#for the sake of the composition i kept it simple

[raepliica]

#trigun #trimax #trigun maximum #trigun stampede #vash the stampede #vash showing fangs and claws when provoked and angered has something of a strong grip on me #mishmashed the plant design from trimax and tristamp #still not quite what i want so i might work on a better design #for the sake of the composition i kept it simple #vash and the plants designs are by far my favourite in the manga but tristamp does have some elements i really like too #my art #raepliica_art

[peridyke]

i like your artstyle for your lapis fancomic. it's dynamic and cute and i see in it an economy that i admire and find appealing! i'm thinking of what you said about studying good page composition and showing how it affected your work, and i'm pretty curious about your thought process on artstyle. how did you approach developing the look? were there considerations unique to doing a comic vs illustration?

Hi! This is a really cool question and I’ve been giving my answer a lot of thought as this is something I think about a lot when I work on comics, especially when I compare how I work now to how I worked when I first started out on making them.

My first thought whenever I’m developing the look I want a comic to have is efficiency, and that’s been a really tough lesson for me to learn and one I’m probably gonna keep learning as long as I’m making comics. If you’re coming to comics from an illustration background, it’s tempting to want your comic to be a work of art with intricate backgrounds and rendering. In my case, my first comic that I made ages 19-23 had a “simplified” style that I thought I could reasonably keep up for potentially thousands of pages.

In the end, after 4 years of work I only finished 35.

This is a bit of an extreme example, and for clarity’s sake my schedule was extremely off and on, but it was one of the most humbling and educational art experiences I’ve had. I’ve learned to try and be as realistic with myself as I can when I’m working on a comic page or developing my vision for the look of a comic. The most important thing to know about comics, in my opinion, is that the visuals in them are secondary to the story and content. A finished comic with a simple or crude art style is ultimately a more enjoyable work than an unfinished comic with pages that took days to finish rendering. Sometimes people are going to go back and examine the visuals of your pages and appreciate your effort, but your readers are primarily reading for the story and are going to finish looking at the visuals in as much time as it takes for them to read the dialog.

As an example, this is a page from my first comic Hellscape vs my recent page mock-up I did for my Steven Universe comic I’m currently writing.

As you can see, although the style is still what I would consider to be “rough”, I put a lot of attention to detail into my backgrounds for the Hellscape page, and while the final product looks nice it took me multiple months to finish. In comparison, my Steven Universe comic page took me 14 hours of work to reach 100% completion, and while 14 hours is still obviously a ton of time to spend on a drawing it’s nothing compared to the amount of time I would sink into rendering my old Hellscape pages. When working on my Steven Universe comic page my primary time sink was posing and perspective, and things like details and shading were kept to a minimum as I prioritized keeping my characters readable and my panels dynamic. I did some gradients and minor blending on background details like the ocean, but especially during the coloring phase I tried to make sure I was keeping a tight leash on myself for how much time I was spending on details.

As I continue to make comic pages I hope to find more and more ways to make things efficient for myself. Time is ultimately my greatest adversary as I need to keep in mind that I cannot afford to work at a rate that would leave me taking literal decades to finish my work. That’s been something I’ve been grappling with in regards to my lapis comic specifically, as it’s my most ambitious comic project I’ve planned after I stopped work on Hellscape. I’m trying to be realistic with myself and my ambitions as I plan how I want my comic to look and how long each segment of it will be, and because of that I’ve been really cautious about doing anything that I feel is jumping the gun so to speak. I’m currently making sure I have my script 100% complete before I start serious work on pages so that my only concern as I work on them is the art and composition, and importantly I’m going to be working on the entire comic as a whole and not releasing pages gradually in a webcomic format. Learning how unproductive and stressful making pages one at a time to 100% completion slowly and gradually was for me back when I was making Hellscape was a huge wake up call and after talking to a comic artist who I respect about how they tackle their projects I’ve majorly restructured how I go about breaking projects down in a way I really hope will result in a more efficient workflow for me.

Every project I do is a massive learning experience and making comics has taught me so, so much about art and my personal limitations. I’ve really had to rewire my brain to become a more efficient cartoonist and I imagine the more experienced I get the better I will be at finishing projects and making work that I’m proud of. Anyways, I’m sorry that this reply took so long for me to finish and I hope it answered your question! This kind of stuff is something I think about a lot and it was honestly hard for me to pin down all my thoughts. I really really appreciate your interest in my art and comics, it truly means the world to me <3

#txt #asks #thank you so much for this ask it was so cool…I feel like there’s so much other stuff I could say but I gotta stop for now #lest this take even longer lol #also the spacing for this post is weird on my ipad I hope it looks normal when I post it

[stormxpadme]

​Whumptober 2022 No. 17 - Stress Positions

09/2000

"You didn't think you were getting out of this, my young Captain, did you?" Hank welcomed Scott in his new-old lair with a good-natured wink.

"Been a while since you called me that, Doc." Hank didn't think he'd ever seen any member of this old team of his looking so deeply and thoroughly exhausted, and he doubted it came from some undefined damage he needed to take a look at. The simple fact that Scott very much not looking at the door to the single room where his girlfriend was sleeping her concussion off, said enough. As did the faint layer of salt from too many dried tears on his cheeks.

  "And you still have the same sense of self-preservation of a five-year-old that I tried to lecture out of you back then already when you kept on body packing sharp metal objects for challenge. I hope we're beyond that at this point." Hank pointed a claw at one of the stretchers in the main examination room. "Clothes off everything I need to see. I'll be right there. Still trying to find my way back around in these rooms."

  "You know you could have started in your own apartment. We've got no medical emergencies right now." Scott grudgingly made his way to said bed and sat down, that was as far as his cooperation went for the moment. Not a lot of surprise on that front either.

  Hank waved him off, digging out with relief some leftover pair of giant gloves from the very bottom of some cabinet, and quickly bit off his claws before pulling them on. "Piotr is still busy carrying my furniture up there and finding a place for everything. I would never have asked but young Mister Rasputin looked like he could use something to do. He takes it very hard that he wasn't with you guys up there to help. Thinks he could have lifted that damn jet in the air with his bare hands or something."

  "I know." Scott buried his face in his hands with a suspiciously shaky sigh, still not even halfway back to his usual composed self so shortly after this catastrophe. Certainly not enough to be even remotely ready to pick up all his duties again … and yet all too eager to load a blame onto his back that Hank had never aimed that way in the first place. "They're all traumatized. But Charles thought it's better to throw them right back into the school routine. Keep things as normal as possible, you know? And the kids took to it well enough. They're all so much tougher than we are, Hank, you have no idea. The teenagers, I'll try to talk to tomorrow. I'll do a few simulations about Alkali Lake together with Logan for them to train in, that usually helps them feel like they're prepared next time …"

  "Scott, if you don't stop trying to do your job half a day after one of us died, I'll put you right under instead of throwing x-rays and blood tests on you." Hank used the beautiful short silence as Scott looked at him in a combination of offense and gratefulness, to pull himself a chair close with one foot claw. "The only one working in here right now is me. And when I work? Just like you, I expect people to follow my orders. Shirt." He waved a tourniquet and a needle in Scott's face. "I've skimmed the first reports, my young Captain. You've been under a heavy psychedelic influence caused by a biochemical substance of unknown composition. I'm not letting you walk out of here and crash into your bed tonight before I made sure, your system is clean. While we're on it, send young Mister Wagner here next, the same goes for him. And while I drain you dry, start talking."

  "About what?" Though he was finally starting to unbutton his shirt with stiff, awkward-looking movements, Scott was showing such a deeply rooted cynicism and self-loathing that hadn't even been there when Charles had taken the boy from the streets in, to be his team leader back then before he'd even been legal, that Hank couldn't help but wince. Yeah, that too had changed since he'd left this house behind for the sake of his own mental health, leaving alone everyone in here alone who could have used the same protection. "About how that son of a bitch hurt our children because I wasn't home to protect them? About how I helped him almost kill every mutant on Earth? About how I failed to save my ex-partner from drowning herself in a goddamn lake right before my eyes? If you're here for a good story, wait another day, then the mission protocols are complete."

  "Stop biting. I'm the feral here." Realizing that the still so young man was in a lot more pain than he'd let on for even a second earlier when Charles and he had unceremoniously welcomed back Hank into their house, their team and their staff, Hank reached out without asking to pop those buttons open himself and help Scott out of his shirt. With his upper lip drawn back between his fangs, he was silently preaching himself patience before a premature word of irritation or hurt pride could come from his own lips. You're not the only one who lost someone they loved, would have been a correct but entirely counterproductive statement right now, towards someone who tended to carry the weight of this world on these nowadays far broader trained shoulders anyway. So he silently put that tourniquet around Scott's biceps once he'd made sure with brief unobtrusive glances there were no signs of what Stryker had put him through at least on his front, and pulled up three alarmingly dark red vials to put into the entry bin of the Shi’ar laboratory scanner next door. "Don't even think about it," he growled when he heard from the rustling of fabric that Scott was already trying to put that damn thing on again. At his backward glance, he almost took a double take, realizing he'd looked for injury in the wrong place, and picked up a manual scanner on his way back to his patient. Gently placing one hand on Scott's as usual far too stiff shoulder in a silent warning, he realized with a deepening frown that even that slight touch seemed to hurt the young man at this point, and placed it slightly lower, on his arm, before holding the tissue scanner against that ugly, circular wound on Scott's neck first. Those other, more common-looking traces of blisters and reddened skin between his shoulder blades, he ignored for the moment. "It's already crusting, and there's no contamination. Just on that side of too subcutaneous but if you keep your hair a little longer, the scar should be easy to hide." Since Scott, predictably, had only a shrug to spare for that which ended with a tortured hiss though, Hank went back to the bloodwork scanner monitors next door and to the supply cabinets because he'd never been a big fan of starting treatments before he knew all the conditions. A brief glance at the lab results at least made it clear why Scott's pain tolerance was rapidly declining. A bowl full of disinfectant, clothes, and burn cream in his hand and a blister in the other, Hank stood behind his patient again, putting the Tylenol down next to Scott demonstratively. "What you swallowed earlier to finish the mission is starting to wear off, my young Captain. I'll let you resupply as soon as you start being a grown-up and tell me what they did to you in that damn facility so I can repair it. Or you can pass out from tiredness and pain at some point and I'll just keep looking. Either way, I'll get some rest in you, so I'm fine with both choices."

  "I didn't swallow anything," Scott answered flatly, only the way his shoulders were immediately tensing even harder giving away his growing irritation, a movement in spite or maybe just because it was visibly unpleasant, judging by the faint sheen building on his neck, drenching the band-aid Hank had just put there. "Two of them forced the stuff down my throat to make sure I'd be in the perfect condition to shoot my own teammates. You'll forgive me if I'm not a lot in the mood to numb my mind any further today, Henry."

  "It wasn't your fault, Scott. None of this." A pain that had taken hold so deep couldn't be purged with a few well-meant words. But some reassurances needed to be drilled into the heads of certain leaders who saw themselves responsible for so much more than necessary every day over anyway, before at least the most necessary cover of rationality could be thrown over such unfounded blame. Having been born a child of the mid-forties, Hank, fortunately, didn't have much of a problem with sounding like a broken record. "You can shake your head at me all you want. Part of you knows I'm right. You were taken out by someone who had no other than Lehnsherr himself dancing on his strings. You know my admiration and fascination for your gift and skill, my young Captain, but I'd say, a small miracle would have been needed for you to not take a hit or two from that guy."

  "Do you hear me arguing, Hank?" Scott rested his face in his hands once more but startled up again with a wince when the change of posture pulled on those voltage burns on his back. A grateful breath of relief was on his lips when Hank started cleaning those fortunately also superficial traces as well and countering the worst of burning with a cooling gel. "I'm telling you the same facts that will be in the files, nothing more, nothing less. I'll let my team and our children decide what to make of them. As long as I'm still wanted in my position after what happened, I'm not going anywhere. But you're gonna have to leave it to me to be my own judge because right now, I'm a person short of the few people I'd let that do for me."

  "By your own choice, from what I hear." That also wasn't his business, sadly, though Hank would have had to say a lot about all those tears infusing the air of that certain room next door. About how not to let an already heartbreaking tragedy ruin a relationship that had seemed so stable in the last half a year. Some wounds needed longer to heal than others. Seeing as Hank as well wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, he'd have enough time to try to mediate between these two equally stubborn young people. For today, even his own usually quite resilient strength for mending someone's mind on top of their bodies had reached an all-time record low though. He could only hope Piotr would be done with putting up his bed by now, because suddenly he felt like he could sleep for 48 hours straight himself, and he hadn't even been on that damn mission … which was something that his own guilty conscience would give him enough to deal with about in the days and months to come. "At least stop straining your body any further. You're gonna need it if you want to keep doing this job, you know. Wanna tell me what I'm looking at or should I make another guess?"

  "Unfortunate combination of Strappado and cattle prod. They weren't too happy about how unimpressed their questioning left me." Scott winced once more when Hank started to feel down his shoulders in alarm, the right one especially that he'd started to go easy on in the last few minutes but forced something like a weak grin on his lips. "They were nice enough to pop my shoulder back into place, don't worry."

  "Yeah, that's about how that feels. I need an MRI here. That Shi’ar tissue repair beam is gonna get a lot to do tonight." Hank rolled his eyes a little and let Scott know in no unclear gestures to lay down on the stretcher, on his stomach. "Anything else you want to remember now or do I need to undress you in your sleep?"

  "Not a scratch, Doc. Cross my heart. Weapon X tends to keep their slaves in good shape to not fuck up their plans." That already sounded far too bitter again for Hank's taste, but at least Scott let himself be helped with getting in a slightly more comfortable position, only gently pulling his head away when Hank rested his hand on the back of it for a moment in support. "Save it for the kids. I'm alright."

  "You've been tortured for two days, you had your body and your mind stolen from you and lost both one of your best friends and your relationship in one day," Hank returned mercilessly. "If you would be anywhere near alright at this point, then I'd ask Charles to throw you off the team, my young Captain."

  "I'll heal," Scott said shortly, and that was also true, probably. Hank hadn't met a lot of people so unbelievably stubborn about coming back up like this fucked-up young soul Charles had made his second-in-command there before the kid had even known what he was doing. "You know me, Henry. I'm not a bad patient. I'm just not hot on a lot of unnecessary procedures right now. Give me a few hours of shuteye, then I'll be a lot less cranky."

  "MRI," Hank repeated sternly because as much as he understood that notion, there were some things that couldn't wait. "If that doesn't show me that I need to cut you open right away and you don't fall asleep in the tube already, you let me hook you to an IV to go easy on your stomach and take the edge off for the night. And once we're both less pissed off, we'll make sure you won't feel every single weather change in that shoulder from now on. That a deal?"

  "You've always been a ruthless negotiator, Henry." It thankfully sounded increasingly sleepy already.

  "Learned from the best." After a last soft squeeze of the young man's arm, Hank went next door to prepare said MRI which was as good an excuse as any to blink that annoying salt from his eyes. Fuck, he wasn't in any way ready for this. But much like a certain team leader back there, he had no choice because there was no one else who could at least try to fill that huge gap Jean had left in this house and in all their lives today. By making sure at least the rest of said team wouldn't walk away from that ugly clusterfuck that had been Alkali Lake with any more damage than necessary, Hank hoped he could at least start to do her memory justice.

*******************************************************************************

@whumptober | @whumptober-archive​

#no.17 #Stress Positions #x men #fic #everything after x2 didn't happen sue me #x men original timeline movies #hank mccoy #missing x2 scene #i am not physically here #i am trying to work #somehow #i hate everything #long post #Scott Summers #Cyclops #whumptober2022 #whumptober 2022

[willadisastercry]

Lance ignores his asthma and Coran is not willing to be an accomplice pt. 2

It’s a race against the clock as Lance’s lungs worsen and his team scrambles to come up with a remedy before it’s too late. And though this whole mess certainly could’ve been avoided had he been upfront about his situation to begin with, his team will have to save the scolding for when Lance can focus on something other than the pain of trying to force air into his rapidly constricting airways. Altean technology works fast, but what if fast isn’t fast enough?

Part 1 / Part 2

“D’you check these yet?” Hunk asked as he threw open the topmost drawer of the in-wall storage space in Lance’s cabin.

“No, and it’s not in here either... I don’t understand wh—shit!” Keith cursed as he knocked over the trash can beside Lance’s nightstand and began scooping the contents back up.

“I don’t know where it could possibly be if—“

“—found it...” Keith interrupted as he held up the inhaler that had fallen out with the rest of the trash.

“Did you just get that from the... don’t you dare tell me it’s... oh, quiznak!”

“We’ve gotta tell Shiro...”

Keith was scared that Hunk would actually cry with the way his body tensed and his eyes glossed over.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure Coran will know what to do,” Keith offered as he forwent cleaning up the rest of the mess he made for the sake of time.

“Bring that with you, maybe it can help him figure something out,” Hunk said after a second of staring blankly before he turned on his heel and joined Keith in a mad dash back to the training deck.

When they finally made it back they wished they’d never left.

Lance was collapsed onto his forearms with a very distraught Shiro rubbing circles on his back as he struggled to take in heaving breaths. He hadn’t even realized they’d returned until Shiro spoke up.

“Thank god you guys are back, just toss it—”

“It’s empty, this was his last inhaler...” Keith offered for the look of utter despair on Shiro’s face as Hunk sunk down next to them and placed one hand beside Shiro’s on his back and wrapped the other around Lance’s, receiving a weak squeeze in thanks for the small comfort.

“You’re gonna be fine dude... Coran and Allura are going to help, they can fix this. Just keep breathing as deep as you can,” he repeated over and over as Lance’s chest continued to hitch, the wheezes so loud and guttural now as his lungs worsened and his body grew more exhausted.

Understanding washed over Shiro all at once and then he was moving, maneuvering Lance’s struggling body despite the unwillingness of his lax limbs.

He was too exhausted to do much of anything aside from keep his chest rising and follow whatever direction his pliant frame was guided, letting himself be pushed back onto his heels as hands clasped his forearms and settled on his back to keep him from tipping over.

Every muscle in his abdomen was screaming. A similar tension burning up his neck and seeping into the sinews between his shoulder blades that made his head feel way too heavy to sit atop his shoulders. After not even thirty ticks of trying to summon the strength to keep it up he let it hang forward, the hands on him tightening their grips when he did.

He was extremely grateful they couldn’t see his face anymore because tears were beginning to form quicker than they could fall and he was sure he would have been fully sobbing at that point if he’d had any energy to spare.

“We’re meeting everyone at the infirmary then, you guys run ahead and let Coran know,” Shiro ordered as he motioned for Hunk to take hold of Lance while he turned away and crouched.

With some help he rose on shaking legs, Keith rushing to support his other side when his oxygen deprived legs protested the action.

“Woah, we’ve got you... thanks Keith...”

Their hands under his armpits kept him standing long enough to collapse onto Shiro’s back.

He literally only had the energy after that to throw his arms over Shiro’s shoulders and nestle his chin securely in the space between his own bicep and Shiro’s neck before his body sagged against his leader like dead weight.

“Go! I’m right behind you,” he shouted, his voice dark and fearful.

He could feel Lance straining against him as he followed after them, could hear the way his congested airways sputtered each time he tried to breathe.

Shiro made his way with steady urgency, not exactly jogging but not walking either, the anxiety bubbling in his stomach only forcing his legs to pump quicker as Lance got worse.

Keith and Hunk made it to the medbaby in record time though, both boys panting after sputtering to a halt once they made it through the whooshing doors.

The paladins knew today’s workout would be a doozy, but none of them expected to be doing this much running, especially under these circumstances.

Pidge was on the floor sorting through boxes of medicine and supplies carrying on an in-depth conversation regarding the compositional makeup of altean pharmaceuticals with Coran and Allura.

“Hey guys—wait why do you have...?”

“Empty...”

Keith answered a bit breathlessly as he waved the tube of navy and teal plastic in the air before gesturing to toss it to Coran who nodded and raised his hands in anticipation.

“...figured you’d want to take a look at the ingredients or whatever before Shiro got here with him.”

The air in the room seemed to thin as worry descended upon everyone.

“Christ, Lance!” Pidge exclaimed and sat back on her heels.

“Yeah, he’s not doing too hot,” Hunk said as he joined them, stealing the box of tubes and gadgets from Pidge to rifle through it himself.

Coran’s frown somehow deepened and Allura looked increasingly more distraught as he began filling them in.

“What level of dangerous is his breathing at?” Pidge asked hesitantly, like she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“He’s panicking and already really exhausted, so pretty dangerous. It’s one of the worst attacks I think he’s had in a while...”

Allura worried at her lip and kept glancing between the jumble of medical supplies and the medbay doors while she worked absently to ready a bed, the mice smoothing out wrinkles in the sheets and pulling down corners for her.

“Well, it was smart of number four to think of bringing this. I am synthesizing several medicines in likeness but none of them are exactly complete yet—”

“That’s—fuck, that’s not gonna be good enough...”

Everyone stilled at Hunk’s harsh interruption, his hands shaking in loose fists at his sides while he stared fixedly at the boxes of miscellaneous medical equipment in front of him.

“Lance can’t breathe, he can’t just wait for something to finish synthesizing, he might not be breathing at all when it’s done!”

Pidge scooted across the floor and laid her tiny hands on top of Hunk’s trembling ones.

“I think what Hunk means to say is that Lance’s condition is, erm, kinda dire and requires something that works as fast as possible.”

“Hmmm, I see. That is why the blue wilgam bark salve is strictly for prevention... this is indeed a rather tricky—ah, though I suppose I can try to extract and aerosolize whatever might remain of his earth remedy for a temporary solution,” Coran noted as he braved his stern concentration face and began separating the metal canister from the outer plastic to compare the words on it to the words on the bottles of medicine in front of him.

“And we can always place him in a pod for however long it takes to create an accurate remedy... he is truly in the best hands Hunk, do not fret so much,” Allura finished with a tight smile that was warm and assuring all the same.

It was strange how well she could do that, squash so much worry with such a simple act.

Coran hurried over to a station with lots of tools and canisters and turned on several machines that made various clicking and whirring noises.

Keith’s nose wrinkled at the new sounds but he couldn’t find it in him to feel angry about it. Not when they were going to help Lance when was in such bad shape.

“Okay, okay... those are good ideas,” Hunk agreed with a gasp, he hadn’t realized he’d been withholding air as he lost himself in his panic.

“Deep breaths, big guy,” Pidge urged, the weight of her hands bringing him back down from the brink of panic as his mind raced.

“Yeah, don’t forget that you’re the one who can actually breathe,” Keith chided gently with a hesitant hand on Hunk’s shoulder.

“Right... sorry. It’s just that these can get ugly really quick if—“

The doors whooshed open with an unsettling burst of air as Shiro emerged and crossed the room in a matter of seconds, a flurry of concerned exclamations filling the silence in between pauses of commotion that should have been hurried gasps for air.

But weren’t.

There wasn’t time to make sense of the lack of color in Lance’s face or the absence of movement in his chest as Shiro slid him off of his back, human hand trembling as he moved to support his middle and the base of his neck as he lowered his lifeless body onto the bed.

It was a grim enough sight to have even Allura’s mice crying out.

“Lance!”

“Holy fuck...”

Pidge was acting on autopilot as she pinched the altean breathing mask Coran had pulled out over the bridge of his nose and cupped it under his chin to secure the seal, Keith moving in eerie similarity to connect the tubing and flip the right switches on the machine when it became apparent that Hunk wouldn’t be spurred from his horror any time soon.

It wasn’t prepped because they hadn’t realized they’d be needing it so soon.

“No... nonononono—“

They aren’t sure how they heard it through the muddle of commotion and devastating silence but it stopped them all in their tracks, the faintest whisper of air passing his lips.

His very blue lips, go figure.

“He’s breathing, Hunk. Just barely, though...”

Lance’s eyes were open still and staring at nothing as his neck strained for air that was there now but still not accessible with how severely inflamed his lungs had become, the only sounds leaving his lips at all just rapid exhales where he couldn’t expel enough before his aching lungs screamed for more of what the mask was providing

“It doesn’t look like it’s helping...” Hunk all but sobbed as he gripped the base board of the bed so tightly his fingers blanched.

Lance’s eyes bobbed at that, struggling to locate who out of his friends was distressed through the tears welling at their brims.

They were puffy and bloodshot as silent tears spilled in a continuous stream, his eyebrows drawn together with pain and desperation.

“That’s because it’s not,” Shiro deadpanned, his hands working to soothe over Lance’s stuttering chest as his rasping breaths caught in his throat on their way out.

“Wh-how is it not working... it’s oxygen?!”

It was almost pitiful how helpless Keith looked as he stated the very blatant fact, his expression sharp and his tone prickly, like he didn’t know who or what to be mad at.

“His airways,” Pidge started weakly, her voice wavering, “they must be too tight for the air to get through...”

Shiro’s hand gripped Lance’s fiercely. It was ice cold.

The gravity of the situation dawned on his friends like a literal blow then, all eyes turning to Allura.

“Coran... he-he’s working on something, but...”

It wasn’t often that the paladins saw the princess hesitate. Her usual order of proceeding during a crisis was to do something brave or noble first and think about it later, but her impulse instinct was uncharacteristically absent as she stared at Lance’s greying face.

Her hands rose slowly, long fingers uncurling from where they’d been pressed tightly in her palms to reveal a subtle pink glow.

“Princess...”

“I know, Shiro... it’s just—I am scared it might cause him greater discomfort...”

“I don’t think we have time to worry about that, Allura,” Keith noted gravely from the foot of the bed where Lance’s eyes were half focused and darting between him and Hunk.

A status update from Coran made the tension in the room skyrocket further as he estimated another twenty or so dobashes before anything was viable.

It only took one more particularly worrisome sound of distress from Lance for Allura’s hands to descend on his chest with certainty, the pink furls leaving her fingers and settling on his body for not even a second before his back arched off the bed with a strangled gasp.

Allura grimaced as she called upon several energy reserves to ease the vice constricting Lance’s lungs as fast as she could.

A phantom tightness bloomed in her own chest as she visualized the pressure leaving his while she forced each passage back open, the channel she had opened between them by using her powers allowing her to feel the gridlock for herself.

She didn’t let up until Lance was sinking back into the pile of pillows and by then she was so lightheaded that her vision was spotting, but Keith was at her side and gripping her elbow securely before she could even stumble when the strength in her legs wavered.

“I am quite alright, just feeling a bit weak.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t you take a seat for a few anyway?”

Lance couldn’t really make sense of the conversations going on around him while he collected himself after being released from the pulls of Allura’s magic.

“It’ll pass, Keith.”

“Allura...”

Not that he was known for having stellar listening skills, but he was just usually able to follow along with the general flow of things even when otherwise preoccupied.

“Coran you said only eighteen minutes, right?”

The voices of his friends filtered back in slowly though, his skull throbbing still after the horrible pressure had lifted.

“Can you lift his head for a sec so I can secure the strap?”

He hadn’t been coherent of much of anything before, fixing what remained of his energy on the miserable stalemate in his chest.

“It’s only seventeen dobashes and forty three tics now...”

And then the twisted relief of Allura’s magic.

But after that his hearing seemed to flatline, zeroing in on a high pitched hiss that was either static or the oxygen flow of which droned on and dribbled into his present when the tension that had yanked every muscle in his body taught alleviated all at once.

It was so disorientating it almost nauseated him and brought a distinct rush of blood to his eardrums, the oxygen flooding his deprived bloodstream like a dam had broken and left him feeling utterly weightless.

Shiro was the first one to break through the barrier of cotton that muffled his brain.

“Easy, Lance,” he instructed when he didn’t start breathing normally right sway, too stunned by the sudden levity to remember how.

“Take it slow hermano, you’re okay now...”

Everything was still uncomfortably tight and restricted, but air was at least accessible even as his body struggled to acclimate to the change, his heaves greedy and crackling.

“I was able reduce the inflammation for now but there is a substantial amount of fluid that remains in his lungs.”

“Fluid? What like blood?”

“No, Keith, not blood. Phlegm.”

“Oh, gross.”

Lance let out an indignant huff at that and despite the restriction of the mask managed to return the look of disgust the mullet had given him.

“Why is that so bad if it’s just phlegm?”

“Because anything in your lungs besides air is bad, Keith. It’s your lungs!”

“Precisely, Pidge. And it will only keep irritating Lance’s but we cannot risk him progressing back to such a state before Coran has derived his medicine when my powers are not indefatigable.”

“Yep...” Lance winced.

In order to speak he had to battle against the congestion in his chest which made his already wrecked voice sound downright abrasive.

“Shhh, no talking!” Pidge hissed with a warning glare.

But when was Lance ever known to take good advice when it’s given?

“Think... I can feel th’fluid... s’not very—“

He didn’t have to elaborate any more than that to get his point across because the rapping of his own vocal cords against each other had him launching into a harsh fit of coughing that rocked his entire frame. The accumulated cloud of condensation in the mask never allowed to chance to dissipate fully as he hacked.

It sort of felt like he was drowning since he didn’t have the strength to get his arms underneath him while all of the crap that his stupid respiratory system produced to counteract the strain in his lungs only worked to suffocate him and his freshly reduced air passages.

“Shit someone help me get him up, it’ll be easier to breathe if he’s vertical...”

Hunk surged to grab the arm that was closest to him as Shiro slotted his own beneath Lance’s back and hefted him into what only partially passed as a sitting position. But the motion made his head spin and his stomach clench and then Hunk’s hands planted on either of his shaking shoulders to keep him from tilting over as Shiro slid behind him.

The others looked on with horror.

“You’re okay,” Shiro assured as he pulled Lance towards himself.

He was grateful for the solidity of Shiro’s chest, his hold firm enough that Lance didn’t have to work anymore to keep himself up as he slumped into it, but the tears started back up anyway when he continued to actively choke on what felt like nothing despite being upright.

But there wasn’t anything in his throat to actually choke on.

“Just gotta work through it...”

He was starting to get really tired of the exhaustion and malaise that came with being deprived of oxygen for an extended period of time.

“Paladins! Only fourteen—er, minutes remaining.”

“Hear that bud? You’re gonna be okay.”

He did hear but he’s shaking his head in the crook of Shiro’s arm where his head had lolled because he can’t wait that long. He can’t.

“Yeah, you’ll feel better real soon,” Hunk affirmed.

But Lance was verging on a hysteria that he couldn’t summon the strength to express when every muscle that can be strained in his body felt like it most definitely was. And with how acutely his ribcage ached he was also certain he’d displaced a couple of those false ribs made up of just cartilage too.

“Hey, no don’t get upset, you’re gonna be fine!”

He’s never been more exhausted in his life and he can’t communicate that he can’t wait that long because he hasn’t stopped coughing.

His eyes are burning from the amount of crying he’s done so he relies on touch alone when a hand cups his chin and turns it, deducing it must be Allura.

“Lance, can you hear me?”

A shakey jerk seems to be good enough for her.

“I know you aren’t the biggest fan of the healing pods, but I understand that you are in a great deal of distress still and I believe you have endured enough...”

“What are you—oh, yeah! We could totally just put him in stasis like you and Coran were for thousands of years and bring him out when the medicine is ready.”

“Yes, just as Pidge puts it. There is no need to extend the suffering of one of my paladins.”

Shiro set his jaw as he regarded Allura sternly, it didn’t matter what she believed if Lance didn’t agree and he knew how wary he was of returning to the pods after the harrowing experience that landed him in one for the first time.

“Is that something you want to do? It’s alright if you aren’t comf—“

“Please.”

His voice was small, hard even a rasp, but it didn’t need to be loud for Shiro to accept it as his answer.

“Okay...”

Lance checked out after that, allowing himself to save the energy it took to focus on what was happening around him.

So when he started registering Shiro’s voice in his ear he wasn’t exactly sure how both him and the respirator came to be at the foot of a cryochamber but he made a desperate noise at the realization.

“I know, bud. You’re almost there but we need to take the mask off.”

No one missed the fear that flashed across his face before it softened into resignation, or otherwise known as I don’t care, please put me in that stupid thing right now.

Shiro was still holding him and seemed to sense the urgency in it.

“I’m gonna stand up with you...”

It was so surprise when Lance’s knees hardly held any of his own weight before wobbling and giving out as Shiro stood with him still flush against his chest.

He regarded Hunk with a lazy roll through lidded eyes as he tipped his head forward and worked the strap off but held the mask in place.

Distantly aware of the burst of air from the pod opening and a renewed flurry of commotion around him, Lance tried to work with Shiro as he ushered him forward but his legs were too heavy and he couldn’t coordinate his movements well.

Someone else’s hands were on him, bending his knee so they could set one leg down in the pod and send the rest of his body with it. He thinks it might’ve been Keith.

The various sets of hands on him stay even after he’s securely in place, probably scared he would crumple if they did.

They were probably right.

“-nce. Hey, Lance? There you are, this is gonna suck but only for a second. I promise. Ready?”

You would’ve missed the brief hum from his somewhere deep in his sore chest if you weren’t practically inside the pod with him like Shiro seemed to be.

“Okay, now Hunk.”

The crackling heave that erupted from hims mouth was something a dying thing made, but he couldn’t hear himself or the horrible sound he made as consciousness began to swiftly melt away in stages.

First with the initial pressure everywhere after the removal of the mask.

And then pain because holy shit he couldn’t breathe.

But the cold creeped into his bones at light speed and the darkness wasn’t too far behind.

#lance whump #vld #voltron fandom #lance voltron #vld lance #lance mcclain #lance has asthma here #voltron whump #voltron #asthma #lance headcannon #voltron fic #voltron headcanons #voltron fanfic #voltron lance #voltron angst #hunk vld #hunk anxiety

[scriptflorist]

Hi and thanks for sharing your knowledge with us writers!

I write about a near-apocalypse setting where the lands are barren and plants are getting rare. Gardening becomes an expensive hobby, and it is to become my MC's vice. What plants or flowers would you suggest my MC to nurture in their garden? Something with high endurance with low humus soil or low sunlight intake.

Florist’s usually don’t do a lot of planting, and if they do it’s almost always to make something pretty and not for gardening purposes. So humus seldom comes up for florists that don’t tend to plants outside their job, at least much less than pH-value and occasionally peat.

So let’s start with what humus is exactly, after all it is about the single most important soil component – even more important than organic matter. (Not to be confused with the food – hummus).

We are starting with all the things that are not humus.

Those bags labelled humus which can be bought at garden centres are no more than mislabelled compost, which probably has something to do with how in gardening and agriculture humus is sometimes used to described well-aged compost. To put it simply compost is slightly decomposed plant material that continues to decompose for years and most certainly not humus. A humus layer is also not humus. And while fulvic acid, humic acid and humin are sub-parts of humus they cannot be used as replacement words.

So what exactly is humus? In short humus is the leftover material from decomposed organic matter that can’t be used by plants or micro-organisms. Organic matter originates from dead plants and animals, and is something of an umbrella term for a wide range of molecules, for example starches, proteins, sugars and amino acids. All that decomposes and is broken down by micro-organisms (mostly fungi and bacteria). And when all the good stuff has been extracted by micro-organisms, so that at one point it can be used by plants again what’s left at the end when nothing else is left, that is humus. It’s exact composition differs depending on its materials.

What’s left over is mostly carbon and some nitrogen, but it can’t just decompose further. It does decompose further, however at the incredibly slow rate of up to a 100 years or more which makes it incredibly stable. A very simple explanation for why it is able to persist for that long is that it basically hides in soil particles, if humus does not do that it usually decomposes within 10 years. This less stable humus contains few plant nutrients but still keeps the soil structure intact.

Humus has three main functions. The first is to absorb water. Lots of water. Like up to 90% of its weight lots of water. The second is that it has what is called negative charge, which basically means it’s like a magnet for plant nutrients and doesn’t allow them to get washed away by rain. Which allows the plants to siphon out what they need, like it’s a slow acting natural fertiliser. The third is that humus improves aggregation, basically it gives soil the nice loose, crumbly texture that makes it really good for your character to dig their hands in. Humus also affects the bulk density.

Generally humus is understood to be the dark organic matter that’s left after decomposition did all it could, it’s what gives healthy soil its black colour.

The thing about humus is that science doesn’t really understand it and we have no exact scientific definition for humus. It’s understood that it’s complex, but it has no determinate shape, structure or quality. Because science does not fully understand humus, science said in 2015 that humus does not exist. The paper was only followed up by some articles talked about it in 2016 for all that I could find.

The basic point of the paper is that since science cannot really detect humus in the soil, but only after treating it with pH 13 in a lab the only real humus is man-made. And so it doesn’t exist. However we’re not here to answer that question, and while there might be something to it given that it appears scientists have been doubtful about humus since they started studying it, it also has to be said that this discovery changes virtually nothing from a gardening perspective. Soil still needs organic matter. – The question we are here to answer is how can there be low humus soil (if possible) and how does it affect planting things?

For arguments sake we are going to say the soil in your character’s garden is old enough to have passed the 100 year mark and any humus that may have accumulated in the past decades was less stable and has already broken down and the most organic matter it receives is the occasional dead rodent and some leaves the wind blew in. Let’s say it’s all that the moment your character decides to make it their garden. Whether they can actually plant anything now heavily depends on the soil structure, and their water and fertiliser supply.

Depending on the soil structure the first thing your character might have to do is actually treat the soil, by adding compost and organic matter. Or compost containing organic matter. How long that would take would depend on the conditions in which their compost is kept.

An apocalyptic setting certainly is not the ideal environment for such an endeavour, however knowing how humus is created it should not be impossible for your character. After all humans require plants to survive and feel good, so surely somewhere in their world there are some fallen leaves or dead plants and other types of organic matter. Something always ends up decomposing unless everything is vaporised.

Other than that they will need a steady supply of water since with little or no humus the soil will hold much less of it, which is an especially big problem for plants freshly put into the ground as they still need to grow proper roots. (This takes about 2-3 weeks on average, which is why planting close to winter even for hardy plants is not recommended). And they will need the fertiliser to make up for nutrient deficiencies in the soil.

Fertilisers generally are made up of the same three ingredients – N-P-K. Nitrogen, phosphate and potash (potassium carbonate). Each of them is responsible for different things and plants have different needs when it comes to the mixture, and though there are all purpose fertilisers the exact mix differs between brands. Your character should also keep a book or some other way for looking up and comparing plant afflictions, to most efficiently combat what they notice on their own plants.

With that said, this was a very long way of saying plants can handle low humus soil if well-taken care off and finding plants that need little to no sunlight should be the bigger factor when your character goes shopping.

As for those, here’s a list of some:

athyrium filix-femina

begonia x semperflorens-cultorum

hakonechloa

chaenomeles speciosa

cornus

heuchera

hydrangea

impatiens walleriana

lamiastrum galeobdolon

lamium purpureum

lamprocapnos spectabilis

mertensia virginica

pulmonaria

spathiphyllum cochlearispathum

tiarella cordifolia

vinca minor

– Mod Jana

Disclaimer

This blog is intended as writing advice only. This blog and its mods are not responsible for accidents, injuries or other consequences of using this advice for real world situations or in any way that said advice was not intended.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/what-is-humus/

https://www.gardenmyths.com/humus-does-not-exist-says-new-study/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humus

https://www.greenviewfertilizer.com/articles/understanding-n-p-k

https://www.tipsbulletin.com/low-light-outdoor-plants/

#gardening #plant care #writing advice #humus #low sunlight plants #ask answered #mod jana #Anonymous

[foronceleavemealone]

Long time no see

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 

A/N: First time writing. Really wanted to write, but I think this is very bad. I don’t know how repetetive this is, but to me it seems very repetitive. Please be kind, but also I’m open for roasting. This isn’t a reader insert, this is more of an OC, but not really either. I feel like it’s somewhere in the middle. The watch that I wrote about is inspired by this watch. Also I don’t know much about 90s fashion, especially work fashion/clothing, I just think those type of necklaces that I made her wear look very neat. 

Summary: She’s very done with work. On her way out she sees an old friend and they begin to catch up.

Pairing:  Javier Peña x OC (I guess? But it can also be an insert. Seems somewhere in the middle for me. idk..)

Genre: angst(ish), fluff(ish)

------------------------------------

She layed in her bed on her left side staring into the distance of the room. Her heartbeat felt a lot more annoying than usual and even in a way painful. She looked at the clock. 4.37am. Not too bad?

‘If I fall asleep right now I'll be able to sleep for 3 hours and 23 minutes, which isnt that bad. I've had worse’. But she couldnt fall asleep. Various thoughts were plagueing her mind. After a couple more hours she couldnt take it anymore.

“For fucks sake” she mumbeled to herself and looked at the clock. 6.42. “good enough”  she got up and went to the bathroom. Getting ready took up quite some time. She did want to look professional one last time. White button up, with a couple upper buttons undone, black blazer, black pants, black heels, a lariat necklace and a watch completed her look. She never liked pencil skirts. Not that it was a statement of some sort, more so that it made her feel uncomfortable. The hip hugging sensation, the way it looked, it just wasnt her cup of tea. Also she couldnt get much field work done in them.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

‘Looks like I'm going to a funeral’ a thought ran through her mind. In a way this was a funeral. The funeral of her career.

She thought about having breakfast but was too afraid to ruin her clothes.

‘Why didn't I think about this’ is all she thought mentally cursing at herself for not planning the little things.

She grabbed an apple, took a few bites and realised that that was not going to work, the nerves were kicking in and food didn't seem like their right companion. She grabbed her keys, her bag and went to take the last trip to the HQ.

------------------------------------

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” her boss asked.

“Absolutely. I don't have any doubts” she said with a smile forming on her lips, but she knew she wasn’t sure. 

“Well, it's difdicult to let such people like you go. It's tough losing good agents. But I wish you luck”

“Thank you. It was an honor working here and with you, sir” she said as she stood up.

“Likewise” her boss put out his hand and she reached out a shook it.

They nodded to each other and she walked out of his office.

It's not that she was a bad agent. Like her boss said, she was good, great, fine. But not great enough. She always felt underappreciated, but that wasn’t the reason why she decided to resign, or so she thought. It was everything else. Both physical and mental trauma. Getting shot left it's toll. She was never severely injured and thank goodness for that, but a couple of bullets pierced her arm once, one went to her lower abdomen and not to mention the times the tac vest saved her life, only leaving a pain in her chest rather than a gaping wound. All of these incidences made her think that maybe she was not only a lousy shot, but also a bit shortsighted, not quick enough, yet she never spoke about these worries and kept everything to herself. The physical scars were fine, they healed and stopped hurting, but the mental ones... She never forgot those moments when she got shot, or when she shot someone else. Losing coworkers left a mark. Losing partners, now that  left a huge mark... After working for what felt like centuries, she started thinking whether this is really making any difference. Is it actually doing any good? So many people dead, so much blood shed, so many lives ruined. Being morally gray? Yeah, seems about right.. 

Working overtime surely didn’t help the situation. She wasn’t a workaholic, at least that’s what she had told herself. Working overtime, obsessing over details and usually getting little to no progress at all led her right into burn out teritory. And one day, she had enough. She talked to her boss about quitting after she finishes off one last case. He tried to talk her out of it, somehow drag out the case, giving her more paperwork or by making her chase loose ends, hoping she would change her mind. She did her job, being the great agent she is (or was), and finished everything yesterday. As she handed the case report to her boss, a letter of resignation was attatched to it. Today she only came in to gather the rest of her stuff from her office and tie up any loose ends, and say goodbye to her coworkers. 

She didn’t have that many things in her office. She kept it simple, nothing too personal. She didn’t even need a box, she had cleared most of the framed honors yesterday. She looked through the rest of the office to see if she forgot anything. She checked the drawers of her desk and in one of them there was something she’d left yesterday, not knowing whether to leave it there, throw it out or take it with her. It was a watch. She hesitated.

“Oh what the hell” she said as she took it and put it in her pocket. 

Finally she was done. She didn’t even stop to look at the now empty office. She was quite done, she had been for a while. She started walking down the corridor. As she reached the first floor she glanced at her watch.

“11am, not too bad” she mumbled to herself. 

She looked up and a few meters right in front of her she saw a man. They locked eyes and something felt so familiar, so nice, so heartwarming. A smile formed on the man’s face.

“My my my, what a sight for sore eyes” she said with a huge smile which almost made her chuckle.

“Sad to hear your eyes are sore” he said and chuckled a little bit himself while going in for a hug. He smelled like he always had (she could never tell the exact composition, but it reminded her of cardamom and cedar) and she found it comforting in a way, especially on this day. 

“How have you been?” she asked pulling away from the hug.

“I’ve..” he hesitated for a bit while looking at her. “I just resigned. Had enough of this bullshit”

“Oh wow. How come? I heard you did a great jo-”

“I did what I had to do. Or at least what seemed right to do” he said as he looked at the floor. “Anyway, what about you, how have you been?” he asked trying to change the subject.

“Oh I... I actually quit today too” she said, with a little quiver in her voice.

The man looked at her and raised an eyebrow. This not only surprised him, but made him a little bit upset. He was never big on picking up emotions and feelings, but this just felt somehow a bit off.

“You? Quitting? That doesn’t seem like you”

“Well, I had enough of this bullshit too”. She forced a smile.

“So, are you done for today then?” 

“Yeah, pretty much so. I was just about to head out. Go...home.” she said with a sudden wave of sadness washing over.

“Wanna get a drink?” He thought that whatever she was going through could be washed away with a drink, at least for a moment.

“It’s like 11 am”

“Right... and I forgot you don’t drink”

“Yeah, I don’t drink. So how about some coffee?”

“Yeah, sure”

“Javier Peña, man of many words, like always” she smiled with some memories flooding her mind.

“Shut it” he said smiling, feeling surprisingly blissful at the sight of her smiling.

------------------------------------

“So why did you quit?” Javier asked bluntly.

“Straight to the point, huh” 

He tilted his head a bit and smiled.

“It just doesn’t seem like you. You always seemed to love the job, the rush it gave you”

“It did once. But it was getting too much. And I couldn’t take it after I lost my partner” she said with a shaky voice. She visibly got upset, but cleared her throat “sorry” she smiled.

“No, it’s ok. We don’t have to talk if you do-”

“No it’s fine. I should talk about it. It’s been months. And the longer I keep it to myself the worse it’ll be”

Just as she was about to begin talking the waiter came and brought their drinks.

“Thank you” she said to the waiter and flashed a smile. Javier always loved how she was kind like that.

“Black coffee? I thought you hated straight up black coffee” 

“Well, I thought I’d spice up my life with something I don’t usually get” she said and took a sip, regret forming on her face.

“How’s that spice?” Javier said trying not to laugh.

“It’ll... It’ll grow on me”. They both giggle. 

“I’ve heard that many times before. It’s been years and still no progress” he said still trying to control the slight chuckle.

“It’s really been years, hasn’t it?” she said and looked at him. They both stared into each other’s eyes for a bit, some form of nostalgia washing over both of them, until she reached out into her pocket and pulled something out. “Speaking of years, or well, time I guess. Here’s what I found”. She showed Javier that silver watch she took from her drawer before she left the office.

“No way.. is that? Is that my watch?” he said and reach out for it. She handed him the watch, their hands touching for a bit and she remembered that day.

------------------------------------

It was a hot summer day and the car surely wasn’t parked in a shade before they got in it.

“Oh fuck” Javier said as he sat behind the wheel. 

“You could actually cook something in here” she said and fanned herself with her hand. 

They sat in silence for a bit. Javier rubbed his face with his hands while she sat on the passenger side with the door wide open, rubbing her right temple. 

“Are you sure you’re ok?” Javier asked as he looked over to her.

“Yeah, I’m fine. He knocked the wind out of me, but everything seems fine”

“He would have thrown you out the window”

“He would have done a lot more, if it weren’t for your quick thinking. Thanks by the way”

“That’s the least I could do for a partner” Javier said as he looked her up and down.

They sat in the silence for a little bit.

“He tore off my watch, broke it” she said as she rubbed her left wrist, which most likely hurt since her facial expression shifted once she touched it. “It was my dad’s gift” she said with sadness in her voice.”I have a date tonight, and I don’t even know what time it is” she smiled a bit, thinking to herself that it was a bit absurd to think about such a thing after all that just happened. 

Javier looked at his watch.

“Well it’s currently 6:47pm. And as I remember you have that date at 8pm.” Javier looked at his watch for a bit too long and unclasped it. “Here, take it” he said holding out his watch.

“What? Javi, I don’t need a watch that desperately, I’ll manage” 

“Just take it for tonight, I know you don’t wanna be late, you like that guy. And we always get too focused on paper work to pay attention to the lobby clock” 

She looked at his hand with his watch in it and thought for a moment before reaching out and touching Javier’s hand.

-------

“Some last day of trainee work that was” Javier said placing the watch on the table and bringing her back to present day. It seemed like he was reliving that same moment. “And you’ve kept the watch for so long” 

“I forgot to return it the next day. And then we were transfered to different locations. I couldn’t just throw it out. I always wanted to return it.” 

“It stayed with you for that long you should keep it” Javier said and took a sip of his coffee. 

“Well it did get me through that date”

“Some date that was. You married the guy” he said with some heartache and bitterness, regretting his words seconds after as he cursed at himself, he should’ve thought more before speaking, he didn’t want to upset her. 

“Some marriage that was. We ultimately got divorced” she took a sip of her coffee to wash away those rancid words with the bitter liquid, but decided that she hated it.

“Sorry for bringing it up” Javier said and looked at his own coffee cup. He felt like he was hitting all of the wrong spots today. Like poking a wounded animal with a stick. He didn’t want to do that. He’s been fond of her from their academy days and the feeling always increased with their every meeting, especially when they moved up from being just trainees to special agents.They didn’t get to see each other as much, but they would run into each other from time to time, catch up. The last time they had a catching up session like this was after the Escobar case, right before Javi went to spend some time back at his hometown. 

“No, it’s fine.. It’s fine. So what are you going to do now that you’re free?” she emphasised the word free.

“I’m going back to Laredo. Gonna spend some time with my dad, help him out. He’s not getting any younger. What about you?”

“Oh, I don’t....know” she said as she twisted the cup of coffee in her hands.

Javier didn’t like this mood she was in. Quitting her job, not having a plan on what to do next. She was always one step ahead, organised. He knew that something was wrong and it broke his heart. She was probably hurting, as he guessed. 

“Why don’t you come to Laredo with me for a while?” this time he said it after some thought, but still it felt like a wild card to him.

She looked up at him, with surprise on her face. 

“Javi I-”

“I’m sure some fresh air and good company would do you go. We have plenty of room at home, you’d be welcome. And you don’t have any plans so” he clears his throat “I think..I’d be a good..idea”

“But, Javi, I wouldn’t want t-”

“You won’t be bothering anyone”

“What about your dad? I wouldn’t want to impose”

“Trust me, he likes company. So what do you say?”

“I mean it’s a big deal”

“It’s really not. Just for a couple of weeks”

“Ok, fine” she said as she took the watch that was still laying on the table and put it in her pocket.

“Great” Javier said as he took a sip of his coffee. He finally felt some relief in his heart. 

------------------------------------

When she got back home it was already 5pm. Where did the time go? They spent their time talking about their academy days, and their trainee days, also talking a bit about the trip. 

“What did I get myself into” she said as she poured herself a glass of water. 

She brushed a hand over the side of her blazer and was reminded of the watch that was still in her pocket. She took it out and looked at it, caressing it with her thumb as a smile grew on her face. And to think she wanted to throw it away. Gosh, what a foolish move would that have been. She never realises just how much she had missed him until they meet again and this time was to exception.

“Yeah... Some date that was” she said as she sat at the kitchen table still looking at the watch, contemplating the events of today. She stopped her thoughts and realised what she actually had agreed to do - travel to Laredo with Javi- and laughed to herself. 

“Well... maybe it’ll be fun” she said to herself, as she took a nother sip of water, with somewhat forced positivity, but excitement too.

#Javier Peña #Javier Peña x OC #Narcos #fanfic

[nyotasaimiri]

Theories: Builder Script

Time for Kae to ramble about linguistics! 

So in all honesty, it makes no sense for the Builders’ script to be a simple 1:1 cipher to the English alphabet, given that the English alphabet is an extreme mutation on the ancient Phoenician trade alphabet that honestly does far more work than we give it credit for, if I remember Linguistics 101 right. I recognize that this was done for simplicity’s sake, because most game developers aren’t J.R.R. “Fifty Languages In My Sleep” Tolkien. But given that I am myself and can’t resist an opportunity to Entirely Make Things Up, I grabbed that think and ran with it. 

Right, so if that linguistic ramble didn’t chase you off, here’s the actual theory: what if the Builders have two alphabets? The first one, the one inscribed on the Vault walls, is an alphabet meant to serve a similar purpose to the ancient Phoenician script: facilitate communication across many languages. The Phoenicians did this for trade reasons, the Builders did this for Builder reasons. The “why” isn’t too important here. It’s probably been picked up and put to use by a number of other cultures over millennia until it’s almost unrecognizable as its original self. The Builders would be very proud. 

The other Builder language is their private language, the one they used to leave notes (and warnings) for each other. This one is pictogram-based, nonlinear, and very context oriented. Simple symbols build into a complex and highly descriptive phrase, much like individual bricks form a house or a series of images form a composite meme. This one might have been forgotten entirely if it weren’t for one species: the Floran. The Floran are one of the “youngest” of the spacefaring people. Perhaps a small offshoot of the last Builders adopted a few Floran tribes as they distributed the Cultivator’s gift. The Floran saw the pictures that the strange givers made, learned a few meanings, and kept them. They do have a talent for borrowing and repurposing technology. Eons later, those symbols are still remembered, even if their origins are long forgotten. 

#starbound #starbound theory #starbound headcanon #starbound floran #linguistics #starbound vault #saimiri's theories

[ineffably-in-love]

Good Omens Soundtrack: The “Lift Home?” Music Analysis

So, I’ve been way too deep into the Good Omens OST lately, and it’s a real shame that not every piece we hear in the show made it to the final soundtrack. One of the pieces most people miss is the romantic violin song that plays in Episode 3, when Crowley hands Aziraphale his unharmed books and bastard angel canonically realises he’s in fact in love with that demon thanks Michael Sheen.

I thought it would be fun to unpack this piece of music --- and even though Aziraphale and Crowley don’t have an explicit theme of their own, by now I firmly believe that this melody is Their Theme. Read my take on it under the cut :’)

First of all, a brief definition from Wikipedia on what a ‘motif’ is in music: “A motif is a short musical phrase, a [...] recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition.”

With that outta the way, let’s dive into this.

So, this is basically the melody we’re hearing when Crowley hands Aziraphale the books:

But that’s not the first time we hear this melody. It first shows up in the Main Theme, after the A Minor and Major parts, that, as far as I’m concerned, are Hell and Heaven respectively. Or at least two different ideologies/ideas/fractions. This new little theme is still in A Major, but it’s not as elaborate as the melody from before. It’s playful, sure, but very simple and repetitive, maybe even to a point where it can get kind of annoying. It goes like this:

As you can see, both motifs start on an E --- the same note that the Main Theme (the first thing that plays in the intro) starts with. The melodies go down from there, to D sharp and C sharp respectively. But the little new motif takes a very different turn with C sharp, because C sharp is what distinguishes the sound of A Major from A Minor. It’s E - C sharp - F sharp. This new motif does not turn into A Minor, like the Main Theme did. It ends on a high A and stays A Major throughout.

That’s very interesting, and I kept wondering --- what does it mean? Why is there such a cut in our intro music? It’s a completely new theme. What kind of theme is this?

Whose theme could it be???

Crowley and Aziraphale, of course. This melody and the fact that it stays in A Major until the very end contain a lot of things they stand for: That they stay true to themselves and their Arrangement. That they share the same “origin key”, but turn it into something that’s solely their own. Their positive nature (we’re in Major, not Minor). But more on that later.

So when do we hear it in the show? The motif does not always play during vital turning points in the plot involving them (I’ve talked a bit about ‘Is That You?’ here), but I think it does play when something changes fundamentally about their relationship. Something personal. I’ve not actually counted all the times the motif is played in the show, but here are some instances as examples:

Crowley’s Lullaby: Sung in C Major, for David’s sake, maybe? Crowley and Aziraphale have thought of this *brilliant* idea to keep the Antichrist normal. They’re actually watching the wrong boy, but they don’t know that, so they’re very enthusiastic about it. but they’re actually being dumbasses Crowley sings to Warlock as “the evil fraction”, but it’s actually part of his and Aziraphale’s mutual plan, and as of right now, everything is going according to that plan.

It’s interesting that a variation of the Main Theme plays when they enter the scene as the Nanny and the Gardener. It’s the “representative tune”. But in that intimate moment, when Crowley is alone with the child he believes to be the Antichrist, he sings our motif, the little new one that sounds so simple and sweet, during the mission that might save his and Aziraphale’s precious Earth.

Before that, we’ve only heard the new theme briefly play when Mr Young names Adam after his birth in the hospital (in the key of C Major) and before Crowley tries calling Aziraphale. You might think that it is out of place here, but remember: The Antichrist is what will drive Crowley and Aziraphale for the next eleven years and make them work together -- even when they first think it’s all about Warlock.

We’re Not Killing Anybody: This is their break-up scene in Episode 3. Now we’ve changed to A Minor (E - C - F). We even get a bit from ‘Holy Water’ in here. But our motif begins when they start their break-up: “This is ridiculous, you are ridiculous”, showing how their relationship is changed by this conversation and by their different ideas about dealing with Armageddon. Showing how their past relationship is coming to a sad end. “It’s over!” Sob.

Bookshop’s ON Fire: An altered version (F - D - B flat - A - D), but it’s there. The motif goes up to B flat before it falls to A and D, showing Crowley’s great emotional distress and the destructive mania he drives himself into. Listen to the choir when he picks up the Nice and Accurate Prophecies, one book as a souvenir, the last thing that connects him to his angel now -- that’s our motif. Sobbb.

Requiem for A Bentley: Even more altered, distorted even (A - G sharp - C - B) --- The Bentley has accompanied them with the greatest loyalty, and their theme is showing here, too, if you listen closely to the strings at the end. The Bentley is gone, that’s how close they are to Armageddon. Everything’s a mess already, how much worse could it get?

End of This Story: We’re back! Well, sort of. Not A Major, but G Major, the key of the Them. One note below A. An only slightly altered version of our motif plays as Aziraphale believes the war is already won, believes that he and Crowley did it. It comes up again when he starts talking about the Beginning and how his husband was a wily old serpent and how he was technically on apple tree duty and---

All Change: They reverse their bodyswap and chatter happily on their bench in St James’s Park. We’re finally back on the old pattern in the key of A Major. After the motif, there’s a nice line cliché down to A [=harmony’s “going down” note by note in a very pleasant way; Queen used those a fair bit, e.g. in ‘Somebody To Love’] and then to E without resolving the tension that comes from this dominant of A Major. It only gets resolved in the piano version of Nightingale later on, which is written in A Major as well.

Okay. So far, so emotional the ugly sobbing. But, especially when watching Ep3, you might be asking yourself: Isn’t the “Lift Home” scene the first time in Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s mutual past when this motif plays?

The answer is yes.

Let’s revisit Episode 3 before the Blitz scene. At the Globe, when Aziraphale looks at Crowley, eyes begging him to make Hamlet a success using a miracle, an E plays quite prominently and you could think it would kick off our little motif. But it doesn’t; it somewhat changes into a sweet little downwards melody, ending in a happy little E Major chord (while showing Aziraphale’s sweet smile) before cutting to Paris. E Major is the dominant to A Major, as written above, and the dominant always means tension. Tension that, to our ears, feels like it needs to be resolved, ideally to the tonic, which in the case of E Major could be either A Minor or A Major. Now we don’t actually get that feeling right away, because the whole phrase is written in E Major, but keep it in mind still.

Because apart from the many times the Main Theme plays (e.g. when Crowley enters the church), I think that’s the closest we get to our little motif: The two of them bickering about their Arrangement and doing each other’s deeds, when suddenly Aziraphale wants Crowley to do something for him. Not for head offices, not for God, not even for poor Shakespeare, but for him. And when Crowley says yes, “my treat”, our angel gives him the most precious smile ever. Urgh.

The motif first plays in its proper form when Crowley hands Aziraphale the books and offers him a “lift home”. This is when Mr Sheen decided that Aziraphale would finally realise his love for Crowley, and the camera and music department support his acting rather strongly in that regard. As for the instruments, I believe it’s a violin playing the melody, with those cute recurring chimes sprinkled on top. The chimes play so often on this soundtrack I’d have to analyse their meaning/symbolism as well, oh God. Back to our scene with Aziraphale staring into the middle distance. Finally he’s on the same level as Crowley, who’s had it bad for 6,000 years already, and maybe Aziraphale even knows. I think that in this scene, Aziraphale not only realises his own love for Crowley, but he also realises that Crowley very much loves him as well, and has loved him for a damn long time already. That’s a big effin turning point for these two.

However, this would mean that the variation we hear in the Blitz is actually the original version of our motif! It’s a quiet tune that sounds like realisation, yearning and loving, and it’s written in A Major. It would mean that the times we hear it later on in the timeline (e.g. the Warlock lullaby or the happy ending) are actually an evolved version of Aziraphale’s love theme from the Blitz.

Let’s take a look at this early motif again:

It goes up to G sharp before falling onto F sharp. This kinda sounds like a sigh, doesn’t it? The second time around, the melody goes to G sharp once more, before falling down to E -- an even more longing sigh in here, a quickened heartbeat in the quavers there... At least that’s what I hear :’) Aziraphale’s heart is practically beating out of his chest here. That’s one brilliant way of musicalising the feeling of falling in love if you ask me. But the best part is that the music also conveys Aziraphale’s confusion about those feelings, his insecurity, because we do not get a resolution. We are in A Major but we end on E Major yet again.

Now, let’s look at the evolved version we hear in the intro once more:

The melody is much more refined by now, it’s steadier, quicker and overall more complete, mainly because we end on an A Major chord. We climb up from our E Major to a high A and the thing finally, finally resolves. Aziraphale and Crowley have come into their own, they are comfortable with their feelings and their mutual love for one another. It’s whimsical, playful and laid-back at the same time. This little motif is about them and them alone, it’s the signifier of their relationship, and it has turned into their Theme. In this regard, the omniscient intro has given us a fully developed theme since Ep1, and it has been evolved from Aziraphale’s little love motif.

So, if you ask me, this melody is as close as we get to a Theme for Crowley and Aziraphale. It’s more joyous than the Mystery Theme (which plays very prominently during their pep talk to Adam), mischievous even, but quiet and solitary when compared to the pompous Main Theme. It also lends itself to more serious tones when shifted in key, as seen above. But most important of all, it gives us a resolution after Aziraphale’s confusion in Ep3. Now we have a happy ending in fucking A Major, the key that is said to sound the most emotional, bright, proud and joyous; the key that closes the series with ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.

Bach, famously one of the demons’ composers, once said that “the glorious heights of the light of A Major have only seldomly been really reached” by other keys in music. If that isn’t worth a Hallelujah then I don’t know what is;;

Thank you for reading!

#dear god I'm in love with that gif #ineffable husbands #episode 3 #music #meta #analysis #david arnold #good omens #*

[thecorteztwins]

No Acolytes in this little fanfiction, just two squads of some of my favorite Marvel mercs---Force of Nature and the Serpent Society! With some Mindmeld and the Shaws at the end!

When the wealthy eco-terrorists that called themselves “Project Earth” had needed some super-powered muscle, they had hired four individuals that they had deemed “Force of Nature” for their elemental powers. Though Project Earth had disbanded, Force of Nature had kept their name, since it was now a known one. Not widely known, but better than any of them had done as indivuduals, and that meant brand recognition, which meant being hired for more jobs. Environmentalists in particular tended to choose them due to their past with the aforementioned Project Earth, though most green freaks didn’t have that kind of cash so they ended up with a lot of less noble merc jobs. Today though, their target was indeed one that their original employers would have loved to see taken down---the Roxxon Energy Corporation. The task was simple---get inside, get deep into the most highly secure area, and wreck everything. They had succeeded in this---but, to their surprise, they were not the only ones. ”Who’re YOU?!” demanded a huge hulking blonde woman as the quartet burst in. She was part of a larger group of people, and judging by their costumes---not to mention two of the men appearing to be part snake---she and her gang weren’t Roxxon employees any more than Force of Nature was. ”I could ask YOU the same question,” retorted Skybreaker/Aireo, a miniature whirlwind forming around on of fists. The woman’s biceps were probably thicker than his entire body, but he was not at all deterred. ”Who cares who they are?!” said one of the men in the blonde woman’s group, a sturdy fellow with light brown skin, the only one of them bigger than she was, ”They’re witnesses or they’re competition---either way, let’s get rid of ‘em!” With that, the man began to increase dramatically in size, his already huge frame getting even bigger. ”Good idea, Puffy!” said the blonde woman, and came swinging at the elemental---swinging with arms that were suddenly twice the length they had been before. ”Now wait just a---” an Egyptian woman in a white dress began, before being knocked off her feet by a gust from Skybreaker, who was airborne now, while Terraformer had taken on his tree shape to grapple with the blonde and the giant man was being kept at bay by flame blasts from Firewall. ”Hang on, I think I know these mooks,” said Aqueduct, who had been in the supervillain business longer than any of his teammates, “The Serpent Society!” The Serpent Society was the kind of mercenary guild you wanted to get in on, big time. They had insurance, benefits, all that kind of stuff, just like a real job. Hell, their package was actually a lot BETTER than most “real” jobs! It was a level of legitimate-like professionalism that was unheard of in the underworld; even organized crime like the Maggia didn’t typically offer that kind of gig. Unfortunately, you had to have a snake name to join up...maybe he should start calling himself Water Moccasin? ”That’s us,” confirmed an attractive woman with long black hair as she snuck up behind him, “And if you know that---you know you’re finished!” Aqueduct turned to attack, only to find himself face to face not with Black Mamba, the succubus-like member of the Serpent Society, but one of her life-sapping love phantoms----which he currently saw, as anyone would who it was targeted at, as looking like the woman of his dreams, a perfect composite of his every sexual fantasy put together in one flawless and nude form. A form that fell upon in a full lip-lock, which he surrendered to helplessly. “Be glad I’m the one that got you, lover boy,” said the love phantom’s mistress as she looked down at where he lay, submitting to his fate, “You’re going to go out with the GOOD kind of bang.” “Release him from your shadows, harlot!” Skybreaker shrieked, using his winds to scoop Black Mamba up into the air, levitating her high above the floor. “Or what, you’ll drop me?” mocked Black Mamba, though in truth she didn’t like the idea. “No---I shall roast you!” Firewall threatened, flying up beside her, her entire body ablaze. “Fine!” Black Mamba said, and the love phantom vanished, leaving a very confused and rather disappointed Aqueduct looking around in a dazed manner. He sat up and blinked at the closest person to him, the Egyptian woman in the white dress. In her daily life, she was Cleo. As a supervillain, she was The Asp. But he knew her by another name,... “Hey, aren’t you The Temptress?” The second it left his lips, he was sorry he had let it out. Now he was hoping that she WASN’T, and would have no idea to what he was referring. Alas, she was, and she did, and she looked down her beautiful nose at him, “You remember me. But I do not recall you. Which means you must not have been a good tipper. So I shall feel no guilt in doing THIS!” And she hurled a venom blast at him, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him out once again. As for Black Mamba, Skybreaker had dropped her anyway, but she had been caught mid-fall by the extendable and strong arms of Anaconda, aka the huge blonde woman. One of her arms, anyway. The other had shot out even farther to grab Skybreaker by his lengthy ponytail, as she growl-shouted up at him, ”Cut yer hair, ya hippie!” He shrieked in hopes that Firewall would help him, but she was distracted by another Serpent, the silent and scale-covered assassin of the team, boasting a spike-studded casing for his tail and titanium talons on his gloves that were filled with snake venom. Her flames allowed her to keep him at a distances, but she couldn’t be too liberal with them lest she hit her teammates, especially Terraformer the living tree, and Death Adder’s enhanced speed and agility made it easy for him to keep dodging her fireballs. Her best bet was to keep her entire body ablaze to keep him from touching her, while keeping him distracted from her more vulnerable teammates, which was what she was doing. But she spared a jet of flame for Aireo’s sake, causing Anaconda to drop him. Then she turned her attention back to Death Adder, hoping to finish him once and for all, -”A pity. I like you far better than your comrades---for you do not speak.” With that, she sent a wave of flame to engulf him---only to have him be snagged away by the long arm of Anacondna. Roland had died before, she wasn’t letting that happen again. ”You’re a real chatterbox yourself, Mabel!” she quipped, using the default name she applied to any woman she didn’t know. “What did you call me, you swine?!” Not being American, Firewall thought that “Mabel” must be an insult. And likewise, Anaconda thought Firewall was insulting her looks, when in fact she tended to call ALL Americans some variant of swine or pig. She seemed to like them about as much as Aireo liked humans in general. The two women abandoned their former opponents and began trying to get at each other. Speaking of Aireo, he was back in the fray, attacking one of the Serpents who had been trying to slash through Terraformer with the two huge blades strapped to his forearms. Like Death Adder, he was one of the more inhuman looking ones (though Skybreaker would of course not use that term in such a way) as from the waist down he was an enormous green snake. And like a snake trying to get at a bird, he tried to strike at Skybreaker as he flitted around him, distracting him from hurting Terraformer further while the tree elemental continued tussling with the giant-size Puff Adder. ”Get away from him!” the Inhuman commanded, trying to blow the snake-man back, but his naga-like lower half proved too heavy, giving him the opportunity to dig his arm-blades into Terraformer’s....not flesh, but bark...and take hold there. ”Monster!” Skybreaker cried in outrage as his teammate did the same in pain. This seemed to phase his opponent considerably, as the man suddenly looked upset, ”Who are you to call me a monster?!” “Among my people, I was Aireo. In the human world, I am Skybreaker. But to you---I shall be MASTER!” ”There’s only one master here,” the snake-man retorted, “And it’s me---Bushmaster! And I’m as human as you!” This was the wrong thing to say to Skybreaker, who let loose a whole new torrent that sent Bushmaster flying--along with a few chunks of Terraformer---backwards into the nearest wall. ”Human?! HUMAN?! You dare call me HUMAN?! Did you not HEAR what I just said?! I am no human---I am INHUMAN! I come from ATTILAN! And while it is a regressive place in need of reform--which I was cast out for trying to give it---it is still a superior world to yours, human man!” Bushmaster actually hadn’t been able to hear half of what Aireo had said over his winds, but he looked surprised at this last bit, and even...touched? ”You...think I’m human?” Aireo descended to stand before him, his thin arms cross over his thin chest, scoffing, ”Most likely; they’re a common breed with many variants. But if you’re NOT? Take it as a source of pride. I do.” Meanwhile, Death Adder was silently slipping up to the prone Aqueduct, who was still down from The Asps’s blast. But then Terraformer, seeing this, defended his teammate by at last letting the gargantuan Puff Adder slam him to the side---right into Death Adder, who went hurling out of the way to avoid being crushed, causing him to crash into The Asp, who reflexively venom-blasted him by accident, taking her own teammate down. ”Enough!” she decreed, striking one bare foot with elegant force against the floor, “Does anyone here even know WHY we are at each other’s throats?!” ”She’s got a point,” said Black Mamba, “Guys, cool it. You four---I’m willing to stop fighting for a minute if you are. At least til we figure out if we SHOULD be.” Firewall and Skybreaker objected, but cooler heads prevailed---Aqueduct, getting back to his feet, agreed it was a good idea, and Terraformer corralled his more tempermental teammates with his branches. Firewall of course could have burned through them, through him, but she would not do that to him. He was the most gentle and inoffensive of them, even from her easily-angered perspective. “Okay the,” Black Mamba said, taking the lead from Asp, “The hell are YOU here for?” “You first,” said Aqueduct, figuring it’d be best if he did the talking for his respective team. For different reasons, none of them were what you’d call good negotiators---and really, neither was he, for the reason that he was none too bright, but at least he probably wouldn’t set things off again.

“Serpent Crown,” Black Mamba explained, “Roxxon’s been after it a long time. In fact, their Mutagenics Division gave all of us except Puff Adder and Asp here our powers, all in order to recover it. And they finally got their hands on it...but we’ve long moved on to new employers. One who’d like it for themselves. You?” “Roxxon Energy Company used to be Roxxon Oil, and really, they still are,” Skybreaker interrupted,  “And like all oil companies, they are ecological monsters. They have damaged countless---” “So there’s no conflict then,” Black Mamba cut him off, “We want the crown. You want to wreck the place, I’m guessing, maybe make an example of some people. We’ve got no beef with that. And I’m sure YOU don’t want these “ecological monsters” having an object of power like THAT.” Force of Nature looked at each other, and Aqueduct finally said, “Well...no. I mean, maybe OUR employers would like it too---but they didn’t say so, so their loss!” He’d added that last part quickly when he’d seen the Serpents tensing to fight again at the very idea he might be thinking of taking their prize. “I don’t think ANY human should have it,” said Aireo, “But since they’re all the same, it doesn’t matter to me if it changes hands from Roxxon to another.” “Any corporation shall use it for gain without a thought of what damage it causes,” said Firewall, the flames around her still crackling. “But Roxxon pollutes even more than most corporations,” Terraformer pointed out. “So uh, I guess what my crew is saying is, it comes down to who you’re giving it to,” said Aqueduct, a little uneasily, not actually caring himself and knowing already that this would not go over well. “That’s confidential. We’re professionals, come on now,” Black Mamba said, and continued to negotiate, “Look, I admire that you guys clearly have a sincere moral stake in this, but you’re still mercenaries, just like us, and like you said, Water Boy, you weren’t paid to take the Crown. We were. If your next customer tells you that your mission is to get the Crown from us, then we’re ready to make you work for it, but since that’s not the case, what’s the point?” Aqueduct agreed with her completely, actually. Like, he liked animals and rainforests and stuff and all that, but he wasn’t actually invested in it like his teammates. Skybreaker and Terraformer both had good reasons to want a cleaner Earth---Aireo being an Inhuman meant that pollution affected his health much more than a normal person, and Terraformer literally WAS a sentient plant---and Theary aka Firewall, well, she was just angry at the West and anyone in power, just angry IN GENERAL really, and Aqueduct didn’t really think he blamed her, given her background as a Cambodian child conceived during the Vietnam War. But him? Man, he just wanted a paycheck. And he’d prefer to get it without any extra complications, like getting clobbered by psycho-snake-people when he didn’t have to. “Guys, let’s let them have it,” he said, turning to his team, “Odds are, whoever they’re taking it too, won’t be WORSE than Roxxon. And if it turns out that our client DOES want it for themselves? They have to pay us for a second mission.” Firewall snorted and said something about his typical American greed, and while Terraformer and Aireo didn’t DISAGREE with that, they too wanted to get back to the task at hand of merely hurting Roxxon, not doing battle with other mercenaries over something that didn’t actually affect their mission at all. “Okay then,” Aqueduct turned back to the Serpent Society, smiling and feeling proud that he’d taken the reins of leadership and actually succeeded in making his team go with it, “Crown’s yours, guys! Carry on! Just be sure to get out of here before we bring the place down!” “Man, we didn’t NEED your permission,” Anaconda growled, “Mamba just didn’t think we should smash you without getting paid EXTRA for it upfront. But me--” She flexed her massive arms, and Aqueduct, even at a good distance, gulped. “---I would have done it for free.” With that, the Serpent Society walked away and left Force of Nature to continue destroying the room even more than the fight already had...but returned to attack them once again in suspicion when they realized that the Serpent Crown was ALREADY GONE. *** “Well boys, here’s your little tiara,” the statuesque and silver-skinned mercenary known as Mindmeld sauntered casually into the Shaw’s meeting room, the priceless weapon dangling off her perfectly manicured index finger like a mere trinket. “I’ll take my fee now.” After a quick counted, she quirked an eyebrow in irritation, “Hey---if you wanna stiff me, there are better ways to do it than this. This is NOT what we agreed on, you owe me---” “Exactly that, once we deducted the fee for those “Force of Nature” fellows that you called in on my tab rather than fight the Serpent Society yourself when you realized they were after the same target,” said the senior Shaw coolly over his steepled fingers, “A clever idea, Miss Mindmeld, but they don’t work for free---much like yourself. Since you procured the prize successfully, I’m willing to overlook it, but touch my bank account again without authorization...and we shall be testing the limits of Krakoa’s resurrection.” Mindmeld didn’t doubt it. She also didn’t doubt Shinobi’s old man knew a whole lot of ways to just make you WISH you were dead without ever delivering the final mercy. So without further complaint, she counted herself lucky and slid the crown over, albeit to Shinobi rather than Sebastian, just to get a tiny little dig in because she was petty like that. Whatever, it was still a LOT of money. More than she’d ever made on a job. More than she’d ever made on all her jobs put together. Which was why, despite it usually being very much outside her professional protocol, she had to ask, “So what IS this thing? Besides hideous and not going to match EITHER of your wardrobes.” “This,” said Shinobi, his gaze fixed on the diadem of intertwined snakes, his finger tips running delicately yet firmly over the textured surface of false scales with the enraptured eagerness of a lover in foreplay, “Is why Billie Eilish wrote that song.” And that was why Sebastian Shaw had long given up anything his son said sometimes. END

#marvel fanfic #fic #writing #force of nature #serpent society #out of cortez

[crapyouknowme]

Skeleton Flower

Prompt: Eliott’s dreamt the idea for the mural + includes his artiste frame of thought.

* Includes clip 3, episode 4 as a reference, posted on 01.11.19 b/c this is post-clip 4 and it plays on the pic below. (although the pic was from their rehearsal, it’s how I imagine they would be discussing what to paint on the mural)

* Look up Diphylleia Grayi for context as you read this; it’s such a stunning phenomenon that occurs to that flower as it absorbs water.

Elliot dreamt of snow.

He dreamt of a wooded mountainside, the gravel of the bedrock enveloped by a snowbank. The branches of bark that extended out, curled thoughtfully into the sky-as if they were fingers reaching for the vault of clouds above. Perched amongst the shrubs were petals of white. The blossom’s hue unequalled that of its surroundings: thin, frosted ivory.

Rain fell from the sky, dampening the leaflets, only for the white to disappear and become translucent. It was mesmerizing, being able to see through a flower. It was a marvel in a foliar. It was as if the heavens itself seeded the earth with a beauty, unparalleled to any of the other creations of the universe.

No, those branches weren’t extending out, they were enclosing the flower in. Protecting it.

He reached out and tried to walk towards it, but his limbs were heavy and his body ached.

When an earsplitting-wail broke through the stillness, Elliot jolted awake. He scrubbed at his face, blinked impassively as stretched his hands over his head. A long, weary, fatigued yawn followed right after.

He dropped his hands on his desk, swiping his thumb across his phone. He tapped at the ‘unread message’, eyes even more vigilant as he read the reply to the ones he previously sent:

‘Yeah, totally.’ {10:51 A.M}

The mural in the common room was a blank canvas remaining barren, untouched and it charmed Eliott. He offered his input, which was accepted undisputed; everyone who had showed up to the first meeting more or less were present out of curiosity as to what disorder latched onto Daphne’s idea so she was not necessarily predisposed to declining an offer that would have contested the naysayers.

He had considered at first sketching a backdrop that resonated with the atmosphere, but founded it distasteful. The people within that school were less than enthusiastic about the revamping of a hallowed, inattentive, deserted space. Their antipathy was directed towards the disturbance of an enduring spot.

Sure, it was unkempt, stacked with chairs and tables haphazardly against the cascade of slates and hodgepodge of faculty storage. It was meant to be a stockpile where most found adventure and thrill in being able to breach the area for their personal uses.

It was never supposed to be disturbed.

His mind flashed to the flourishing flower. It posed no threat but as the vines encapsulated it, it was clear that it was meant to be protected, preserved and sheltered. A breach would have been deplorable because something that ethereal was never meant to be touched.

In that regards, Eliott sympathized with those that were against Daphne’s intention, regarding her ambivalence to a crusade.

On the other hand, the dream felt too good-natured. When the rain seeped into the pale petals and transformed it’s pearly white hue into a lucid crystalline, he was reminded once again that nothing could be unscathed. The drops of water kissed the stalk and blade of the flower, fatally. Never intending on destroying the floret, but exposing the veins of a flower like peeling the skin off a body to reveal the skeleton.

It all felt too purposeful.

He knew what the blank canvas needed: that skeleton flower.

He entered the room that Daphne had messaged in their new group chat, the Oeuvre, to meet with Lucas. Eliott admired her when he thought about how invested she was into the output as she was in efficient in planning their assemblage and affairs.

He had been the first to enter. Eliott kicked the chair from out underneath the desk, placed his bag down and unzipped the knapsack. He combed through the printer paper, a stack of graphite and charcoal pencils, a new bundled set of prismacolor colored princils. He reached for the composite of images he had printed out earlier that morning, pulling them out and placing them decidedly on the bench behind him.

Eliott tugged his jacket further to his chest, settling into his chair as he tilted his head to the wall farthest to him where a chalkboard had been; it was replaced by mountable portable projector and a whiteboard that felt ill-suited for the drafty room that was moated and barely erect if it weren’t for the sturdy blocks beneath the gravel.

“Hi.”

Eliott turned, tamping down his feelings when Lucas shrugged his bag onto the desk in front of him, wearing a timid smile as he sat down.

“Hello.” He said in return.

Lucas pursed his lips as he nodded, looked over Eliott’s shoulder as he was captivated by the sight. He drew his brows inward when the form of the sketch became evident. “An iguana?” He  inquired, “That’s-“ but cut himself off, as if the word preceding his train of thought was mundane.

“Interesting?” Eliott offered, convinced it was his choice of word when Lucas looked away sheepishly. “I guess I should think here-on-out that nothing I do is typical.”

“That’s not true.” He countered.

Eliott amused him. “I don’t think you like boring people.” He said instead.

Lucas stilled. His gaze was elsewhere as he offered silence in return.

Eliott turned to grab the sketches of multiple renditions of the framework of the reptile he had drawn first, on his sketchbook, transferring them to his tablet before deciding on printing multiple copies of each, for composition sake.

He dropped them in Lucas’ lap. “These are just primary references. We can change the size and shape once we decide on the form.” He grabbed the scroll of paper tucked in the other zip of his bag, pulled it out and walked to the wall without a slate.

Eliott turned to face Lucas, nodding him over. Lucas was quick to his feet as he strode towards him, papers tucked under his grip.

“What should I?”

“Here, hold this side.” Eliott rolled out the scroll, walking against the length of the curb. “You think this is how big the wall is downstairs?” He asked, despite having measured the dimensions the day prior and employing his ability to gauge distance instinctually.

Lucas gave a cursory glance at the width, shrugged. “I think so.”

Eliott chuckled under his breath.

Lucas blinked. “What?”

“Nothing,” he sidestepped. Eliott reached into his sleeve for the band of tape. “Give me a hand?” He stretched out the strip a finger length in size, tugged with his front teeth to rip it at the seams. Once he was done with both corners on his side, he walked over.

He mumbled a haste ‘just one sec’ as he hovered over Lucas, taping down the corners steadily. If he was being honest, he could have been faster but he lingered beside Lucas for a stretch of time, just because.

Lucas glanced down at his feet. “Why an iguana?”

Eliott shifted slightly, so that they were standing shoulder to shoulder, adjacent but with formidable space in between them.

“It’s a chameleon,” he corrected, “Do you know why they change colors?”

Lucas gave it a moment’s thought but shook his head, ultimately.

“It reflects their mood. People think wrongly that it’s a defense mechanism, to hide from predators. But they are as bare to the bone exposed as they can be.”

Eliott dropped his hand to his side, brisk fingers running against the surface of the wall.

“What do you mean?” Lucas slid his hand next to him, duplicating the same motion with his thumb and index fingers, “They don’t look that bare to me.”

“The outermost layer of their skin is actually clear.”

Lucas looked at him like he didn’t quite get it.

“Like a skeleton, there isn’t much to hide.” He continued, “If it weren’t for nature, they would appear stripped to the bone.”

“I don’t think that’s how evolution works.” Lucas said flatly, his gaze fixated on the projector above them.

Eliott laughed aloud. It was a response fitting him. “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.” He repeated words off a flyer near the bus-station that he passed in the morning. “Do you know what that means?”

Lucas sighed with simple directness. “Nope.” He jabbed his head back, “Enlighten me.”

Eliott contemplated on entertaining the idea of being vague and puzzling, back and forth, but decided against it when Lucas tore his gaze to turn and face him. It was the briefest of glances, yet it does nothing but tighten the ache in his throat.

Eliott swallowed his indignation, remember the blossoming petals in his dream.

“Just because something can’t be seen, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” It was as cryptic as he could have gotten. He wanted to offer clarity but he was also aware of the fact that there was no context that he knew of. He saw something that had no context. All he kept thinking of was a blossom that appeared like a skeleton and not a living thingit was. He kept thinking of the chameleon and how it existed in clear sight. Appearing ghostly but so alive.

A jolt of shiver ran up Eliott’s forearm as their fingers brushed; His thoughts are cut through with a jaded blade.

“Nature can sometimes be an illusion.” He mustered, their proximity painfully warm. “It’s as Trompe I’Oeil as you can get.”

Lucas stilled, breath abated.

“Sometimes, our eyes can be deceived.” He supplied, noticed from his periphery how flushed Lucas’ cheeks had become. His ears burned with a coral hue that appeared all the way down his neck and under the seam of his shirt.

“So-“ Eliott pushed off the slate, redirecting his attention to the clock hanging above the door. It had been a mere few minutes since he had been in the room. “Bad idea?”

He had his back to Lucas, laying out the sketchbook, his tablet, the bundle of color pencils and markers on the ground. Eliott bent down promptly, stretching out his towering feet out in front of him, careful not to step on the anything.

“Well, it’s different.” Eliott sensed the hesitation in Lucas’ tone, the way in which he parsed his words, carefully and with consideration. He coughed into his hand subsequently, as he stood beside Eliott.

Lucas squatted, swiping his hand on his jeans. He glanced in Eliott’s direction often, looking away as soon as Eliott made an effort to meet his gaze. They alternate between gaping at each other for just ten, eleven seconds, before Lucas professed: “Best idea I’ve heard.”

#skam france #prompt fic #lucas lallemant #eliott demaury #lucas x eliott #Eliott's POV #reference to episode 4 #dreams #artist eliott #light angst #Eliott and his animals

[ukiyoe-reproduction]

The Making Method of the Turmeric Yellow Pigment .

Turmeric yellow had been one of the main yellow pigments in the original ukiyoe prints in the Edo period.I have been trying to restore it. Before this time,I had gotten it by boiling the root of turmeric in water and vaporizing  the extract. But since the extracting power of boiled water looks a little weak and it needs many times of  boiling to get the sufficient strength, so I always had thought of the new way. On the way,I found one description in the book,"Enogu-seizouho（絵の具製造法)"written by Michiya Yano （矢野道也)in 1908.A lot of making methods of various pigments is written in this book,which says the color of  turmeric is extracted by alcohol. I tried the way at this time.Her I  introduce it as below.

1Cut the root of turmeric in  small pieces and boil them in water until the water vaporizes out.The turmeric volume becomes about 2 times  than the dry state.  

2When they get a little colder  ,alcohol is poured in. The cup in this state is left over one night. I explain about the kind of alcohol as below. （Since the amount of turmeric was too much , I divided it to another cup.  )

3In the next morning, take the soaked turmeric to a mortar and grind.Grinding it all, then put back into the cup with alcohol.Leave the cup during a few hours.

4After a few hours, filter the turmeric extract to a pottery.And the turmeric in the cup is washed by water.The water after washing is filtered to the pottery.This washing process is repeated 4 or 5times.  

5Heat the collected filtrate and vaporize water.

6Stop heating when it loses the water until a certain degree. Now a little rice powder dissolved in water is added.Take care not to burn the extract too much.

7After drying rightly, scrape off by a wooden spatula.Finish.

In the use for printing , it is hard to dissolve by cold water ,so it must be heated at first with a little water. The use of container of ironwork or aluminum should be avoided since the color of turmeric tends to change its color by metal composition.（I had sometime made the turmeric pigment with a little black in the past.It must have been caused by boiling turmeric in a iron pan.)

The color of pigment in this time is good well.When I used it on this printing, I felt again it had different feeling from the chemical yellow pigments.It makes me feel softness more.The color of turmeric discolors by time passing, especially  weak to the light.Many of people may think such features is no good.But that's how it is with the original pigment of ukiyoe and I think that's good including such fleeting. During printing ukiyoe, the paper must be kept moisting. But turmeric has features to percolate through moist paper little by little with time , so   the use affects the technical aspect of printing.

Now I explain about the alcohol above.In this time,I chose "shouchu （焼酎)"at first , which was made from just barley and barley kōji, and contained 40%alcohol When I used it, it actually took effect better than just water, however  I couldn't completely extract the color. Looking for the good way, I found one material said 40%alcohol was too weak to extract. So I decided to try distill shouchu since I don't have idea to use ethanol for disinfection in drug shop. I looked for the way to distill and found that the  simple equipment  to distill nikawa gule  was introduced in  "ehon-saishikitsuu"（絵本彩色通) by Hokusai in 1848 .So I referred it.

Prepare two earthen sake bottle.Cut a tup of one.（Just this work took a few days since I used a handy file.) Mix wheat flour and lime with a little water.Put it on a piece of cloth and wrap as filler on the connected part of bottles.

The alcohol put into the right side bottle on heating vaporizes gradually and it comes to be  collected as   droplet in the left bottle.It was done well at a first few times but it got a fire on the cloth at 5 times or so. The bottles broke down and the fire spreaded. Fortunately, I could extinguish the fire around tatami burned a little, but since I felt this way was danger, I had to thought of other way.    

As the result, I decided to connect the bottles by a stainless tube. Since the similar equipment had been used in the manufacturing of cinnabar mercury, although I haven't tried it yet but  but probably I 'll be able to  use together in the future .

（　｢On Japanese pigments」by T.Takamatsu in 1878)

I could get the alcohol with higher concentration by this way and extract turmeric yellow color more than 40%, however couldn't extract out completely. Pale yellow comes in each time endlessly when I add water and wash in the process 4 as above.The materials don't say how long turmeric should be soaked in alcohol.   I'll verify and found the best time to soak from now on.

#ukiyoe #woodblockprint #hiroshige #浮世絵 #turmeric #japaneseart #pigment

[environmentworld-blog]

Making an environment in One Week - Part 1

I decided to make a whole environment piece in one week. So yeah!

WHAT THIS IS: Practice and an experiment. This was just a personal test to see what I could achieve and share my experience. WHAT THIS IS NOT: Healthy and practical. Healthy for reasons you will read bellow (at least for me), and practical because rushing things doesn't make you better. Even though there was some discovery here for myself, I didn't learn any new techniques, didn't learn from critiques, etc. I dont recommend to do this as a constant art practice. Its not smart if you are planning to grow in your craft.

That said!

Its been both a challenge, and a great time. It was definitely a big learning experience for me, and I am not very happy with the results but I decided to share it because I got something out of it, and hopefully some of you will as well.

The main challenge was to conceptualize and go from blockout to final in 1 week. Basically, going from here...

...to here...

...in one week.

The result is running realtime in UE4. I used Blender, ZBrush, Topogun2, the Substance suite and Photoshop.

DAY 1. Starting out...

This was, heads out, the hardest part. The whole piece took me around 45 hours. 4 hours after work from Monday to Friday and at least 12 hours on each day of that weekend. Needless to say, at the end of that week I was completely exhausted. MVP of the week was my girlfriend who decided to take care of my chores the whole week while I worked!

Looking at the empty canvas is always scary.

And of course this time it was no exception. It added an extra layer of pressure knowing that every minute I spent looking at it and clicking around, would take valuable minutes away from my busy week.  

I had to figure out SO MANY THINGS.

When tackling down an environment, there are many things I usually keep in mind. You have composition, theme, storyline, execution method, end platform, etc. And in this crazy jungle of thoughts that usually strikes me when starting to build a piece, I can get lost really quickly and begin walking in circles.

First I had to CHOOSE A PLATFORM. Unreal, of course. Moving on!

Then I had to FIGURE OUT THE MAIN THEME, on which I'm going to build my scene. So I almost instantly thought: pirates. I LOVE pirates. I mean, who doesn't? And with Uncharted 4 still to this day in my veins and one of the latest Magic The Gatheringset ever-present in my head (go Ixalan bois!), I had all the inspiration I needed. I had found my theme. And I set it in stone, for I would never allow myself to lose time changing it. That was not an option...

And of course, I ended up changing it.

Now, I need to THINK OF THE STORY. It was going to be amazing! I wanted to have a small boat in the sand with a treasure on it. And in the back, a huge ship shooting at it. As if the pirate stole the treasure and was getting away! He got to shore, but the ship was too damn close, so he had to take away whatever we could in his hands leaving most of it behind.

Cool, I liked it. It was no Dark Souls environment art storytelling, but it kinda worked!

So then I jumped to the next and one of the most crucial of steps: GATHERING REFERENCE AND BUILDING A MOODBOARD.

I think I got rid of most of my pirate-related reference, but here you kinda see what I was aiming for terrain wise. I had to cut a lot of it, but the feeling was there. This step is almost crucial, and it is really important not to underestimate reference. Spend 1-2 days looking for it. Always keep it open while working, and never stop looking for new pictures!

All this took me a good couple of hours. Perhaps 3 (tight time frame after all). So I HAD to move on to the engine now. No time to waste.

Next, I started with my main BLOCKOUT. This is definitely the most important part of it all. Here is where you should spend the most time when making environment art. The blockout is going to dictate the overcome of your whole piece. Don't think in details, details sucks, details are for murlocks. Nail your main shapes and composition FIRST. You will definitely tweak things around, but having your composition, shapes, balance, and flow of the piece in place in the beginning, is not only going to allow you to work more effectively, but it will also keep you inspired and moving forward.

So I did. This is the first blockout of this piece ever.

I started out with the simplest of compositions. I can go quite crazy trying things out at this stage but, not to my surprise, I hadn't much time to spare. So a simple rule of thirds, which I personally dislike (here is why), will do for now. I knew that I was going to keep a simple 3 point composition, and 2 counterbalancing points will do the trick for now.

Also, at this points rocks, water and sand texture were taken from the UE4 library.

I moved on then to BLOCKING OUT LIGHTING. As everything in this stage, it was very simple. Just used a basic skysphere (default to UE4) and tweaked the values a bit. I knew for a fact I wanted to keep working on both the mood and the clouds. But no time for that right now.

The goals of my first day were to have the whole blockout done. At this point it was almost 10 pm and I wasnt ready. And I wasnt going to bed until I had at least a very basic sand texture there.

So I made it.

And since its really awful, I figured I might aswell explain what was I shooting for composition wise. The framing was going to be natural vs man-made. Rock vs water. So the big rocks on the fore and the middle ground where doing that for me. At the same time, I was throwing all the flow lines I could to make the ship pop up.

And that was it. 11 pm. Time to eat something, go to bed, and go to work the next day. I could have stayed up all night. But I knew better.

DAY 2. Sand and rocks

Day 2 started out nicely. I almost ran home to get my hands on this! I was confident that I was going to pull it off. All was great!

I jumped right away to Substance Designer. I knew (and had been thinking all day) that I wanted to have the sand in as soon as possible. So I jumped directly to my next step BLOCKING OUT TEXTURES. Not everyone works this way, but I found out that having a solid blockout of your textures helps you to see the bigger picture. In an interesting scene, not only color but also roughness take a big part in making it look unique and appealing to the eye. And having your materials blocked out will get you early to a point where you can start tweaking lighting, composition and even propping to get the most out of your scene.

This screenshot is 2 hours in on the second day. I kept moving rocks trying to improve the composition, and all this new perspective came from my new sand material being applied to the terrain. I built a simple blend shader and vertex painted some roughness variation in where the land met the sea.

Also grabbed this super high poly ship from somewhere on the internet and used it very quickly to try to pull my vision a bit forward. All assets were created by me in their entirety, but blocking out a ship just for the blockout's sake would take me a whole day, and I was already starting to get scared from the scope of this scene. At this point I didn't think I was going to pull it off, and grabbing these ships helped me realize that my original vision simply wasn't going to happen. They were a lot of work, so I had to improvise something on the fly.

Much like in game development, the cool parts get cut. Ships were out, and I spent a whole hour trying to think what to do to replace them. And the clock kept ticking.

So I kept working on the composition. A 3 point composition would do it. A simple offset of focal points kept in flow by the terrain and contrast. Not too fancy, but would do the trick if done correctly.

Then I thought I might as well move on to the next thing: CREATING KEY PROPS. So I decided to get started with the rocks. I sculpted these godforsaken monstruosities and quickly decimated and textured them.

Here is a quick tip for you all: DONT RUSH THINGS. Because when you do, you end up losing time. They looked like crap. And I knew that. And hated the fact that I had to redo them. That didn't only make me lose time, but also severely affected my morale. Tackle things smartly, and give every piece of the puzzle the time it requires, because if one single piece is off, everything will look unfinished or just wrong.

Then added some fog and, just like that, the day was over. What a waste.

DAY 3. Rocking rocks.

Day 3 started at 7pm. I had to get to work with the rocks right away. So I did.

I looked for a lot of references and got to it. I ended up finding some killer ref on it, that was exactly what I needed. In the end, and after pretty much all day, I was happy with what I got. The sharp edges broke nicely with the smoothness of the scene. It almost felt like I was achieving a gradient between the smoothness of the water, the semi-rough surface of the sand and the sharpness of the rocks. I quite liked that. There was even a cool story element to it.

It also had to be reusable, so I sculpted it 360 degrees, since it was going to be rotated like crazy. I knew they weren't perfect since there was barely any small detail on them, but I would come back to them later.

I also kept developing the blend shader a bit. And used it on the rocks as a test, painting some sand on top of them.

DAY 4. Propping, mesh scatter and sand!

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew what I wanted to do with the rocks, so I started creating bigger variations and some backdrop ones. Once I had them, I kept working on the composition and framing of the whole piece. Also created some sharp ones to add at the distance, as some reference I found showed.

So at this point, halfway there, I had my composition kind of there, my secondary props almost done, my main textures half done, and I was still experimenting with lighting. Damn.

When propping, it's always good to keep micro-compositions in mind. There is a lot to talk about on this topic, and I plan to do it in the future in more detail, but as of now this should do. Every big shapes should be grounded, accompanied by medium and smaller bodies. And this is what you can see I did here. Breaking the rotation of assets and having other smaller props around them, blend big assets and terrain together smoothly, almost like in a gradient.

And then it clicked. I decided to take a huge U turn. Pirates wasn't an option anymore since the ships were too expensive to make. So I decided to turn into scifi. Star Wars more specifically. For some reason I just got a bit of a scifi vibe out of it. Decided to follow my gut.

First big change was lighting. Before I was aiming for something really moody and gray. Tons of fog, low visibility and and sad/uncomfortable mood. Changed it into a mostly clear sky at dusk.

DAY 5. Prop making

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew

My first idea was to recreate the crash from Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy on the planet of Blenjeel (the one where the sand worm tries to get you). So I thought it could be a really nice remaster piece to make! Story was figured out and all.

So I used some UE primitives to build the basic shapes of what I was going to go for in both focal points. It was going to be the fallen ship and one of the ships parts you need to retrieve in the mission.

But as I started looking for reference, what I could find was really limited. the game is really old and there is barely any art for the level. I found a single piece of concept art in one of many Star Wars wikis and started blocking it out from it.

My plan was to execute the main asset that day, so I quickly jumped into it. And as I started modelling one of the turbines of the ship (you can see it in the next image), it resembled something I was really fond of. So, again, a new sporadic change in the design...

Pod racers! I LOVE pod racing. Who doesn't?

And like that, day over!

DAY 6. Of grounding and helmets

First day of the weekend. My intention was to finish everything today. Wanted to have all props figured out, all dressing done, all painting in place, etc. The last day had to be just post processing and super small details in the scene. Lots of things happened on day 6.

The new prop was simpler and more easily recognizable. And, most importantly, I liked it! It would be now the remaining of a crashed pod. The races (as depicted both in the movie and the game) were pretty brutal, and so I figured I could try to show that.

Here is the asset.

After that I quickly jumped into grounding the asset better and adding smaller detail. Added some dragging marks for the turbine, wires, random parts of the broken pod scattered everywhere.

DAY 7. Final tweaks and presentation

Final day upon us!

I started the day early adding the third focal point to the scene. Backdrop pods racing at the distance. This wasn't only the third piece of the 3 point composition, but also a big storytelling element. This guy had some tough luck, but the race still keeps on going!

Also started to play heavily with a post process volume and some nice LUT tweaking.

Then did a final pass on everything. Added some more scatter, tweaked lighting, added some fake bouncing lights and tweaked the reflections. Then made some quick dead vegetation and added it around some rocks. The final composition was rather simple, but here is a breakdown of my mental process. It doesn't really matter which of the 3 focal points to see first, all of them are connected creating a circle flow between them.

In blue, you can see the helmet connecting with the turbine thru the wire in the sand, creating an arrow directly pointing back and forth. Framed by the rocks in the foreground, the helmet creates a strong contrasty focal point that is very likely to attract most attention at first glance.

In red, the turbine. The trail behind it serves a single purpose: its guiding the viewers sight towards the next focal point in the rotation. Also the same positioning of the turbine works as an arrow pointing left. Perspective and placement work together here for this end.

In green, the pod creates an attention spot simply because of contrast. And so it completes the circle. All shapes around are meant to both point towards it and guide the viewer back to the helmet.

General positioning on the scene and during the dressing had purpose. Playing with empty spaces vs populated ones, contrast and color helps, and here the sand areas and sea create clear paths to traverse. and the central, uninteresting, piece (in orange) creates the perfect shape to accentuate direction and a pivot for the whole image.

And so I was done! 8pm on Sunday. Crazy week! Was absolutely exhausted and had a real bad time trying to concentrate next Monday morning. But I managed to pull it off to the best of my ability in the given time, and the result was rather acceptable.

Many lessons learned on this. Not going to bore you with all the details of my own realizations, but I tought it would be nice to share the crafty side of them.

Im not doing this again any time soon. Even though I look back and can be proud of having finished a piece in this small amount of time, the gain wasn't really worth it. Things I would improve if would have had more time are:

Pods could have improved with some motion blur (didn't have the time to figure out how to make it happen in UE).

Smoke looks still and inorganic.

Rocks could be better grounded, with sand buildups on the sides.

Backdrop rocks are way too simple.

More color variation would have taken this to a much nicer place. I played it safe with complimentary colors.

Assets could use some more time.

And I think I could keep going on forever. Even though my eyes are still a bit used to seeing it constantly.

Thanks a lot for reading! Sadly I had to cut a bunch of it due to text characters limit, but I think this sums it up well enough.

Please leave any questions you may have, happy to answer them! Also any ideas and C&C on the piece is absolutely encouraged.

Thanks again, and till next time!

Otto

#environment #environment art #level art #unreal #ue4 #real time

[keremulusoy]

Being one of the most important public spaces, can the streets prevent alienation and form a meeting area? Or a stage for musicians who left their hometowns and came to another country for one reason or another?

When you walk down Istiklal Street, you encounter musicians playing on the street so many times. Some of these musicians are Turkish, while some are travelers on their way to discover the world, and yet others are immigrants who are just passing through or end up in Istanbul due to war in their country. The answer to the question why these people make street music should be studied without strict generalization. At first look, as an external perspective, being a street musician seems pretty fine with its enchanting ways, bringing people who are there together due to different circumstances to a single area with a relatively homogenous status; though, how does it make one feel to do the job?

GO OUT TO DISCOVER!

On the subject of immigrant musicians, I would like to talk about a group of 3 people from Ukraine whom I met while strolling around Istiklal Street. On this hot day with a soft breeze, Alina, grabbed my attention, as she sang beautifully with her great voice and danced with unique moves and stood slightly in front of the two other people.  After that, I realized Svetlana whose body movements were in harmony with her violin, and Denis who calmly played the guitar. After listening to their music for a while, I approached them wondering about their stories. Alina warmheartedly told me about their position in Istanbul. “It is not our first time coming to Turkey; sometimes we even come twice a year. This year, we are in Istanbul for 3 months to spend the summer here. We are also engaged in arts in our own country Ukraine and teach music, but we are here to make save money as well as putting our holidays to good use. Denis and Svetlana are siblings; we met long years ago while making music. We receive positive feedback from people we met here or from those who stop by to listen. We dance together; sing together what else can be more beautiful than this? We haven’t faced any problems; after all, if we had we wouldn’t come here this often. We are doing the job we like; therefore we get more excited each time we go out on the streets. Istanbul is a very big, touristic city; we get the chance to meet people of many different cultures. This both thrills and enriches us, as well as making us gain brand new experiences. We like to be out on the streets to discover. We usually prefer singing Russian classics; however we also have an instrumental composition we particularly made in Istanbul. Leaving Turkey creates a feeling of emptiness in our hearts, and when we go back the first thing we do is always to prepare next year’s plan.” After Alina explained all this, I thought they can earn a living doing this job –at least for their basic and simple needs- all over the world. They do not need to know the language of the country for they have instruments to vocalize their ideas. They do not need to know directions, for music can be performed on the streets and if it saves the day and makes them feel joyous; maybe it is also a tool to earn money up to a satisfactory point. On top of that, they have the chance to return to their countries whenever they want. But, what if they were street musicians as immigrants?

Alina, Svetlana, Denis

Moments of cultural codes unraveling

Immıgratıon and musıc

“SOUNDS BEYOND THE BORDER”

While searching for books to read or movies to watch on immigrant street musicians, I came across a 5-episode video conference series called “Sounds beyond the Border” from Evrim Hikmet Ogut and Umut Sulun. The stories of 5 people from across the border, all five of them had brought different stories to Istanbul, but they had a common point which was their experience as street musicians… First of all, I have to mention a young lady, Sadim, who is younger than the other musicians. Being both an immigrant and a woman, she faces some difficulties making music on the streets; as a matter of fact she could only experience street music once in order to feel this emotion. Having had an education of music in Syria, Sadim left her school due to war and had to come to Turkey. Sadim, who mentions that she would like to continue her education says: “Actually I really wanted to graduate school and continue my education abroad on scholarship. However, the war started and we had to leave the country, so it was not my decision or something I have done to enrich my personality. When I came to Istanbul, I would have liked to continue my education, but I had to work here to earn a living, and earning money takes precedence over education. I want to join courses, but I cannot afford them. Apart from the occasional musical nights we have or singing something at home with my parents who are also musicians just like me, I cannot do anything for the sake of music. I have not come across any Syrian woman singers or instrumentalists in Istanbul. Or maybe they are an unseen minority. Usually, men musicians are able to make music on the streets. We once tried it with my mother, but it was very difficult since you need good quality sound equipment in a crowded metropolitan city. It would be nice to make music on the streets if only we had better opportunities.”

“MY MENTAL STATE KEPT ME FROM MAKING MUSIC”

Alaa Alkateb, who studied music in Syria for over 20 years, is one of those who had to come to Turkey due to war. Leaving the war environment in Syria and coming here with a small bag containing a few clothes, two paintings and his oud, Alaa says: “During the first months I only dusted my oud and tuned it back into its case because of my mental state, I could not enjoy what I played. Afterwards, I got acceptance from a university here, which was a great accomplishment. When we came to Turkey, we tried different options related to music with my sister; our aim was to meet new people. One of them was to make music on the streets in Taksim with some of my friends. It lasted for about a month. I have never had such an experience in Syria. There are many reasons why I stopped making music on the streets, but the main one is exhaustion and playing for long hours. My shoulder hurt from playing for five hours nonstop and the sound of the oud was insufficient on the street. A second reason is that everybody on the street plays with a band, but it is not a stable job since you cannot sign a contract on the street. However, during my time on the streets I met many people. We are still in touch with these people who are researchers, musicologists, and we have several projects together. Among these is a project related to children, I used to join some projects for children when I was in Syria too. We play interactive games with children, sing and organize workshop. I dream and hope to make music in Istanbul. The simplest and most important language is the language of music. The music you play brings together cultures; it will be easier for Syrians to understand Turkish people and Turkish people to understand Syrians. My goal is to sort of synthesize, finding common elements and bring them forward.” While explaining what he has been through, Alaa’s voice makes it clear that he will never lose his faith in music.

THE DEAF STREETS OF METROPOLITAN CITIES

Noise pollution deafens us to a point where we stop noticing it after a while in a city like Istanbul with a population of 15 million or in other metropolitans of the world. Due to this noise pollution, we try to find comfort with our headphones or sometimes with the notes played by street musicians. Why wear headphones when we can travel to other realms via music with the help of the different cultures on the street? Who knows, maybe we should get away from the music industry and hear them out more often. For this to be possible, they need to be able to make music under fair conditions, get the education they need, we need to help accommodate them and most importantly help them earn a living with this job, leaving our deafened sides behind…

NOTES

A research assistant from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatory, Evrim Hikmet Ogut, who has been conducting academic and other studies on the musical practices of immigrant groups since 2011, explains immigrant musicians making street music as such: “Making music on the street is a state of obligation, if you ask me. They are usually not really willing when they first start, since there is no street music culture in Syria and it is regarded as kind of begging. The street is like an open market where immigrant musicians can show-off their products; while performing there, they get the chance to meet other musicians and mediators that lead them to cafes, restaurants and other places they can possibly perform at. It is a public place where they meet the Turkish audience as well as tourists from other Arabic speaking countries and Syrians. Street music is subject to permission in Turkey and above all requires being a Turkish citizen. For that reason, the street music practices of Syrian musicians are pretty fragile.”

Beyoglu Street Musicians Festival

Organized by Beyoglu Municipality in 2007, Street Musicians Festival was held for 3 days on a stage built in Tunel. This festival, which was a one tine organization, can help build space for street musicians if it merges with Beyoglu Festival, held at the moment.

IMMIGRATION AND MUSIC

Immigration has been a research topic for various fields of science such as history, geography, archeology, sociology, psychology; and took its place among the important themes of other areas of  art such as literature and music. While even the immigration of the TV at home (moving it to another place) changes the whole atmosphere of the house, the total effects of a collective immigration of living beings would be enormous. This can be regarded as an explanation to how and why immigration affects many different scientific and artistic fields.

THE MUSIC OF THE IMMIGRANT

We cannot regard music as just an artistic production. Music is a product of cultural fault lines and social interactions; it is a sociological event due to the resources it feeds on and feeds in return. From the moment humans discovered their “voices” and “screamed” they also found a solution to their muteness via music. The image of immigration is being portrayed throughout all the geographies of the world as the scream of those who are unwillingly sent on exile “from where they belong”.

A musical reading will both be ‘meaningful’ and comprehensive enough in order to come in contact with especially the sociocultural level/side of mass population movements that are caused by war, natural disasters, chaos, famine, population exchange, political/cyclical changes and deportation.

By: Dilara Özdeş/Photography: Yağız Karahan

*This article was  published in the  July-August issue of Marmara Life. 

THE MELODY OF THE CITY AND STREETS; STREET MUSICIANS Being one of the most important public spaces, can the streets prevent alienation and form a meeting area?

#Istiklal Street #Music #Syria #Taksim #turkey #Turkish

[loadpar677]

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Price

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Musical Typing Keyboard (MTK)

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To test Mixcraft I loaded a few songs that I was working on from WAV files and proceeded to build up the compositions and add a few extra parts. The first striking thing was that without a manual I managed to get started tracking right away. Actually throughout the whole time I can't think I ever referred to the manual - everything was where I expected it to be and was pretty much self explanatory. I ran a few realtime amp simulations while tracking guitar and Mixcraft handled them with ease and latency was very low, at about 2-3ms. Mixcraft performed like a champ as I proceeded loading it with more and more files. Compared to other software, such as Cubase LE4 and Tracktion, Mixcraft was running these tracks with less overhead and seemed to be more responsive than the competition. The software comes with its own plugin bundle, guitar amp sims and virtual instruments, which while useful still left something to be desired. The addition of the Pultec inspired Pultronic Tube EQ is definitely a step in the right direction but still this is the only part of the software where I can tell the price point. Luckily for us, Mixcraft runs external VST and Direct X plugins as well and they even encourage supplementing with some freeware VST effects, such as Kjaerhus Audio Classic Series, SIR convolution reverb and so forth. Working with Mixcraft was a very pleasant experience and I noticed that my workflow improved as less clutter meant more music-making. Fader automation is a breeze, as is audio editing - pretty much all the functions that I needed were there. An extra plus was the included audio export to MP3 as some programs, such as Cubase LE charge extra for that option. While mixing I'd have to say that the new mixer view came in real handy and the software's dual monitor mode definitely helped me better organize the workflow - I simply sent the mixer to the second monitor and was happily zipping along with the tracks. Another handy new tool that I found was the new Link Feature - it allowed me to link together a whole section of a song, and move it around as a one piece. This comes in really handy when you're not exactly sure if say your bridge should go between the bridge or the chorus, or maybe the chorus needs to be extended twice. Some other new features that came in really handy were the bounce (Mix to New Audio Track) and MIDI Merging (Mix to New Clip) features. The bounce feature was great when combining several recorded sources of the same guitar signal - in my case I recorded guitar with 3 tracks, one DI that I ran amp emulation on and two mic tracks that I blended to taste, compressed and eq-ed and then bounced to one track to save clutter and conserve system power. The MIDI Merging tool came in handy when I needed to merge a midi drum sample to my tapped-in-via keyboard conga parts so I could run only one midi track for simplicity's sake.

Overall Mixcraft have managed to create very impressive software, with lots of features that can appeal to novice and veteran users. It is easy to get started on and achieve fast quality results. If you find yourself pulling your hair with the complexities of your more expensive DAW - spare yourself the trouble and give Mixcraft a spin!

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[leslogames]

Layers

Wow, what a Ludum Dare last weekend. 72 hours to make a game based on a theme, this time being: “Deeper and deeper”. Normally it takes me a huge chunk of the time trying to think of an idea I want to explore, this time was no different, but actually the time where less I knew what I was doing for the longest time. This is a journey in detail of how I designed the game:

------------------------------------------------------------Brainstorm

Ludum Dare started 3 AM here, so I decided to go to sleep prior to the announcement of the theme, and handle it next morning. I spent most saturday just blocked without any interesting idea to pursue, however, there where two concepts that kept coming back to me:

Digging game, but with water, which spreads when there is space to the right, left or bottom. This would affect the character, making him float, having a sort of “Snake and ladders” situation.

Fossils card game. Having a board with dinosaurs, different cards for different type of soils, in each turn players would place those cards over the board, creating piles that players would have to dig in a second phase of the game.

Whenever I’m looking for jam ideas, there are two big questions to ask “Do I want to make the game?”“Can I do the game in that time?”, very early on I need to know that there will be some art-light way of presenting the game to the player, since I’m not a good artist, and that the programming will be bounded enough.

------------------------------------------------------------Blind work

At night, I was dry. No clear goal, no line of mechanics, no concept of game, no hint of the art and no focused path. I didn’t even open the game engine yet to prototype anything.

“At this point I should be making something, anything”

Opened Game Maker 2, and, inspired by the two previous ideas, I decided to start with the art, trying to make a sprite that could work both as a tile and as a card. Of course, I started with water.

Somehow, I got into the flow of drawing tiles, and made some more. I got a nice looking physical tile look that draw my attention, and worked on a free space spot where these tiles would fit. 

End of day 1.

------------------------------------------------------------Rules

The physical look of the tiles made it weird to make a side view digging game, but I still wanted to explore this idea. I started creating a player character (a cursor), with a movement affected by the tiles the character was in.The first rules I made where:

Empty: player falls south / gravity. Water: player floats north / buoyancy. Fire: ice movement (ironic)

This batch of 3 simple rules was extremely corner casy, like an infinite loop between water and empty, or ending on fire at the edges of the screen. I tried a couple of variations to make it feel right, but it wasn’t making any sense.

However, I liked the idea of moving around the tiles, so worked from there:

Tiles affecting adjacent tiles: The player movement could be normal, but have some stats (life, oxygen, speed) affected by the tile they were in, and after X number of turns, tiles would affect its surrounding. Again, some unintuitive cases made the system unpleasant (fire next to water, who wins?)

Character actually acting as a cursor to select things: I really disliked this approach, a mouse input system would make much more sense. It also felt closer to a match 3 game, that I wanted to avoid, so players wouldn’t be influenced by an existing genre.

Character movement affecting tiles: Ah! This was interesting! It was easy to define rules, the player had much more control over the board and the number of things that happened per turn were limited to 1, making much readable. Got some rules in that made the system playful and unbalanced before letting it rest.

------------------------------------------------------------Sound

Break from design to make some sounds to have a better idea of how the game felt, good sounds can really help understanding a game and allow for more minimalist animations.

I looked for some sounds in freesound.org, and treated them with audacity, combining, removing noise, cutting, adding small effects...

After that I opened Ableton to start composing a main theme for the game. I usually start finding a pair chords + sound preset to get going, after that, a simple melody and some beats. I then copy and paste the number of bars a couple of times, making a couple of variations (no drums here, melody ends differently...), find a spot for a drop down, adding a couple of instruments and followed to reintegrating all the elements in a more uniform composition.

This is the first time that I made the audio in the second day instead of the last, and I really appreciated being able to listen to everything for a longer period of time, to find the weakest spots and change them if possible/necessary (I unfortunately didn’t have the time to polish the song, sad emoji).

------------------------------------------------------------Objective

I jumped to the design to figure out what the game was about before going to sleep. The temporary set of rules I had was clear about something, there were elements that were predominant, and had more chances to end up overpopulating the screen; I needed a way to get rid of tiles.

At this point, I was pretty convinced that I needed to make the game about sedimentation and fossils being preserved, digging was at this point pretty unrelated, and if not, the game would be completely out of the jam’s theme.

To better represent the sedimentation I needed to stack the tiles, and that implied that the information was much less readable once they were stacked. I needed a way to let the player understand the quality of their performance by solely looking at the grid.

I created an automatic system that after X moves a new row would appear on top, and the bottom discarded to the sedimentation pile, that would be the “final score”. Since information needed to be on the grid, every tile should have a clear value to the player, being the lazyest option: points. Another score attack game.

I don’t think points are the funnest stimulous, but they get the work done in a game jam, and I find very fun designing fair system points; there is something pleasant about finding numbers pattern matching what you think it’s fun about the game.

End of day 2.

------------------------------------------------------------Play

After spending the morning making the gameplay loop to work, it was time to play with a more critic mindset. Some weak points I noticed:

The automatic counter condition (X moves) felt claustrophobic, every move mattered, so it wasn’t only deciding how to alter the elements but finding the optimal path. Also, the system creates kind of a dynamic laberinth, where the direction you enter a tile matters, meaning that detouring is a necessary technique for getting the best boards; hence penalizing movements was contradictory. Focusing only on turns where there was some change in the grid seemed to be a much more interesting approach (This was much clearer because I already added the SFX for the “special” moves while there was nothing for the “normal” ones.)

Rock power up (Pushing a row or column) was very strong, if you managed to have two, it was most of the time the best move to make, allowing to change the positions of 5 tiles in a single turn. I needed to limit the number of uses, specially given that I wanted this to be the tile with more value, creating a tension between the powerup and the points it would give.

Air powerup (swapping with any tile) was really weak in comparison to stone, and I wanted both to be seen as “items”, limiting its uses too. I decided to make air actions free, but I regretted it later.

Fire was rarely useful, and only something you wanted to extinguish as soon as possible. Adding a new positive interaction could create more interesting decisions of when to extinguish it. I looked at the possible interactions of the fire with existing tiles, and created a new tile, sand, made by drying mud. I added a couple more interactions to make it part of the system (mud + air: sand, water + sand: mud)

Polishing the values of the tiles after seeing what a random run’s score was, the ideal to me is that the score is near zero, so I decreased the value of all tiles by 1. I also reordered the values so the “heaviest” tiles were the best, trying to match the theme, as well as making the most valuable tiles not appear directly on the grid (a new line is made first by fire, water, grass, mud and one empty space, and then change one random place to another empty space).

Intuitively I chose a maximum of 8 rows, so runs were short, but long enough that empty spaces could ruin the score, making the management of those key for the best scores.

------------------------------------------------------------Tutorial

This is usually my nemesis. I tend to underexplain the mechanics and system of my games and players normally struggle to understand what is going on; I’m in a never ending journey to a middle ground between giving enough information to get started but never holding the hand of the player.

In this case, despite seeing the special moves as simple individually, there were a lot of them, so teaching all of them was not an option: it was too much information at once. However I should explain the difference between a normal move and a special move.

First time doing an interactive tutorial, and I think the result is good, there is a small of initial information, given step by step, and that instead of giving away everything, stops by encouraging players to explore and explicitely acknowledging the lack of explanation. It works much better, although it isn’t everybody’s cup.

Probably the biggest flaw is not pointing towards the UI elements (tile values and highscore list), which was the part of the game the least understood (I misjudged the clarity of those). I also regret forcing the tutorial to stop, instead of allowing to experiment freely until the player pressed or hold a key to start the first run. 

------------------------------------------------------------Polish

Nothing interesting here, except that for the sake of consistency, I made the air power up cost a special move very late, without balancing further, making it a tile that felt more as a punishment than a tool. I will probably add a couple of rules to it after the jam ends to make it more valuable. The rest was adding visual polish, mainly to the score system which was the last thing I added.

End of day 3

------------------------------------------------------------End

This is layers: https://le-slo.itch.io/layers

#game design #postmortem #game #indie #design #video games

[a-k-a-ruenis]

'Debilitating’

Rating; Teen and +

Fandom; Aldnoah.Zero

Series; Inaweek 2017

Story under the cut!

Alternatively, please click here to read it on my Ao3!

“You are my enemy.”

Gazing at himself in the mirror, Inaho cannot help but frown somewhat at the reflection that greets him, and though he knows he had said the phrase himself, his reflection simply gazes at him immobile and silent, their lips unmoving.

He raises his hand a bit, mechanically, and begins to remove the medical patch that he sleeps with at night, the white bandages and gauze a bit sticky with the medicine he occasionally uses to reduce the nerves in that area – Yuki had suggested that a paste or creme might be more beneficial and far less taxing on his stomach, since he does not have to ingest it. Medication, apparently, if used extensively and rather often, can end up burning a hole through the stomach and cause an array of medical issues, issues that Inaho has no interest in dealing with on top of his own. He keeps his eye shut as he removes the patch, and remains as silent as his reflection, gazing at the used patch for a few moments before he throws it away in the garbage; he has many, many more, and until the nerves around his eye calm down, he suspects he will always have a drawer full of them in his bedroom, somewhere. Bending down to wash his face with soap and water, he tenses up again upon hearing the vaguely familiar sound of their sliding door, the sound scratching, screeching, harsh on his ears, and his fingertips lightly dig into the sink's edge – it doesn't matter, ignore it, ignore it, it doesn't matter, don't think about it. He remains still for a few moments, breathing out softly, inhaling shakily, and straightens himself again, gazing at his silent, immobile reflection in the mirror.

“You are my enemy,” he repeats, and his voice is low, stoic still as he addresses his own reflection, “You are my enemy, and I will defeat you.”

“Oh, Nao, you're up earlier than usual,” Yuki breathes, and she sounds surprised, looks surprised, when Inaho raises his head to glance up at her.

Yuki is currently holding a basket full of vegetables from their garden – the psychologist said that finding something mentally stimulating to do might help, so long as it was calming and not heavily taxing on the mind. Inaho had chosen gardening after attempting knitting, sewing, flower arranging, crafting small art pieces, painting, and a part-time job as a waiter for the Amifumis. All of those hobbies ended in failure, ranging from 'complete' to 'utter', and Inaho realised soon afterward that he simply does not have the talent nor patience to learn anything remotely artistic, especially with only one good eye, nor does he have the willpower anymore to deal with potentially annoying customers that may show up at the Amifumi's restaurant. His mind simply cannot handle what may come, and it seems that little things seem to set off his migraines, now.

Gardening, it seems, is both good for their own health, as well as mentally stimulating and physically engaging. It is the perfect hobby for Inaho to distract himself with when he is not busy elsewhere.

So that was what Yuki had been doing, why the sliding door had opened; Inaho makes a mental note to go out and buy something to make sure their door no longer makes that sound, perhaps a few tools or simply some oil..

“Yuki-nee,” Inaho says softly, and he gestures toward her, “I thought you got rid of all the clothes you didn't wear anymore?” He asks, because once he had been awarded his compensation for his part in the war, they had moved somewhere quieter and had donated everything that they no longer needed, including their old house, and Yuki herself had parted with quite a few of her own belongings.

“I did,” Yuki says, nodding, and she shifts the basket in her arms a bit, resting it against her hip, instead. Inaho realises she is covered in dirt and grass and pollen, and her pants are damp with morning dew; she had definitely been outside, that much is obvious. “But I kept just one pair, so I could garden with you,” she says, smiling a bit. She looks.. sad, almost, sad and a bit pained, but Inaho has come to realise that she is just worried about him. “And I know you like to start breakfast out well, so I got some vegetables from our garden so I could cook you a nice meal..”

Ah.

“.. thank you, Yuki-nee,” Inaho murmurs, taking a few steps toward her, “I'll wash the vegetables and cut them up, and you can cook us breakfast.”

“Sure, Nao,” Yuki immediately agrees, nodding eagerly, “For the omelette, would you like bacon or ham?”

'Debilitating'.

That was the word they had tried to use to describe Inaho's condition, physical as well as mental. The war had taken slightly more from him than it had his comrades and friends, something less than death, but 'debilitating' all the same. It had robbed him of his debatedly healthy state of mind – something many argue was never quite healthy in the first place, given how standoffish he comes across, given how cold and harsh he had seemed during the war – and had robbed him of an eye, of half of his sight.

Post-traumatic stress disorder. Nightmares, as a result of the disorder. Slight paranoia. Those new symptoms had cropped up after the war, piling onto the ones he had already had: difficulty socializing, difficulty maintaining and forming relationships, difficulty in keeping himself occupied when there is seemingly naught to do..

Inaho remains silent as he weeds the garden in their backyard, pulling up the green stalks forcefully, the dandelions, the rogue grass, the little purple flowers that have somehow started to invade their slightly elevated garden space; he tosses all of them into the basket at his side, and will later put them in a compost pile so that he can make fertilizer once everything inside has properly decomposed.

He had chosen relatively simple things to start off with, no fruit trees, no vines, mostly vegetables and berry bushes that would be easy to maintain and take care of until they bore food.

Currently growing in his garden are strawberries, lettuce and peas, and in another, separate plot, is mushrooms. They are heavily shaded, and the soil composition is darker, richer to promote growth. If he is not careful, Yuki will occasionally nick a couple of strawberries from the garden before they are truly ripe, leading to him trying to be the one to care for their small garden plot.

Debilitating, Inaho thinks again, and the word feels wrong, inaccurate to describe his current condition, 'To make weak and infirm'. But I..

“Nao?”

Inaho lifts his head upon hearing the familiar call, and finds that he is currently gripping a few weeds a bit too tightly; they bend in his grasp, leaking water on his fingers, his palms, and he drops them to the ground, remaining silent.

“Are.. you alright?” Yuki asks quietly, remaining still on the porch, loosely gripping the sliding door's wooden handle. She has that worried look on her features, eyebrows furrowed, dark eyes glossed over with mild tears. “Did I wake you up this morning?”

With the sound, she means, Inaho realises, shaking his head a few times. “I was already awake,” he says honestly, and then he drops his gaze, lightly frowning at the crumpled up weeds, bright green and vivid and ruined against the dark soil, “You did startle me.” He picks the weeds back up and carefully places them in his small basket, hands shaking a bit; what had upset him, this time?

“.. I'm sorry, N–..”

“It's fine,” Inaho insists, cutting her off. Lifting his head again, he catches his sister's gaze this time, and he forces a smile, for her sake. “I'm fine,” he repeats, and he raises a gloved hand to wipe the sweat from his cheek, breathing out softly, pausing. “.. Yuki-nee, can you please get me juice?”

“.. sure, Nao,” Yuki says, and she forces a grin, too, a small, pained grin.

Inaho is silent as she disappears back inside.

Gazing at his hand, shaking before him, Inaho is temporarily unable to discern whether or not the crimson red oozing from his palm is supposed to be there. There is a slice in his palm, right across it, and the crimson that seeps from the wound drips onto the sink's counter, staining the white, white marble. The red colour is unsettling, painful to look at, almost, and he has to avert his gaze elsewhere.

You're bleeding.

The thought comes late, the realisation late, and he immediately lifts his head to gaze at his reflection in the mirror –

Or, rather, he would, if the mirror before him were not shattered to pieces, distorting his reflection. A few shards are missing, sprinkling the sink and the floor, and a few lie dangerously close to his bare feet.

“.. ao..? Nao..? Nao?”

Inaho's gaze flickers toward the door, and he realises that the knob is rattling.

Yuki, his mind offers, and he presses his palm against the towel at his waist; the fabric irritates the slice in his palm, though he decides to ignore it temporarily.

“Nao, are you okay? Are you alright?”

“.. I broke the mirror, again,” he says after a few moments of silence.

“.. what.. happened, Nao?”

“It was.. staring at me..” Inaho says, and even as he says it, he knows it is unreasonable, the reason is ridiculous, but he knows that his paranoia is to blame, his lack of self-control and his mind is to blame. “I'm.. I'm sorry, Yuki-nee,” he apologises, and his voice is low, low and careful and quiet and shaky, “I'll.. get us another one..”

Yuki goes quiet outside the door, and Inaho hears her shift, her footsteps quiet and muffled against the wooden floor in their hallway. “.. it's.. it's fine, Nao,” she finally says, and her own voice is shaking, trembling, uneven, “Let's.. just get your wound sanitised. We can look for another mirror tomorrow.”

“Bad day?”

“.. bad day, yes.”

Footsteps. Muffled footsteps against the wooden floorboards, slow and cautious footsteps followed by careful, quiet voices.

“How is he?”

“The medication makes him extremely drowsy. He's dozing on the sofa.”

“What happened, yesterday?”

“He.. broke the bathroom mirror, again. He said it was staring at him.”

Silence. Heavy, heavy silence hangs in the air, and Inaho can barely comprehend what his sister and friends are talking about; his medication does indeed make him drowsy, and he finds it exhausting to think, to move, and he can do little more than rest and lie down when he takes it. He had tried, once, to go out to town, and had almost crashed their car.

The doctor told them afterward that he is not allowed to operate anything – at all – whenever he takes the medication.

“Are his.. reflections really that upsetting, to him? Even after.. seeing that doctor, and the medication..”

“It doesn't help that he refuses to stay home and rest. He's out at least three times a week. Where does he even go?”

Ah, no.

At that, Inaho groans softly, trying to sit up, Don't talk about that.. –

“Oh, he's awake,” a soft voice calls, and he hears footsteps again, low, heavy footsteps against the floor.

Inaho's vision is blurry before him, blurry with sleep and drowsiness and exhaustion, and he barely registers the hand combing his hair. “Who..?”

“We all came to see how you were doing,” a voice murmurs, and Inaho recognises it as Inko's, Inko's low voice stained with worry, “Yuki told us what happened.”

The mirror.

“We brought some soup for you to eat, when you're finished resting,” another voice chips in, and it sounds like Nina's, maybe. It has to be Nina's, his mind tells him again, Who else would it be?

“And we brought a bunch of movies, to watch when you're sleeping,” yet another voice says, and theirs is a bit louder, more cheerful, “Kid stuff, movies from America. So they're in English, but they have subtitles..”

Calm, that's Calm.

“Mmn,” Inaho murmurs, and he manages a weak nod.

There is a hand still in his hair, combing it clumsily, and he feels that hand on his shoulder after a few moments, pushing him back down gently, exceedingly gently, so that he is lying down once again.

Tired. Sleepy. Go back to sleep. Go to sleep. Rest. Close your eyes.

Inaho does, allowing his eyes to slip shut and the voices fade away.

Sometimes, it is harder to differentiate between certain sounds.

An airplane whizzing by and missiles.

Fireworks and gunshots.

.. metal construction work and kataphrakt battles.

Car alarms and sirens.

Sometimes, on days that are worse than usual, it is harder to differentiate between sounds.

“Feeling better, Nao?”

Inaho lifts his head a bit, just barely able to hear his sister's voice over the thunderstorm humming in his ears. “A little,” he says, and he cannot even hear his own voice; it must have come out a bare whisper.

Yuki nods somewhat, and her smile is again pained, worry evident in her dark eyes. “I'll let you know when the firework show is done,” she promises, “Just.. take it easy until then, okay? Take a nap.”

“.. sure, Yuki-nee,” Inaho says, though they both know he will do no such thing; his sleep is irregular already, and trying to take a nap will disrupt his cycle further. He does, however, allow himself to lie down against the tatami mats, the earbuds in his ear digging in a little bit further, the music just a slightest bit louder on that side.

She waves a bit before slowly shutting the door, and Inaho feels his heart slip just a bit further into his stomach.

'Debilitating', he thinks again, and that particular word seems to be more relevant as of late, more applicable, 'To make weak'. Gazing blankly ahead of him, Inaho silently watches as the fireworks from the outside cast long, abstract shadows against the wall, watches as sparks slowly slip down the wall and disappear amongst the shadows against the floor.

“You are my enemy,” Inaho quietly tells his reflection, and again, his other stands in the mirror immobile, stoic, blank.

Almost a perfect copy.

His reflection is almost a perfect copy of himself, and that in itself should be alarming. The reflection in the mirror has both of their eyes, dark, dark eyes devoid of life and shimmer, and they absolutely refuse to copy Inaho. They refuse to copy his movements, and if Inaho did not know better, he might think that the mirror is no mirror at all and an image, instead. But when Yuki comes in to check on him, occasionally, she will show up in the mirror normally, and his reflection will correct itself. And when she leaves, the mirror's image will shift back to what it was before, and Inaho is left to wonder why.

He already knows the reason why.

Bringing up the issue of his reflection has always been something he has no intentions of doing; it will only worry Yuki, and his doctor might be tempted to change his diagnosis. A change in diagnosis may mean a change in how he is currently living – he is almost a functioning member of society, save the fact that he may act out at times – and that would result in a change in how he goes about doing what little work he already does.

Besides..

Inaho shifts a bit, lifting his hands to carefully pull off the medical patch over his eye again, and this time, it is a bit less sticky with the pain-relieving medication, just a bit. He remains silent as he pulls off the patch, disposing of it in the garbage, and reaches a hand out to turn on the sink – keep going, continue marching on, you can do it – and listens as the handle squeaks quietly, water falling from the faucet and meeting the sink's basin, slowly filling it with water.

.. there's.. worse ways to..

Inaho washes off the creme from his eye, keeping it shut as he does so, and listens to the soap quietly bubble in the water, feels it against his skin. He tries to keep his face maintained, not wanting an infection to spread from anywhere near his eye – because then, it would be so easy, painfully easy – and gently pats the area dry with a small towel, opening his other eye to gaze once again at his silent reflection.

.. there are.. worse ways to live, he supposes, recalling one arrangement in particular, Without help.. or care.. or medication.. At least, I have Yuki-nee to support me.. Brushing his fingertips over his eyelid, Inaho hesitates for a few moments, trying to imagine what he might have been like had he not received immediate medical care and a replacement.

The reflection is silent, still, immobile, and they still refuse to copy his movements, even when Inaho leans in a bit closer to inspect the mirror. “.. you are my enemy,” he repeats, a bit more firm this time, “and I will defeat you.”

And on that day, perhaps the war will finally end.

#aldnoah.zero #az #kaizuka inaho #fanfiction #ruenis' work