Sorry if this is a question you don’t want to answer or if it comes off as rude, but is the artist in question that you’ve mentioned disliking a few times (the person on your shit list as you’ve said) m*rina v*rmillion by any chance? Asking because I (also an E. Asian fan) have noticed some really weird things in a lot of her designs and also the way she portrays certain characters but I kind of feel like I’m the only person who feels this way… like I’m in a lot of big discords and everyone in there seems to like her art a whole lot. You don’t have to post this publicly if you don’t want, either, since I know she’s very popular. Thanks!
Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t rude at all! Sorry for the wait, I had a lot going on, on the side. But yeah, one of the people on my shit list actually is Marina (@vermilion_shade on twitter | marina-does-things on tumblr). Their designs, despite the many, many flaws on them, are unfortunately well-circulated around the white-majority fandom. A nicer person would call them a good artist despite those flaws. But when you’ve seen them draw and color Nureyev from pale lily white to slowly getting darker by the piece (most of them even just coming out YELLOW) without directly addressing it or even trying to improve on the way they draw the facial structures of characters of color (because god knows they draw Juno and Buddy a little weirdly too), it’s a little hard to be nice on them. Here’s a compilation from them just to show you what their Nureyev looks like now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for letting artists learn and improve. I’m a hobbyist at best, so like hell I’ll ever claim that I don’t need to learn and improve myself. If I liked Marina enough to talk to them in the first place, I probably would even have messaged them about all this. But they’re an artist who knows how to use references, they’ve done entire screencap redraws. It stands to fact that they should probably know how to do the research and improve themselves, whether or not they get feedback from fans of color. But instead of this, we get nothing and Nureyev getting progressively tea-stained as the days move forward.
Considering the track record of fans of color talking to white creators in this fandom, I didn’t want to chance it becoming Rab 2.0, y'know? So, whatever, if anyone sends this to Marina, I don’t really care. But I want it out there that I do not like their art!
u go into ur minecraft server and hes sitting there waiting for u with a cup of Monster Energy Drink Classic and u notice theres 2 beds in ur house but before there was only 1. ur name is peter nureyev welcome to your youtube channel what do u do
[ID: art of Juno Steel sitting on a minecraft backgroud. he is wearing a tiedye t-shirt and shorts, blue socks decorated with bananas, and tiedye crocs. he is holding a mug of green liquid in both hands. end ID.]
Vespa Ilkay needs to find a thief who might be working for someone with an eye for Ancient Martian artifacts. Covertly. Reporting the serial killings yields… subpar results, so her next stop is Valles Vicky’s Vixen Valley– a place for fine dining, good conversation, beautiful people, and contraband from across the galaxy. Oh, and information on at least every backend deal on the planet. Despite knowing how Vicky worked, Vespa just wished it didn’t come with a price this steep.
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay Characters: Vespa Ilkay, Buddy Aurinko Additional Tags: Enemies to Lovers, and there was only one bed, Sharing a Bed, Cuddling & Snuggling, Almost Cuddling, Reverse AU (The Penumbra Podcast), you can read it without any knowledge of that though, basically it’s the oasis hotel theres only one bed and buddy is NOT sharing these sheets, Humor Summary:
“Whatever could be the matter, darling?”
Vespa groaned, glaring up at the ugly popcorn ceiling of their room at the Oasis. It was certainly easier to look at than the predicament hoarding all the blankets in the frigid air conditioning. At least a ceiling couldn’t be smug about it.
“I think you know what the matter is,” Vespa huffed.
In which Buddy and Vespa, still enemies to loversing, share a bed at the Oasis and totally aren’t flirting or anything. No way in hell. Why would you think that haha. These guys? Nooooo definitely not them
Thanks to @entropyre and @stubbornjerk for writing the wonderful au that inspired this fic and giving me their blessing to write it!
Preface: i’m far from the first to talk about this, but i recently made a post about works with f/f ships or more prominently featuring women getting a lot less interactions so after about ten seconds of deliberation i decided i might as well make a rec list for penumbra so those of you who are new to reading vesbud might have an idea of where to start! this list will mostly be newer oneshots which means im leaving out a few of my favorites to make this a good starter list but every vesbud fic is perfect to me
This one is one of my favorites. I bookmark very, very sparingly and this is one of the thirty or so that are on that list. The fic explores Vespa’s psyche following the flashback events of Time Gone By in haunting, beautiful prose that I still remember bits of to this day because they stuck with me so firmly. Be prepared for angst and check the content warnings, but this is still one of my favorite fics of all time.
This one!! Another one of my bookmarks, this one is a mermaid au near and dear to my heart. It’s a very fun read all the way through with what I can only describe as a strong authorial voice that I feel matches the story and narration really, really well. It’s one I reread often and enjoy more and more every single time. Another plus is that this fic (and this author consistently!) actually portrays Vespa’s hallucinations often, realistically, and without stigma so this is one I would definitely check out.
This one is post season three finale, so make sure you’re caught up before you read it, but I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, this is a bookmark, it’s phenomenal, it knocked me dead. If you like angst, this is the fic for you. If you like hurt/comfort, this is the fic for you. If you have eyes, can read, are fine with the content warnings, etc, this is the fic for you. I cry about twice a year and this almost got me.
Hey, there’s a familiar name! I feel bad reccing myself too much, but the acting in this one is genuinely wonderful. It might as well have been done by the actual cast, and that’s not me tooting my own horn, since I just wrote the fic. That being said. The fic is also very good. It’s an action comedy meet cute where Vespa and Buddy meet when Vespa, getting chased by police, jumped in the first car she saw, yelled “drive!” and the rest is history.
Ever just been gay for your wife? If you’re more into fluff, domesticity, and being head over heels for your partner, this fic is wonderful for all of that!! It’s really the vesbud equivalent of a warm hug. It explores postcanon domestic life for Buddy and Vespa and is overall a wonderful time!
I know I said I’d keep most of the recs on this list fairly short, but it would be literally criminal not to bring up the Reverse AU. It’s a fan project putting together fully soundscaped, acted, and soundtracked episodes of an au where Vespa is a private eye and Buddy the mysterious thief. There are full backstories to keep characterization up while also respecting the bones of canon they’re working with (which is super impressive imo), bonus fics, and even bloopers. Check them out on ao3 or on their youtube channel here!
This is a series of two oneshots with two podfics, all of which are excellent, featuring a lot of hurt/comfort and emotional hurt/comfort. Essentially everything I look for in a good comfort fic. The podfics are beautifully done and acted, including soundscaping and music, plus the writing is absolutely beautiful. I’ve already included Danny on this list a number of times and I cannot stress enough how much his work has done for the entire vesbud tag. I wish I could put in everything she’s ever written lol.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Hoo. Whew. Howdy. That being said, if you heard the line “I know how to make a special lady feel special” and tripped and/or choked on something, this is the fic for you. It’s a precanon vingette in which Buddy and Vespa accessorize for a heist by figuring out how to hide knives on them and it’s just excellent. Opaldawn is one of my favorite vesbud authors but this one was just straight up a direct gift to the lgbt community.
Another one having to deal with the season three finale, so my only caveat is that you should be careful of spoilers! This one is absolutely wonderful, as is everything this author writes. If you’re a big fan of fluff and angst (but mostly angst), this fic is absolutely wonderful. Devastatingly sad in the best way. It definitely helped me process a lot of what I felt coming out of that last season!
In which Buddy and Vespa visit Ranga on their honeymoon and enjoy the scenery, talk about Vespa’s childhood, and oh, yeah, run into Vespa’s ex, a TENTACLE MONSTER. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but it’s genuinely wonderful, with a lot of fun worldbuilding and moments that fill in bits of Vespa’s past we don’t get to see in canon. I found it absolutely delightful and it’s going on the rec list for a good reason. Just trust me on this one. For fans of Elevator Pitch Podcast, this may or may not be the same Rae who has starred in numerous episodes.
This is a collection of fics revolving around Vespa and the various weekly prompts that have come out this summer. While not all of these are primarily vesbud fics, all of them revolve around the fandom showing a well written female character a little bit more love! If you want to join, the event is still ongoing and the prompts are going up weekly, though you can write and create outside the prompts if you want!
Hey wonder who that guy is. Anyway, I couldn’t get through this without a little self promo, so here’s one of my favorite of my own fics. Buddy and Vespa commit a heist by pretending to be a bereaved femme fatale wife and a hardboiled detective respectively. They flirt profusely while their crewmates who they may or may not be mocking have to hear it all go down over their comms.
Anyway, I hope all of this is some help for those of you without any idea of where to start! If you want more recs, I have plenty, plus you can go ahead and treat all of these as author recs as well. I didn’t put any writers on here whose stuff I don’t generally like. I hope you consider giving these fics and others a read to help out with the lower interaction f/f fics tend to get!
So I spruced this up cos this specific duel between Sir Damien and Lord Arum haunts my very soul 😔👌
[ID: art of Lord Arum pinning Sir Damien to the ground, wrist to wrist and knees to knees. Arum’s purple cape is billowing out behind him, and he has a dagger in one of his four hands. his forked tongue is darting out against Damien’s flushed face as he says “I love to make you panic, honeysuckle. The sound of your pounding heart makes my stomach growl.” Damien replies “I think I can hear that stomach, Lord Arum… You are… very close to me…” the second image is a close-up of Arum and Damien’s faces, which are indeed very close. end ID.]
In the fourteen years between stealing the Iris of Jupiter and meeting Buddy Aurinko, Jet can recall almost nothing of value.
Logically, he knows what transpired. He landed on an asteroid in the main belt, safely only because of Ruby. He sold the Iris. Ruby told him about the fifteen people dead from what he had done, and Jet Sikuliaq proceeded to stumble into the nearest bar he could find and lose himself in it.
Beyond that, his memory is one large blur. The years slid by quickly and meaninglessly. The Solar-Outer War ended. He continued to steal, smuggle, sell. He continued to use. He slept in the Ruby, on the few nights when he was too exhausted to find a hotel room or resist sleep. He either started a fight or found the most shadowed corner and drank until he passed out.
The name Unnatural Disaster was already known amongst smaller circles before the Iris, but in the following years he made it true: Jet Sikuliaq is a smear across the galaxy, bringing calamity wherever he goes.
It takes a woman with hair red as a Martian sky to stop a storm in its tracks. To teach him how to make more of himself than a warning sign, to hold his rage in his hands until it no longer controls him, and to identify the heavy weight sitting in his chest for what it is: guilt.
Dr. Ilkay rolled her eyes, but took the seat anyway, making a point to put her leg up on the arm of the chair. Despite the brutishness of the action, it suited her— scrubs and all. “You really know how to make a gal feel special, huh?”
Buddy gave her a smile. “I know how to make a special girl feel special—”
She blinked, then glanced at Dr. Ilkay, who seemed… tense, not meeting her eye.
She swallowed, cleared her throat, and said, “Never mind that.“
[id: a digital drawing of vespa and buddy from the penumbra podcast in their younger years. the two are in a darkened hotel room with a bag of their heist’s bounty, slightly pulled away from an embrace and glancing towards an unspecified light source. buddy is beginning to draw a laser gun, but the two seem to otherwise have a slightly cocky grin on their faces.]
the vibes are fun, intimate, and yeah we gay keep scrolling
we haven’t had a lot of vespa and jet screentime but they clearly like and respect each other so i like to imagine she was relatively quick in accepting his role as human-radiator and backup singer to buddy. the knife is there affectionately
[id: a page of four digital drawings of Buddy, Vespa, and Jet from The Penumbra Podcast interacting with each other.
Jet is a tall Indigenous man with light brown skin, dark brown eyes, and
dark grey hair with a messy fringe and a short ponytail. he has pale
veiny scarring on his face and a bit of stubble. he is wearing a dark green t-shirt, beige
cargo pants, and green boots, and in all but the top left drawing he is wearing a brown leather jacket and black fingerless gloves. he has many crisscrossing scars on his hands.
Buddy is a tall, fat black woman with a mass of curly dark red hair that (except in the top left, where it is pinned back)
covers the left half of her face. she has a dark green right eye and a prosthetic left eye that resembles a camera lens, set into wrinkled dark grey skin. she is wearing a selection of purple clothes.
Vespa is a slight, medium-brown-skinned South Asian woman with
brown eyes and short dark green hair in a mullet with the right sides shaved. she has some scarring on her face that makes it
uneven in places she is wearing a sleeveless black top with a hood-scarf, and has white bandage wraps around
her wrists and hands.
in the top left drawing, Buddy and Vespa sleep against either side of Jet, facing one another. the image is overall darker in hue than the other drawings. Buddy has both eyes closed, while Vespa has her right cracked open, smiling softly at Buddy. Jet is awake, looking at something on a mini tablet that he is holding with his right hand. it casts a blue glow, illuminating his face. Buddy is wearing a purple V-necked top with a dark blue collar.
in the top right drawing, Vespa stands with her hands close to her chest, smiling but startled on the left while Buddy and Jet sing to her, apparently kneeling down. Buddy has both arms spread out either side and is smiling as she sings. she is wearing a purple suit jacket with dark blue lapels, and no shirt underneath. the forearm portion of the sleeve is semi-transparent, and she is wearing matching purple lipstick. Jet stands slightly behind her and to the right, with his eyes closed and one hand to his chest, the other splayed out palm-up to the ceiling. beside Vespa are three question marks, while musical notes float above Buddy and Jet. an arrow points to Jet and says “harmonising” at the other end.
in the bottom left drawing, Vespa kisses Buddy’s left hand while Jet leans on Buddy’s right shoulder with his elbow. he has his right hand in his jacket pocket, and is smiling slightly looking at Buddy and Vespa. Buddy smiles at Vespa with her right hand balled up close to her chest, and she is wearing a simple purple dress and red-pink lipstick. Vespa is holding Buddy’s left hand with her right, and her left hovers close to her chest. a small red heart floats up from the kiss.
in the bottom right drawing, Jet sits on a sofa with Buddy lying across his legs and Vespa holding his chest with one arm from behind, brandishing a knife in her free hand. Buddy is posed with her right hand under her chin, smiling upwards, and has her left knee propped up on the sofa while the other hangs down. she is wearing a dress with a purple top, pale pink sash across her stomach, and dark pink skirt. she is also wearing black socks and red-pink lipstick. Jet raises an eyebrow at Vespa whose face is pressed close to his on his left. she has a very small devious smile. /end id]
