didn't give easily.
Soon when she finally finished the school, with average grades and average company, her stepmother kept trying to make her more like a lady; ending up to dissapointmet, but Elizabeth doesn't regret that- without her she wouldn't have ever met her prince, A person who she could trust on. And in the end, she at least ended up wearing a dress like a lady? Well, actually the reason is that it suits with Vincent.

✧ How she met Vincent:
On a normal day, Elizabeth was hopelessly practicing how to ride on her horse that she got as a birthday present from her mother. The horse didn't like her much, but at least that not-so-happy horse brought those two together.

Elizabeth's horse was running around like it would be it last day, Elizabeth was hopelessly trying to calm it dowm. Sadly animals didn't seem to like her much so the horse kept running, heading to the cliff; She surely was thinking that it would be her last day alive, because of handing the horse a carrot before end of the ride. Well.. At least her mother finally learns that making her more ladylike is hopeless? Though she wasn't really ready to die. It seemed that her family didn't notice her dissapearance yet. Elizabeth trying to get some attention from the horse was hopeless, and soon she saw the dead end.

She didn't actually notice that infront of her had the end of the cliff, but when the horse stopped suddenly running; she lost her grip from it, somersaulted, even fling over and.. fall off from the cliff. That was a sudden shock, Elizabeth was sure that she would be finished but.. she heard some voices like someone was running.. and soon without a blink she felt a press on her wrist, she was still afraid of opening her eyes; maybe she was already in heaven? Did the god caught her to heaven, or ready to drop her to the hell..? Slowly she opened her eyes, and stare at her surviour, a male with an eyepatch, a person who saved her from the death. After that moment, she decided that he would become her ally, and it happened as she wished.

✧ Partner/Prince: :thumb281759419: Vincent White
(Her sexy partn- *kicked*)

#Queens-Game © *LastingTransmitter
Vincent White © ~Chibi-godess
Elizabeth Glown Me}

Masseuse Buffer No. 4

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 19:55:11 PDT

This is a long awaited request by Ripped-Saurian of which I requested a pic of Spike from Extreme Dinosaurs being trapped and tickled on one of my Masseuse Buffers, a tickle machine that is from my line of Muscle Buffers.

I'm glad to be able to get one of the Extreme Dinosaurs onto one of my Muscle Buffers, mainly because they would probably be easy to trick, and I wouldn't be surprised if they enjoy working out their muscles. All that is needed is a little advertisement of my Muscle Buffers and all I need to do is wait..........
Ah, I love my job.

(UPDATE): Here is a short story I thought up for the picture.

There was truly no stopping him now................ Spike just had to try out the brand new workout machines called Muscle Buffers, which just arrived at the local gyms today, plus the free exclusive first tryouts slips that arrived for all 5 of the Extreme Dinosaurs only strengthened Spike's excitement.

Although as T-bone examined the Exclusive Ad for the Masseuse Buffer, he began to suspect a possible trap. "Now hold it Spike, don't you think its a little odd that all 5 of us got All of the 5 random special offers for some mysterious new line of workout machines?" But Spike wasn't listening, "Heh, now come on T, their just workout machines, how can they be any danger to us?" said Spike, as he was gathering his workout gear. Although T-bone was still abit concerned about it, he decided it's probably not a big deal. "Hmmmm, alright you can go on ahead of us, we still have to get some work done." Spike then picked up his duffel bag and started to walk out the door. "Alrighty, smell you guys later!" And with that, Spike hopped on board one of the small hover crafts, and flew off towards his destination.

As Spike finally arrived at the addressed gym which was located near the out-skirts of the local city, he noticed that it was in a pretty empty area. Even though the streets were empty, he parked the hover craft in a hidden spot and used the back entrance. When he entered the main gym, he found that it was empty as well. But Spike shrugged and started to try out some of the new Muscle Buffer machines, he remembered that the gym was rented privately for him and his other Dinosaur partners for one day, so he didn't have to worry about someone walking in on him.

After about an hour of hard heavy lifting, Spike was sweating hard and was feeling the burn. Spike was greatly enjoying the Muscle Buffers, but unknowingly, he was being watched.........

(Meanwhile in a hidden room)

Voice 1: Heh Heh Heh, Ahhhhh I can't wait any longer! I wanna see him squirm on one of the machines now!

Voice 2: Silence you pea-brained reptile! Were not turning on the machines yet. Just wait........I shall have him exactly where I want him soon........"

(Back in the gym)

Spike had just finished the best workout of his life, "Aw, yeah, that was awesome!" But despite his great endurance, he was definitely feeling a bit sore from the extreme workout and started heading for the Spa area for a relaxing shower.
Once he got done with the shower, he noticed an area in the Spa that had some massage tables. Spike also found some instruction notes that the massage tables were apart of the line of Muscle Buffers and were designed to automatically give massages by simply laying down on the pressure-sensitive mattress, it even had an open for his tail to fit. Without a second thought, Spike jumped onto the table, layed down flat on his back, and waited. But as he waited he heard a clicking sound by the door, did it just lock?

Suddenly, metal clamps emerged from the middle of the table and restrained his waist. Surprised, Spike was just about to sit up, when two smaller clamps came out of the lower part of the table, and restrained his feet, while two other clamps attached to mechanical appendages quickly restrained his flailing arms. Spike furiously pulled and struggled with the tough restraints, "Grrrrrr, Raaaaaagh! What is this!?" Then he heard a voice that was all too familiar to all the Extreme Dinosaurs.

"Muhuhuhuhuhahahahahahahaha! Heh, typical, only a shell-brains like you would fall for such a cheap ploy." Spike looked up at the voice box up in the corner. "Badrap! You slimy filth, let me go now!" But Badrap only laughed, "Heh, your not going anywhere, and once your other fellow Dinosaurs get here, I'll be sure to show them what my Muscle Buffer can really do! But first, I think you need and nice little massage to calm your nerves, and I do think the Masseuse Buffer will do nicely, heh heh heh. Despite how strong he was, Spike was unable to break the titanium restraints, he was now at the mercy of the ruthless Raptor.

"Now lets see, where shall we start on your body?" said Badrap as Spike awaited his fate. "Ah yes, lets start out with though strong Abs of yours." BadRap pressed a button which caused an appendage with a skinny hand-like mechanism to appear from the side of the table, and it started to poke and scrap its pointed fingertips on Spike's rock solid abdomen. "Heh Heh Heh, Haaaaaayyyyyahahahahahahahaha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Whahahahahat ha ha ha ha are youhuhuhuhuhu doing! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! He He He He He He He He Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!" Spike laughed as the hand machine started to suddenly tickle his six-pack Abs.

"Why the Masseuse Buffer is going to give you the best possible massage it can, and while where at it, lets see what we can do about those pits of yours! Ha Ha Ha Ha!" Just then two other appendages with circular ring-shaped brushes came out from underneath the table. The started to dig into Spike's armpits just as they started vibrating. "AAAAAAAAA Ha ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Nohohohohohohohohohohoho Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Please Stahahahahahap! No Mohohohohohohore Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!" But Badrap was not about to show any mercy. "Now Now, we haven't finished up on your massage yet. So why don't we take care of those big sore feet? Ha ha Ha Ha!"

Suddenly a short metal appendage appeared on the side at the foot of the table. The tip of it then extended a long thin metal pole ,that looked like it was covered in white fuzz, across the foot of the table, near Spike's exposed feet. Then the fuzziness started to expand on the pole and stop just as it grew big enough that it touched Spike's twitching feet. It then started to spin while touching his soles, going faster, faster and faster as it started going up and down Spikes big feet, who then quickly burst out into Hysterics.

"BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO! PLEASE NOT MY FEET! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! NOT MY FEEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE HE HE HE HE HE HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! AHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

As Badrap watched the merciless machine tickle torture the helpless 10-foot tall Triceratops via the camera monitors, the dim-witted member of the Raptors quickly came in and told Badrap that the rest of the Extreme Dinosaurs were arriving at the Gym. Badrap then switched on some other cameras that showed the 4 other Dinosaurs entering through the back door and entering the gym. Badrap smiled evilly, it was all going according to plan.

T-bone, Stegs, Hardrock, and Bullseye looked around the gym, they didn't see Spike anywhere. T-bone then walked over to the door that lead to the Spa and found that it was locked, along with a note of privacy that was taped to the door, with Spike's signature on it. "Hmmmm, looks like Spike is taking some time off, I guess we can try some of these machines out while we wait for him."

The Dinosaurs then got into their workout clothes and started trying out the machines, unknowing of the ticklish doom that awaited them, nor of their partners tickle torture inside of the sound-proof Spa.

To be continued?

Note: I have been thinking about doing a remake of this picture, along with a series of pictures depicting each of the Extreme Dinosaurs trapped and tickled in different Muscle Buffers. But I have yet to fully develop the full detail, and I must also find the proper artist(s) to help with this idea. So don't expect this series to come too soon. We still don't know what the future holds.

Original art by Ripped-Saurian: [link]
Original Picture: [link]

dj shadow___the private press

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:00:23 PST

2nd year in art school.
study: make a cover and a booklet for a cd.
I choose dj shadow's "the private press" (I had it sooo fresh back then).
the concept of the design of the cd was taken from the name of the album "what means the word "prss" for each one of us"...
I used tattoos, magazines, gossip newspapers, school books, letter via airmail, comics...etc... trying to combine it with street,urban style...

big love: my handmade "dj shadow" logo on the cover of the cd...

Vice City Public Radio

Thu, 14 Aug 2003 01:28:13 PDT

lol!! has anyone played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City?? i played it on the weekend and it was soooo funny! especially the radio station VCPR!! lol! in this pic they were discussing "morality" on the program "pressing issues". this is a scene from it near the end:
the guy with the gun is Rev. Pastor Ricards, "now i'm not saying that all the money donated to the statue will go towards my palace!!"
the guy being shot is some nudist guy, i forget his first name but his last name is "Stark" lol!! anyway, he got shot in the groin^^ (i heard all this when i stopped my car in da middle of the road and held up traffic^^ the people in da game were telling me off^^)
the woman is pretty funny, her husband has many affairs and she has obese kids ^^, "if my kids are hungry i just give them a spear and tell them to kill their food in the park, my toddler came back yesterday, he'd killed the postman, i just picked him up and gave him a cuddle and told him just to hit daddy the next time he comes home smelling of cheap perfume!" lol
the guy under the table is the radio presenter maurice chavez, "what u thinking now asshole!? where's ur three step program now!??"
anyway, the nude guy jumps out from behind the visor thingy saying "we should all be naked! take off ur clothes!! ooo this air conditioning is so liberating! look, that means i'm happy!!" hehehhe, the woman faints and Pastor shoots him in the d-PRIVATES-k, "oh the blood! maurice can u hold it to stop the bleeding?... it's getting dark, u should use mouth to mouth, don't be afraid to use tongues!!" ahhhhhhhh! i almost peed myself when i heard this coz it was so damn funny!!
by the way, maurice runs away from the nude guy, he was very afraid of him and pastor with the gun,(sarcastic voice) "yes Pastor, ur the man, ur the king..." , "damn right i am!!"

CB-Wall-BG-01

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:17:16 PST

Credits:
Images from sxc: [link] and privat images

Press Download for full size!

When you use our stocks, please leave us a little note so we may

Please credit us in your artist comment, and put a link back to our stock.

You are welcome to create prints with our stock here at DA, you do not need to ask our permission.

You are welcome to post art with our stock outside DA, just remember to credit us and link back to CB-Stock.

Don`t claim them as yours.

Enjoy

I, Cyborg Pt. 1_WIP

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 13:30:35 PDT

I, Cyborg Part 1: The One
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the past few days Nikki Vetter, also known as the cyborg superheroine Diamond, hasn't been able to get much sleep as night as she's accustomed to getting. After her recent encounter with the evil Sataria and being partially assimilated into the Cybercom Collective along with having more of her original organic body replaced with machinery, the organic components of her body requires less sleep and rest than they used to. Plus her traumatic experience of being dismantled and forcibly programmed has caused her to have night terrors and nightmares, often harshly waking her up from her slumber. Before her premature awakening on this night, her mocha-skinned physically fit and chiseled statue-esque body rested in a cushioned pod in the middle of a private AFPD laboratory room...her arms were stiffly straight by her sides to the point of where she almost didn't look comfortable as she lay there on her back like a black Barbie doll still in her packaging. Her cyber-symbiote was not present, as she lay there nude...her body was a patchwork of flesh and metal as her cybernetics and organics intersected at various points, seamlessly at some points, and even then her natural skin was riddled with circuits, nodes, and other mechanical gadgets that burrowed deep under her skin and muscles. Various wires and tubes had been connected to her in a few spots while a monitor located next to her pod displayed her vitals and energy signatures.

Her bionic right eye snapped open first and glowed brightly as her cybernetic systems were already fully online...it took her organic parts a minute to warm up however. She slowly opened up her left eye and lay still for a minute before she finally rolled over on her side in a reclining position, resting on her hip and left elbow as she crossed her completely mechanical right arm across her chest and held herself as she stared down at her bare body; she noticed the gentle glow of her diamond implant flickering in and out. Usually after a few minutes she would fall back asleep once she woke up in the middle of the night, but on this particular night she was especially restless.

On the outside, the city of Angel Falls was fairly quiet and draped in darkness with the morning sun still several hours away from shining it's first rays of the day...Nikki has been spending her last few nights in the AFPD laboratories where recent transplant and the new head technician of the AFPD SCU, Dr. Jetta Chambers aka Techna, has been monitoring Nikki. Techna had gone in to remove and replace the parts that Sataria had replaced to prevent any sort of systems takeover or incompatibility issues with her other cybernetics, as well as she's been keeping an eye on Nikki's new found ability of energy projection thanks to her diamond implant in her chest, an ironically fortunate mistake thanks to Polygirl, and some clever wiring to her other systems thanks to Techna. At this point, after some extensive repairs and system upgrades, Nikki was in the best shape that she has ever been in physically...the upgrades and new parts that her body received would make her even stronger, faster, and much more efficient than she's ever been since becoming a cyborg. Plus her energy projection/manipulation powers as well as her bionic eye now being able to shoot high-frequency lasers would give her more weapons to her already impressive arsenal.

Mentally, however, Nikki had been somewhat of a wreck. Since first becoming a cyborg approximately 7 years ago, she had never felt the way that she has been feeling in these past few days. Her cybernetic programming and systems have never challenged her raw human emotions and feelings as it has since Sataria nearly erased her mind and her consciousness with the assimilation process. Being a cybernetics wiz in all aspects, Techna is also skilled in "cyber-psychology" and getting into the minds and/or databanks of cyborgs to make sure that the mental health of her subjects is stable and that they are able to maintain balance between the part of them that is still human and the cybernetic part...she has been observing Nikki and had noticed that the partial assimilation to Nikki's thought process and to her computer systems has caused Nikki to struggle to decipher between raw factual logic and her human emotions...which is normal for a cyborg to experience after receiving a major programming change to their memory banks and data units. Not to mention that Nikki has been rather distant and a bit cold as well as experiencing a few bouts of depression due to her recent troubles, something that she has hardly ever had to deal with in her 28 years of living.

Nikki has been able to fight her programming from overriding her natural psyche and remain herself and her usual personality for the most part instead of acting completely cold, distant, and machine-like...yet it has been a struggle for her to do so and obvious to others that know her well that she's been acting much differently from what they're used to seeing from her. It really threw her off on seeing herself dismantled for the first time and realizing just how much machinery that her body is now composed of when Sataria had captured her and assimilated her....she wonders if she's supposed to act more machine-like because of her current condition. Plus, it didn't help that Sataria had gotten the best of her in combat and Nikki has never been good at dealing with defeat; that fact alone of Sataria beating her and rendering her helpless to the point of almost having her identity taken from her and turned into a mindless robotic drone was probably the core reason as to why Nikki has been in the doldrums for the past several days. Nikki has never taken losing and defeat well at all...her mind raced with several thoughts running through her brain with the events of her loss replaying itself over and over again. Not to mention that two fellow heroines had sacrificed their lives during her rescue...she feels personally responsible for the loss of Alexandra Robinson and Inez Moreno at the hands of Sataria and the Collective, plus the fact that she wasn't able to save Gemma Kildare like she had planned ate away at her core. Being that she was a part of the Collective, albeit for a very brief duration, her brainwaves were in tuned to the Collective's singular thought...she could feel the energy signatures of all three women and she knew that they were still alive; they were now Elite Cyborg Drones, but she at least could take solace in the possibility of saving them from the grasp of the Collective.

Another thing that deeply bothered her was the fact that she lost a significant amount of her hair due to Sataria removing a big piece of the base of her her skull on her right side to add more machinery to her body. Nikki has always taken much pride in her hair...being that she's from both a strong African and Jamaican heritage it's believed that a woman's hair holds much power and her glory. She would often joke and say that her hair was to her what Samson's hair was to him as the reason why she was so well rounded at almost everything...not to mention that her ponytail with her red scrunchie was her trademark for so long, dating back to her days where she first started using her scrunchie that she bought for a dollar to pull her hair back when she would play basketball and run track for her high school many years ago. She has never had her hair cut once in her life and she has NEVER added any harsh chemicals, perms, dyes, bleaches, or anything that wasn't all natural products to maintain her full bushy healthy head of hair. However, with Sataria's interference by removing part of her organic skull, that hair couldn't ever be grown back naturally...plus the missing amount of hair really made the rest of her hair look uneven and awkward.

Some Rastafarians believe in the notion that hair, dreadlocks in particular, contains positive and negative energy and once it seems as if the hair is emitting negative energy it's time to cut the dreadlocks off...although her hair wasn't locked and being that she's no Rasta, Nikki wholeheartedly bought into that notion. Her traumatic experience of nearly losing control of her own life coupled with the fact that she had a bad haircut with a big metal skull piece visible was enough to convince her to cut the rest of her hair really short to rid herself of any lingering negative energies...a beautician had been bought in and gave Nikki a brand new short-bobbed hairstyle that fell slightly below her ears along with a piece of synthetic hair extension. Her new do not only hid her exposed cybernetic skull, but it did a great job in accentuating her natural beauty...being that her scrunchie was also her charm of sorts, she had even devised a way to wear it as a headband now that her hair was too short to put into a ponytail. Since getting her haircut, everyone has been complementing Nikki on just how great she looks with her new shorter hairstyle, some even saying that it fits her better than her long hair and it makes her look mature and distinguished. She too really likes her new look, but is still saddened at the price that she had to pay to get her current look with the lost of her full head of hair that she has worn for the majority of her life.

As she lay there on her side, she raised her left hand and stared at her fingers and the cybernetic segmentation of where her knuckles were replaced with reinforced mechanical joints. Her cybernetic eye went into X-Ray vision mode as she looked through her epidermis and muscles and examined the fact that the although her flesh covered that hand, underneath the surface a myriad of wires and circuits that connected that hand to her forearm along with a completely metal hinged joint and the near indestructible metal bones of her cyber-endoskeleton that replaced her natural human skeleton. She then made that hand charge up with the energy as she balled it up into a fist...her diamond implant shimmered brightly as her fist fizzled until she allowed the energy to dissipate after a minute of playing with her powers, slightly smirking at her new abilities.

She used her right hand to move her bangs out of her face and stopped as her metal fingers made a slight clink as it collided with the circular audio receptacle dish that was now in place of where her right ear used to be. She slowly rubbed her new 'ear', another part of her that was replaced with machinery by Sataria along with the base of the right side of her skull and area leading to her jaw. She sighed and even her sigh was echoed, as her voice had also been permanently given a digital reverberation thanks to Sataria removing her larynx, trachea, and part of her esophagus in exchange for cybernetic replacements. Techna replaced it with another one and adjusted it to take some of the digital feedback off of it, but too much of her voice box was removed to fully save her natural voice. She reached over and grabbed her red scrunchie and placed it around the crown of her head, letting her bangs hang down over her forehead and keeping the rest of her hair pinned behind her ears as her ends curved back in toward her face and lips.

She raised herself to a sitting position as she watched the monitor displaying her vitals while she disconnected the connections from various ports and plugs located on her body. The side of her pod opened up; she stood up and her liquid metal cyber-symbiote spread from her torso completely covering her toned cybernetically enhanced body...the symbiote seamlessly washed over all of the wires and machinery contouring to her every curve, nook, dimple, and crevice from her neck down except for the fingers of her left hand and her diamond implant located between her breasts. She appeared to be glowing as the dim lights from the room reflected off of her impressive athletic physique. Once her body was completely covered in the living cybernetic chrome substance, she walked over to a mirror that was located in her chamber. She looked at her face and noticed a few more gadgets had been added to the area surrounding her right eye and forehead. After staring at herself for a minute and touching the new wires and nodes that penetrated her face, she pulled her hair back from over her lower right side of her head to see her exposed metal cranium...with her thoughts she then made her symbiote cover up her the exposed part of her skull as well as her cybernetic audio receptacle that replaced her ear. She then looked at herself again and ruffled her hair to get the kinks out from where she laid on it. She stared at herself for another minute before hanging her head and sighing again, then headed for the exit to her chamber.

Nikki headed to the rooftop of the AFPD Complex as she's done several times in her stay there at the police station...she would go up to the roof to sit and have some time alone to gather her thoughts. On her way to her destination she would pass by the rooms of AFPD/SCU officers and fellow cyborgs Genesis and Deuce, who were being housed for the night; she has been drawing support from them along with Lt. Hunter to help her deal with her recent feelings and would have loved to talk to one of them at this moment, yet Lt. Hunter didn't reside at the station nor did she want to disturb Genesis or Deuce's rest. She first looked through the glass window of Deuce's chamber to see the large tank-like cyborg woman standing in an apparatus in the center of the room...her helmet had been removed and Nikki looked at where Deuce's flesh face had ended at the bottom of her chin and top of her forehead and where the rest of her exposed head was completely mechanical complete with many wires and tubes plugging into the area behind her organic face. The left ocular implant that usually was plugged into her face was sitting at a table next to where her body stood; various wires, plugs, and other machinery covered the ocular cavity where her implant would normally go. As she scanned Deuce's frame, Nikki was thankful that she wasn't almost completely mechanical like Deuce...whose only organic parts that remained was most of her face and part of her brain, which could also be seen through a protective covering in the back of her skull. Nikki felt much remorse seeing Deuce's body hanging there like a car on a mechanic's rack...Deuce's right eye was opened and her head was slightly tilted down; it looked like someone had deactivated her in mid sentence, as her mouth was partially open. Nikki couldn't even imagine being almost completely mechanical to where someone could just come and 'turn her on and off.' Her thoughts once again flashbacked to when she hung in Sataria's chamber in a similar manner just days before as Sataria maniacally stole more of her humanity away. She shuddered and snapped out of her traumatic remembrance and moved along to the next door.

She then peered through the glass window of the sliding door of Genesis' dark and cold chamber where she saw Genesis' body connected to a huge machine and parts of her body disconnected from her as she slumbered...both Genesis and Deuce usually are dismantled to some extent to receive their standard maintenance overnight. Another thing that's been running through Nikki's mind is that since Genesis saved Nikki's life by splicing and sharing her power source to keep Nikki's life supports online as well as transferring and downloading part of Nikki's brainwaves into her own mind, the two cyborg women have shared a special bond. The bond is on a psychic level, almost like some sort of cyborg telepathy, as they can feel each others feelings even miles away from one another...almost as if they were one with each other. Nikki stood there as she almost yearned to want to be able to touch Genesis...she zoomed in with her bionic eye and stared at Genesis's peaceful face in awe and adoration as she slept while mechanical arms worked on her impressive body. She pressed her hand on the glass and whispered.

Simone....if you are able to find rest, then there is still hope for me yet.

After several minutes of watching the red-headed cyborg sleep, Nikki made her way through the nearly empty police station to the rooftop and found herself a seat on the ledge. A brisk breeze caused her bangs and newly bobbed hair to waft in the wind as she stared down at the streets below as she gathered her thoughts on the direction that her life has taken in the last few months. It wasn't that long ago when she was loving the idea of being a superheroine and never thought twice about her cybernetics being a hindrance to herself, however after her encounter with the Collective she often questions some of the decisions that she's made thus far. She wondered what if she would have just stuck to her comfortable life of fame and fortune being one of the most celebrated athletic figures of all time instead of helping others with her extraordinary abilities and seeking the thrill of wanting to be a superheroine. She never really stopped to think if she would even be a good superheroine...she just assumed that she would be given that she's usually successful in nearly everything she's ever set out to do. She thought that since she was regarded as one of the greatest fighters on the planet that she would easily be able to combat evil...supervillains with superpowers is a whole different world to deal with than other hand to hand combatants. However with her defeat on her first solo-mission made her think twice about being a top tiered superheroine. She never stopped to think that although she was indeed strong and mighty, that there are others that are even stronger and mightier than her...she never even entertained the idea that maybe she was just a big fish in a small pond. She then thought about some of the more popular superheroes and heroines in Angel Falls and even with her state-of-the-art cybernetics that she wasn't even halfway as strong as someone like Walkiria, Fantastic Lin, or Soviet Superwoman. How could she hang with, let alone stop someone like Ultrawoman when even it takes the top heroines to their farthest limits just to even slow someone of her caliber down?

She then contemplated as to whether or not she made the right decision by agreeing to go under Scarlette Tamzarian's knife and receive her initial cybernetic parts and to have her cyber-symbiote fused to her body so many years ago. The night that she met Scarlette and the days after, she was over-emotional at the fact that she lost a championship Blitzball match that she could've won if she had body mods like the majority of other athletes did at that time. Her decision to receive her cybernetic augmentation was a hasty one....Scarlette really made the idea of being turned into a cyborg sound absolutely great and alluring, and this was the first time in 7 years that she actually stopped to question if she made a wise decision and thoroughly think things through. She wondered what would her life be like if she hadn't have taken Scarlette's offer...where would she be? Would she be a coach or color commentator for one of her previous sports...still in the world of athletics to some degree and still respected? Would she have made the Hall of Fame and forever lived in infamy as one of the all time greats? Would she have continued her career to the point where she was too old to keep up anymore? Would she just have become some flash in the pan hotshot athlete trying to hold on to her glory years rehashing the same old stories in some bar wasting away in obscurity? Or would she just be a normal woman living a normal life with a normal job and family that was once one of the greatest sports figures ever?

She then thought about the idea of her not being able to have children nor being a mother and this further saddened her. All of a sudden, she was very remorseful of ever agreeing to trade in her humanity to become a cyborg. So what if she wouldn't ever get sick, or old, or feel pain, or have the speed to run along side a race car at top speed, or have strength far beyond that of 100 Olympic powerlifters; She would never know the joys of motherhood...having a baby, seeing her child take it's first steps, the first day of school, taking that walk across stage to receive their diploma....none of it. She thought about how unlikely it would be to find a mate that would love her unconditionally and would look past the fact that she's a cyborg. At that moment, she didn't think that any sane man would want to hold her and cuddle with a girl that's partly made of metal...thoughts of her being lonely for the rest of her life crept into her head. Tears streamed out of her light brown left eye as she put her face in her hands and sobbed to herself.

After several minutes of crying Nikki stopped abruptly and looked up to the Moon, which was in it's waxing crescent phase. She then looked to the skyline of downtown Angel Falls and thought about everyone that was still in their beds sleeping. She shook her head as she wiped the last few trails of tears from her face,

"Alright, enough!!! Snap out of it Nikki...stop feeling sorry for yourself!!! What's wrong with you...this isn't you at all...you're not a crybaby! Crying ain't gonna make things better...tighten up, girlie!"

She jumped to her feet and coached herself through her sorrow, almost embarrassed at herself for allowing for her emotions to get the best of her through self-pity. Even better for her sake, this was all of her human side chastising herself for having a pity party and not her programming trying to override her feelings. She then thought about why she wanted to become a superheroine in the first place rather than just focus on her career as a mega-athlete...she thought to all of the times that she has helped others and fought evil forces to protect this city and world and how it made her feel afterwards. As she paced back and forth across the rooftop, she thought about the citizens of Angel Falls that didn't have any kind of powers or augmentations and how they would be easily taken over and tyrannized by the likes of evil minded villains such as Sataria, Ultrawoman, Genocide, or Dark Star if it weren't for virtuous-minded protectors with the special gifts of metahuman abilities, genetic augmentations, cybernetics, or just a full arsenal of weapons ala La Femme Punisher...she realized that she was one of those protectors. She then thought about the children...although she couldn't have any herself anymore, she became a superheroine so that the children could grow and play in a free world with a decreased chance of having to live in an oppressive war zone to where they would have to live either as slaves, soldiers, or something worse at such a young age. She remembers her mother telling her stories of her childhood, often in tears, being forced to mine diamonds for hours on end with no break in the harshest conditions...only getting a sparse and unappetizing meal at the end of the day for her efforts. Although Nikki never had personally to experience that pain, she never wanted anyone else to experience anything like what her mother, grandmother, and many generations of her other relatives and ancestors did back in Sierra Leone. It was at that moment where she once again realized her purpose and exactly why she agreed to become a superheroine.

She fixed her mind on her cybernetics being a gift that she could use to help those in need rather than a burden for herself. She looked at her make and model number of 'Adora-1' on her right breast and thought to herself,

"Adora-1...Adora-1...I'm number one, the first of my make and model...I am 'The One'...by the fates, I have been given this body and these powers and abilities as gifts, not burdens. Although I have lost a good bit of my humanity to receive them, my soul is still 100 percent human. Sataria was wrong in saying that I'm not human...being human is a state of mind, not necessarily how much flesh I have left. Yes, much of my body has been replaced with cybernetics and I won't be able to enjoy life like everyone else does...but I see now that the life of a heroine is often a thankless job where at times I will have to sacrifice my own happiness and comfort for that of those who I protect and fight to keep safe.

The time for tears and self-sorrow is over...I'm through feeling sorry for myself! I have gone through a lot in the last few days, but what's in the past is in the past...wallowing in my own pity isn't gonna get me anywhere at all nor fix anything. I've been knocked down many times in my life, and I've always always ALWAYS gotten up! Sataria really did a number on my body and mind, but I refuse to ever let her or anyone else ever do that to me again! I should be happy...Techna has made me stronger than I've ever been and has given me the tools to make things right....I feel invincible right now with this body! It's time for me to make my mind and my thoughts invincible as well once again! This is me getting up off of the ground...and this time I rise back to my feet stronger than I've ever been! I promise, the next time we tango Sataria, it's gonna end much differently than it did our first dance! And I promise that I will save Gemma, Inez, Alexandra, and as many Collective Drones from your evil grip that I can as well as put an end to your horrific assimilations once and for good!

I will protect this city and this world and stand up for what is just, right, and fair; as long as my circuits and muscles are in sync and there's still energy coursing through my body I will do what it takes to be the greatest superheroine ever...that is my vow. I may not be the strongest physically, or the fastest, but I will use the talent and the technology that I've been fitted with to their full capabilities to protect the citizens and my comrades-in-arms at my side taking up the same fight against evil. I cannot lose...I WILL NOT LOSE!!!"

Just then a distress signal rang out in her internal databanks from an unknown frequency...a hollow, digitized female voice similar to that of Nikki's rang out as she frantically pleaded for someone to answer.

"Mayday...mayday...Angel Falls....can anyone hear me? If you can hear my voice, my designation is Cytrax-100...I am a cyborg agent employed by the U.S. Government. Please respond...mayday..."

"Cytrax-100, this is Diamond, copy. I hear you loud and clear...what's going on?"

"I have been tracking a hostile fugitive by the name of Valerie Harrison that is also a rogue agent for the same government organization which I belong to....she has been going to federal reserves, banks, and such with hi-tech armor and weaponry and has decimated everything in her path, leaving many injured or dead and millions in federal money lost. It appears as if she's trying to get her hands on some even more powerful hardware in the weapons and armor department...I was able to intrude on one of her phone transactions at it appears that she had made a deal with a Scarlette Tamzarian about receiving a cache of weapons, ammunition, and armament. She is set to meet one of Tamzarian's representatives at 4:05 am in an arbitrary location at the city limits of Angel Falls to make the transaction, which is in about 25 minutes."

"So it looks like Scarlette's up to no good again by selling her weapons to a criminal traitor...I knew she couldn't be trusted!"

"I gather that you are familiar with Ms. Tamzarian and Tamzarian Industries?"

"Yeah...just a little bit. She's only the person that turned me into a cyborg. So what do you need me to do?"

"I am still in pursuit of Rogue Agent Harrison...she is approximately 35 miles Due West of Greater Angels Falls city limit at the current time heading your way at a sustained speed of about 65 mph in a large automobile. The purpose of my distress signal is that I request some assistance in apprehending the rogue agent, as she is still heavily armed and dangerous. Plus, I don't exactly know what to expect from Tamzarian's cohort..chances are that if they are shipping hi-tech weapons and ammo, then they're strapped as well. Although I am quite powerful, it would be logical to not head into battle by myself not knowing what to fully expect...I do realize the fact that it is 3:40 am and that everyone is sleeping, but I would be extremely appreciative to have any sort of assistance in apprehending the hostile while I have her cornered."

"Pardon me for being a bit inquisitive, but how do I know that you're not a hostile trying to get the jump on some unsuspecting superhero or something? You mentioned Scarlette...she and I have beef; how do I know that you aren't in cahoots with her and that y'all aren't trying to get the drop on me? I realize that shit happens, but like you said it's almost 4 in the morning! I'm not trying to step into any unnecessary shit!"

"I can't blame you for questioning the reason of my late distress signal, but I can assure you...I'm one of the good guys and this is a serious situation...perhaps not anything that is a major threat to national security, but still serious nonetheless. I have called for backup from my organization, but I don't think they will arrive in time to assist me...I have been tracking Harrison for weeks and finally I have her in position for capture."

"Alright, alright...I believe you. Lucky for you, I'm antsy and I can't sleep tonight! I'm on it...I too am a cyborg like yourself, so please send me your coordinates so that I can get your exact 20 with my internal GPS implant."

"Done."

"Okay...I'm clear on the other side of Angel Falls, so I'll meet you there in approximately 20 minutes. Fortunately, there's hardly any traffic on the roads so perhaps I'll be able to shave some time off of my trip. Plus, it's good that there aren't a lot of civilians out and about just in case things get hairy. We'll rendezvous and take 'em down while they're not even suspecting it! Let's keep this connection between you and me open; maybe you can brief me a little on just what I'm about to face."

"Affirmative. I thank you in advance and I'll see to it that my organization compensates you for your assistance provided that we're successful in capturing the fugitive. By the way, I am a longtime fan of yours Diamond, and I look forward to fighting by your side! But fair warning...we are facing a moderate level threat!"

"Good...I'm in the mood to kick some ass and not hold back! I don't know about you...but I'm an Extreme Level threat by myself! I'm heading that way right now!"

With that Nikki ran over to the ledge of the roof and without hesitation jumped off of the side of the moderately high building. She formed her symbiote on her right hand into an elongated grappling hook and latched onto a stop light post, causing her to swing in pendulum like fashion before she hit the hard concrete street below. At the full height of her swing, she let go of the post and her symbiote came back to her arm...she continued to fly forward, somersaulting forward 4 times before finally landing on the city street, running at full speed towards the location that Cytrax-100 gave her.

To Be Continued
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cast of Characters:

-"Diamond" Nicole Vetter bka "Nikki", "Genesis" Simone Rattica, Deuce, Valerie Harrison created by and belong to

-Cytrax-100 created by and belongs to

Mentioned, but don't appear:

-Alexandra Robinson belongs to
-Inez Moreno belongs to
-Ultrawoman belongs to
-Walkiria and Dark Star belong to
-Soviet Superwoman and Genocide belong to
-Fantastic Lin heralded by
-Polygirl belongs to
-La Femme Punisher belongs to
--Dr. Jetta "Techna" Chambers, Lt. Raina Hunter, Sataria the Cyborg Queen, and Scarlette Tamzarian all created by and belong to
***********************************************

Alright, I had to take a short break away from my OC Sexy Summertime Swimsuit Bikini Jammy Jam as I've had Nikki on my brain something fierce! I've been stewing on ways to revamp her look, and since she went through quite a bit of stuff in her "Enter The Collective" story arc, I thought that this would be a good time to switch her look up a bit. Being that I pretty much made Nikki into my oldest OC of all, Adora-1, last year...I found myself looking at old pics of Adora-1 that I did a few years ago (This one look familiar?) and thought about ways that I could make Nikki look more like that while keeping her current look.

I entertained the idea of giving Nikki short hair like in those pics, yet I wanted to keep her hair busy/kinky and not straight...I experimented with a sketch and I liked how it came out. I then decided that I would redraw "The One", as I really like the pose, and decided to draw her with her short hair and the extra gadgets and her diamond implant now being visible. I thought back to earlier this year when I gave Nikki a head band here and threw that in with her new short hairstyle...success! I really like Nikki's quasi-new look, as I pretty much just took the old pics of the original Adora-1 character and melded them with how I've been drawing Nikki over the past year. I'm not exactly sure yet, but she's probably gonna have this shorter hair style for a while.

As for the story aspect, my homie and I decided that we should team up his cyborg gal Cytrax-100 along with Diamond...I would write and he would draw the image. However, when I first started writing, I was gonna make this a separated image. In fact, this drawing was just Nikki until I got the spark late last night (around 4 am! ) to add in the side view of Cytrax after I was all ready to upload the deviation! I'm glad I did add Cytrax-100, as I felt that the piece was missing something. I didn't plan of having Cytrax show up in this story, however it just flowed so I went with it...it was literally an afterthought that worked out rather well!

I think that this is a good follow up to the "Enter The Collective" arc, as I didn't like how it ended for Nikki. She had gone through some serious shit and in retrospect her ending seemed a little flat. I think that this is a better way of showing just how she felt after her encounter with Sataria and the internal struggle that she's dealing with.

Stay tuned for part 2 and the conclusion of "I, Cyborg!"

CB-Wall-BG-02

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:21:24 PST

CB-Wall-BG-03

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:23:25 PST

Single character sample

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:07:37 PDT

Commission sample: [link]

color version

Prisoner of the Puppet Master

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:02:12 PDT

Prisoner of the Puppet Master

Prisoner of the Puppet Master
So theres been no suspicious activity? Fred asked, looking suspicious himself.
If I had, I would tell you, Pietro the Puppeteer snapped. Now unless you have some reason to be here at my show, I suggest you leave now.
Velma looked around. They knew they had found a phony $20 bill, but unless they could search some more, or get a warrant, they would be stonewalled.
We have to stall for timefind a way to stay until we can find more clues! she hissed to her friends quietly.
Scooby ducked away, only to reappear in a coat and tails. He started to dance about with a cane, to the amusement of the puppet master.
Velma rolled her eyes, then turned to Daphne to whisper a private word about the silliness of the whole thing. But her redheaded friend had disappeared. What the
Well, Johnny, what do you think, Pietro asked his puppet, with the hat and red suit.
Sorry, chum, but you cant be in the show if youre a dog, the puppet said with a dead pan.
Well how about me? Daphne glided in in her pink tutu, and began to dance.
Did she save that in the van from the episode from the Ghost clown, when she was hypnotized, Fred wondered. And why hasnt she worn it for me?
She pirouetted twice more, then curtsied for the others. Shaggy and Velma clapped while Fred continued to gape.
What do you think, Mr. Pietro? Daphne batted her lashes at him, flirtatiously.
Its up to Johnny, Pietro managed.
You cant, unless youre a real puppet.
And how can I do that?
Without warning, the lights went out completely. Velma screamed, Shaggy and Scooby ran through the door, leaving only their imprints. Fred caught Velma as she stumbled, then helped her toward the door,
where the dim moonlight showed the way. Cmon Daph! he yelled.
Daphne stepped backward. Fred? she managed, almost like a whisper, then suddenly, a caped figure behind her whipped around the cloth, enveloping her. A gloved hand covered her mouth, while another pinned her arm at both sides. The scent from the wrists was overpowering, and she mercifully fainted into her attackers arms.
When she awoke, she found herself dangling from the ceiling, each wrist and ankle covered with a clamp, tied to the roof with strings
Like a marionette.
A strip of cloth from who knows was used to gag her. The knot was tied in the center, forcing her mouth open uncomfortably.
What do you think Johnny, Pietro asked his puppet. Should we let her into the puppet show?
Shes pretty, Johnny admitted. But she has to learnpuppets cant talk!
Unngghh, was all Daphne could manage. She glanced over as she heard the organ music. A figure with a black hat and cape was sitting in front of the musical instrument, playing a love theme. What thewait, who was hethe one that abducted her originally.
Freeze, police! a voice broke out, as Fred, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby followed a team of cops in, who grabbed Pietro. Looks like weve got a kidnapping in progress.
That should give you enough evidence to get a search warrant to find the counterfeiting presses, Velma added.
Shaggy stood near Daphne. So Daphare you just hangin around? Everyone laughed, except Daphne, of course, still bound and gagged.
Id better get her down, Fred admitted. Shell be ticked if we leave her around in bondage too long.
The gang helped work the ropes to lower her down, and Velma helped Shaggy unlock the manacles.
Fred tended to her gag. Sorry you got left behind, Daphne. Guess you got to play damsel-in-distress again.
Yeah, she managed. Then she glanced over. So who was the phantom at the organ.
What do you mean Daph? Velma asked.
The guy with the cape, the redhead insisted.
They only guy busted was Pietro, unless you count his puppet Johnny! Shaggy added. Scooby laughed.
Hes the one who.covered my mouth, pinned my arms to my sidesI fainted. Hes the one who probably tied me andand
Swooned sounds more like it, Velma thought, a little concerned.
Fred put his arm around his girlfriend. Maybe youimagined it.
Yeah, maybe Daphne managed weakly. But as she followed her friends back to the van, all she could think about was the way he held her tight, covered her mouth firmly, but gently. Did the scent of whatever he was wearing make her pass out, or was it something else? Whatever the case, she was sure she didnt imagine it, and wondered when she would meet the mysterious phantom again.

Precious

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 23:42:02 PDT

Has anyone else ever noticed that one of Hojo's 'beach bunnies' has his phone number?

In the increasingly fatalistic atmosphere of the day, Hojo pursues Precious, out of a want for continuation more than intimacy. Costa Del Sol still teems with people exuding their own personal humidity - sweat tinged sweetly with anxiety, sickening - and the bars have never been busier.

Meteor hangs over the ocean, a second moon above Costa's much advertised horizon, apocalyptic. Romantic. The bartender jokes 'last rounds' to everyone too drunk to listen, and Precious is behind the counter with a white lily in her short dark hair, serving the usual cold drinks and lukewarm smiles.

"Long time, Professor," Precious says when he waves her over. It's nearing 3am. Hojo never calls beforehand to say he is coming. Either he finds her or he doesn't, but usually he does. Her routine is somewhat predictable. Hojo orders a lemon lime with vodka, and slips Precious two one hundred gil notes for his five gil drink.

"Keep the change," he advises.

She keeps the change, and still makes him wait until dawn, when her shift finishes.

Precious' apartment is never devoid of flowers - big, tropical blooms suffocating in cheap ceramic vases, ten gil imitation bouquets in tall glass bowls. Hojo brings her the finest chocolates from Midgar's upper plates, and the sweets sit melting on the kitchen bench while wine cools in the fridge. Without her high, high heels, Precious' forehead presses neatly against his collarbones, the lily in her hair tickling his chin.

"Are we all going to die?" she murmurs, nonchalant, before he eats the words right off her lips.

Later, Precious is pulling up her underwear at the foot of the bed when she catches him watching. "Picturing you with a baby bump," he answers, when her silhouette asks him what he's looking at.

Her dimly lit frown carries over on waves of heat despite the column fan in the corner, but Precious only clicks her tongue as she lies back down beside him, breasts soft against the thin film of moisture on his chest. She pinches his belly fat. Swirls a finger around his navel in wide, lazy circles, spiralling down down down.

"I don't want your baby," she sighs. "I'm going to find a blond man so my baby girl will be pretty and blond."

Hojo chuckles. "With those dark locks of yours, m'dear, there isn't a man blond enough to father your fair-haired offspring."

"And besides," she says, ignoring him, "I'm only going to have a baby with the man I marry. My daughter's gonna have a proper dad, so she won't go around messing with grumpy old men more than twice her age to try and fill the gap."

Hojo continues giggling. The atmosphere of the day is increasingly fatalistic; everyone is clambering to fill the gaps in their lives before time runs out, some more desperately than others. Precious, petite and barely into her twenties, tumbles slowly down into Hojo's own private hell, where the hands of a child he has no memories of and a wife he cannot forget reach up to meet her.

His grin is slightly manic as he pulls her closer. "Who says I wouldn't marry you?"

She has to twist her head to stare at him, and her eyes are wide, wide as saucers. "You'd marry me?"

Meteor hangs over the ocean, overseeing the ship carrying the Sister Ray to Midgar. They're all going to die, certainly - but sometimes the only way to obliterate a hole is to destroy its boundaries.

"Sure, kid." Hojo keeps laughing. "Why the hell not?"

Char.Sketch - FF7Fic - Orator

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:51:51 PST

Some quick drawings of a supporting character that appears within a Final Fantasy VII fanfic that I am working on.

He's also an updated and redesigned version of this guy: [link]

As I progressed further into the story, his personality started to evolve into something slightly sociopathic, my mental image of him, consequently, changed. Hopefully, he now looks less like a mafia lackey than he did, before, while still maintaining a somewhat... suspicious air. Something like... that of a card shark or a grifter...

I also have a job class in mind for him while I write. What exactly is that class? Well, it's alluded to--if not glaringly obvious--by his profession.

One hint: It's not Theif.

However, that's not to say that he isn't subbing it.

---------------------
Hoddmimis Holt
Prologue: Part Two - "Ars Oratoria"

When he was six, the boy liked to hunt for treasure. His mama and he didn’t have much at home, so he would set out on afternoon journeys through a jungle of steel and concrete to find neat things to put inside their small home. Mama didn’t like it when he went off on his own; but he was a Big Boy now, and not Mama’s little “Chickpea,” anymore!

It was Frigg’s Day—he remembered it being that day because Mr. Pisco always got new fish shipments on Frigg’s Day—when the Big Boy was returning home from playing outside with the other kids. The streets were getting dark and he knew that Mama would have dinner ready, soon. One step at a time, he climbed the steep steps that led to the apartment that he and Mama shared. When he got to the door, voices from other side caused him to he stop. He had heard a man talking with Mama—a man who sounded very loud and very angry about something.

“What’s the meaning of this?!”

“It’s hard. I can’t keep living like this,” he heard his mama say to the man. “He’s starting to ask questions…”

The boy leaned against the door, while standing on his toes, and tried to peek through the keyhole. All he could see was a man who was, in the eyes of a six-year-old boy, very big.

“So, you decide to put this… revelation on me, now?” He heard the man growl, “It’s not the best timing…"

“But he’s your son. He should know…”

“What do you think that would gain? That I’d take you two in? That we’d become a family? You’re kidding yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant, I—”

“It’s over; we made a deal. Don’t call me, again. I have nothing to do with you, or that kid.”

The boy stumbled away from the door when he heard the man approach. With a loud creak of the rusty hinges, the door swung open and man stepped out. Although, to this day, he could not recall the face of the man that had visited their home, he did remember that the man had paused in the doorway when he noticed the small boy sitting across the hall. He remembered that the man had stared at the boy with scary eyes that reminded him of those bad guys in Tommy's comic books. After a long moment, the man inclined his head and turned away.

When he went inside, he found Mama crying. He didn’t want to see Mama sad, so he showed her what the nice lady with the flower wagon had given him—a yellow chrysanthum, the Flower Lady had said.

His mama had smiled and said, “That’s nice, Chickpea. Let’s put it in a vase.” After searching around their apartment, they put the flower in an emptied soda bottle and set it on their kitchen table.

For a long time, the boy didn’t think much about the man that had visited that day.

It was getting cold from the chill of winter when he had returned home, early, from playing in the park with his friends. He’s forgotten his coat and his nose was starting to get running. Mama’d worry about him getting sick if he was out too long, and she’d always say they couldn’t afford the doctor bills.

After he climbed the stairs to and made it to the apartment door, he found that it was slightly open. Door had a hole by the knob and it looked like it’d been broken. When he went inside, he saw that that room was very messy. Messier than that time he’d once snuck that big brown puppy home, and it had gotten out of his room and tried to eat the couch! The table was smashed and the curtains were turn. Their small bookshelf was on its side. His Mama’s prized knickknacks all over the floor, along with the used books that she’s scrapped her gill together to buy for him because it was important that he have an education if he was going to be a Big Boy.

Maybe Mama brought home a big puppy and it had gotten out, too?

With a rush of excitement, the boy ran through the apartment, looking for his mama—and maybe a new friend!

He soon found Mama sleeping in her room with her face down on the bed. He climbed onto the bed and went to her side to push his small hands against her shoulder, and chirped, “Hey, Mama, wake-up!”

But she would not wake up.

Later, uniformed men with helmets hiding their faces had come to take Mama away. They wouldn’t tell him what happened, no matter how much he cried to know. Then, a man that his mama knew from work had come to take the boy away, too. The man had said that he was the boy’s uncle, and that he’d come to take care of the boy. He’d said that Mama had had an accident, and that she’d died.

“But,” his uncle had said, “It’s going to be all right. You’re coming to live with me, now.”

When the boy was nine, he decided that if there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that he did not want to prove his so-called uncle right—that a fatherless kid from the slums could never amount to anything useful in life.

He was tired of the old man's words: No future outside of pick-pocketing and prison can be expected for the bastard son of a Honey Bee and some old, faceless lover of hers.

Hell, maybe the old man was right, but that didn’t stop the boy from wanting to punch the loudmouth’s fat mug.

However, when faced against the look of admiration that his big sister would often direct toward the man, the boy never could follow through with the urge. His sister, for reasons beyond understanding, idolized the man. It was as though he were some sort of hero to her. Did she see the world through such rose-colored glasses, that she was completely blind to the fact that the man was just an all-around bad apple?

Or, was Don Corneo generally nicer to the female members of the boy’s patch-work, imitation of a family?

Either way, it didn't matter. It wasn't like he'd see either of them—or visit his dead mother’s grave, for that matter—ever again.

He’d had enough of this damned city, enough of the slums, enough of Midgar, and enough of his life-debt to Don Corneo. It wasn’t worth it. Not anymore.
The decision was made; there would be no turning back.

He just had to wait for the right moment.

It took a lot of patience, observation, and a fair amount of sneakiness; but, the boy had managed to swipe an MTID—an after-market transit pass in which the access code had been hacked, allowing the boy to stow away aboard one of the few trains that still traveled outbound from the Sector-1 train station. After gathering enough gill, lifted from wallets of unsuspecting officers that patrolled the South End Wall Market, the boy set his ambitions toward the famous splendor of the Gold Saucer. With the goal to cross the world and make a name for himself, the boy ran away.

That was nearly a decade ago.

At eighteen, the former slum kid stood backstage at the Gold Saucer’s Event Square.

The tailored black blazer that he wore over a white button-down shirt—left un-tucked and without a tie—and dark blue-jeans were carefully crafted to impress an image that was both casual and down to business. For the event, the long, shaggy hairstyle, that he normally preferred to wear, had been trimmed and combed down in a style that tried desperately to keep his hair out of his face; however, he found himself still having to brush aside a loose, sand-colored fringe that kept falling over his right eye.

Peering out between the curtains and past the stage lights, he could barely make out the members of various news and media organizations he knew to be present within the auditorium: TNN, the Cosmo Canyon Chronicle, Gold Saucer News Network, and so on.

To his left stood the pretty blond Turk with the nice ass—he recalled her name to be Elena—who was assigned to watch over the proceedings. Shifting his weight, he passed a sidelong look in her direction.

When Elena seemed to notice his gaze, her posture stiffened and she swiftly turned to meet his deep blue eyes with her honey brown. An annoyed frown pulled across her lips before she gestured toward the stage and said, in very business-like voice, “It’s time. You should get out there, now.”

The young man nodded, “Ah… Right then, time to get this show on the road, eh Dollface?” With a grin and a wink, the young man stepped away from Elena and trough the curtain to make his way across the stage.

At his appearance, the auditorium erupted into a cacophony of voices through which the young man could distinguish only a few questions: “What’s going to happen to the Troupe?” “Is the rumor, about how you’re leaving, true?” “What was the meaning behind your private meeting with Shin-Ra?”

With a raise of his hands, the young man stepped forward to stand behind the podium. He then flashed a charming smile and greeted the reporters, “Ladies and Gentleman, your attention, please. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. Your questions will be answered, soon. But first, I’d like to clarify matters before we begin.”

The questioning voices of the gathered reporters soon quieted to a low murmur of shuffling cloth and sporadic coughs. When he was sure of their attention, he nodded and cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” he continued speaking in his youthful tenor, “I’ll start out this press conference by confirming that, yes; I’ll be leaving The LOVELESS Production Troupe.”

In response to the questions and protests that arose, the young actor lifted his hands in another quieting gesture before he continued his speech.

"In the last year since the relocation and re-adaptation of LOVELESS, here at the Gold Saucer, the Troupe has sought to bring a message of hope to our audience—a reprieve for those who have suffered through the losses of war, economic turmoil, and though the wake of Geostigma. Although the new production of LOVELESS has taken a different creative direction than its predecessor, we still strive to hold onto the intent of the original. We believe that within the allegorical poem, the Gift of the Goddess serves as a metaphor for the human will. Although there are tragedies that many will face throughout life, if we hold true to our convictions and our dreams, we can forge forward and rise above any sorrow. That is our gift. It's like the old theatrical adage, 'The show must go on.' Even upon the precipice of extinction, humanity is resilient. Humanity goes on."

“However, this is not something that we are able accomplish alone. Like a production, it is done through cooperation—a bilateral approach set toward reaching a common goal. Without this unification, there can be no progress.”

The actor then removed the microphone from its stand and stepped out from behind the podium. “Now, as you may have guessed, my leaving LOVELESS is not complete reason for this press conference.”

“Today, I come before you to stand as a follow man—as a son, a brother, an orphan from the slums of Midgar, and a man who has lost loved ones to war and to the Geostigma pandemic. We have all experienced death, pain and sadness in the years before and since Meteor Fall. There are many who blame the exploits of Shin-Ra for this suffering; and, there are many who demand that they should face financial restitution for the damages done to our lives and to the planet. I count myself among that number."

"However… There are organizations and individuals who have chosen not to cast blame or point their fingers. From relief groups like the WRO, to independent contributors, they wish to leave the past behind. Instead of demanding to be given that which some would call their 'just due,' they have chosen to be more progressive—to step forward and extend a direct hand toward rebuilding what has allegedly been lost at the fault of Shin-Ra. It is in respect to these Progressionists that I have realized that my life as an actor is not enough. There is only so much that a person can do from under the limelight.”

“And recently, in light of my past as a Midgar orphan and the perspective that it brings to the table, I was offered an executive position with a company seeking to join the effort of those who work toward improving the global community—a company whose management and employees want to give back to the planet that which was once taken from it.”

The young man paused momentarily to let the words sink in, and then he announced, “I’ve accepted that offer. As of now, I’m the Public Interest Liaison for the new Public Relations Division at the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company.”

- - -

“I didn’t see it at first,” President Rufus Shinra confessed while he watched the press conference as it was broadcasted, live, via the GSN news feed to one of the Ghost Square Hotel’s Executive Suites.

“But,” he glanced briefly toward Director Tseng, “You’ve always had a sharp eye for detail. Your observation was, truly, on the mark.” A vague smile then pulled at the president’s lips while his voice took on an amused tone—a tone that was not without a somber touch. “I can see it now. There is a passing resemblance, if not by appearance, then by the unnecessarily long-winded speech. It’s almost nostalgic.”

Tseng, who had been flipping through a binder filled with photos and documents that were marked in red as CLASSIFIED, shifted his dark-eyed gaze away from the reports he held. With a serious expression drawn across his narrow face, he watched Rufus for a moment before giving a brief nod. “This certainly was… an unexpected development. It is impressive how he managed to evade detection for ten years; and in southern Corel, of all places, while living amongst a hotbed of… well…” Tseng shook his head before closing the binder and setting it upon the suite’s coffee table. He then stepped forward to watch the broadcast alongside Rufus. “Sir, if I may be frank…”

“Hm?”

“Is this the best move? He is young. To give him the role of Public Interest Liaison when you have yet to determine if he if he will be reliable…”

Rufus cut Tseng off with a brief wave of his hand. “Consider it to be a… necessary risk. At this phase, we need a public face for my company. A face that the people believe they can trust as the spokesman for a new, sustainable, Shin-Ra. When it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility,” the president’s vague smile widened when he settled his icy-hued eyes upon the Turk, “I’m not above using certain methods to facilitate gaining that trust.”

“I can understand that reasoning...” Tseng hedged while carefully considering his next words, “Yet, given his animosity toward the company, I’m surprised that he accepted your offer. If your true motives were to be exposed…”

“Then, I entrust the Turks with handling that matter—expediently.”

Hordes sketch!

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:09:08 PDT

A fan-art sketch of a troll from Privateer Press' Warmachine Universe

The LINE

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:24:26 PDT

Character Rodolfo Cortez Jr
[link]

Real Name:
Roman Bantay

Aliases:
The Brown Boy

Occupation:
Adventurer, bodyguard, mercenary, private investigator, various odd jobs

Citizenship:
U.S.A.

Place of Birth:
Makati, Philippines

Current Residence:
New Orleans, Louisiana

Known Relatives:
To be completed later...

Group Affiliation:
To be completed later...

Education:
College dropout

Height:
6' 2"

Weight:
350 lbs.

Eyes:
Brown

Hair:
Black

Powers:
Roman Bantay is a Class 1 UAI. When he is awake he is superhumanly strong, able to lift/press approximately 25 tons and punch through barriers as thick as four-inch steel plate. His skin is steel-hard and his muscles and bone tissue super-dense; he can withstand conventional handgun fire at a range of four feet and cannot be cut by the sharpest of blades. All of his tissues and organs are very durable and can withstand most traumas and impacts. His entire body can withstand up to one-ton impacts or blasts of 150 pounds of TNT without serious injury, and is impervious to temperature extremes and electrical shocks. His recovery time from injury or trauma is usually one-third that of an ordinary human. When the LINE is conscious he is immune to all known human diseases, pathogens and infections.

The LINE is a self-taught hand-to-hand street fighter an experience he recieved from his youth; and thanks to playing high school and collegiate football is also rather athletic despite his weight and girth.

Weaknesses:
The LINE's superhuman strength and durability are directly linked to his conciseness. This means when he is awake and aware he is near invulnerable but if he is asleep or somehow rendered unconscious he loses all of his powers. He is literally helpless when he is sleeping. The LINE's powers can be turned on or off while he is unconscious and without his knowing.

[link]

Sylvia Maeloch

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:34:07 PDT

The hubby is putting his Mass Effect game on hold to reboot his older Iron Kingdoms campaign, this one a sequel of sorts set 100 years in the future.

We be pirates, and I'm playing the captain! Sylvia is going to be a multi-classed Free Hand Fighter/Swashbuckler, both from the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide. She's a bit eccentric, and I haven't really played a comedic character in a while, so it should be lots of fun.

Iron Kingdoms © Privateer Press

Virus Free Storage

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:58:59 PST

Isn't it annoying when you get your PC infected with a relatively known or most of the times unknown virus present in your storage device. Now a days 45% of the viruses target these storage devices. 90% of these devices are infected. An average survey shows that 60% users don't know about this infection whereas 25% know and cant do anything about it. 15% know and remove it with the help of an AV or by hand.One could get his system infected with a very deadly Trojan Horse, Worm or even a Computer Virus. After reading this tutorial you will be able to eliminate all known and unknown viruses manually without the help of an AV support and avoid future infection from Storage Devices. Viruses in storage device sare broadly categorized into two types

Which openly show or reveal their nature.
Which are hidden and have to checked/ examined for analysis.

Before Inserting your Storage Devices...

Customized PC'S are safe from certain types of Known computer Viruses. In order to be more secure on XP you should consider doing the following before operating a storage device.

1- Change the Icons of Closed and Open Folder in XP.
2- Goto Tools---> Folder Options--->Click the View Tab

Select:
Show Hidden Files and Folders
Show Hidden Operating System Files and Folders

Uncheck:
Hide File Extensions for Known File Types.

Why and Whats the Use?

Why do I suggest to change the icon of the folder? Thats the strangest thing that Ive asked you to do. Actually No! Most viruses such as the W32 Youtoit.N, W32 Silly.FDC, W32 Rontokbro@mm, W32.Trojan VB.Nir are applications designed as the default folder Icon in XP that deceive the user into double clicking them and thinking that they have tried to open a legitimate folder. The system gets infected. When the user realizes this it is already too late and the system is infected. Changing the folder Icon will distinguish between a Folder that is valid where as Virus will show the same old XP Folder Icon and hence can be easily deleted and removed for good.

Show Hidden and Operating System Files and Folders:

Most virus files are marked with unchangeable attributes of read only and hidden. These viruses can be seen only when the user reveals the hidden files along with the Operating System Files and Folders.

Un-checking the Hide File Extension for Known File Types:

Since the option is checked a user can t even see whether a file is legitimate or it is a virus. As already explained above, a virus is mostly an application with an icon of a valid folder, or a jpeg image or even an avi image to fool the user to double click them in haste. This option when unchecked also reveals the File Extension distinguishing a valid file from a virus.

2- NEVER OPEN A STORAGE DEVICE VIA THE OPEN OPTION OR THE AUTOPLAY DIALOGUE BOX.

Most infections spread when a user quickly and without checking double clicks the storage device. This is the most unsafe way to enter into a storage device. Unlike Vista XP does not offer to scan and Fix Removable Media. The best way to avoid this in XP would be to use these options

1- If you use Styler explore to the USB
2- You could also choose the Folders option on the XP Explorer toolbar and navigate to the USB device.
3- Press Windows Key+E and explore to the USB.

3- Checking for Viruses Manually:

Always check the properties of suspicious files. If they say Type of File Application. then Gotcha. Its most probably a virus. Moreover you know what programs you transfer in your USB. Lookout for .com and .exe files as they are the bringers of Virus. Look out for any hidden autorun.inf in the USB and file such as readme.eml etc are viruses. Do check the properties of a folder before opening it. You can save yourself from this haste if you change the icons of the folders. Use Resource Hacker or an Icon Package. Hidden and operating system files that come infront of you are mostly viruses unless you hide something intentionally that is private in your USB . Look out for oddly named exes such as 23habdjhdd.exe or 43245usdsf.exe etc ...

4- Tackling Issues:

You right click a Storage Device Device and it shows strange words instead of Open and Explore. STOP! Don't open your Storage Device it is infected with W32.Rjump! Open the Storage Device by exploring to it. and delete Ravmon.exe and Autorun.inf and another infected .com files you may find.

5- Fight Back Like a Warrior:

So what if you have been infected? A Storage Device virus at the most blocks certain locations such as the Task Manager, Command Prompt and Registry Editing and most commonly the Folder Options. So what you need some Scripts from XP Optimizer Pro here [link] and the virus is done away with.

Credits for the Icons in the Preview Image

Rinzler: How I Made the Costume

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:45:44 PDT

MATERIALS YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE THE SUIT

Neoprene rubber - [link]
a wetsuit undersuit (dive suit) - [link] (this links to the shoes I used, but in the suggestions below they have some wetsuits)
Barge's cement
LEDs of your color choice - [link] and [link]
an exacto knife
black latex paint

A WARNING BEFORE GOING ON

When dealing with Barge's cement, please wear a mask and gloves. This glue is very potent and can cause damage to your body if inhaled too much. It will also tear skin if the glue gets on your body and you try to peel it off. If glue does get on your skin, just wait it out. Eventually it will all come off.

PHOTO 1
- Using a pattern my fiancee made from scratch we cut out the chest piece with an exacto-knife and started the base layer. The material used for the armor is Neoprene rubber, which is similar to craft foam, but much thicker and stronger.

PHOTO 2
- Repeated the same steps for the leg.

PHOTO 3
- In these three photos you can see some of the progress we made with the base layer. We repeated the same steps in photo one, continuing the leg, and starting on the back. The weird section on my leg is where we had a small mess up. This will be covered later, so if you make a mistake don't worry. Just fix it as best you can for the moment.

PHOTO 4
- Will be explained later. For now, I'm explaining the suit itself.

PHOTO 5
- We completed base layer of the armor. We actually started the second layer (a little bit) on the leg and back.

PHOTO 6
- Once the base layer is completed, you can start on the layout for the LED lights. We placed the LEDs where we wanted them to sit on my chest and ran the wires towards my back. The batteries will be kept in the disc hub, where Rinzler's Idenity discs sit. These LEDs were ordered from Oznium. They are the lay-flat, orange LEDs. They come pre-wired so there's not a lot of hard soldering.

PHOTO 7
- Second layer for the chest area is complete. Be sure to use thick Neoprene so the wires from the LEDs will not show underneath. This is where you will want to take it slow and make sure you're getting all of the details correct. You can cover up mistakes and get it as perfect as you can muster. You can even take shortcuts. For example, since the zipper was in the front for my wetsuit, we decided to have a small slice down the middle so it would be easy for me to get out in case of overheating. However, we made it as inconspicuous as possible and it ended up looking really good.

PHOTO 8
- More layering on the body, and the back has been started. Inside the disc hub is where we have the ends of the LED wires. This is where the batteries will sit and be well hidden.

PHOTO 9
- Since the chest was completed, we started painting the Neoprene with black latex paint. You can purchase this at Lowes or Home Depot. We chose this paint because it doesn't flake or chip from movement. It flexes with you and holds everything together nicely.

PHOTO 10
- The hand lights. Now, we ended up uninstalling these because no matter how little I moved, the wiring wore out extremely fast. That and the wires constantly pressing against my fingers when I bent them and was quite painful. I would recommend getting reflective tape for this area. We just used the lights without the wiring. So it was still orange, it just didn't light up. Same went for the butt-lights. If we had made them light up I wouldn't have been able to sit and, believe me, I needed to sit. So here, and for the bum area, I would recommend placing reflective tape on the base layer of the armor. Then, when you lay down the second layer, cut a small section out of the first two fingers so the orange will show underneath. For the butt lights, cut out circles in the shape desired. You can use two layers, or just place the tape on the second layer. Feel free to follow the pattern in the photo for the fingers.

PHOTO 11
- Detail shot of the "T" section, which is a separate piece from the chest. The LED's are gently placed onto the Neoprene inside of small square holes that were cut out with an exacto knife. They were then glued in with a back piece of Neoprene to ensure they didn't move. The wires for these lights also travel into the disc hub on my back. The "T" section itself is covering the top of the zipper, and it is connected at each side of the suit so they line up together nicely. This was secured with strong velcro.

NOW FOR THE HELMET

This photo above is just to show the difference in size from the ordered helmet to the redesigned one.

This helmet we ordered was from a Prop Maker in Italy named Art Funk. You can order an incomplete kit, or a finished helmet, from him on his Facebook page.

Honestly, I would recommend purchasing the kit. That way, if it doesn't fit you, you can re-size it as much as you need to. When we picked up the kit from the post office we received a resin cast of the helmet, as well as a plastic visor. When I tried it on we realized that it was way too large for my small frame. J had to cut out the resin visor, heat shape the resin base, cut, and sand it until it fit me. He had to take the entire base in about 50% before it started to look right. One all of that was sorted, he then had to size down the plastic visor.

After installing the plastic visor to the resin base, all that was left to do was to fill in the mistakes and sand it to give it a smooth finish. Then comes the easy part: painting the visor, resin base, and installing the lights. For the visor we used VHT Nightshade window tint, and for the resin base we used a matte black spray paint. Use any method of your choosing for the lights.

If you have any questions, or need something explained further, feel free to comment below or send me a private message.

DUE TO IT BEING ASKED QUITE OFTEN:

NO I will not make this costume for you.
NO I will not sell this costume to you.

Family Tree - Luisa

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:19:58 PDT

Meet the parents. 8D

_{I'm going to try to do this for Andon as well as he -together with Luisa- is one of the few characters of mine I actually thoroughly have figured out.

Alright, let’s see what I can write up about these two without spoiling too much. I'm going to censor everything Luisa does not know and the things that hasn't been figured out by anyone yet. uvua; Also you’re not obligated to read it, it’s more because I wanna write it down than that I expect people to read it ;;; probably pretty boring anywho

Mother: Ines Maria Munoz (1963-2010)
Father: Valesco Diege Munoz (1961)
Daughter: ▋▋▋▋▋ ▋▋▋▋▋ ▋▋▋▋▋ a.k.a. Luisa Dimanche (1986)
Luisa also has a ton of siblings, but I’m not going to draw all of them, that'd be crazy. > >;

Luisa remembers her parents as two of the most disciplined and religious individuals who, when they have a goal, will take anything to get where they want to go. It doesn't matter whether someone needs to be taken down to achieve this or if a life or two need to be changed for the worse, it only matters what is the best for the family's name; such as accomplishments on educational grounds, but as well as law and medical.

▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋ (▋▋▋▋▋) ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋, ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋, ▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋, ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋, ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋, ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋. ▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋▋.

Her mother used to be a lawyer, while her father held a high standing job at the hospital as the chief of surgery whom is specialized in neurosurgery. They preferred to refer to themselves as the 'golden duo', as it was quite the impressive combo to have a highly respected lawyer and neurosurgeon/CEO working close together, ready to defend a case whenever it needed to be, it gave you quite the image towards the public after all. No one who would want to hold a case where the chances were quite large that you would lose.
Surely this was an image they wanted their children to achieve as well, whom they pressured into gaining good grades, socializing with the right people, befriending the right people and of course getting a shove into the right educational grounds that they saw fit for their children. They planned what was supposed to happen and as long as their children kept to it, they did not care about what else their children did- as long as it was nothing that damaged the family's name; such as the usage of drugs, tattoos or things of the likes.

Luisa’s mother, Ines, passed due to a type of Alzheimer that progressed much faster than it usually would, or so her father claims; who put his everything in the case. Her mother was moved to a private institute to be hidden from any press while Luisa’s father acted as her assigned doctor and used all the time he had to look into what she had and whether or not he could be able to do something about it. He learned the hard way that Alzheimer was not something that she could be healed from when she passed at the age of 47 years.
After this her father started up his own research for the illness, after gaining approval from those above him and gaining a fund to work with, and is currently still working on it and he does truly believe he is making progress. Whether or not that is the case? Who knows. u3u ~

Currently Luisa's relationship with her father is crappy as fuck, though things could look up better if both parties would stop being stubborn and would be able to let go of the past.}

^{Credits:
Luisa, Ines, Valesco © =Tomokou
Meme Template © *StarberryLemonade}

Satixis Queen

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 13:29:55 PDT

Concept sketch for a Reaver Queen Scarre, Epic Warcaster, for Privateer Press's Warmachine..

Wrongeye Sketch

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:18:03 PDT

Just a quick doodle of Wrongeye, a new lesser Warlock from Privateer Press.

This was done at D&D, I didn't have any references, so some of the details are wrong, but I like it none the less.

Mitt of the Year

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:47:44 PDT

A little thing I threw together to commemorate Mitten's smoooooooth visit to Britain....

"Mitt Romney made yet another gaffe on Thursday when he admitted to reporters that he had met with MI6 head Sir John Sawers. The meeting with the chief of Britains intelligence agency was not on Romneys public schedule, but then he told the press, I appreciated the insights and perspectives of the leaders of the government here and opposition here as well as the head of MI6 as we discussed Syria and the hope for a more peaceful future for that country. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office later commented, Sir John Sawers meets many people, but we dont give a running commentary on any of these private meetings.

Ghost of caspia

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:48:17 PDT

this one is an idea i came up with for a warcaster for cygnar, a faction of privateer press' warmachine game. i'll add his backstory at a later date

cygnar, warmachine, and warcaster are all trademarks of privateer press and such blah blah blah....its just a freakin fan concept. legal mumbo jumbo :/

Dont press your luck Private

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:28:35 PST

Self explanitory

Little Miss Trouble Maker II

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:41:49 PDT

There is actually an amusing story behind these photo's, well amusing now i am not in trouble... In fact a very choatic part of me wanted to name these photo's "industrial espionage" but i didn't in fear of actually getting into trouble.

Yesterday was a nice sunny day, and i had to be in town later that day for my D&D game any way. Plus there is a couple of things i wanted to do. So i thought since it is a nice day i will take out one of my dolls and my camera and have a wander about Manchester and get some cool shots. Especially since I have not took a picture with Scops's new face up yet.

So i remembered this really cool place i wandered though one day when being shown where that gaming bar was. I remembered how pretty the water feature was and they had a cool statue. And how quite it was, so it would be ideal.

So i wander that way get out my doll and start taking some photo's. One security guard walks past, i think nothing of it and just say hi to him. He was nosing what i was doing, but i didn't mind or thing anything of it because i can get that when out with my dolls any way. So i carry on taking photo's.

About 40 minuets later the security guards (yes plural) asked me what i am doing. So i explain. Then they explain it is private land, and not only that they have trouble with the press being there and all kinds of people who wish to take photo's will ill intentions because of the businesses they have there and other things. I explained that i had no interest in the buildings because they where not pretty, unlike the water feature and the marble statue.

So they radio up to the main bit and have a little giggle that i am not some terrorist, or with the press or some sort of spy. That i was just a bit weird. So they guy asks was is it for? Was it some sort of school/collage project or personal. I say personal (I have not been a student in some years now). He says OK the, just hurry up because i am not meant to be there. So i am like sure no problem and apologize.

So i try and hurry to try and get a couple more shops. Then 5 minuets later another security guard; then lists (yes lists) the number of crimes i could be done for taking photo's in that area and how much trouble i was now in. I was actually too shocked to hear the full list, but it started with industrial espionage, terrorism was on the list some where and a few others too. I try and explain the doll thing and say i am perfectly willing to show them any photo's i have taken. And explain i really didn't know, because look there is a Starbucks (yes really there was).

Then he wants to see some sort of ID because he really thinks i am up to no good. He sees that my purse does not contain press passes. So says hurry up and get out, before i get into trouble. And stresses how i was not meant to be there. I apologize again and at this point am very quick in packing my stuff.

Well not something that happens everyday. And now that everything is fine and i am not in trouble a little funny. And on the plus side i got some cool shots!

Old gumball logo!

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:44:10 PDT

The gumball logo from the creepypasta artical "the grieving

One day, I was watching Adult Swim when I realized that I'd been up so late that I hadn't even kept track of the time, it was already 4 AM. I don't recall ever watching AS this late, so I stayed awake to see what would happen when it ended. A little bumper showed up at the bottom of the screen during a commercial break, it said that a special episode of The Amazing World of Gumball was about to come on. I was a little confused about an episode of a very popular, new show coming on this early, but I was bored and decided I would watch it; thinking it might come on later in the day so I could spoil it for my brother. Sort of mean, I know.

The flashy and energetic intro theme played, although it was played a little differently than I recall. The music was a little different, and the show's logo wasn't animated, it's colours were done rather sloppily as well, almost like something a little kid would do in MS Paint. I ignored it, assuming that it was done just for this 'special' episode. The title of the episode was "The Grieving", a sort of sad title, but I didn't really pay too much attention.

It began with Gumball, the show's 12 year old protagonist, standing alone facing a corner of his dimly-lit classroom. He looked absolutely miserable, a far cry from the cheerful demeanor he usually had. There was no one else in the room, not even his best friend and adopted brother Darwin the goldfish, and the windows in the room clearly showed the night sky outside. I was really starting to get confused, why would he be at school at night, and why was he standing in the corner all sad and alone?

After about what seemed like a minute of Gumball standing somberly in the corner, the scene suddenly changed. We were in Gumball's house, once again the scene is silent and a little disquieting. Richard, Gumball's enormous rabbit father, walks in from the kitchen, he looked even more miserable than Gumball had in the previous scene. Richard isn't wearing his usual attire, he's dressed in a fancy black suit, a little uncharacteristic of him, as he's usually a slob. He sighs, and slumps down onto the sofa, and starts sobbing intensely, sounding like someone who had just lost something important.

I was starting to get a little creeped out, where was the silly, fun cartoon that I usually looked forward to watching with my younger brother? This was something completely different. I was beginning to think that this might have been something the creators did as an experiment or something, a test of the animation or sound perhaps. Though, it couldn't have been, aside from the opening theme, which was still different from the final shows', the episode had been much quieter than it usually was, only subtle sounds and very little music, and the animation was not anything to write home about either. It was done a bit like an amateur flash on Newgrounds, the character designs were somewhat sloppy and rushed looking, and the real life backgrounds used for the show looked different.

As confused and somewhat frightened as I was, for some reason, I kept watching it. Poor Richard was still sobbing on the sofa, as the front door opened suddenly, making me jump a bit at such a loud noise, and Gumball's mother Nicole, a blue cat like him, stepped in. Like Richard, she wasn't wearing her usual outfit, for some reason, she was in a black dress and was wearing a pretty black hat to match. Nicole sat down on the couch to comfort her husband, although she was looking a bit saddened herself. By this point Richard's crying had began to get more pained and miserable sounding, this wasn't the normal cartoon crying on the show, this was realistic and almost depressing crying, I almost felt like sobbing myself.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the sad scene at their home ended, as it shifted back to the school. We weren't in Gumball's classroom this time, we were in Principal Brown's office. Nicole and Richard were there, in their usual clothes, looking more normal and happy than they had before, but still slightly worried. Principal Brown however, looked extremely sad. He quietly and somberly informed them that their children, Anais and Darwin, were not present after lunch earlier that day. They hadn't been seen at all the rest of the day. Nicole was instantly furious at him, she began spouting various insults and calls at him that I don't think would have made it on a more mature program like Regular Show. I was laughing at this, because it seemed sort of funny for Nicole to flip out in this manner and start swearing like a sailor in a G-rated cartoon, but my outlook soon changed when Principal Brown told her something else after she finally had quieted down.

His eyes began to tear up as he informed them that they eventually were found, but they had not been found alive. He then went into graphic and nearly nauseating detail describing how their bodies were found, their parents sitting in utter shock. I could hardly believe what was happening, how could such a cheery and fun kids show be taking such a dark and twisted turn. I was considering turning the television off, but I was too scared to be left in the dark by now, nearly frozen by fear and disturbed intensely at the terrible things that he was saying. Another flashback, the scene was earlier that day, and the animation in this scene was even worse than earlier. I don't remember it very clearly, but I think he began his recollection by saying that the school had called the police department when they first turned up missing, believing that the kids had simply ran off and decided to skip school. They said it was very uncharacteristic of both Darwin and Anais to go skipping school like delinquents, Darwin was a little naive and a bit ditzy, but he was a good kid and wouldn't have even dreamed of doing something like that, and Anais was even less likely to run away, she was a straight-A student, despite being only four, which also troubled the police, seeing as a defenseless four year old little girl was missing as well as an older boy.

The school had been thoroughly checked, so the police started to search the heavily wooded area outside of the school. It took little time for the police to discover the horrifying fate of Anais. In a small clearing outside of the school, Anais's head was found in a small box, you likely would have expected something like that to be shown in the show's cutesy art style, but it was nothing like that at all. Realistic blood covered the box, inside and out, while Anais's head was done in the normal style, but was drenched in blood and some other fluids, not all of them her's apparently. There was a note in the box, seemingly written in her blood. It was never stated during the episode what exactly was written on the note, but it apparently lead to the rest of her remains and Darwin's heavily mutilated corpse.

What I remember most about this scene was how out of place it seemed. All the blood and gore from Darwin and Anais's slaughtered and dismembered remains was done in a very realistic and disturbing way. It looked like the scene had been taken from a crime scene photograph done by a professional, not something from a cartoon. The way this scene was animated was different from most of the show as well, you may know that the characters from this series are done in vastly differing animation styles, from Flash animation, to CGI, and I think that there's even a character done by someone putting their chin upside-down to make a face. This particular scene wasn't like anything I had ever seen on the show before, every little detail on Darwin's face was clearly illustrated, he looked a little like a zombie, his face was very pale and his eyes had been gouged out by someone. Anais fared no better, or, what was left of her anyway. She was naked and her stomach had been slit open, her intestines were strewn around the trees and bushes in the woods, done once again in a very morbid and realistic style.

I was feeling very ill by the time this incredibly disturbing flashback had come to an end, so I quickly ran to the bathroom to vomit. I was feeling better after upchucking, so I had realized that I had good timing and had ran to the bathroom during a commercial. It was then I noticed that the show had been running twice as long, it usually ran for eleven minutes, but this episode was running for about thirty. By then I was wondering if there was any information on "The Grieving" on IMDB or something, so while the commercials were still playing I looked up some information about this episode on Google. Nothing came up, no information remotely similar to the plot or name of this episode existed anywhere.

Now incredibly scared and wondering if anyone else was watching, I quickly dialed my brother Larry and asked him to turn on Cartoon Network and see if he was seeing the same shit that I was. He was pretty mad that I woke him up at this hour, but he's a nice guy and told me he would see for me. I thanked him and stayed on the line as the show came back from commercial break. The scene had thankfully panned away from the horrific sight of the children mutilated and was back to the principal's office. I asked Larry if he saw some cartoon animals talking or crying, since that was what they were doing on my TV. To my surprise, he said that he saw nothing like that, instead it was a rerun of an old Looney Tunes short. In utter shock, I dropped the phone and ran over to the TV to turn it off and as hard as I pressed the buttons it would not shut off at all, I tried every single button and none of them did a thing. I tried unplugging the whole thing as well, but nothing worked, the TV stayed on no matter what.

Larry had hung up, assuming that I was playing a joke or something, I guess, and I was alone once again. My door was locked from the outside somehow, and the door to my bathroom was now locked as well. It seemed that I had no choice but to call the police, since my other family members were gone that night, it was the reason I could stay up so late to watch Adult Swim in the first place. When I hurriedly dialed the number, I accidentally dropped my cell phone into my cup of Pepsi. I was very scared, and had no choice but to finish the episode, I turned on all the lights in my room and got under the covers, hiding like my little brother does when I make him watch scary movies with me.

I had apparently missed a little bit, but Gumball's parents were still talking to Principal Brown, so not that much. Nicole was asking him if Gumball was alright, apparently since she hadn't remembered him when Principal Brown told her what had happened to Darwin and Anais. He looked slightly confused and shocked for a moment, and explained to her that he thought Gumball was out sick today and he had spent the day at home by himself with the stomach bug. Nicole screamed and wailed, while Richard quietly told him, in a very out of character voice, that they thought Gumball had got on the bus this morning, but it didn't seem that way.

The police were called once again, to search the building and the small forest outside of Elmore Junior High. They had found him in Miss Simian's classroom, hanging by a noose, with a blood covered knife behind him and blood covering his clothing. The episode ended with the shot of Gumball's dead body hanging there in the corner fading to black. The credits rolled silently, not like the usual way Cartoon Network annoyingly airs a promo that squishes half the screen, these credits rolled unusually slow and they weren't that fun to watch either, a little creepy, just plain white text scrolling on a black background.

I only recognized Ben Bocquelet's name, as he was the creator of the show, the rest were people I'd never heard of. The copyright notice at the end said © Cartoon Network Studios, 2001. Which was incredibly odd, seeing as the show was new for 2011. After all that was over, the screen went to static for a split second, during which some incredibly creepy and shocking video clips were shown between static intervals. I can still remember them all very clearly. The first was a picture of a person in a Plague Doctor outfit, those always scared me for some reason, and the way the person in the suit was filmed was just as bad, a red light, something that freaks me out incredibly was shone over the clip. The next was what seemed like a video being played very quickly, over and over of a kitten's face being squished by a woman wearing high heels, which was strange because a so called "friend" of mine sent me a picture yesterday of a cat being stepped on and killed, similar to the kitten in the video. The last one was the one that disturbed me the most and made me want to both cry and vomit my guts out, it was my little brother or at least a small child who looked very similar to him being shot in the face by a person who looked like my father. You could clearly see the child's brains and blood splatter on the wall. I began to sob uncontrollably after that traumatizing clip, so much so that I passed out.

When I woke up, my door was unlocked, and my television was turned off. I went to call the police on the home phone in my kitchen and report that I had seen some very disturbing things on TV and that my doors had been locked. When they arrived, they could find nothing like what I remembered from early this morning. My internet history was even cleared, they were angry at me, and just assumed that I had had a bad nightmare, when I was sure I hadn't. Thankfully, one of the officers felt bad for me and took me out to a small diner so I could recollect my thoughts.

At the diner, I remembered that my family was out visiting my aunt, and they were supposed to be back by noon or so. It was already eleven, so the officer and I drove back only to find a whole squad of police cars and even some government agents at my house. They explained to me that my little brother was missing and that my mother and father were major suspects. I was freaking out, and trying to tell them about the disturbing clip of the boy who looked like my brother being shot in the head, but they wouldn't listen. I stayed with my older brother, Larry, who wouldn't believe me either, still insisting that all he saw was an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and nothing at all creepy or weird. The cops eventually told me that they would contact Turner Broadcasting and tell them about the incident.

A representative of Turner Broadcasting came to my cousin's house to talk to me in private about what I had seen and experienced that night. He was very kind, but it all seemed a little like some sort of front. After I could tell him all I remembered, he agreed to playback that day's programming from when the incident with the disturbing Gumball episode had occurred. To my shock, all that was airing at that time was an old Looney Tunes short, nothing more, nothing less. I hysterically sobbed and moaned that what I had experienced and seen was completely real, but no one listened. Eventually, I discovered that Ben Bocquelet had a Twitter account, so I sent a message about the episode and this was the reply I got:

"One thing, how in the heck did you find that? I never, ever, EVER, thought I would think about that old shame again. Don't tell anyone this Sarah, (Yes, that's my name), but The Amazing World of Gumball goes back further than you know. I used to have a really boring job as a teen, and I sketched little drawings of The Wattersons and friends. The episode you saw was never supposed to be seen by anyone but me and a few friends of mine. It was a very, very awful thing to do, but we made the episode as a joke. A guy from my old job, who everyone hated, had lost a child to a crazed serial killer, who is apparently still out there somewhere. Anyway, we made it so we could make fun of how he came into work usually, crying like a fool, which is why you saw Mr. and Mrs. Watterson cry so much in the episode. I know, I am deeply sorry for what I did, which is why I tried to bury that stupid thing years ago. Literally, I went out into the countryside with my mates and dug a hole and buried it.

What I don't get though, is how you described the blood and guts and stuff. We didn't have any scene with Darwin and Anais's bodies being found, all that happens in the episode is the parents are informed of the kids being found dead and them crying like crazy. We didn't even draw anything in the episode like that, at all. We're not that sick.

Now, this is my theory, the lunatic who killed the man's child found the tape we buried, watched it, and heavily edited it. Then, he hijacked the local TV station near *******, (I blocked out the name of my city, I'm paranoid enough, and it's a small town.) somehow, and got the episode to air on your local Cartoon Network station. Now, why your brother couldn't see it, I have no idea, why it seems you're the only one who saw it, I have no idea either. Sorry, but I just don't know.

Now, for the explanation you have been waiting for, the clips at the end. I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T. I'm deeply sorry, from the bottom of my heart, but I don't know why those clips were aired, I just don't. I am sorry, I really am, but me and my mates are just the ones who made those scenes with Richard and Nicole crying, that's it. I'm so sorry Sarah, I'm so deeply sorry. -Best wishes, Ben Bocquelet and everyone involved with, 'The Grieving'."

'

USS Liberator - second refit

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:20:48 PDT

During the time of the Ambassidor-Class Enterprise, the Liberator was further modified. The under-saucer photons were replaced with a brass cone... a Tractor Cannon. This weapon presses against the target with a spread-out tractor beam, while at the same time pulling on it with a narrow tractor... both consuming and outputing tremendous power. The end result is the target ship's frame is litterally twisted, torn, and ripped appart. The weapon had been in Federation archives for some time, but was only granted testing rights with the looming danger of war with the Klingons, due to it's violent nature.

To make sure the firepower of the photons would not be lost for conventional combat - or if the cannon proved ineffective - the "Photon Roll-Bar" was added above the saucer. The fusion power plants were upgraded, and a large portion of the recreation facilities were replaced with holodecks.

As often is the case in these turbulent times, several Klingons felt that the empire had lost honor. These warriors often go to a neiboring empire and act as privateers until the empire regains its honor. Two 12-man B'erel-class birds of prey (little larger than gunboats) found their way to the Federation... rare, but not unheard of that they see honor there. These ships were assigned to the Liberator... which quickly had docking clamps installed on the underside of the Photon Roll-Bar to carry them - unnessisary, but it saves fuel. Some of her cargo space was turned into on-ship quarters for the Klingons. *Reference - this was to help explain the large number of members that began showing up in Klingon costume, after a visit from the Klingon Assault Group of Boise, ID*

Granted an older Battle-Destroyer, the USS Redoubtable, and placed under the command of Captain Don Shadly, the ship was off. The cannon proved horrifyingly effective in tests, but was fortunately never used against the Klingons, for fear of whom it had been installed.

ACEO - Finch

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:55:04 PST

2.5 3.5 inches
Watercolour on 140lb cold press
Original in private collection

Gift for my mom

ACEO - Girafffe

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:57:22 PST

2.5 by 3.5 inches
Watercolour on 140lb cold press
Original in private collection

Gift art for a friend.

ACEO - Elephant Eyelashes

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:48:32 PST

2.5 by 3.5 inches
Watercolour on 140lb cold press
Original in private collection

A gift for my sister.

1891 $1,000 Silver Certificate Note Front

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:51:33 PST

This is the front of the 1891 $1,000 Dollar Silver Certificate. Only 2 of the actual notes are known to still exist, and about only 200 were ever made. The image on the left depicts "lady liberty", but the actual person used to model that image was a woman named Josie Mansfield. She became famous for a sexual scandal involving financier James Jubilee Jim Fisk. Uploaded file is very high resolution of 8809 by 3656. Gamma is 2.2. The full Josie Mansfield story follows here....

"The woman on the left of the note might seem unremarkable, little different from any of the other allegorical depictions of Liberty or Columbia often seen on American currency at the time. I can assure you, however, that this woman is different.

To ask who she is is to scratch the seedy underbelly of Americas Gilded Age.

Her name was Josie Mansfield. She was born either in Boston in 1842 or California in 1853; coin collecting sites mention the former, while original sources state the latter.

One way or another, she became an actress and showgirl in San Francisco in her teens. Like a lot of actresses at the time, Josie had trouble making ends meet. Many less famous actresses resorted to prostitution to earn extra cash, but Josie was different. Her stunning good looks and bubbly personality led to her becoming a courtesan for San Franciscos wealthy men. Eventually, she married fellow actor James Lawler, and within months shed convinced him to move the couple from San Francisco to New York.

There she met infamous financier James Jubilee Jim Fisk. Fisk was known for being a ruthless businessman in an age of ruthless businessmen. Together with partner Jay Gould, Fisk was able to literally steal the Erie Railroad out from under Cornelius Vanderbilt. Fisk used the proceeds from the deal to engage in ever more ambitious and barely legal stock manipulations. Fisk also bought several theatres, including the Grand Opera House on West Twenty-Third Street. There he staged lavish productions full of scantily-clad women, which, as you might guess, created a scandalous buzz about Fisk in society but also (not surprisingly) proved to be very popular with theatregoers, especially men.

Mansfield was soon divorced from Lawler and living in a richly furnished house supplied by Fisk. It was close to the Opera House, and there was even a covered walkway between Mansfields house and Fisks office, allowing the two to go back and forth in secret.

Why the secrecy? Although Mansfield was divorced by that time, Fisk was not. His wife lived in a huge home in Boston (with her lifelong female roommate) and although Fisk spent most of his time in New York, hed still travel to Boston to be with his wife for a few weeks in the summer and at major holidays. Fisks (apparently lesbian) wife was okay with this, even if proper New York society was not.

Fisk seemed to have money to burn. He headquartered the Erie Railroad in the Opera House, and spared no expense in furnishing his offices. He owned several lavish carriages which he rode through the streets of New York, and he even had servants aboard to roll out a carpet when he arrived at his destination. Fisk bought himself a colonelcy in New Yorks 9th Regiment militia, and bought everyone in the regiment new uniforms after splurging on a $5,000 uniform for himself (thats $84,135 when adjusted for inflation).

Despite being as rich as Croesus, it just wasnt enough for Fisk. He always wanted more. And, with Gould, Fisk tried to corner the gold market.

During the American Civil War, the United States issued money that was backed only by credit. After the war ended, everyone assumed that the government would buy back these so-called greenbacks with gold. So Fisk and Gould became friends with financier Abel Corbin, who was President Grants brother-in-law. They used his relationship with Grant to argue against the sale of gold to the President himself. They also convinced Grant to appoint Daniel Butterfield, a war hero mostly remembered today as the composer of the military tune Taps, as Assistant Treasurer of the United States. Butterfield would tip off Fisk, Gould and Corbin when the government was going to sell gold. The three would then use this knowledge to manipulate the market to their advantage. President Grant eventually got wind of the plan and secretly ordered the government to sell $4 million worth of gold, which destroyed the gold bubble and wiped out the fortunes of thousands of investors. Corbin was ruined, but Fisk and Gould had sold just before the price fell, netting themselves an estimated $11 million (almost $176 million in 2009 dollars). The day became known as Black Friday, and it was yet another scandal in the seemingly endless line of scandals befalling the Grant administration.

You might wonder how Fisk and Gould were able to openly act as financial buccaneers without attracting the attention of law enforcement. This is because they were friends of William M. Boss Tweed. The son of a furniture maker, Boss Tweed early on recognized the byzantine nature of New York politics and used this as leverage to literally take over not just the city, but the state, too.

Tweed was able to seize control of Tammany Hall, the headquarters of the citys Democratic Party, which had long had a stranglehold on city politics. There he was able to control which candidate was voted to which seat, and use that to get kickbacks from people wanting to do business with the city. Hed then use that money to bribe police officers and judges, which created a feedback loop which allowed him to constantly expand his influence. Soon, Tweed had control of not just every board or commission in the city, but state legislators and judges far from the city as well. Within a few years, Tweed was literally one of the most powerful men in America. Its hard to imagine today just how much power Tweed had back then. When some of Tweeds contractors came under fire for receiving a lot of money for doing not a lot of work, Tweed didnt worry. When a committee was formed to look in to the matter, Tweed awarded his own printing company a vastly over-inflated $8,000 ($127,000) contact to print their report!

One of Tweeds favorite people was Fredericka Marm Mandelbaum. Born in Prussia, Marm came to New York City in 1848 with her husband, Wolfe. Together the couple opened a dry goods store on Clinton Street. Within a few years, Marm was operating as the premier fence in New York City. Thieves of all kinds came to her to sell their wares, and soon Mandelbaum needed two warehouses to store the stolen goods. However, Mandelbaum wasnt content to simply sit back and have criminals bring merchandise to her. She funded many heists and ran a school to teach street criminals how to become proper thieves.

Mandelbaum was able to separate her criminal and social life, and she often held elaborate parties for the citys elite in her lavish home decorated with only the finest stolen rugs, tapestries, silverware, china, chandeliers and furniture. These were parties where the guests thought nothing of smashing expensive china and glassware, smoked cigars rolled in multiple $100 ($1,600) bills, gambled ten of thousands of dollars without a thought, or happily showed off the new $15,000 ($240,000) diamond-studded dog collar theyd just bought for their well-groomed poodles. Mandelbaum often used her students as servants for the parties, and had only one rule for them: no stealing from guests like Fisk, Gould, or Tweed at the parties.

One of Mandelbaums favorite criminals was George Leonidas Leslie, a man who would become infamous as the King of Bank Robbers. Leslie was born in Cincinnati into a wealthy family. His father owned a successful brewery, which enabled Leslie to attend the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a degree in architecture. He then founded a successful design firm. But Leslie had a romantic streak in him. He constantly read books about the Old West (which wasnt actually old at the time) and read every news story he could about bank robbers like Jessie James. When his parents died, Leslie sold their house, cashed in his inheritance and moved to New York, where he decided to become a bank robber. Upon his arrival in the city he used his architectural background to get an introduction to John A. Roebling, the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. Roebling suggested that they meet for lunch at Delmonicos, famous as the first restaurant in America. There Leslie was introduced to Fisk and Mansfield, who got him an invite to one of Mandelbaums parties.

At the time, most bank robbers used guns and violence to rob banks during the day, or dynamite to blast open safes at night. Leslie didnt care for either approach. He abhorred violence, especially violence against bank employees, whom he considered to be working men. He didnt care for blasting open safes at night, because this attracted the attention of police and often burned up the very money people were trying to steal. Leslie, an engineer at heart, came up with something he called his little joker: an aluminum disc encircled by a cutter. One simply pried off the dial to the bank safe, inserted the little joker, and replaced the dial. The next time a bank employee opened the safe, the little joker would cut notches into the disc, revealing the numbers of the combination. All one had to do then was break into the bank, retrieve the joker, and figure out which order the numbers notched into the disc opened the safe.

All this required a bit of finesse. Instead of simply storming the bank with guns and demanding money, or throwing a rock through a window and blasting a safe, Leslies method required entering the bank at least twice: once to plant the little joker, and another time to retrieve it. This required a lot of planning, and Leslies heists often took months to execute. He often built exact replicas of a bank in one of Mandelbaums warehouses, and had his Mandelbaum-supplied gang practice the heist over and over again. He sometimes posed as a businessman and rented space above, below or next to banks to provide a way in, using fake papers provided by Mandelbaums forgers. He often had gang members hired as night janitors at banks and work there for months to allay suspicion. He insisted on his gang members wearing disguises (provided by Fisks theatres) to throw police off the trail. Leslie thus became Americas first glamorous thief, and if youve a fan of the heist film genre, you now know where the inspiration came from.

Leslies methods were successful because his intricate planning left nothing to chance, and most of the time very little evidence if any was left behind. Leslie was also patient, and he sometimes had to force his impatient gang to wait until he was certain that the bank had as much cash as possible in its vault. Unlike most shoot em up or smash and grab bank robbers, Leslie was able to pull off heists for years. Law enforcement at the time estimated that Leslie was responsible for up to 80% of all the bank robberies in the United States in the time he was active.

Leslie was able to evade police for most of his life for two other reasons.

First, most Americans didnt have bank accounts at the time, so it was only the rich who were stolen from. Thats why Leslie (and Jessie James, and other bandits) were able to become folk heroes. People just wouldnt rat on Robin Hood. This would change with a single robbery, however. Leslie often worked as a robbery consultant for a flat $20,000 ($320,000) fee, and he had done all the planning for the robbery of the Dexter Savings Bank in Dexter, Maine. He took no part in the actual robbery, and when things didnt go as planned the gang raided a bank employees home, held his family hostage and tortured the poor employee for the combination to the safe. They even stole the mans gold watch, something Leslie termed despicable. Robin Hood had apparently gone bad, and so public support of bank robbers waned.

The second reason Leslie evaded capture was because he worked for Mandelbaum, who was friends with Boss Tweed, who had bought off all the cops. But Tweed was eventually brought to trial and convicted of stealing between $40 million and $200 million from the city of New York (thats $1.5 to $8 billion current dollars). With Tweeds men being weeded out of the police force, a new detective was brought in: Thomas Byrnes.

Byrnes was the Elliot Ness of his age, a man with enough money and moral backbone to be incorruptible. Brynes, who coined the term third degree for his extreme methods of questioning suspects, was relentless as was Robert Pinkerton, son of Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, whose all seeing eye logo became the basis of the term private eye. Byrnes and Pinkerton worked day and night to clean up the streets of New York.

They eventually caught most of Leslies gang, but not Leslie himself. If Leslie had a weakness, it was for beautiful women, and he often sent members of his gang out on reconnaissance missions to check out banks in other cities. This allowed him to romance the gangs wives and girlfriends in their absence. One of the gang members eventually found out about this when his girlfriend suddenly began wearing an expensive cashmere shawl. Suspicious, the crook went to the store helpfully embroidered on the label, and the clerk described Leslie perfectly. Leslies body was found a few days later in Yonkers with a bullet in his head. His murder was never solved, and his single largest heist the $3 million robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution went ahead without him several months after his death.

Tweed, who had been convicted largely due to the efforts of reforming NYC mayor William H. Wickham and New York state representative Samuel J. Tilden, was sent to prison for a year, then slapped with a civil suit. On December 4, 1875, Tweed escaped the custody of sheriff William C. Conner and fled to Cuba, where he boarded a ship for Spain. Although the United States had no extradition treaty with Spain, the US government asked Spanish authorities to arrest Tweed, which they did.

Amusingly, Spanish police were able to recognize Tweed thanks to his likeness in the political cartoons of Thomas Nast, the illiterate German-born American cartoonist who invented the donkey and elephant mascots for the Democratic and Republican parties. Tweed tried to buy off Nast for years, due to the bad press Nast generated against him. Tweed reportedly told Nast to [s]top them damned pictures. I dont care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents dont know how to read, but they cant help seeing them damned pictures!. Nast always refused Tweeds offers, even a $100,000 ($1.6 million) bribe to stop publishing his anti-Tweed cartoons.

Tweed arrived back in New York on November 23, 1876 and was sent to prison, where he died from severe pneumonia on April 12, 1878.

The Pinkerton Agency was eventually able to infiltrate Marm Mandelbaums gang and build enough evidence to have her arrested on a variety of charges. Marm was able to make bail, and she fled to Canada with an estimated $1 million ($24 million). She spent the rest of her life in comfort in Toronto. She died in 1894.

Jay Gould wound up becoming a robber baron, controlling several railroads as well as Western Union which is ironic because a Western Union employee had once committed a grammatical error in a telegram during the Black Friday scandal that almost cost Gould everything. He died of tuberculosis on December 2, 1892, leaving his entire $72 million fortune to his family. Adjusted for inflation, thats around $1.8 billion in todays dollars. And thats a conservative estimate. He is buried in a large, but unmarked, mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

Samuel J. Tilden, the great reformer, ran for president in 1876. In an ironic twist, he ended up losing the most crooked election in American history. Tilden won the popular vote, getting 4,288,546 votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes 4,034,311 votes. However, due to political and racial infighting between white Democrats and black Republicans in the states of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, those states each submitted two sets of electoral votes, one favoring Tilden and another favoring Hayes. Congress created a 15-member Electoral Commission to look in to the matter. Although initially designed to allow equal representation from both major parties, power in the commission shifted to the Republican side when Supreme Court Justice David Davis, an independent from Illinois who had won a Senate seat in the same election, resigned from the Court. His seat was given to Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a Republican. Not surprisingly, the commission voted 8-7 along party lines to give all the electoral votes and thus, the election to Hayes. Angry Democrats then threatened a filibuster in the Senate, but were thwarted by the so-called Compromise of 1877″, where southern Democrats gave their support to Hayes in return for the immediate withdrawal of all remaining Union troops from the former Confederate states, as well as the appointment of a southern Democrat to Hayes cabinet. Tilden retired from public life after this, his health failing, and he died in at his home in Greystone, New York in 1886.

Daniel Butterfield, central to Fisk and Goulds plan to corner the gold market, apparently survived the fiasco thanks to his reputation as a war hero. He was buried by special order at West Point Cemetery at the United States Military Academy, even though he never actually attended the school. Taps was played at his funeral, and his version of the tune remains standard in the United States military to this day.

Thomas Byrnes was appointed Chief Inspector of New York in 1888. Although mostly remembered in popular history for developing the third degree, Byrnes was also one of the first police detectives who valued intelligence gathering, and he created an organized database system for indexing all that content. However, an 1895 commission appointed to look in to corruption discovered that Byrnes had somehow amassed a $400,000 ($10,000,000) fortune while receiving a $5,000 annual salary. An embarrassed Byrnes was publicly humiliated by one of the commissioners future President Theodore Roosevelt and resigned before he could be removed from office. He started his own private detective agency specializing in financial crimes and died in 1910.

Cornelius Vanderbilt shrugged off the loss of the Erie Railway, although he and Gould would snipe at each other for years afterwards. He went on to make a fortune estimated at $100 million adjusted for inflation, thats around $143 billion in todays dollars. To put that in perspective, thats around $10 billion more than the net worth of the four richest people in the world Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, Carlos Slim Helú of Telmex and América Móvil, and Larry Ellison of Oracle combined. Vanderbilt lived his life modestly, with gambling on race horses apparently his only frivolity. He left token amounts to his wife, daughters and younger sons, leaving 95% of his fortune to his eldest son, William. William was able to expand his fathers business empire even more, and it was while William was running the family empire that Vanderbilt became a household name and the family built huge estates like Biltmore, The Breakers, and Hyde Park.

John A. Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge, but did not build it. One day in July 1869 he was out scouting locations for the bridge when his foot was accidentally crushed between an incoming ferry and a dock. All toes on one foot had to be amputated, but Roebling refused further medical treatment, preferring water therapy (constantly pouring water over the wounds). He worked feverishly over the next few days, staying up into the wee hours of the morning dictating engineering instructions and sending messages back and forth to various contractors. But it was clear that he had contracted tetanus from the accident, and he died of the disease on July 22. His son, Washington Roebling, took over design and construction of the bridge, which opened on May 24, 1883. Washington Roeblings son, Washington A. Roebling, II, died in the Titanic disaster.

As for Josie Mansfield remember Josie Mansfield, the woman who started this whole article? although she was was Fisks girl, she had affairs with many men (including George Leslie, the King of Bank Robbers) and a few women before falling in love with one of Fisks business partners, Edward S. Stokes. Mansfield and Stokes attempted to blackmail Fisk for large sums of money, using Fisks love letters to Mansfield as evidence of his illegal financial shenanigans. But Fisk took them to court, where his Tweed-appointed judge friends shot down every suit and motion the couple filed. Stokes, infuriated with Fisk and close to bankruptcy, shot Fisk twice in the gut at the Grand Central Hotel on January 6th, 1872. Fisk died in the hotel within hours, but not before identifying Stokes as his assailant. After three trials, Stokes was sentenced to six years in prison, serving four. Shunned by his old friends, he bought a share of a restaurant, which he owned for ten years. For the rest of his life he was paranoid about Fisks friends finding and killing him, and he allegedly never ate at a restaurant with his back to the entrance. He sold his share of the restaurant in 1897 and moved in with his sister. He suffered a series of strokes and died in 1901.

Josie ended her relationship with Stokes after he murdered Fisk. She moved to Europe shortly after the incident, eventually settling in Paris and marrying American lawyer Robert Livingston Reade in 1891. By 1897, Reade was put into an asylum due to an addiction to alcohol and chloral hydrate (a powerful sedative). Mansfield then took over his fortune, living out the rest of her life in comfort fit for a queen. In 1931, at age 78, she fell in a department store in Paris and died of complications from her injuries.

But her legend lives on in the $1,000 note, which was originally designed by contract engraver Charles Kennedy Burt. Burts original design, taken from a photograph of Mansfield, has the siren wearing a liberty cap in honor of the nations centennial. However, the final design that ended up on the note was done by G.F.C. Smillie, who depicted her with a tiara of stars instead of the liberty cap.

And thus, one of the bloodiest, most public love triangles in American history has been forever enshrined on a piece of the nations currency."

Bee Girl

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:54:34 PST

Another older story, for a Merging group at Yahoo Groups. I never actually drew her Bee Girl form. Maybe when I get a scanner again.

_______________________________________________

Bee-Girl
By cyclonekath

Beatrice Foster never believed in such things as old wives tales, metaphors and other such cliches. Once
shed even watched a pot of water come to the boil, just to disprove friend whod stated a watched pot
never boiled. Thus when she was driving down a mountain road back, a tire blowing out and her car
slamming out of control off the edge, she was rather surprised when her life did indeed flash before her
eyes. And what played out was a rather normal life, where the connventually pretty brunette had a happy
childhood, a handsome boyfriend and was doing a media degree at college. A life that was only starting out
as Bea judged things, one full of unfulfilled promise.

One that seemed doomed to end too soon as the nose of her car crumpled as it struck the ground at a speed
much to high to be survivable and the steering column pressed into her tender flesh violently. Before she
could make even a sound, this had given way to white and she fell. Getting to her feet as best as her
adrenaline filled and shaking legs would allow Bea saw white. An utterly white void that extended as far as
the eye could see in all directions, that gave seemingly no sign of where ground and the sky met.

Hello.

She screamed and took a step back away from the strange black robed figure that wasnt there a second
ago, yet now stood right next to her. Car accident. White void. Strange and mysterious black robed figure.
Her lip quivered as the grim possibilities nibbled at her, and before the figure seemingly devoid of a mouth,
face, head underneath that robe even spoke she could predict what hed say next.

Do you want to die?

Beatrice was frantic. How do you respond to THAT? Yes, thank you very much Ive had a good run, take
me now? How would pretty much anybody respond? Of course not! Who would! she raged, the words
almost spat out. Im 20 years old! I havent lived! I havent done even half the things I dreamed of as a
kid! There is so much left undone! Out of breath, Beatrice stopped and glared at her would be judge of
continued existence for a response, and thought she could perhaps see a slight movement that could be
taken as a nod. Or a shrug.

As Bea considered if her rant was perhaps a might too selfish and she should have raised the pain her death
would have caused in her friends and family, another figure appeared in the same abrupt and instantaneous
manner as the first. Beatrice backed away less in shock and more in a mixture of horror, the new arrival
somewhat less than human. His, assuming he was a he and not a she or even an it, arms were much thinner
than normal and ended in small three digit hands or feet. His torso was large and bloated and misshapen,
with a head bald of all but two antennas atop it. From his back she could just see the motion of two thin
insect-like wings. Trying to avoid staring into the things bright yellow tea saucer shaped eyes, she finally
focused on the two tone color patterning on his torso. She pouted and let out a mild snort of disgust. He was
a humanoid bee.

Much of her life people had linked the shortened version of her name with the animal namesake, and where
ever possible she tried to enforce the fact she was Beatrice, not Bea. If the robed figure showed any sign of
this, he gave none as he began to speak again. He also feels he has things left undone, even though he is a
champion for good who has done more than his fair share. He has a need to seek justice and the power to
do it. You have a body that can be saved and a world in need of a savior.

Bea stared in bemusement at both the figure and the bee-guy for outward sign of what the whole point of
this meeting had to do with her death. As if sensing her confusion, the robed figure turned to her. Different
purposes, different people that shall be merged into one. Both of you shall live, but as one being. Beatrice
looked agast at the prospect of this merging, it certainly didnt sound all that good, even less considering
it was with a bee-type guy.

Do you want to die?

Bea recoiled as the repetition of that informed her of her choices. She sighed and nodded. What choice did
she have? As the figure looked upward, Beatrice Foster tried to convince herself it wouldnt be that bad,
that shed be the majority of this new being, it was her body and planet after all. Suddenly the robed figure
reached out and touched a nebulous hand to them both at once. She heard the bee man emit something she
assumed was a gasp the same time she did, then-

Oh your awake, thank god.

She completed the gasp she shared with shared with

She blinked as she realized she should have known what had happened, but it slipped through her fingers
like water. She chose instead to focus on the now, only to find similar problems. She was surrounded by
people she recognized, knew that she was in a hospital bed, could even see Marisa show mock-horror at the
revelation that Jobe was cheating on her with Timpani from Search for the Sun on the TV to the left of
her. Yet

Her mother hugged her. Bea, oh thank god youre alright. She knew this was meant to be her mother,
yet it didnt feel like it. It felt like a stranger was hugging her. Looking into the faces of Beas family gave
off the same lack of feeling. If these werent her family, whose were they? She knew who they were, yet
didnt feel them. It was almost a relief when someone she knew she didnt recognize and wasnt meant to
know came forward. Hello Bea, Im Doctor Roberts. Id just like to ask you some questions, if you feel
your up to it.

She nodded, not trusting her voice at this point. What do you remember of the accident? It startled her to
know that she could remember this. I lost control of my car and crashed. The Doctors expression was
one of expectation, as if he was awaiting more. You cant recall how you avoided injury? Bea blinked
bemused. She could certainly remember pain and blood from the crash, yet now she appeared to be whole
and uninjuried. I bumped my head, and everything after that is black she mouthed, even as she realized
the word white felt more appropriate.

But you can remember everything else? No other problems. She looked at her family and smiled a smile
that didnt reflect her internal viewpoint. Yes she lied barefaced. If the doctor detected this, he gave no
sign and left her to be with her family.

Thus for the remainder of the day, Beatrice Fosters family spoke to her about goings on in their life and in
turn asked her questions about what Bea was doing, which for the most part she could answer as if she was
Beatrice Foster herself. They kept calling her that and while that person felt familiar, it wasn't her. Despite
the fact that a look in the mirror seemed to imply that she was. Yet Beatrice Foster felt more like a
character from a long and winding novel series she had read and knew intimately, but much of the fine
detail and emotional connection wasn't there. The only thing that was there was an insect like chittering in
her ears that grew louder, but never enough to become more than a background noise.

It felt as if someone was whispering to her, trying to secretly tell her something important, yet she couldnt
make it out

Eventually as visiting hours drew to a close and content enough that for the moment she was okay,
Beatrices family departed. Yet even without this distraction the answers didnt come, and after a day spent
puzzling unsuccessfully on her situation, she fell into an uneasy sleep.

The dream started the same way it always did, with him as a young drone just hatched. Even then he felt a
calling beyond his caste. The warriors mocked him constantly as he attempted to aid them in defense of
their City-Hive, yet he persisted. It was when he defended the Queen against a military coup that his
abilities were recognized.

As thanks she bestowed a large measure of royal jelly upon him, transforming him into a super-powered
protector of his world. Empowered by his Queen, he roamed the multiverses righting wrongs. The years
spent roaming the universe, he defeated numerous foes, but none so fearsome as a entity that devoured
entire worlds. It took his entire life-force, but finally he won. Defeating such a terrible threat should have
been a just way to sell his life, but his last thoughts were that there was still so much left undone, as he was
blinded with a flash of impossibly bright light

When she awoke in the morning Bea was bathed in sweat and spent long minutes examining her hands, as
if unused to having five digits on it. Beatrice had never remembered her dreams in any clarity or volume
even approaching this, and it had felt more like a memory than dream at any rate. She squirmed as she felt a
large itch right between her shoulder blades. Reaching around as best she could, her could feel a tea saucer
sized bulge

Any further investigation was interrupted when she heard the door to her private room open, to see a meal
cart and Doctor Roberts enter. Beatrice had been a more savory flavor person, and among the differences
shed noticed was the fact she had a distinct sweet tooth. Doctor Roberts read and checked her charts while
Bea smelt the waffle shed selected for breakfast. The doctors mouth opened to ask a question, but he was
cut off as she grabbed the squeezable bottle of honey that came with the meal and virtually strangled the
life out of the poor plastic receptacle.

Doctor Roberts watched Beas breakfast related antics worriedly, which she either ignored or failed to see,
so intent upon the release of sweet liquid foodstuff. Um Ms Foster, are you sure you have enough? She
looked up, her almost maniacal look fading for a few brief seconds. No. She then proceeded to return to
drowning the waffle under a layer of honey. Well the catering department will probably be happy to learn
you wont be increasing their order of honey. Physically and mentally you seem to be okay, so your
recovery can continue from home.

The honey slipped from her hands. She hadnt considered shed be going home so soon, that shed have
more time to figure out who she was. Being shoved back into Beatrices life would be hard enough without
being in close proximity to those whod know her best, that would be able to detect any little flaws, yet
refusing would be a clear sign something was wrong. She smiled and nodded, saying the things the doctor
expected. As soon as the doctor left, she felt the pulsing return. Why was she keeping all these strange
things secret? The insect buzzing and chirping returned louder as if to answer this question, but it made no
more sense than before. She placed her head in her hands and whimpered.

Dont worry baby, Im here now.

She recognized the slightly scruffy man standing in the doorway in the same manner she recognized Beas
family, but she felt contempt, which was a strange emotion for someone meant to be her boyfriend.

At first it seemed wonderful relationship, but it had gone downhill. Mitch tried to find work, but never quite
seemed to land a job, and borrowed money in open-ended loans from Beatrice. He constantly spent time
with his friends and less with her, as evidenced by his non-appearance at her bedside until now. It was clear
that Mitch treated Bea badly, that the relationship almost boarded on her being a combination bank and sex
outlet for him, but the girls love blinded her to this. Who ever she was, she didnt have that emotional
roadblock, and had a strange compulsion to set things right began to bubble up. That she didnt have to take
such treatment, that she should, she could stand up for herself. Her face twisted into smile that was an
almost complete opposite to the honey was eating. How about we make a deal. Ill kiss you when I pay
you back the totality of the money Ive lent you.

Mitch recoiled as if struck with a cattle prod, his face one of abject horror. Bea barely noticed as the bulge
pulsed faster and faster, as it was receiving a hit of adrenaline from her actions. Dont baby me. If you
really loved... me, would you borrow money so often, would you wait this long to come visit your
girlfriend? Mitch tried to play the wounded lover card, but the almost enraged expression on her face shot
that down. I dont have time for this.

Mitch started to leave and waited at the door, as if he was expecting a reaction to his leaving, that shed
fold, but it soon became clear that none was forthcoming and that hed mistimed what hed been intended
to be a smooth move. Fine. Screw you bitch. And with that stunningly witty retort, he was gone.

As she sat there, she was slightly disturbed that she felt no emotion at the end of a relationship that had
meant so much to her the other her. The only emotion she really felt was a sense of satisfaction that an
injustice had been redressed, which reminded her of the dream. The insect chittering raised up a notch, as
if to ram this point home, and the thing on her back began to pulse much like a heart beating. She felt a sick
feeling in her stomach and amazingly for the first time during her stay, she actually felt unwell. She
whimpered slightly as she felt the bulge expand rapidly, and the insect scratching filled her ears, blotting
out everything else. Bea fell to her knees and placed hands over in a vain attempt to shut it out.

Yet this didnt block out anything, and suddenly the sounds of police sirens reverberated in her ears. As if
in response the growth on her back went wild, pulsing more violently, directing its force at certain points
instead of the whole surface. Sweat poured off her as she felt feverish, but what fever felt like your muscles
were seperating and expanding. The most disturbing thing was that despite the worst pain shed ever felt,
she couldnt, or wouldnt scream. As she felt her flesh tear, blood trickling down her back, all she could let
out was a low moan through gritted teeth. She looked back as best she could to see what had just emerged.

Wings.

She had a pair of insect wings extending out from her back. As they twitched and shook, splattering blood
about the room, their owner's eyes went wide as doorways previously closed were torn open. Every second
of the crash and the deal she made. She stood and walked uneasily, in a body somewhat alien to both sets of
experience, yet with many familiarities. Confronting the mirror she spent long minutes examining the
reflection and trying to match it against both the looks she knew to be her/him.

For the most part she was human, but now she had the proportions of an amazon, her body covered with a
thin layer of muscle, her skin sporting a perfect tanned sheen and a pair of breasts that seemed to defy
gravity and projected forward into a bee-sting shape. And the changes only got stranger, as fingernails now
were closer to talons, twin antenna extended from her brow, and her eyes yellow orbs that, for want of a
better word, bugged out. Her wings beat, as if subconsciously not wanting to be left out of her mental
review.

She was the child of two people, and she contained both their memories and life experiences, both being
averaged out into her.

Any further consideration on her new found completeness was interrupted by the sound of fire engines, and
the cause as to why her body had finally pulled itself together returning to the fore. She pulled open the
windows and leapt, performing a spiraling dive before pulling up at the last minute. Her new wings beat
with urgency that matched that of her expression. The fact her disappearance from her bed might cause
problems, along with her complete nudity drove her faster and faster forward, but her drive to assist was
strong than any of these fears.

Even without her newly enhanced senses the burning skyscraper was impossible to miss. With them, she
saw and heard everything. Her ears heard the screams of those trapped, the police planning how to save
them, and the firemen ordering hoses to bare. Even though their position limited their range of vision
compared to normal bees, her multi-faceted eyes picked up endless details. The flames reaching ever
higher, the police desperately trying to keep families back, the fire department rescuing as many people as
they could reach, and the frantic waving and praying of those beyond any hope of rescue. At least by
normal means.

Bea didnt slow her pace, putting her arms straight down her side in an effort to increase her speed. Closing
her eyes a split second before, she plowed headlong through the glass and into the building. The huddled
people inside showed shock, but if it was the fact a rescuer had come, her more than human form or her
lack of clothing. Whatever it was, it didnt prevent them from accepting her aid, and after a number of
similar trips the building had been cleared. With barely a wave she was off, and the legend of the
mysterious Bee Girl was born

JurgenDOE Signature Final

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:17:36 PDT

This is the final test of the new signature for my friend

This is very private and top-secret.
So hurry press the "BACK" button of your browser....

More...

Healing

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:52:39 PST

More distractions! Sketch inspired by a scene from the story, "Pirates Sunset" in the Privateer Press forums. I had fun with this and will clean it up in the future.

RAILEY

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:42:30 PDT

What's this? GhostPockets has uploaded something? Well I never, how very unlike him! Oh my God, this must herald the end of days!!!

Well since the moon hung heavy and blue in the sky I thought I might do some work, just this once mind.

This is Railey Otter, a character I've had running about in my head for several years now. He was the star of many crappy comics (far too crappy to put up here) as an amoral private detective investigating bizarre crimes and usually swearing a lot along the way.

Recently though I have reinvented him, not only in design but character. Railey now resides on the other side of the law as a vicious COCKNEY serial killer. The Otterman is not a loveable character, he has no redeeming qualities, he just lives to kill and he reallly enjoys it. He is close friends with the Wests ("A lovely couple"), and engages in a game of one-upmanship with them and other serial killers he knows. Like a deadly version of keeping up with the Jonses. You know what I mean, here's an example... Wild Bill Hiccup blows up a bus loada schoolkids so Railey goes and hijacks a luxury spacecruiser and crashes it into Wild Bill's mother's house. That sorta thing

Obviously Railey isn't that popular with the Law, especially Detective Youngblood who has gone on record as having said "I'm gonna tear that Otter a new ass!!!" He is constantly pursuing the Otter, but Railey always seem to be one step ahead. Kinda like the fugitive but the cop's the one-armed man Oh yeah, Youngblood also blames Railey for the loss of his limb. I don't know what happened yet, but it probably occured back when Railey too was a member of the Joy Police. Railey spent 20 years investigating one case, trying to catch a stamp counterfeiter. In the end it turned out he was the counterfeiter all along, it shoulda been obvious really as the stamps has his head on in place of the Queen. D'oh!

Anyway, that's Railey. He aint no stinkin' rat, he's a bleedin' otter you muppets!!!!

Menite "David"

Sat, 27 May 2006 20:59:08 PDT

For Privateer Press's Iron Kindoms, A Menite Torpedo Boat..

Back in the civil war, armor outpaced the weapons for a while at sa, and the ironclads generally ruled the waves, one solution that the confederates tried was the spar torpedo, a explosive charge on the end of a long pole, while the confederate submarine Hunley used this kind of weapon, they were also tried on small boats and even on the ironclads themselves on several ocassions, most notably William Cushing's Sinking of the CSS Albermale..

I've taken the idea, and adapted it to the iron kngdoms, styling it on the Protectorate of Menoth faction, who after all are the most fire and explosive and even sucidal of the entire IK, with abig menofix sheild in the front, and an engine from the Menite Jacks, and blazing canisters of Menoth's Fury and blasting powder on long spars, ready to be lowered for ramming....

Oh, this is about a 5 min sketch, then quickly colored in pshop elements...

PE - Calais for Dolphingirl

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 00:39:29 PDT

Scanner didn't like this one too much. My new sketchbook is bluky and hard to press down nicely. I'll try to get a better version of this!

This is Lady Calais, who belongs to Dolphingirl from Private Exchange. She's got really awesome hair design, I have to say.

Predator Card

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:13:31 PDT

This is the working card for the Predator, a Cygnar Character Heavy Warjack for the game Warmachine. This is for easy access for field testing of this model. For Warmachine players feel free to download this for field testing. Then pleas let me know how the field test went. Thank you.

Warmachine is copyright of Privateer Press.
The Predator is copyright of me.

dire pyre troll

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:51:28 PDT

an idea i was tossing around. did the drawing for a class project. enjoy

all right to dire trolls and pyre trolls and such belong to privateer press.

ACEO - Wolf

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:02:40 PST

2.5 by 3.5 inches
Watercolour on 140lb cold press
Original in private collection

Gift for my brother.

ACEO - Hawk

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:00:51 PST

2.5 by 3.5 inches
Watercolour on 140b cold press
Original in private collection

Gift for my Dad.

Sorceress Distaste Sketch

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:37:42 PDT

Character: Tan-Elin (Tanallyn) Eirenikos
Fandom: Dragon Age (c) BioWare

All dressed up with no one to scorn!

Tan-Elin Eirenikos was originally a Tevinter subject from a well-off elven family. Her elder sisters were sold into slavery in order to provide for a better life for their family. As the twelfth child in a long line of beauties, Tanallyn was afforded a good life by this arrangement. After her birth, there was no need to prostitute herself to anyone in order for her parents to maintain a comfortable standard of living, and so Tan-Elin consequently grew up as a pampered, educated, and spoiled only child.

After discovering that the girl possessed a powerful natural talent for magic, her parents decided to take yet a different route to continue to improve their lot: by pressing forward a magistrate candidate from their own family. Although rare to have elves hold public office, it was not unheard of. And though not officially allowed to attend, Tan-Elin was trained by accredited mages from the Tevinter Imperial Academy through private tutelage lessons commissioned by her parents.

Tan-Elin was arguably a sorcery genius. Her mastery of primal and elemental magic was unparalled, and her innate grasp for blood magic rivaled even that of the Academys top students. Her thesis on Fire, an Elemental Primary when she was just 16 garnered rave reviews despite the controversial statements regarding her views of the quintessential elements of primal fire control. She later went on to begin a second book on Pyrosanguine Transmutation, regarding advanced techniques for combining blood magic with fire, but never finished due to a run-in with the law that ended with her being sold into slavery in Orlais, where she met Aidan, her future lover to be and the father of her only child.

Further description of character can be found here.

Lich Lord Asphyxious' New Ally

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:42:34 PDT

My Little Pony and Warmachine? I might get some flack, but oh well. Can't we just all love and tolerate?

Lich Lord Asphyxious and the Slayer is owned by Privateer Press
Pinkie Pie is owned by Hasbro

WH40K Warmachine Ork Card

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 23:42:46 PST

This was Made with a Flash Card generator. Its Made up stats of WarHammer 40k Orks for another tabletop Game Warmachine. aminly made it so I can use my Orks in warmachine. this was made purely because I love both games and respect that they are owned by Games Workshop and Privateer press.

Baby Bush

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 08:39:00 PDT

House Shyeel Glyf

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:38:01 PST

The Glyf of House Shyeel in the nation of Ios

Copyright of Privateer Press

sketch003

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:05:46 PST

trollblood from sketchbook - concept (c) too privateer press

A Toast - Scrap and Lynne

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:20:20 PST

This was a base sketch for some congratulatory fanart in a Privateer Press IK forum. Then the old forum got scrapped, pardon the pun. Figured the toast was appropriate for this time of year.

Scrapthrall and Lynne belong to ~scrapthrall.

House 3 pic3

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:41:51 PDT

Well this is the picture of House 3 after it was reconstructed onto the other server. I'm not giving out an IP or world save, so forget it right now if that's what you're thinking about asking. It's not even my server to begin with and it's private. I don't know why I didn't press f1 to get rid of my HUB in this picture. Oh well, you know I like iron swords better than diamond now, lol. In this picture you can see the house in it's entirety after a few small things were altered and a lot of homely touches were added by the girl it was made for. I love every one of them. It gives it an added touch of a home, like someone is living there, instead of just a house, like it's a business or somethin... Plus they look cool on it too. And we both love birch trees it seems XD

Credit for some interior decoration and all outdoor decorations go to I'm glad she likes her new house, lol

Searforge Sig. 5

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:02:22 PDT

Searforge Sig. 5

ACEO - Horned Dragon

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 08:59:33 PST

2.5 by 3.5 inches
Watercolor on 140lb cold press
Original in private collection

Gift for my brother.

Hildur

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:25:43 PDT

Well, long time no post, as per usual. I could justify my distinct lack of action because of a move, some downtime, job searching, and the like, but that would really be a cop-out, so I won't bother.

Anyway, this is the first drawing that i've colored using that neat 'multiply' function in photoshop, and i have to say that coloring has become so easy it feels like cheating now. Seriously, this took me about an hour to color in. The drawing is basically slapdash inks with a fat roller-ball pen over very rough pencils, which I pounded out in about ten minutes a while back and found charming in a sort of 'awww, child-scribbles' sort of way. I decided to leave the color swatches I used to color the thing at the bottom, although I would be hard pressed to give a good reason as to why. I am a strange man.

Anyway, this is the dwarven town of Hildur, situated high in the Cyron's Fist region of the Dragonspine Mountains, which make up the far eastern extent of the range. The town is very old, one of the few truly ancient dwarven settlements still in use in the eastern Pyrunduns, but the Cyron's Fist range was once a thriving heart of Old Dwarven civilization. The town is nestled on a cleft of rock, its structures wedged close to each other, built entirely out of local stone. Tunnels weave through the cliff's interior and feature some of the finest Old Dwarvish carvings within easy travel, compared to most other Old Dwarvish sites, and as such Hildur sees a great deal of travelers through it's narrow streets. The town's year-round population is entirely dwarvish, mostly hailing from Clan Frostbrow and Snowcrest.

The Cyron's Fist mountains are notoriously inaccessible, unless you happen to be a mountain goat, but historically this did not stop the dwarves from building on, inside, and under the entire range for thousands of years, until the collapse of the mountains during the dark years. As such, Hildur serves as a staging area for many aspiring explorers, whether following league commissions to explore remote Old Dwarven sites or private expeditions out to make a quick score with some choice dwarven artifacts. The Royal Explorer's League maintains a small outpost within the town, and often has little trouble finding would-be leaguers to follow up on leads of dwarven ruins hidden days from the town.

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scrapping this because it is pretty scrappy.