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athenodora-sulpicia-writer · 3 months

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Vanessa ives - where we meet at a ball and she ask us to dance, she never got our name and follows us home to find out we are the daughter of Evelyn Poole. So we start seeing Vanessa behind our mothers back and maybe if you could add some smut between us and vanessa?

Forbidden Love- Part 1- Vanessa Ives

A/N: Hey @wandamaximoff2823 thank you for your request, I'm so sorry for the long wait, I've been really struggling to get back into writing but better as never I suppose 😅, anyway I hope you enjoy this and that it was worth the wait.

Warning(s): Scars, smut, mentions of neglect/abuse.

I was never one to be interested in the intricacies of the aristocratic ways of the upper class but mother had asked me to be here and what ever mother asked you to do was never a simple request but a very firm order.

I entered the lavish estate of a Mr Dorian Grey, unescorted of course, how scandalous. A butler or perhaps he was a servant came and took my cloak and directed to me where all the fuss and chatter was coming from, so I followed the sound of champagne induced laughter and discussion of who owned the most properties in the countries, which took me to a grand ballroom which was filled to the brim of upper class Londoners, an orchestra and the walls were completely lined with portraits, show off.

I weaved my way through the large doorway that lead into the ballroom a feat which would have been easier if everyone was deciding to take up the space. I'd originally dressed to blend in and not draw in to much unwanted attention, who would have thought that wearing dress of gold and white (the opposite of what my mother would have ever approved of) would have caught so many stares and glances.

A server came to me with a tray of champagne and though I was usually partial to a class or two I knew I had to keep my mind as agile as possible for the task my mother had sent me to do. I was told to not get to close to Miss Ives but just enough to use some effective Nightwalker magic on her mind, this should have been Hecate's job not mine but apparently according to mother "Hecate had her own tasks" I would have used the chores or enslavement but I'd rather not have a gash from the tip of my cheek to my chin so I kept my mouth shut.

For a moment as I was thinking a man approached me and I could already smell the alcohol from a mile, this would be wonderful not, I snarled for a moment at the thought but as the man was now in reach of me I returned my face to its natural composure.

"What's a charming dove like you doing all alone and without a chaperone?" This man, who looked old enough to be a someone who should start writing their will, asked me. Who looked like the usual upper class prick, my least favourite kind of mortal irritation.

"That is none of your concern sir, now if you wouldn't mind walking off to go and compare your assets, though I'm sure yours are lacking by the looks of things, with the other gentlemen I'd be most thankful." I said the man with my best 'I'm super important' voice but when the man didn't leave I know that my word choice may have been a little too much.

"How dare you speak to me in such a way," The man snarled at me and was quick to grab my upper arm harshly and with so many people in the room it would be easy to not notice or ignore what he was doing. "Now judging by your dress I'd say your still a maid, so why don't you be a good little heiress and have a drink with me on the balcony," Damn this dress I just wanted to wear something that was the opposite of the scars on back and now I was being mistaken for a maid because of it, just fabulous.

As more time passed and I hadn't responded, the man's grip on my upper arm was becoming painfully tight and even for someone like me, I couldn't hold back a wince.

"Ah cousin," I heard a feminine voice call out and upon hearing the voice my head turned abruptly to the direction of the voice and then I saw her. She had raven black hair, sky blue eyes and pale ivory skin and was wearing the most fabulous black and red dress I'd ever seen and she was walking over to me. Well that's half a job done and half a job failed.

Once she stood by my side she began to speak again, "Thank you for keeping my cousin company Sir," She spoke to the man who still had his hand on my upper arm, "But now that I am here I believe she is no longer in need of your company," Her voice which originally was soft and compliant of any woman in this room and now become more natural almost steely.

I could feel the man's grip tighten and I knew who was about to say something but for whatever reason after he made eye contact with my ravenette saviour he let go of my arm completely and walked off without another word. My first reaction was to rub at my arm, even if I knew it would heal within a minute or two.

"I Apologise for the cousin lie but I can tell when a woman is uncomfortable." She spoke to me with a kindness I knew would be there if she knew who I actually was. "My name is Miss Ives," She spoke again with a slight bit more formality, extending out a hand for me to shake and suddenly I was grateful to the creme gloves I was wearing because if I weren't she'd probably be able to sense exactly what I was.

"No apologies needed, It's a pleasure to finally meet you Miss Ives." I spoke with the same slight formality as she but then I soon thought of the implications of my words and I began to internally kick myself for making such a slip up, my mother was going to kill me if I messed this up.

"To finally meet me?" She looked at my with a smile and odd confusement in her expression. "Why have we been intending to meet one another before today?" She asked me curiously with a slight chuckle to her voice which was somewhere between being eerie and joyful.

"Not at all, I simply meant that," I paused for a moment to think of a better excuse for my slip up, "I've heard your name on people's lips before, it's nice to put a face to the name, Miss Ives." I said coming up with something that I thought was a decent enough excuse that would hopefully appease her curiosity.

"Oh, I didn't know I was a topic of gossip," She spoke again and though she was trying to feign ignorance I could tell she had noticed my slip up by the way her eyes looked at me and how her pupils darkened with triumph at her victory.

"Well anyway would you care for a dance?" She asked me her tone lighter with an undertone of something that was perhaps mischief, as she gave a slightly bow and extended out hand, facing upwards, to me.

"Well people do like to talk," I was very quickly scanning the ballroom for a quick escaped to the exit and when I found it I took my chances, "I must be going Miss Ives, good evening." I said the formal goodbye and quickly left through the small gap that had been left to the exit and retrieved my own cloak and quickly began to set off back up to the manor we were staying in that was slight ways away.

As I walked under the nights dark sky at a brisk pace, I thought of how I knew my mother would be anything but pleased at what she would see as a display of my incompetence at not completely her 'simple' task but I also thought about how what she didn't know couldn't hurt her, a policy I very much enjoyed using with my mother. Though if she were to ever find out I knew I'd probably be crucified upside down with no last words being allowed.

Not long later I made up back to our home, a manor that was slightly outside of central London. I walked up the stone steps that led to the large front doors which i opened with a heavy gust of wind which came when I turned my wrist in just the right way and I walked inside oblivious to anything else as I took my cloak off and threw it somewhere I didn't care to check.

As I walked further into the foyer at the front of the manner, I started ragging the gloves of my arms and unpinning the mass of my that sat atop my head. It felt euphoric when my hair cascaded down my back because finally all the weight was off the crown of my head and sighed out in a pleased way not caring for all the bobby pins that were fall the marble floor and making a clattering sound.

For a moment all I thought I could hear was the clattering of my bobby pins on the floor, which was a lovely relief because it meant that my mother possibly my sisters weren't in the manor or they were at least asleep, either way I was happy to not be bothered by any of them.

As I just about started to walk up the overly elaborate staircase upstairs, I heard a bang and then a mumble and quickly whipped my body around to the direction of the sound which just happened to be the front doors and then I saw her, Vanessa, well this is just fabulous.

"Miss Ives, what on earth are you doing here?" I asked feigning confusion and innocence as I walked down the few steps I had just walked up. I then walked over to where Vanessa was, in the middle of the foyer, taking in her surroundings of the dark and quietly frankly disturbing manor.

"You never told me your name," She began to say, the meaning behind her voice was obviously detached from what she was saying to me as she was to focused on surveying her new surroundings. "What possible reason do you have for being here?" She asked me finally making eye contact and her steely gaze was hardened and distrusting.

She must be able to feel the aura of the manor, Hell she probably had a pretty good idea about who lived here which meant she probably knew what I was. "Miss Ives I know how it may look but..." I began to say to Vanessa before I heard the creaking of floorboards coming from upstairs and as the noise grew closer the sound of footsteps accompanied it.

A horrible sense of dread filled my chest because I knew that it was just the wind or if it was a person, as I suspected it was, it wasn't one of my sisters, it was my mother. I didn't have much time to think and I'm not sure what compelled me to do it but I quickly faced Vanessa agin and twisted my wrist in her direction and a gust of with pushed her against one of the far walls and quickly I consumed her in enough mist to make her invisible.

Just as I turned back around to face the staircase but before I was able to regain my composure, my mother was at the top of the staircase in one of her robes and her hair pinned. "Oh mother, hello," I spoke trying calm my voice down as to not give anything away.

"Y/N you've returned, I assume the task I sent you on was a success then." She phrased it in a way that anyone would think it was meant as a question but I knew she didn't mean it as one, she never did.

"Yes mother," I spoke with my head bowed, lying through the skin of my teeth, praying she wouldn't notice my lie. "Lucifer's bride had a bit of a manic episode at the party and fainted," I explained to my mother whilst trying to come up with a believable lie, we were expected to refer to Vanessa as Lucifer's bride, the thought always made my skin crawl but I'd never let it show.

"Good, I'm pleased to hear," I eternally sighed of relief when my mother spoke like she had know idea that I had lied to her and I was grateful for it. "Well I shall retire for night now," She then finished saying as she walked back the way she came and the sound of her footsteps soon disappeared completely.

Once my mother was gone I couldn't even give myself a moment to enjoy my victory as I know Vanessa was still stuck the wall and covered in mist. I quickly ran other to where I cast her off and released from my nightwalker magic, to which she fell from the wall gasping for breath.

"Miss Ives," I quickly got down on the floor as she was still gasping, "Miss Ives you must leave, if my mother or sisters find you here you will never leave," I tried to encourage her off the floor and I eventually got her to her feet but she wasn't leaving. "Listen, I understand your in shock and still recovering but you have to leave right now," I kept urgently encouraging her to leave but it wasn't quite working. "Vanessa!" I shouted her name and this finally snapped her out of wherever she'd been in her head, she made eye contact with me once before running out of the manner and disappearing and all I could do was finally sigh in relief. What a night. __________________________________ So I've had to split this request into two parts because it was getting a little long. Anyway, thank you all for reading, I hope you all enjoyed and until next time fellow readers.

Tag List @ateliefloresdaprimavera @cissyenthusiast010155 @multifandomfix @multimilfs

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13eyond13 · 5 months

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a friend of mine who isn't into Death Note asked me why people ship Lawlight. I gave her a pretty good answer but I feel that couldn't encapsulate it fully and you are the most articulate/analyzer person I can think of here, can you help me?

omg, I'm flattered you think that, but a bit worried I won't be able to speak for everybody about this! I'll probably just have to mostly say why I like to ship it and hopefully that will suffice...

1) the constant tension and the mind games between them is the heart and soul of the series to me. Light's a complicated character that is both very entertaining to follow and also sort of an infuriating bastard to watch as well, so when L waltzes in being like "HOLD ON A MINUTE HERE I KNOW IT'S YOU AND I'M DEFINITELY GONNA PROVE IT" and Light both seems to get extremely excited about how clever he is and also horrified and determined not to lose, that makes for a very charged dynamic that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Light's curiously positive reactions to L opposing him, as well as the way L intuitively understands him and pushes his buttons so effectively, is definitely one of the funniest and most intriguing things to watch in the entire show.

2) there's a lot going on in the narrative to continuously draw parallels between them and to sort of suggest that they're the true equal and peer that the other one has never actually had their entire lives, the solution to the boredom and loneliness and aloof superiority they've both been feeling due to their above-average intelligence and privileged positions and ambitious competitive stubborn streaks and so on. People love that and also find it super tragic/angsty or fascinatingly ironic and darkly funny that they end up only meeting in an enemies, "you're the closest thing to a real friend I've ever had but one or the other of us will have to die" sort of way

3) This part of their relationship also gets me as well - they probably would not have easily met if Light HADN'T been Kira, because L never has to meet any of the people he works alongside nor any of the criminals he catches in person - Light was just good enough at being a criminal to force L to meet him in person, basically. And there's also no guarantee that if they DID meet in other circumstances that they would have clicked so weirdly well as they do, because their cat and mouse game was probably the best way they could both impress each other the most and prove their own intelligence and entertainingness to each other as well. The immense difficulty of setting up this ship so that it actually works is part of the enduring appeal to me.

4) I think there's just a lot of intrigue to how much is left unsaid between them the entire time. They literally never get to have an actual straightforward heart-to-heart even once in the story, but they're seen obsessively thinking about each other the entire time (and Light continues to do so for years after L's death, even to the point of comparing everyone else who opposes him to L unfavorably after his death and admitting he feels bored again now that L is gone). I think a lot of fans were kind of dying to see them interact in a more straight-forward way

5) the handcuffs are certainly fairly suggestive and kinky hahaha... and the memory loss arc definitely brings up a lot of interesting "what if" type scenarios in every shipper's mind. Not everybody is convinced that they really hate each other, and seeing them work together on the case like that causes a lot of people to think about how they might get along if Light had never picked up the notebook in the first place. The fandom has a lot of people who really like the idea of them together whenever Light isn't Kira, and also a lot of people who think their dynamic is superior and works better when Light IS Kira - and having both of these different dynamics between them presented to us in canon makes for even more interesting possibilities to explore

#there is probably more to it than that as well #but these were the main things i could think of off the top of my head #ask #anon #lawlight #p

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yuleshootureye · 5 months

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I don't think it's fair to say that people only like WFA if they prefer the fanon, idealized versions of Batfam characters.

More rambling about comics and fandom under the cut, but the tldr version is that a) sometimes people want slice-of-life stuff for their favorite characters and b) if I have to put up with Dark and Gritty, unnaturally-prepared, child-slapping Batman, fans of that guy can put up with some light and fluffy manor hijinks like WFA.

Yes, there is an active and vocal portion of DC fandom that wants things from canon that will never happen. Partially that's because fandoms typically always want things from canon that would never happen. Teen Wolf and SPN fans want a coherent narrative that actually addresses the themes and character choices portrayed on the show. CA:TWS fans want to dig their claws into Steve and Bucky's relationship AND the US Military Industrial Complex in a way that the MCU never will. Stranger Things fans want some honest-to-God character development. And part of what I see in DC fandom is similar: what do fans of works where the characters are constantly emotionally and physically stressed want from their fanworks? Hurt/COMFORT and/or curtain!fic, in my experience.

And yes, partially that's because there seems to be a large portion of DC fandom that have not read a significant portion of the comics.* And/or watched the tv show(s). And/or watched the movie(s). And fanon builds on fanon until suddenly Tim Drake is crying because no one has ever hugged him, Cas/Steph/Duke are Sir Not Appearing in this Film, Jason is Gotham's #1 feminist, Dick is a golden retriever in human form, Damain is baby™, and Bruce would NEVER endanger his children by letting them go out and fight crime. But that happens in every fandom, to some extent.

I think it's perhaps more pronounced in DC because it's a comics fandom without any one unifying canon that most people are drawing from. For good or for ill, the Marvel fandom is typically able to circle the wagons around the MCU, with people incorporating various aspects of the 616 or Fraction's Hawkeye or whatever Spider-Man movie's come out most recently. DC doesn't have that. There's 80+ years of comics, including reboots that are supposed to make things less confusing (but YMMV on the effectiveness of that), and characterizations that change with the times; CW live-action TV shows; the Snyder-verse live-action movies; the NON-Snyder-verse live-action movies; the DCAU or Dini-verse/Timm-verse; the DC animated movies that are generally adaptations of comic storylines; the 2005 Teen Titans animated show; the 2010 Young Justice animated show; TITANS; The Batman (the animated show!); The Batman (R. Battinson!); Gotham; Smallville; Lois and Clark; etc, etc, etc.

I came to comics from the DCAU. I watched Smallville far past the point where any reasonable person would have quit. When I first watched 1978's Superman, I was confused that John Kent was dead, because he wasn't in the canons I was most familiar with. It's obviously not a 1:1 comparison, but I do think the question of "what do you want from canon" depends on what canon you're talking about.

And I don't mean to sound like I'm coming down on the side of people who are only familiar with fanon trying to argue they know the characters better than people who've actually consumed canon. But I do think DC being such a broad canon with no unifying property makes it a difficult discussion to have unless you start off by identifying the parameters.

ANYWAY, the point I've been dancing around is that there's enough canon that when someone says "MY Batman would never do that", they might be talking about their fanon or they might be talking about animated show #903 or the Tim Burton movies or whatever. Also, I had to put up with Nolan!Batman being the Batman du jour for like 10 years. It's WAFF WFA Batman's turn to be in the spotlight for a hot minute.

(Also, as greater minds than mine have pointed out, comics are, in general, a collective mythology of the modern era. And if you've ever tried to look up the One True Version of a myth, you'll know it's a frustrating exercise in futility)

*Of course, there's also a question of "what counts as a significant portion of the comics". Someone semi-recently ran a poll of "would you say you've read a lot of comics" and I was torn because I've read a lot, but in fits and spurts over the last 20 years, based on what was available at my local library or bookstore, and with nowhere near the focused attention that others have managed.

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ghostofsnails · 17 days

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rambling about art "Perfectionism" (+ my experience)

Lately I've been looking for advice about curbing perfectionism but couldn't find anything that worked for me. I feel that so much of the advice out there is just too surface level. It wants to target what I consider the symptoms (perfectionism itself / fear of messing up) and not the real source of the problem, or the "why", which is something that will look a little different for everybody. If you really want to curb perfectionism, the serious answer, in my opinion, is to start by looking inward. If you've done that and found that you're anything like me, with problems that feel like compulsive fixing, uncontrollable hyperfocus, and/or paranoid thoughts that your art career is doomed and everyone is secretly making fun of you because the angle of your oc's mouth is off by 2 degrees, hearing the advice that looks like "Here's a fun little drawing exercise to do every day!" over and over again is probably starting to feel more demoralizing than anything. So instead, here are some tricks/reframing devices that I use in place of some of the really general ones.

The first piece of advice I see everywhere is to "make bad art on purpose" to get over the fear of making mistakes. As a literal exercise, this just doesn't work great for my specific problem. Sure, I can draw some crappy sketch in 5 seconds if I want or waste all my spoons on making something I hate, but it offers no real support in terms of my "compulsive fixing" issue, which is where everything really goes wrong in my process. If it was as easy as saying "I'm just going to Not Have Compulsions!" I wouldn't be here writing this. But I have learned to relieve a small amount of the paranoia and anxiety that my compulsions stem from with the following exercise!

Essentially, I look through some of my favorite artists' work and find some stuff I really enjoy. While I do that, I look for mistakes, confusing choices, and inconsistencies in the work. I then ask myself: Why do I think this art piece still works so well despite all these errors? Does seeing these errors change my feelings about the piece or about the person who made them for the worse? (Spoiler alert, the answer to the second question is always no.)

I will then literally repeat the answers to those questions over and over and over again to myself while I draw. Does this completely or even mostly fix the problem? Definitely not. But if you're like me and at the point of desperation, this is something that's had a small yet significant impact on my workflow and my mindset as I approach making art in general. If my favorite artist can make a weird mistake on something and I love the piece anyways, then maybe it's okay for me to also make and leave in a weird mistake or two. The other good news is that I've noticed the effect of this has increased over time! In the past few months, and for the first couple of times in my life, I've been able to actually ignore a small handful of my compulsions to fix things while drawing. Which is actually so insane and probably my proudest moment of "invisible" progress I've ever made.

It's definitely worth noting, however, that this exercise is not going to work if you don't or can't approach it in good faith. You cannot give up immediately with "I'll never be this good, this artist's work is perfect." Nobody's work is perfect. If you look for ages and genuinely can't see any mistakes, that probably means you're looking at an artist way outside your skill level, and believe me, I've been there, it's super demoralizing. That's why most of the artists I look up to now are those whose work is just a few levels above or next to mine, because being able to spot errors not only makes their work feel more authentic and easily relatable, but functionally speaking, it keeps me inspired without getting locked into self-pity mode.

I'm obviously not going to put any artists I love on the spot here, but I'm going to list a few errors that I myself see very frequently in my specific corner of the art world: Inconsistent or straight up weird limb lengths, floating facial features, broken lines, color spill, and awkward tangents. Often times, the "errors" I notice aren't even true errors, just results of stylization that I get paranoid about in my own work. And this is super important too -- seeing those kinds of "errors" in art that I unabashedly love helps to soothe the paranoia that I'm doing something "wrong" or that everybody secretly hates me because I drew the eye 2 pixels too far to the right.

Other times, what you notice doesn't have to be an "error" at all. Maybe you just see untapped potential or find something that you would have done differently. For example, maybe you think a different light source or perspective could have improved the atmosphere of a piece. I often feel that many of my favorite artists' work suffers from a lack of contrast.

But the point of this entire exercise is that even when I apply a mock version of my compulsive behavior with art that I love and pick it apart as much as I possibly can, I realize that I STILL LOVE the artwork I'm looking at just as much if not more despite all the "mistakes". Rarely do the errors take anything away from the piece that they don't replace with a sense of life and authenticity. And as a bonus, now I'm ten times as excited to go draw and try out some new things!

And for the record -- this isn't the sort of thing I dedicate "15 minutes a day!" to doing, but something that comes pretty naturally to me whenever I come across art I really love. And speaking of TIME, one other piece of advice I see everywhere is to set a timer and give yourself just a few minutes to draw such and such. This is a piece of advice that logically I know SHOULD work, and despite the fact that it DOESN'T for me I would STILL recommend it heartily. My only problem with this piece of advice is that my brain just does not work this way. Time is just way too arbitrary and setting a "fake deadline" doesn't do anything to fix the issues that are making me take forever in the first place. So instead, in order to try and improve my speed in my digital art, I've started to stay more zoomed out of my canvas as I draw. This better mimics the experience of sketching on paper, something that's always been easier for me since fixing mistakes is so much less convenient than it is on a digital program.

Don't get me wrong though, if you're like me and used to drawing while so zoomed in you can count the pixels, this is going to be even harder than it sounds. I avoided this piece of advice for years because it was so viscerally uncomfortable to let go of the feeling of "control" I had over my pen strokes while zoomed in. But I gave in a few weeks ago when I was having such a hard time getting a pose down after days of attempts that I was willing to try anything. And honestly, the results were a MUCH needed morale boost. I saw improved speed, dynamism, and stylization pretty much instantly. I've been pushing myself to do this with all my subsequent art pieces and while I forget to do it every 15 minutes it's still made a surprisingly large and positive impact on my workflow.

Yes, I still feel the compulsion to "fix everything" in the refinement stage. But if I pair this with the advice above, the amount of compulsive fixes I makes goes way, way down. Especially if I remain relatively zoomed out during the refinement stage!

In conclusion, I'm not saying that the og art advice was dumb or bad or never works. This post is extremely specific to my situation. As far as I know I might be the only person in the world who spends extra nightmarish hours on every piece adding and deleting and readding unnoticeable layer effects, color adjustments, and details and "fixing" and unfixing and "fixing" every conceivable possible detail whilst sitting there begging myself to just stop so I can go eat or move on with my life or do literally anything else. And the fact that on top of that I go into hyperfocus every time I so much as LOOK at my Ipad makes any "take a break" solution near impossible if I don't have a seriously involved outside support system to take my mind off of art, which I don't.

Thanks to all of this plus typical life stuff, I've been drawing less and less in the past few years. It's hard to start anything knowing that once I do, I'm pretty much not going to have a life again until it's finished.

And drawing less also means that when I do draw, I'm drawing much slower, which draws out the length of time I have to deal with these problems and therefore makes them unignorable. I used to be able to finish up a full piece in 5-8 hours, basically a school night, and because it was finished I could focus on my responsibilities the next day until I started to draw again. But now I'm spending anywhere from 8-16 hours on simple bust up character drawings. That's crazy! Honestly reading all this back, I guess it's no wonder I'm so burnt out and exhausted all the time!

I'm never going to completely stop drawing. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I physically could. But I would really love to get to a point where art feels fun and freeing again, and where sitting down to sketch on paper for 10 minutes doesn't mean throwing the entire day away.

So if anyone else out there has got advice for me I would absolutely love to hear it. And I'd also love to hear from anyone who can relate to any of this, because as much as I was joking earlier about being the only one in the world, I haven't actually been able to meet anyone else who gets what I'm going through. And wow it is so difficult to put into words, too. I rewrote this post a million times. But that's all for now! Thanks for reading.

#the dead speak!#rambling #vent

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authoreeknight · 1 year

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Bechdel Fail

Happened upon this intellectual landmine about sexist depictions in Andor. This is the sort of analysis that the word "pettifogging" seems like it was invented for.

The Bechdel Test is useful, especially for newer writers, double especially for men, to make sure you're not using your female characters as set dressing. I like Bechdel. I support it. It passes the Ben Franklin test of being succinct, pithy, and cogent. It's super-easy to use. Just like a blood pressure monitor. A blood pressure monitor is a quick, easy way of monitoring cardiovascular health, but if you look only at BP without backing out and getting the big picture it can mislead. Usain Bolt no doubt has world-class cardiovascular health, but if you just look at his BP in the middle of a 200 meter race, you'll get a misleading picture.

Now, I've not delved much into the subject, but I don't imagine Bechdel was ever intended to be used as a be-all-end-all last word on whether a work is sexist. The author of the linked article is correct on facts (well, mostly) but incorrect on the meaning of those facts, like a lawyer making the best of a bad case. To illustrate, I'll apply an old test of mine, the Nancy Test.

Yeah, you've never heard of it. I'm not surprised. The Nancy Test goes back to my earliest days as a writer. Nancy is my mom (an English major back in the day and keen student of Shakespeare). When I told her I was worried about writing women, she gave me this advice: "as long as what your women *do* effects the story in an important way, you're fine." My mom was educated long before "agency" meant anything but "a government department", but I believe that's what she described.

For brevity, I'll only discuss the episodes (most of them) where the article points out that Andor failed, applying my own Nancy Test.

Ep 1 - Kassa PASS

If the young woman leading the Kenari wreck expedition didn't decide Kassa should come along, nothing else in the whole series would have happened as it did. No Rogue One, no Battle of Scarif.

Beyond that, Bix deciding to use the resistance transmitter to contact Luthen (or maybe Kleya) probably saves Cassian's life, or at least prevents him from being arrested by Syril's corpos. Though unstated, it's my assumption that she's breaking protocol doing this.

Ep 2 - That Would Be Me PASS

Once again, Bix plays a key role, though it's something of a double-edged sword. She has to tell Cassian that the buyer is coming for his Starpath, but their intense conversation and Cassian touching her as he thanks her for getting him out of the jam is misinterpreted by Timm.

We also get the woman who runs the brothel doing a positive ID on Cassian as the man she spoke to, giving Syril the confirmation he needs to go to Ferrix.

And finally, we have the Kenari leader going alone to check out the wreckage. If she sends a scout while she stays back with her team, I don't think we get the response from Kassa to go into the wreck seeking revenge, which we know leads to Maarva, Clem, and B2.

Just as an aside, it's lovely how BBY 5 Maarva is introduced as a little old lady who keeps her house cold and worries about Cassian. Just your basic aging mum, right? Bit cantankerous, but within our usual experience. Silly us.

Ep 3 - Reckoning PASS

For some reason the author decides to rant about Deedra Meero here, and as she isn't even in the episode draw your own conclusions about the quality of the article.

But back to the Nancy Test, we have Kenari Maarva overruling Clem and deciding to take Kassa with them, and without this decision once again we never get to the Battle of Scarif. We also have Ferrix Maarva executing some cool psywar on the corpos from the comfort of her chair.

Ep 4 - Aldhani PASS

Vel decides to take "Clem" onto the team. You can argue that Luthen gave her a choice that wasn't a choice, but Vel's decision to swallow the Diego-shaped frog to keep the mission alive mattered. She also manages to keep the team together and on task even though she takes a lot of flak for bringing someone in so late, especially from Lt. Gorn (aside: if I could change one thing about Andor season 1, I'd have Gorn live and decide to stay with the people of Aldhani in the face of the inevitable Imperial reprisals. I *really* liked Gorn, he was great).

Episode 7 Announcement PASS

First, we have Syril's mom, who has managed to get Uncle Harlo to use his connections about a position for her son.

Deedra Meero is all over this episode like Godzilla on Tokyo, as she gets her teeth into the equipment thefts, building her case that there's a rebellion building military forces. She then expertly defends her actions, leading to her being put in charge of Morlana system and Ferrix. We have Kleya issuing a kill order on Cassian to Vel. We have Mon Mothma bringing Tay Kolma into her network with the skill of a heart surgeon implanting a pacemaker. And probably most importantly of all (as it turns out), we have Maarva, inspired by events on Aldhani, deciding to become a rebel.

Yet our writer, unable to see the forest for the trees or the global purpose of the Bechdel Test, sees this episode as yet another example of base female representation fail in Andor. Astonishing.

Episode 10 One Way Out N/A

This episode is so much about the prisoners on Narkina 5, everything else is little updates except for the scene about Jung being a secret rebel. It's a bit like trying to rate how women are depicted in Das Boot. They mostly aren't present for obvious reasons.

Still, we're introduced to Jezzi and the Daughters of Ferrix (even if they don't have a name yet) and though we don't actually see Maarva (as the scene is from Cinta's point of view, who's watching the house from outside) by refusing her meds Maarva has advanced the story more than we can guess, what she's up to is just invisible to us right now. There's also Mon Mothma refusing Davo's offer and the access to funds she so desperately needs.

Episode 12 Rix Road PASS

The only thing I'm going to say about this is that if you can sit through Rix Road and say "Andor does not meet the baseline standard for depicting women" you need to check your diagnostics.

#andor #bechdel test

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krys-loves-otome · 17 days

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OC Brain Rots #2: Miri, Magical Ancestry, and Mortality

Welcome back to OC Brain Rots, where I go off about an OC of mine and whatever it is that caused them to tickle my brain at the moment.

For this brain rot, I'm gonna be focusing on my Obey Me MC Miri since it's Nightbringer's one year anniversary (Happy Devil Day, Obey Me: Nightbringer, congrats), so it's a timely occasion to talk about her. Spoilers ahead, of course, as I'm gonna be going in depth about her ancestry (about Lilith and her history) and on a little more somber topic about her aging, since I've thinking about it ever since a light-hearted chat came up in game.

For basic info about Miri and my other dating sim OCs, check out the intro post here! For the previous brain rot post involving Abby and Thea and some of the events of Ikevamp's interlude, check here!

-----

For context, this line of thinking began with a chat with Luke and a dream he had of escorting Miri through town. He was older and taller and all those things he wants to be to impress her and be a cool angel and all that. They then make plans to make the escorting adventure happen for reals, as their current selves and they both had a good, cute, sweet time.

Then this sparked my brain into thinking of how aging works in this universe, especially with supernatural beings vs humans.

For Luke to be adult-sized, how long would that take? Do angels start as babies that mature eventually? I feel like I've seen a post before about how angels were created, not born like humans are. Maybe their appearance changes once they go up in rank? Or maturity is just a lot slower as they are (technically speaking) immortal?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, when Luke gets older, so does everyone else, including Miri, our sorcerer with angel ancestors.

Technically.

Lilith had been reborn as a human, likely retaining some of her angel powers innately according to OG Lesson 16 (though not as powerful as when she was a full on angel), so I'm thinking that some of the longevity that angels have likely stayed some as well, making her lifespan longer than that of normal, non-magical humans. How many more years? Game doesn't specify, but I like to think that means Lilith's line had longer lifespans than most normal humans. 100s probably weren't a problem for Lilith to reach. Maybe even a bit longer? And this is also considering there isn't any other magical interference in her life.

Fast-forward a few generations and we get to Miri, a once ordinary human thrust into Devildom to take part in the Student Exchange Program at RAD. She gets her first rush of power when she makes her first pact with Mammon. As she gains more pacts, she gains more power. Around the time she's getting Asmo's pact, Solomon had lent her some of his power so she use it for a mission so she could earn Asmo's pact on her own. She uses this borrowed power to help Mammon, Levi, Beel, and herself escape Henry 1.0 by summoning Asmo and drawing out his power to charm Henry.

Asmo comments later that though she was on borrowed power, Miri drew out a lot more power out of him than Solomon had ever done and that was interesting, so he agreed to the pact after failing in her initial task because he was impressed by her innate power.

Her power grows so much in later lessons, it threatened the balance of magic between the three worlds. Solomon suggests she cut her pacts with the brothers, but she refuses to separate from the brothers. She eventually gains Lucifer's Ring of Light that dampens her power to a more manageable level. Solomon then takes her on as an apprentice so she can learn to use her power more effectively.

All this to say, Miri isn't your average human anymore (though she never really was, even from the start because of her ancestor Lilith). So, her lifespan has likely been affected because of the influx of magical energy that human Lilith most likely didn't have. How much it has affected her remains to be seen.

So, if she hadn't had this magical boost from Lilith, the brothers, and whatever else comes along to affect her, she probably wouldn't live to see grown up Luke and he wouldn't be able to escort her through town like he wants to. Miri as of now? There's a chance for it now! Could she reach Solomon's age because of her power? At what age will she start getting wrinkles and grey streaks in her hair? 200s? 300s? Who knows!

Now the image of Old Lady Miri being escorted through town by Luke isn't such a sad image to me anymore. How before all the powers she gained, it would look like a young boy escorting an elderly woman through town, excitedly talking back and forth about baking and puzzles, to now leading to the image of the cool, older angel Luke that's taller and stronger escorting an older Miri with maybe some grey streaks in her hair but is still youthful in her eyes, excited for a day in town and all the things he wants to show her, both still talking excitedly about baking and puzzles.

And that's about it for this brain rot. Hope you guys enjoyed this little thought experiment and I hope to see you for the next brain rot session!

#krys's adventures in fanfiction #oc brain rot #obey me #obey me oc #miriam (obey me oc)#luke (obey me)#luke may be older than her but she still treats him like a younger brother #a very platonic relationship #he thinks she's cool and wants to impress her even though she's a human #it's his human friend/big sister!#it's a very sweet relationship #but now I'm thinking again of luke not aging like humans while Miri gets to old granny age and they have tea and cookies together #maybe Simeon comes along too #haven't gotten very far in season 4 but does he remain human?#does he get to age with Miri?#while Luke Solomon Raphael Thirteen and the demons watch them age while they stay the same?#an interesting thought to ponder #hmmm

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omegasmileyface · 2 months

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Vital tenets of media depicting space travel

it's big. everything is SO far apart. a lot of beloved space media doesn't give you any sense of vastness and desperate farness. desolation. i still love them, but its very important to me. if youre making a space journey, the distance should be mind-bogglingly farther than you can imagine, and uncomfortably long in waiting times. this can expand to other, less literal parts of your story. scales human minds can't easily comprehend.

things that are almost like home... almost. historically, i think of planets that looked suspiciously like SoCal and aliens that looked suspiciously like humans due to limitations in effects in film and TV, but today we see this more in ideas like parallel universes and convergent evolution. when you travel, you often come across something that reminds you of home, but with something a little off. these coniferous forests look like back in the rockies, except there are trees I've never seen before where the spruce and tamaracks should be. this culture has a "let's eat dinner together" tradition just like mine, but everyone is sitting on the floor. it's almost familiar enough to feel like you know what you're doing.

relating space travel to a historical parallel. i think if you were creative enough you could subvert this, and "reflect the past in the future" is a core idea of sci-fi in general, but like... Firefly works really well because it uses the moral values and story themes of Westerns, yeah? and you don't have to go all in like they did, but think to yourself "what were humans like in times of far travel and expansion? can i draw inspiration from Polynesian sailing culture? or Chinese train lines? would humans react to the back-and-forth shipments of resource ships more like they did to British commerce sailing or to USAmerican trucking?

number 3 above should help define your aesthetic. i am a strong believer that sci-fi aesthetics should have some thought behind them. dont just make things blue-and-white LEDs and sleek plastic Apple™core futurist because you can (or just because it's a nice shorthand for the imperial bourgeois, though that can absolutely be an influencing factor. because i agree). would touchscreens be practical or not on this ship? would things be dirty due to a rushed, uncaring labor culture, or clean due to strong health infrastructure, or somewhere in between because it's just home? is the equipment uniform because it's part of a single government program, or all over the place because everyone does it, or a mash-up of the two because there are strict tech requirements to make it work and it would fuck everything up if you deviated a little but you decorated on top of the necessities?

BE FUCKING WEIRD. space is weird. look if you want to get some kind of social commentary across or be lauded as Perfect you should probably follow everything i said above and also carefully think up a scientific system where everything you mention is consistent and you very carefully don't mention anything that wouldn't be consistent. if that's where you want to go, godspeed. i liked Ender's Game as much as the next youngest child with an abusive brother. BUT don't be afraid to be camp. break rules (my rules, others' standards of the genre, the laws of physics, your own previously-established rules) when it's fun. make things stupid and pretty for no reason. assign numbers to things that could never ever make sense. even the most serious of space travel stories do well with a scene or two where Someone Gets Space Madness or A Wormhole Appears And Everybody Gets Genderbent or We Need To Have An Alien Fashion Show To Afford Repairs or what have you

refuse to make up your mind on whether space is magic and gods are real or not

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echoingvoice · 11 months

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Okay so im redesigning loz race decigns/charecters to make then look more neat, and i got to the gorons and...

OKAY I CONFESS I STOLE @ezlo-x 's HORNS AND TAIL FOR THEM! SEND ME TO THE BRIG I'VE COMMITTED A HANES CRIME

okay fr, i took inpersation from they're goron designs since they looks cute and cool to me (follow them btw they make super neat looking art and i think they're designs for the botw charecters look so cool-)

But yeah i tweeked the designs a bit so now i shall show them off

First off with the horns they're made of luminous stone since i thought it looked rad and also cause i thought 'they mine a lot so they might have to mine at night... and its dark at night sooooo'

Heres what it looks like in light (also i gave the gorons fangs since daruks champion design sorta looks like he has fangs in the art)

And heres the horns at night, as you can see if the horns get damaged in someway they can glow less.

On to the tails

Now tails are sort of complicated, ezlos designs for the tails sorta look more crocodile/komodo dragon like, mine are ment to look more like spotted geckos, so that means that the tails fall off, and theres a sort of leveling system to the tails growing back.

The first tail is the soft/flesh tail, they never last too long since usally babys and younger gorons only have them for up to a year (at most) they're pretty sensitive and never over stay theyre welcome (well unless your yunobo-) (also i couldn't attack a photo but just think of a squishy lizard tail on a goron booty)

Next is amber (i tried drawing the amber, but failed and then just went the lazy route... dont judge me-) amber is a bit more tough then the squishy tail but till kind of senitive. also while the tail is regenerating, things can get stuck in the tail like rocks, bugs.... lizards-

Next is opal, a big more durable and strong. Usally when gorons keep this tail (as in not doing too much with the tail and not risk it falling off) its for asthetic reasons as opal tails are pretty popular for gorons since they look pretty and also its rare to have one for super long, like if your 30 and you still have a opal tail thats a bit of a big deal.

Topaz is next, heres where we start getting into the elemental tails. This one of the least popular out of the three since its yellow color and electric powers aren't super useful (as you can't quite camouflage a bright yellow tail like you can with ruby, nor is it super effective against fire enimes like sapphire)

Its seen as the sort of awkard stage of the tails.

Now we have ruby, like i said cause of its firey crimson color its great for camouflage and also its the second most liked tail when it comes to appearances.

Up next is sapphire, usally gorons with sapphire tails are given jobs to either get rid of fire enimies (red chuchus, red lizalfos) and also sent off to gerudo city to sell other jems since gorons with sapphire tails can take the dessert heat the best.

And now we finally have diamond, the strongest and most durable tail out of all of them, it can pack a mean punch... er swing or something... YOU GET THWAKED WITH ONE OF THESE BAD BOYS ITS GONNA HURT REAL BAD. Its pretty difficult to get a diamond tail to fall off as you'd have to be using it A LOT.

But alas it is still possible for diamond tails to fall off, nub/no tails are exactly what they sound like. And once a diamon tail is gone gorons can't regenerate another tail. Some gorons think that theres another tail after the diamon tail but since most gorons that lose they're diamond tail are like 60+ years old nobodys ever seen it, whether or not thats true ill leave up to you.

On the next episode of ann info dumps about gorons tm, we get to see yunobo daruk and bludos redesign and some back story for yunobo!

#gorons botw #gorons #gorons loz #loz #loz botw #legend of zelda #legend of zelda breath of the wild

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loserchildhotpants · 1 year

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questions for fic writers 1, 2, 15, 16, 23, 37, & 41 (if you want)

questions for fic writers

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (in other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

Hmm. I guess it depends on who's asking! I've written like... 200 fics???? I think maybe Seeing Wolves (Where There Are No Wolves) on my loserchildhotpants account is a good introduction to like... my writing style? I guess? And it covers my most used tropes; slow burn, mutual pining, love confessions, eventual smut, etc etc.

That said, I think What Used to be Mine on my someonetoanyone account is probably a better example of what my writing has transformed into.

2. Go to your AO3 "Works" page, to the side bar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for "Additional Tags." What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

On my loserchildhotpants account the top 5 Additional Tags are: Fluff (111), Angst (91), Tumblr Prompt (71) [I'm not gonna count this one tbh], Romance (60), Humor (54) and First Kiss (5)

On my someonetoanyone account the top 5 Additional Tags are: Mutual Pining (12), First Kiss (9), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (9), and Love Confessions (8)

and yeah, these are all p accurate - on both lists, the next one on the list would've been 'pining' lmao so a p accurate depiction!

15. What's your favorite AU that you've written?

Tbh my favorite AU that I've written isn't up yet -- I'm posting it in ~2 weeks and I don't wanna spoil it here, but... it fucks. This AU fucks. I'm so proud of it. It'll be on my someonetoanyone account - check back in w me then lol

16. What's an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

So, first, I'm not big on AU's typically. I'm a basic bitch, i like canon-divergence best of all, and I don't usually stray outside that until I'm like, running out of things to read in the canon-divergent tags lol that said, a canon-divergent AU i NEVER get sick of (for my current fandom - destiel) is time travel fuckery. Older!Dean going back in time, meeting his younger self, or interacting w early seasons Cas, or Older!Cas going back in time and meeting Stanford Era!Dean, Stanford Era!Dean getting plonked into later seasons canon and meeting Cas at all -- it's delicious to me.

23. What's a trope, AU, or concept you've never written, but would like to?

Oh, so many. I'd like to try my hand at omegaverse (i've only read a handful in my LIFE that didn't feel weirdly transmisogynistic and over-the-top sexualized to the point that it had an opposing effect where it was suddenly sexless to me? I feel like i could mASTER IT AND GET IT RIGHT i just have no plot ideas yet lol), sex pollen something or other I'd love to do, I'd love to do a time travel fic of my own, I'd love to write a djinn dream fic, amnesia fic, murder husbands fic -- i wanna do all the things!!!

37. Promote one of your own "deep cut" fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!) What do you like about it?

hmmmmmm

On my loserchildhotpants account, I think June is the one I was most proud of that didn't get much feedback. And it's got all the hits for the reddie fandom! Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, Love Confessions, First Kiss, it's Richie-centric and i was really proud of the pacing and imagery of June :( the only person to ever point out June to me was my friend Grace, and it made me SO happy to know at least one person remembered June by name and that it came to mind as a favorite ; _ ;

On my someonetoanyone account, I think So Tirelessly maybe deserved some more love ; _ ; i love writing endverse!destiel and i plan to write more of it in the future, but this fic was short and bittersweet and i enjoyed writing it. i was like 'oh yeah, this one's a banger' and then it didn't really draw attention lol

41. Link a fic that made you think, "wow, I want to write like that"

how do u expect me to stop at one

In a destiel rec that will shock absolutely no one, sobsicles' 'let's take a drive' changed my brain chemistry forever and tbh i had a Crisis after going through their entire AO3 bc i was like 'oh what is the point of writing actually when sobsicles is out there doing the damn thing this well i should just be quiet' sdkjfhskldjhf genuinely an amazing fic and writer

In a johnlock rec that WILL shock someone, 'The Quiet Man' by ivyblossom - it's 157k words and i could. not. put. it. down. and why is this shocking? it's in First Person POV and i usually can't handle First Person POV bc it personally gives me the cringe (godspeed to everyone enjoys it, i mean no offense, it's just not personally for me) but this fic Changed My Life and genuinely made me rethink how and what I write.

And in a final, spicy and unpredictable thorki rec that no one asked for, 'Find A Home,' by Aria and filiabelialis is... incredible. Listen, when you open the link, you'll see it's 107k words, DO NOT BE INTIMIDATED, GO READ IT, IT'S LITERALLY INCREDIBLE AND SUCH A GOOD CHARACTER STUDY SDJHFKSKDJHF PLSSSS

#letskzuniverse #melanie writes #sldkjhf thank u for sending me so many slkdjhfsdkhfj #destiel #sterek #reddie #my stuff

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katyspersonal · 1 year

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Happy birthday!

I never said anything here for Bloodborne's birthday I guess... This kind of speeches is not my forte, but I figured I'd share anyways.

It changed my life - an effect commonly reported by people who got into Bloodborne, of course. But I really mean it as well. I've been stagnating in the way I draw for years, but Bloodborne made me try out new techniques and brushes just to feel 'worthy' of its aesthetic as an artist. I was somewhat lame at media analysis and my headcanons made no much sense - but by analysing Bloodborne, I've developed the analytical, logical, observing and philosophical skills I never even dreamed of having with my monkey brain. I remember keeping up with so much detail and subtlety was so insanity-inducing that I asked my friend to send me very dumb memes to lover the raw ACTIVITY of my brain as I was loredigging.

I guess my decision to first develop solid Bloodborne theories and headcanons in isolation and then join the fandom was the best - it ensured my takes were very unique, some are even revolutionary (quoting the people that praised me), not influenced by anyone else and adding very fresh look at the things that seemed like dogmas for years. I think everyone should develop their own interpretations before interacting with the fandom, really. It should become a common practice in fandomry. Nothing will feel quite like being told that your idea is the most unusual one in years. I've always been weird and had weird headcanons, but they were chaotic and unfitting. But when I've encountered Bloodborne... For the first time in my life, the insanity of a piece of media matched mine.

I just... I have not been the same person. Both because of the game's characters+themes, and because of the people I've met in the fandom. Ooooooh boy... THE people I've met in this fandom... At times I miss my past. At times thinking about the way I've came overwhelms me with regrets and sorrow for the things that could have been, and that now will never be. Sometimes I question - have I ruined my life (and sanity) in Bloodborne? Was it for something?

But at the same time I always come to realise that I would not have traded the insight all this pain and experience brought to me for anything else in the world. I've often caught myself thinking - "The only thing I am TRULY scared of losing is my insanity". It is like I've finally found a friend I cannot lose even if I try, and it is all in my head. That pain became the most precious thing to me, because it made me get so much knowledge. That I will never use, but it fills my head, and so I will never be empty again. Another heavily personal thing...

As a kid, I used to be very spiritual person, believing in magic and paranormal. My life was hell beyond describing, and my only comfort was found in very specific dreams about the sea. I've stopped having these dreams for years. I forgot myself, and what I held dear. But after Bloodborne? The dreams about the sea came back. And prior events in my life started to make sense. I've rediscovered something extremely important just when I thought the world washed out the person that I used to be.

So yeah. Thank you for everything, Bloodborne. There is a very huge chance that you've returned my very soul back to me, and I am never letting it go ever again.

#bloodborne #personal

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braintapes · 1 year

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21, 30, 7 hehe

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

Art styles that rely heavily on linework, or a solid ink kinda style, are SUPER cool. My usual style is 'glob of colors exploded haphazardly onto the canvas' so anything involving a lot of tiny detail ESPECIALLY with the lines makes me go heart eyes. I also really enjoy cartoony, exaggerated styles. I love love love super stylized facial expressions, they're SO fun.

Some examples of artists/artwork I really like and am inspired from:

Niccillustrates has a beautiful style that features solid, largely unshaded colors and gorgeous linework/inking, which is most obvious in their Undertale fan art. Seems like they've taken down a lot of their older stuff which is a shame, this piece is one of my absolute all time favorite inspirations of mine. The little lines in everything, especially the flowers...AGH!!! Here's a more recent work! The contrast is gorgeous and I adore the shapes in this so much.

Retroautomaton's art has this overall pleasantness and smoothness to it that makes me feel like I'm drinking a milkshake, but like in visual form. Here's a few pieces I especially like. The fluidity and sense of movement in the lines/figures along with the bright, poppy colors is just!!! so lovely!!!!

ArtsyDudeJude's pieces are so EXPRESSIVE!!! The way he really pushes facial expressions in particular is super inspiring - all his original character design stuff in general is tbh. I look at linework like his and go. man I couldn't do that but it looks SO GOOD. Here's some of my favorites!

Last one I swear but I wanna mention my pal Dana, RedEyesRetroDragon on here! The way she stylizes characters is SO fun and dynamic I love it a lot. I don't know barely a thing about ygo BUT I care these guys bc of Dana's art. PLUS her inking!!!! Holy woah! LOOK AT THIS PIECE!!! AND THIS ONE!!

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated?

Hmm this is hard! Usually when I get reception on my art it's really kind and lovely and when I don't, I generally chalk it up to people just not being online/not seeing it at that time so I don't worry too much about it.

I suppose...since I draw a lot of fanart, it's easier for my original stuff to sort of slip by the wayside. So I'll use this one as an opportunity to gush a bit about this piece I did a little while ago!

People have left some really kind and sweet comments on it so I can't say it's underrated but it is my favorite original piece I've ever done. I felt clever about the caption because you can see it a few different ways - maybe 'taking form' refers to the canvas, reaching out and taking over the person. Or maybe the person is reaching IN, merging with the painting. Maybe the painting isn't taking form as in stealing, but taking form as in manifesting itself a human body. The possibilities are endless! Also I like the silly goofy expression here <3

OH AND WHILE I'M HERE. This piece is also not underrated but this was pretty cool too.

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

SO MANY!!!!! But the first one that comes to mind is photography! Photography is so cool and fascinating and while I don't think I could ever get /super/ into it, I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for the craft! A good photograph is SOOO satisfying to look at, like it's literally the art of composition and lighting!! How cool is that??

ALSO music!!! Gah I want to make my own music so badly!!! But there's SO MANY building blocks I'm finding it kind of difficult to learn. That said I have such an appreciation for people who make songs and sounds and things!! OH AND SOUND EFFECTS. EDITING. THAT'S AN ART TOO AND I LOVE IT.

Production work in general!!! To me it's art and it's beautiful and I want to be a part of it. If I could have any job in the world no questions asked, I would want to work in stage lighting. Concerts, theatre, idc, that kinda work is right up my alley. There's just something I adore about like, all the little details that go into making a production work that most people don't think about or notice because it's designed not to be noticed, but people still worked on it!!! People still put their time and effort and craftsmanship into it! <3 <3 <3

this is about to turn into a whole essay about all the different art mediums i love efjkdshajhg Sorry this is so long but i really can gush for hours about this stuff. Thank you so SO much for sending these!!!

#THANK U AGAIN #i have so much love in my heart for art #i also keep a folder full of art pieces i rly lke that ive reblogged over the years #im at almost 2000 images now and nowhere near done sorting everything

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8bit-mau5 · 1 year

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22, 23, 27, & 30? For the art meme!

What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

I'm gonna get in trouble for this one cos i know. i KNOW this is so important but i just CANT integrate it into my routine. Its the ADHD i think, starting smth and adding it to my daily tasks is nigh impossible for me. SO... THE ANSWER IS I DONT.. NHSGDBFGFBG

Do you use different layer modes

Sometimes, though very rarely!! I only use things like multiply + add glow because those are.. 2 of 4 layer modes i actually understand. I havent bothered to learn the rest, or commit their effects to memory.

Most of my coloring and rendering is all on one layer because it's fun and easy for me. Feels like I'm working traditionally when I do ^^ (i also regularly forget to just. add more layers!)

When I DO use layer modes, it's usually for when Im working on big illustrative pieces for myself.

Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

Sometimes, but not always! Another really bad artist habit of mine is jumping right into a big commission project, or jumping right into what I wanna do and then end up surprised when it doesnt go my way asjdhdhgdg

What piece of yours do you think is underrated

Lord almighty. So many. So many. But especially these I think. The first one is DND but the response was underwhelming even on twitter, which was a shame cos its still one of my top fave pieces Ive ever done! IIRC this piece is from 2020, it was the first time I tried a hard light effect/high contrast lighting and I've definitely improved plenty since this piece, it was my first step to getting little out of my comfort zone and trying new things.

The next would have to be this piece I was SUPER proud of cos I had tried new things, like I was extremely happy w/drawing a full piece for myself but the response was. I don't remember much if any. BUT that wont stop me from loving how this came out. Gigi looks so serene here and I couldn't be happier! TW for blood + death, thought the first pic makes me think of cotton candy w/the colors askdjhdhgd

Thirdly, a piece that blew up on twitter but got an underwhelming response here Where I Post Fantrolls. TW for blood + strangulation under the cut. It's a Chrona flshback I was really excited to reveal, it's the reason he has as many tattoos as he does (': Given the TWs i DO understand why it didnt go around though.

ARTIST ASK GAME

#asks #toojazzed #mun stuff #Gabriel's art #blood #death #death ment #strangulation #FOR JUST IN CASE #ask to tag #THANKS SO MUCH FOR THIS ASK BTW LIAM #i meant to get to it yesterday but. bad migraine #im alive now though #this was such a fun ask game

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katnewman96-blog · 10 days

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Confession from the duke

I stood by the crackling fire in the hearth, my heart racing as I watched Mr. Mayfield enter the drawing room. He looked every bit the gentleman he was, impeccably dressed and bearing a weary expression on his face. I took a deep breath, steadying myself before offering him a curt nod and a polite smile. The silence that followed was deafening, the only sounds the occasional pop of burning wood and the low hiss of the flames.

I felt my temper begin to flare as the tension in the air grew more palpable with each passing moment. I took a seat opposite him, my posture rigid and my hands folded primly in my lap. "Well," I began, my voice barely above a whisper, "I suppose you've come to apologize for your behavior at the dinner party." My words were laced with acid, my gaze unwavering as I met his eyes.

Mr. Mayfield visibly winced at my harsh tone, but he didn't look away. Instead, he took a deep breath before speaking. "No, Miss Rosewall," he said slowly, "I did not come here to apologize. I came here to explain." He paused, searching for the right words before continuing. "I've been wanting to speak with you about this ever since I received your letter."

"Mr. Mayfield, with all due respect I do not wish to hear your excuses." I said, my voice steady but betraying a hint of emotion. "Nothing excuses the way you acted at Ms. Shaw's dinner party." I paused, taking a deep breath to steady my racing heart.

Mr. Mayfield leaned forward from the lounge, his elbows on his knees. "Bridget," he began, using my given name for the first time. "I understand that you are highly protective of Miss Alice, as you should be, However, there are things you don't know." He paused, his eyes searching mine for some sign of comprehension.

"Then please, enlighten me Mr. Mayfield." I said, my tone cold and distant. I didn't want to hear what he had to say, but I felt I owed it to him to at least listen. He took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair before speaking.

"It's not as simple as you think, Miss Bridget," he began. "You see, my family expects me to marry well." He paused, his expression pained. "And my mother has made it very clear that she has chosen Miss Alice." He looked away for a moment, taking in a deep breath before continuing. "I don't want to marry her. I never have."

"How could you say that, Mr. Mayfield?" I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. "Alice is the most eligible young lady in all of London high society. How could you not want to marry her?"

"But what of love?" He asks, his voice pleading. "Can it not be a factor in such a decision? I have never felt that way about Miss Alice, I do not love her." He pauses, searching my expression for some sign of understanding.

"And you believe you love this woman, that woman you refused to name at Mrs. Shaw's party?" I asked, my heart racing.

"Yes, Bridget, I do." He says, using my given name as if it were a plea for understanding. "But I fear that my family will never accept it. As Miss Alice is the perfect match." He pauses, taking a deep breath before continuing. "And I fear she does not feel the same."

"So Mr. Mayfield, are you discarding my cousin for a woman that may not have you?" I asked, my voice laced with anger. "You are willing to ruin your reputation, and hers, for a whim?" He flinched at my words, but they seemed to have my desired effect.

"You are not a whim!" He protested, his voice harsh, shock spreading across his face.

"What did you just say?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. The air between us seemed to crackle with tension. "You... you as in me?" I could feel my heart racing, my cheeks flushing with a mix of anger and surprise. I looked down at my hands, trying to process the emotions swirling inside me. "And you think that I don't feel the same way?" I finally managed to say, my voice trembling slightly.

"If you do, why push me towards Alice?" He demanded, his voice raw. "Why Bridget?" I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I met his eyes.

"When Alice... when she started to show interest in you, I wished to put her happiness first." I confessed, my voice barely above a whisper. I walk over to the window, unable to look in his face. Fearing that my face will betray me and reveal too much.

"And what of your happiness?" He asked, his voice low and husky. I could feel his presence behind me, so close that I could almost feel the warmth of his body. I turned to face him, my heart racing, my palms growing sweaty.

"I... My mother married someone below her, and thus I am not an acceptable match for you, Alice is." I confessed, my voice shaking.

"I could care less about your so-called acceptability for me, Bridget," he said, stepping closer, his voice low and intense.

I felt my heart skip a beat as he reached up, cupping my face in his hands. "I could never love Alice the way I love you." His thumbs brushed away a stray strand of hair from my face, his touch sending a wave of heat through my body. "I want to be with you, Bridget. I need to be with you."

I step back, feeling a combination of shock, and guilt wash over me. I hadn't expected this. I hadn't dared to hope that he felt the same way. "I-I can't do that to Alice." I stammer, my voice trembling. "How could I?"

"If she cares for you as you do her, and I know she does, She will want you to be happy." William spoke softly, his voice full of sincerity. "She will understand." He took a step closer, his eyes searching mine. "I cannot live without you, Bridget. I cannot love anyone else. You are my heart, my soul. Please, give us a chance."

My heart raced as I tried to find the words to respond. The air between us seemed charged with emotion, the connection between us almost palpable. I felt my resolve starting to crumble under the weight of his words, the intensity of his gaze. "I-I don't know..." I stammered, my voice barely audible.

"Bridget," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "I know this is a lot to take in, but please, just think about it. Talk to Alice, talk to your mother." He reached out, taking my hand in his, and I felt the warmth of his skin, the strength of his grip.

"I can at least promise you that." I said, my voice barely audible. "I will talk to her, and my mother. I... I will consider your words William." His grip on my hand tightened, and he gave it a reassuring squeeze.

I pulled my hand from his, needing a moment to gather my thoughts and compose myself. "I'll write to you." I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart. "I need some time, but... I'll let you know as soon as I can."

He nodded, understanding gleaming in his eyes. "Take all the time you need, Bridget." He stepped back, giving me some space.

I wanted to tell him that I would be thinking of him, that I would be praying for this, but I couldn't find the words. Instead, I simply smiled at him, hoping it would reassure him somehow. He smiled back, and for a brief moment, it was as if the weight of the world had been lifted from our shoulders.

He took my hand in his, his grip firm but gentle. "Farewell my lady, until we meet again." His lips brushed against my knuckles, sending a shiver down my spine. As he turned to leave, I couldn't help but feel the weight of his words, the gravity of the situation pressing down on me.

#creative writing #writing #writing exercise #writing advice #writerscorner #writingadvice #writing-challenges-and-prompts #romance #romance writing #romance writers #historical romance #historical fiction #regency #regency era #regency romance #bridgerton #enimies to lovers

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playa-pariah · 4 months

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i can't assume to know what your goals are in art, so this might just be me sticking my head where it doesn't belong so please feel free to ignore this message if it ends up offensive in any way by me misunderstanding - but i do very strongly relate to being unable to improve in any kind of meaningful way that i can be satisfied with. i have plenty of artist friends who started off at around the same skill level as me, but have long since surpassed me in ways that i don't think i'll ever be able to compete with...however, i think as artists we are always harsh and honestly pretty unfair on ourselves when we self-critique. there are most definitely others who also hold their art up against yours and find themselves lacking, each person's journey in art is different. our goals, the steps we take, the ways we achieve results, it's all different and i think that's part of what makes it unfair to criticize our own art by comparing it to others. maybe i'm jealous of someone's landscape skills, but they're jealous of my character drawing, and so on.

one thing that i've found that helps me is to try and step back from how i'm feeling about my art in that very particular moment and try to see it from the point of view of myself 5 years ago, 10 years ago. my child self would be amazed at my progress even if my adult self struggles to find anything worth admiring, and i think resetting how i view my art in this way does work for me. i sometimes try to redraw older pieces as well, since that gives a much more tangible way of viewing that improvement. when my mindset about my art is bad, it's unlikely that i'll be satisfied with the redrawn piece but it forces me to notice the specific things that i've improved on even if they feel small as well as forcing me to admit that it's overall more technically skilled.

regardless, the end of the year is always rough with all the art roundups that everyone is posting. it's been a string of terrible years, so i'm dreading posting mine up, but it's still a good moment for self-reflection. take note of what you need to improve on but don't deny yourself what you're already good at and allow yourself to be proud of where you've gotten. and since i'm being pushy anyway, don't label yourself a "bad artist", the words we use to describe ourselves are important not just because it effects the way we perceive ourselves but because of how others perceive us. i follow you because i genuinely enjoy your art, but if someone labels themselves a "bad artist" then, well, if you're bad then am i wrong for enjoying your work? i know toxic positivity is a thing but - let's be realistic instead of falling either which way.

art is tough, and no matter how tough it gets there's something that just doesn't let us quit, isn't there? i wish you luck in your artistic journey, and i also hope that you can find more satisfaction in the process. apologies again if i've overstepped!

I really appreciate this- I think I needed a good talking to. Doing an art degree has taught me more about feeling inadequate than anything about art. I think being surrounded by so many talented people makes it really easy to start comparing myself and picking myself apart in comparison. Jealousy comes easy in that sense, not to mention, being an artist on the internet feels like a rat race. I’ve got lots of worries for my future 🫠

But I think you’re right. I need to focus more on the fact that I actually do improve and people do actually like my art and placing myself next to other artists to compare isn’t in any form productive. You’re a very kind person for dropping this in my inbox. I do really appreciate it. I am going to stick a work in progress at the end of this, as I feel an obligation to this blog to stay somewhat on topic 🥲

#work in progress #maybe it wasn’t that deep in the end

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miriael-the-cozy-witch · 8 months

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Fear the Reaper, Part One

Had an idea for how my WoL made her pact with a voidsent to become a reaper, and had to write out. I hope you enjoy! They'd nearly died.

Shivers skittered across my skin as my body remembered what I desperately didn't want to.

When I'd crawled across the frost bitten ground, through snow covered broken pavement, the feeling of half decayed fingers of ice in my grip as I pulled my undead body forward.

It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me.

I'd done it. I stopped him.

Barely.

"Had I been a second later… " I mumbled into my cup, shaking my head in a vain attempt to clear the rancid memory from my mind.

But I couldn't.

The helplessness… The weakness…

I had felled gods and monsters, but this…

This was something else.

I downed another cup of the Mun-Tay brew, weaker than some Ishgardian drinks I'd had, but with more than enough alcohol in it for it's intended purpose. I needed to forget.

"There you are, I was beginning to wonder where you'd run off to," A pat on my back nearly made me jump and draw my blade. They'd approached from my blind side.

Thankfully the voice was welcome. Long familiar, safe.

I'd known this voice longer than most.

I betrayed my nervousness with only a slight twitch, disguised even further as I lifted my mug once more to my face, swallowing a gulp of the brew, turning my head further left than most would need to get the speaker into vision.

Estinien.

Despite us being back in Eorzea, a brief respite before we shipped back out to try and storm the Tower of Babil, he was of course still in his armour. The only time I'd ever seen him out of it was when he was attempting to be inconspicuous. Which he was miserable at.

"Didn't think you'd leave Broken Glass." I muttered, wishing I'd had a stout Ishgardian red ale. It tasted better and hit harder than this Mun-Tuy brew. Maybe if I was quick…

"I didn't think you'd leave Broken Glass." Estinien replied, crossing his arms in silent brooding, the noises of the Roost effecting a white noise tuning out everything but my own stammering heart and our words.

"Wanted a drink." I said quietly, affecting my own brooding. "I needed… " I began my words confidently, but realized I didn't know what I needed.

All I had was this fear.

I didn't know what to do with fear.

I'd been scared, anxious, worried, each fight through the years more challenging than the last. But never before had I been robbed of my strength. Not like that.

I felt my mind begin to circle as I remembered the feeling of being dead again, my breathing pick up quickly.

That wasn't me. I'm here. I'm home. I'm alive.

I pushed down the panic, drowning my fear in the rest of my drink, without a care in the world. It was nearly painful, there was more left in the mug than I'd thought, as I chugged it's entirety in seconds. The pain in my throat solidifying the feeling that this was my body.

Mine. I'm not there. I'm not dead and dying in the snow.

Estinien seemed to not react. I glanced towards him, daring him to judge. But he wasn't looking at my face. He was looking at my shaking hands, my empty cup rattling on the hardwood table.

"Miriael."

Estinien's voice had taken a new more serious tone.

I barely moved, shifting my gaze away, putting him in my blind side. I didn't need his judgment. He wasn't yanked from his body like a puppet, put into a corpse, and made to watch as someone nearly killed our friends with my own hands.

I kept him in my blind side, wishing he'd just go away.

"I've not seen you like this since… " He froze, unable to say it. But his tone finally made me tilt my head to look back at him, just in time to see him reach up and tap his face, just under his left eye.

I felt the long healed muscles around all the dead ones in my face twitch.

Fury built in my gut as he gestured at the scar I bore. The thing that marked my worst moment.

When Zenos slashed out my fucking eye at Rhalgar's Reach.

Whether due to the alcohol or my fear, I was livid.

"You weren't there Estinien. How the fuck could you know?"

He lowered his armoured gauntlet slowly, crossing his arms once again.

"You're rattled, and you need help. I remember teaching you how to hold a damn spear, and now…" He gestured at me, the mess I'd become. "I see you waver. You need to-"

I shoved out of my chair, hearing it hit the floor behind me as I smacked his outstretched hand away. "-What? What do I need to do Estinien?" I nearly shouted, multiple voices silencing around us. "Because I'm sure, the Azure Dragoon, of all gods damned people, will have all the answers for me." I patted at my chest, the most outspoken I'd been in months.

I reached up to point a single finger into his breastplate, my anger and fear pushing me to say the most hurtful thing I could. "I'm sure Nidhogg's bitch would know exactly what to say to me."

The silence of the Roost was now absolute, Estinien's eyes hardening as he slowly uncrossed his arms, reaching down to slowly place his gauntleted hand around mine, still poking into his damn breastplate.

"Exactly because I was Nidhogg's 'bitch' is why I think you need help. You need to talk to someone. I know what that was like, to be under someone's control…"

I should've listened to him. But I was probably too drunk, too angry, too fragile… and more devastatingly, too weak.

I knew what I needed to do.

I wrenched my hand out of his, stepping backwards and nearly tripping over my own chair.

"You can't help me Estinien. Only one thing can."

I just didn't know if I could do it.

I stomped away, out of the busy doors and away from my mentor and friend. Thankfully, he didn't give chase. I felt dozens of eyes on my back, but I needed space. I needed time. I needed…

To become stronger.

Strong enough that that never happens ever again.

That was the catch. The impossibility. How did I become stronger than I was right now? Hell, how did anyone?

I pushed outside into the main square of Gridania, the aetheryte humming it's ever present low song, the crowds of people warping in and out through it currents. Stopping to laugh, to cheer, to talk and dance with each other. Someone was playing music from a harp, it's tones just the tiniest bit off-putting of some familiar melody.

I wanted the quiet. Peace. Silence. I'd thought coming home to Gridania would get me some perspective and calmness before we finished preparing for our assault on the tower of Babil.

Instead… All it'd done was make me more afraid.

What if he took control of me here? How many would I kill? Would I stop me in time? Would they even bother playing games?

I needed to be strong. That's who I was. That's who I've always been. Ever since my childhood in the caves of Gelmorra. I needed to be strong then, and I needed to be strong now.

Not being strong enough… Was never an option.

I was the Hero of Eorzea. Liberator of Gyr Abania. Saviour of Doma. I'd saved the 1st, and saved hundreds if not millions of lives. I was master of the spear, the bow, the blade, and a multitude of magics. My strength was legendary.

And yet it wasn't enough to save my eye.

I thought I was the strongest being in the known world until I met the one who struck me down that day in Rhalgar's Reach. Leaving me battered, bleeding, and half blind.

At that very moment, I made an oath I'd kept ever since.

Never again.

I continued walking, past the Serpents nest, a few guardsmen saluting as they saw me, rounding the corner to turn my walk northward into Old Gridania as I reflected on my oath.

I vowed to became stronger, and I did. Much like Zenos had. I crossed the world in search of learning the best weapon arts, and picked up the style of blade that Zenos favoured.

The same style of swordsman ship that took my eye.

And I killed him with it.

And then killed him again for good measure when he gods damned fused with Shinryu.

But now… Once again, Zenos was back from the dead for a third time, more powerful than ever before.

I stopped in my pacing through the wooded city, just outside of Stillglade, feeling my heart lurch and the sob in my chest.

I wasn't strong enough.

Undone by Zenos and his pet Ascian. Pulled from my body…

Alisae… G'raha… They'd nearly died because I wasn't strong enough.

Suddenly, it felt like all the alcohol hit me at once, making me sway on my feet, near stumbling out of some passerby's way. I wandered over to a nearby tree, some of the houses just beyond Stillglade twinkling with lights in the evening breeze.

Only once I'd stopped moving, did I feel a slight buzzing in my pocket. My linkperal was vibrating.

I nearly wanted to crush it under my boot.

Instead, with a silenced whine, I placed the tree at my back to slide down it's bark, sitting down in the grass underneath it's shade. I should've been freezing, in nothing but my day clothes, but my insides felt warm and flush.

I fumbled with the linkpearl, the damn thing wanting to roll around in my unsteady hands rather than make it's way into my ear, but finally I managed it.

"Hi. This is Miriael." I mumbled, trying to affect my most neutral voice. I didn't know if I was successful. And right now, I didn't know that I cared.

"Miriael, hello. It's Y'shtola."

The image of her concerned eyes, her sight without sight, considering my person as I clawed my way across the snows flashed in my minds eye.

She was the only one that saw the horror before anyone else. We shared an unspoken bond, her and I. Sight was... complicated for us both.

I breathed out a sigh, leaned back to rest my head against the tree, the rustling of leaves above me calming in it's own way as passerby gave me no spare glance. Only a few who spotted the eyepatch did a double-take in wonder before my glare made them keep walking.

"What is it 'tola?"

A brief sound of silence in my ear answered me, and I lifted my fingers to push the linkperal further in, just in case I missheard her.

"Would you... Can you... Talk about what happened?"

I felt my entire body clench, the memory flashing through my mind again.

I breathed through my teeth, wishing I had something, anything more to drink. Something to give me peaceful oblivion rather than these cursed memories.

I'm not there. I'm not. I'm here, against a tree. The leaves are nice. I'm warm, despite the cold. I'm okay. I'm not dead.

I let out a shaky breath.

"About which part?" I heard myself mutter, with a bite of acidity in my tone.

Y'shtola, bless her heart, wasn't phased.

"About Zenos. The fact that he's alive seems to bugger belief, but I don't think that's the surprising bit."

I shook my head as if Y'shtola could see it. She was right.

"No... It isn't. You saw better than I do. He's changed hasn't he?"

She made a slight hum as she considered, audible through the linkpearl.

"Without a doubt. He's grown stronger. Much stronger. What alarmed me though, was the source of that strength."

I blinked, unsure of what she was saying.

"What do you mean?" I asked quietly, eyeing a few Silent Conjurers coming in and out of Stillglade, imagining Y'shtola tsk'ing as she debated the morality of the elemental.

"The thing that nearly... that creature? It's the source of his power. It was a voidsent."

I remembered the sight of the floating creature, All faces and floating hands, it's scythe huge and devouring. The moment where I pushed every rotting muscle in my body to throw that ugly Garlean sword-

It wasn't me. It wasn't me. Right now I'm here. I'm whole.

"That... doesn't surprise me. You're saying he's summoned one?"

Y'shtola silently considered her words for a moment, before murmuring quietly.

"I was hoping you would know. Certainly in your travels you must've come across plenty of voidsent. But I've never seen one likeÂ that. It seemed... Almost in tune with him. Like he'd made a pact with it."

I fought down the stab of jealousy I had at Y'shtola's vision. Maybe if I'd seen what she had, I could understand how he'd achieved such power.

But a pact with a voidsent?

Unthinkable.

"I wish I knew more, but I don't. I'm sorry Y'shtola."

I felt her disappointed sigh in my bones. "I was hoping... maybe that since he'd made such a strong connection to a voidsent, that maybe... he'd been able to talk with it. Or had an inkling on travel to the 13th."

Ah.

Suddenly I understood her hope. If you could travel to the 13th... Whats to say you couldn't use the same method to travel back to the 1st?

"I'm sorry 'tola." I quietly repeated, more feeling in the apology this time. I knew how much finding a way back to the 1st meant to her.

"It's alright. Maybe next time you face him we'll learn his secrets."

Next time you face him.

Would I live through such an encounter? Or would I end up just another corpse in the snow?

I felt a shudder rip through my body.

"Sure Y'shtola. Sure." I mumbled, clenching my fist around the hilt of my blade.

"Anyway, I should go. I have a million and one things to do before we hit the tower. Till next time."

"Till next time." I mumbled out, as the line went dead.

I kept the linkpearl in my ear, looking up through the branches of the tree above me... Deep in wonder, without a care to any passerby.

Voidsent... Pacts... Power...

I needed to know more.

The first step to becoming stronger, is knowing your enemies weakness.

That was one of the first lessons Estinien taught me. His words rung out in my mind as I picked my uncooperative limbs out from under the tree I'd collapsed against, and made my way towards the Yellow Serpent Gate.

If I needed to know more about the void... Well, there was one place that was just as good as any. It was even pretty damn close, all things considered.

Home.

Gelmorra.

I stumbled through the gate, the Wood Wailers giving me a pitying glance, but saying nothing. They knew just as well as I did that anything in these woods, even in my drunken state, wouldn't dare touch me.

Because if they did, my blade was ready.

Once outside the City proper, making my way through Treespeak, I couldn't help but feel some desperate joy fight against my fear. The trees shifted in a barely there breeze, the lights from path-side laterns covering everything in a warm glow, the stars overhead bright guardians to my journey.

Once or twice, I felt some creatures gaze from the woods, but all it took was the click of my blade being undone from it's sheathe to scatter the predator to the wind. I was under no threat here.

Nonetheless, the walk was too short, before the ruins of Gelmorra opened up in a cavern before me.

The home of my people before the calamity had forced us to accept Gridanian walls. That submission of our pride still smarted, even now. My skin was lighter than most, and some of my fellow 'citizens' forgot just where I was born.

And the sight of that very location almost seemed to sober me up in a heartbeat.

I stood at the cavern's edge, a deep pit into the ground, wondering just what I was looking for. Even if I did corner a voidsent, what did I hope to accomplish? They didn'tÂ speak.Â Or if they did, it was nothing more than a terrifying yell or scream or at best, a roar of 'I'm going to eat you' or something akin to that.

They were mindless.

But Zenos... had done something to gain all that power.

Power I needed, to save my friends, my family, my planet. The Final days were here, and we were out of time. I could stop at nothing to achieve the strength I needed to avert catastrophe.

I jumped over the edge, down into the depths of my home.

Gelmorra was simple enough, for the ruins of an underground city. Or at least they were to me, as someone who was born here. There was the Palace of the Dead and it's ever shifting hallways, but no Duskwight in their right mind ever went down that far.

No, I was here for one specific passage. The passage my dear mother, may she rest in the aetherial sea, told me to never go down.

The passage that went to Amdapor.

I barely needed light to see, any Duskwight could see easily in the dark, but eventually even I had to conjure a flame in my hand to see down the darkened passage.

It was quiet, the sounds of the forest above long silent, only the dripping of moisture and my own boots against hard stone echoing in my ears.

It seemed endless. Black as night ahead of me, black as void behind. I'd only gone down this passage once before, when I still had lance in hand and unsullied hope in my heart.

I had both eyes then.

I cursed, forging ahead, pushing myself into a light trot to try and quicken the time I had to be alone with my thoughts.

This whole trip might be useless, but at least it felt good to do. Not just sit there and think.

"Miriael?"

I screeched to a halt, twisting in my step, my hand reaching for my blade.

The click of it freeing from it's sheathe breathe confidence into my blood as I solidified my stance, as my eye searching in vain through the darkness for the speaker.

For there was none.

I listened, glancing over my shoulder, slowly freeing my blade to the air, the slide of metal on metal echoing down the tunnel.

But there was no one. No sound. My heart beating loud enough to hear.

I stayed ready and alert for another minute, with no intrusions.

I must've imagined it.

I sheathed my sword, letting out a gust of panicked laughter, and took a single step.

"Miriael."

I froze. The voice a whisper in my ear. I could feel the breath on my neck.

"Ul'dah. Drusilla."

I didn't dare breathe, the feeling of a pinprick of a blade at my throat.

"Come back."

I slowly, ever so agonizingly slowly, reached for my blade once more, twitching my good eye to the wall beside me.

And saw a pair of red eyes, leaning out of the dark stone, the rest of their body incorporeal as they phased through the wall.

A voidsent.

I couldn't see the point of whatever weapon they had at my throat, but felt it's press all the same, as if this voidsent could feel me reaching for my sword.

"Ul'dah. Drusilla." The voidsent said again, needier this time.

"Come back."

It's asking something of me.

I nodded, ever so slightly.

The eyes seemed to flash, almost a smile within them, before they sank into the wall, disappearing from sight. A breath later, and the point from my throat did as well, and then I was alone. Once more in the dark.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, feeling... terrified.

A voidsent spoke to me. How?

I shook my head, reaching for my throat to rub at the point it's threatened, but felt no puncture or wound. Which was also strange. I could of taken the damn thing in a fight, but it'd gotten the drop on me.

I shuddered, realizing I should've listened to my mother, before turning back the way I came, beginning the long march home once again.

With nothing but the words the voidsent had left in my ear.

Ul'dah. Drusilla. Come back.

Click here for part 2! Click here for part 3! Click here for part 4! Click here for part 5!

#FFXIV #short fiction #me #my writing #estinien wyrmblood #y'shtola rhul #voidsent #in from the cold #that quest lives in my head rent free

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