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regrettablewritings · 3 years

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Soulmate AU: The First Drawing You See From Your Soulmate is Tattooed on Your Skin

A detective having a tell would probably be considered inappropriate to most people. Detectives were supposed to read tells, not have them. But then again, Benoit had never been much for keeping up appearances. Besides, what was the harm in rubbing his thumb along his right wrist? It helped him focus; it helped him think.

Or at least, that was what he’d told himself. He wasn’t entirely lying, either, rather the larger whole of it all was more so that when he rubbed that spot on his skin, he felt calm. Composed. He liked to think that that was the feeling his soulmate had intended when they painted that image, whenever they made or would make it. Whatever it was. After all, it had plenty of blue in it.

He was pretty sure it was meant to be a pond or some kind of body of water; that might explain the blues and greens and maybe the bits of white that he could make out. And if he squinted his eyes a little, he could swear there were little flecks of gold. Goldfish, maybe? Honestly, he had no clue. Benoit wasn’t much for complaining or expressing a lack of gratefulness, but he couldn’t help but sometimes feel envious of those whose tattoos covered a larger part of their body. Not a massive amount, but at least just enough to be able to tell precisely what the heck their soulmate’s image was trying to portray. Clearly, the image was larger than what that patch of his skin could afford, and honest to God, he’d spent a good part of his life trying to make out what it was!

(The embarrassment of it all, he would sometimes muse deprecatingly: That the acclaimed “Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths” could solve the most absurd cases in the country, yet had spent most of his natural-born life completely stumped by what might as well have counted as a body part!)

And yet, Benoit could never stay frustrated about it; not when his thumb gently grazed against the image, imagining the smoothness of his skin ebbing into the aquatic swirls of the proposed water. But just for extra precaution, he saw no harm in distracting himself.

That afternoon’s distraction? A quick skim of the local paper, accompanied by a mug of hot tea. He tried not to think of how such a method revealed his age, instead snapping the paper open to a page discussing the local goings-on. It was the usual sort of content: The community theater’s spring production was seeking house crew members, a mom and pop-style restaurant was having an anniversary special . . . It was the same sort of thing Benoit had grown used to expecting.

But what his pale blue eyes landed on next didn’t make the rest pale by comparison -- it downright washed all else from existence: An art show.

Benoit considered himself a well-rounded person, but it was more so in an almost tongue in cheek sort of manner: As a detective, it was his job to be appropriately versed in an assortment of fields. However, a jack of all trades was never truly a master of none. Benoit’s experiences with art theft and forgeries had lent him a hand in only about as much observation as was necessary for the respective occurrences.

But . . . he knew those swirls. He knew that blue, those greens, that white -- he recognized how the gold was patterned! Sure, the cheap ink job of a colored newspaper picture might have dulled the quality ever so slightly but there was no mistake to be made: That painting was his. No . . . It was theirs!

You tried to make calming breaths without making your anxiety obvious. A nervous but otherwise acceptable smile twitched into place, fooling the guests as they wandered about the gallery. Or, at least, you certainly hoped it was fooling them; but it was probably all to be outdone by the fact that you’d been nursing the same champagne flute for the last half-hour.

Is this what “making it” feels like? you wondered. Because if it was . . . you weren’t too fond of it. You felt bad for not relishing this opportunity; the art world was highly competitive, and you were more than blessed to have had the chance to not only display your work in a showroom, but to have said room be dedicated entirely to your pieces. But in that blessing was also a curse: The curse of criticism, of weary eyes, of people both waiting to pounce on you with ribbings of how you lack the magnanimity of the classics or the free thinking of the contemporaries --

Shitshitshitsmile! You did as you were told -- both by your brain, and by your manager earlier when they walked you through how you were to compose yourself through this entire ordeal. Just smile, enunciate when spoken to, and let the potential schmoozing flow and oh god, that Karen-looking lady who definitely owns a house in Martha’s Vineyard for when she wants to get away from her husband for a day totally hated that piece you’d spent months working on, didn’t she?!

The thought made your stomach twist, your already awkward smile along with it. You inhaled sharply. You had to find something to distract yourself with.

You turned and faced the painting nearest to you. Some might call it vanity, but you were actually quite pleased with this particular piece. That, and its blueness gave you a sense of . . . serenity. You imagined the ripples washing over you and into you, the scent and sound of the painted environment gently caressing your nose and drowning out both the stench of perfume and pretentious chattering . . . And also, apparently, the sound of approaching footsteps.

You hadn’t realized anyone had joined your side until the rumble of a southern baritone carded through the water.

“It’s gorgeous. Isn’t it?”

You hadn’t meant to jump and appear so clumsy.

“Oh, sh -- ” You cut yourself short as you eyed the droplets of spilled, room temperature champagne. If your manager found out that you had cussed around a potential buyer, they would’ve mounted your head on the wall. Thankfully, however, the stranger didn’t appear at all fazed. If anything, the chuckle he responded with sounded genuinely amused.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m terribly sorry!” he insisted, holding up his left hand. “I didn’t mean to scare you; I can imagine most anyone would be mighty transfixed over a piece like this.”

You gulped as you looked up at your unintentional scarer. His eyes were the same blue as the one that brought you calm just moments earlier, yet they had the almost opposite effect to you now. As you looked into them, you didn’t feel calm; not necessarily: Instead, you felt your heart beginning to ripple the pattern of the painting, your cheeks burning as bright as the gold swirling amongst the little waves. And yet you found yourself transfixed by them, only offered freedom when the older gentleman offered you a hint of a smile. A warm one.

Crap! Uh -- Answer his question! Think of something to say! your mind scrambled.

“Uh . . .” you stammered. The only way to save what atoms of confidence you still had left was to turn your eyes back to the painting. “I -- I should hope so.” Smooth. You tried to remember your calming breaths. You heard the man hum, shifting his position ever so slightly in your peripheral.

“What can you tell me about it?” he asked, revealing just how close to you he truly was. You could feel the warmth of his person and the richness of his voice vibrating into you. Or perhaps it was butterflies? Maybe both? Well, whatever it was, it almost made you stumble over your words. You’d spent the entire evening up to that point rehearsing stories of your inspirations, recounting whatever education you had to people who probably didn’t give a crap.

But this instance was different: Maybe it was foolishness sourced from a sudden and sophomoric attraction, but you almost wanted to believe that perhaps this man genuinely cared. That he was genuinely interested in what you as the actual artist had to say and not you as some painting mannequin made to recite lines over and over.

The excitement of such a possibility broke through your nerves . . . and, unfortunately, right out of your mouth.

“I just really wanted to paint a mermaid in a mall coin fountain,” you admitted. You wanted to kick yourself. Up until that point, you’d been rather proud of your nifty little idea. But when you said it out loud, you sounded ridiculous! You could barely hide the reactionary wince, much less how your breathing hitched and hiccuped with nervousness. Just as soon as it had come, the hope that perhaps this man was different disappeared, leaving you awaiting his ridicule.

A ridicule that never came. Instead, there was quiet between the both of you. Perhaps he was at a loss for words?

“Mm,” he hummed, making you tense with expectation. You glanced at him just enough to see him nod, his blue eyes still focused on the canvas before him. “Go on . . .”

You blinked. Was he . . . for real?

“I . . . What more is there to say?” you wondered. The entire night, nobody had really asked for more on your part. They usually just took whatever purple prose you gave them and left it at that. Your initial assumption was right after all: This gentleman was cut from a different cloth from the lot.

He pursed his lips and shrugged. “What inspired this?”

“Oh, uh . . . Well . . .” Was it worth telling him? Aw, hell: you’d already made a bit of a fool of yourself being honest, so what harm was there in doing it some more? “I did it because I never saw anything about a mermaid that lived in a mall fountain, collecting the coins people toss in there.”

You didn’t even have a chance to worry about his criticism before the man’s features broke into a smile. It wasn’t like the others’ more courteous grins; this one reached his eyes, making their icy coolness warm and welcoming. You hated the cheesiness of it all, but for a very split second you wished that you could be a mermaid in them.

He chuckled once again. “Can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything concerning a coin-hoarding mermaid myself, let alone a professional art piece.” It was small, but the assurance made you offer your own smile.

“Well . . . But then maybe I have . . .” At that, your heart dropped. There it was: The anticipated criticism. He thought you were a hack after all: Uninspired, boorish, unskilled, whatever word there was to describe a person who didn’t know how to use a fan brush properly if any.

The wound stung as one so sudden should: Heavily and down to your core. You wanted the floor to open up and eat you whole. Or better yet: You wanted to climb into your apparently uninspired painting and drown in the mall fountain. But none of those could be an option, and neither was the possibility of hiding in the bathroom or an empty corridor. Instead, you had to put on a brave face and do your best to get through the moment.

“Oh?” you uttered. Your throat pained from the threat of anxiety. “Where do you suppose? I’ll admit, I’m not much into contemporary art so I don’t know the what’s what of what if you catch my drift.” You tried to weakly smile at your sad attempt for a joke. God, this so wasn’t what “making it” felt like.

But the man didn’t offer a courteous hint of laughter. Nor did he offer you a verbal response. Instead, he turned to face you. You did the same, even though you really didn’t want to. But it was the polite and expected thing to do when being confronted. Damn politeness and courteousness.

You weren’t sure how to respond when the man began to make work of his right sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and beginning to roll the rest of it up. Your paranoia was unfortunately the first to respond due to your preexisting discomfort of the entire ordeal of an evening. You were just about prepared to scream, yelp, make any kind of distressed call -- only for it to trickle out into a gasp. An amazed exhale. The image the man presented to you on his wrist was small. Clearly, for it to be recognized for what it was, it needed a larger stretch of skin to belong to. But you knew what it was: You knew those swirls, the placements of those flecks of gold, those blues and greens surrounded by white.

For the umpteenth time that evening, your breathing changed. Only, you were pretty positive that none of your deep breathing would be necessary this time around; you would be more than happy to look at your painting on your soulmate’s skin for the rest of the night.

Epilogue:

“Mr. Blanc, please,” you insisted. “You’ve grown up with that thing on your arm, surely you’re bored with it by now. You can have your pick of the gallery. Hell, I’ll even make you something on request!”

Pickings hadn’t become slim, but the night had ended surprisingly successful. Well, surprising to you: You hadn’t expected anyone to buy anything of yours that evening, let alone six. You supposed that perhaps they just wanted to participate in the elitism brought on by owning newcomer art. Benoit, however, insisted that the buyers simply had functioning eyes. What a sweet-talker your soulmate was.

You watched as he shook his head stubbornly, eyes still fixated on the painting that adorned his wrist. He’d seen all the other remaining paintings, and even the ones that wound up selling by evening’s end. They were all gorgeous, he insisted, but . . .

“Benoit, if you will, Ms. (Y/N),” he corrected, apparently missing the irony. He gestured insistently at the composition. “And no. I . . . I truly would be quite satisfied with this one.” He heard you raspberry in defeat as you made your way back to his side, folding your arms in exasperation.

“Seriously, though,” you sighed. “Is a painting of a mermaid dwelling in, like, a fountain you can find nearby an Auntie Anne’s really . . .” You waved a hand as if searching for the right word. “. . . Befitting? Of a detective’s abode? I was thinking more of a bucolic piece or like a portrait of some kind or . . .” You trailed off, only to be met with an amused huff.

“Some detective I am,” Benoit muttered. He broke his gaze back to you and placed his hands on his hips. “Took me well over a damn decade or two to learn what it even was. And only because you told me!”

#benoit blanc x reader #benoit blanc #knives out imagine #knives out imagines #knives out x reader #regrettablewritings #for anyone wondering: I think Reader's tattoo would be of a flower. Or a random doodle.#something Benoit made while not thinking and they just so happened to glance at it

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psychemeanscure · 3 years

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PART 27 {Uhm.. Still have audience for this? Surprise? 😌 guess another long days of next update as is. I miss you guys though.😩😙}

She needed to make sure, blinking number of times for she not need another ghosting.

But she’s not as there he is, Jang Taeyoung in his simple summer polo attentively approaching on her way from afar. The moment she least expected has finally come to light. The man she’s been looking forward to yet the very reason now she’s backing out. And yes, she is. Turning her way at the opposite side, denying things isn’t true like usual. Shutting eyes, clenching fist, interchanges she had to do. Strength she needed to overcome. Walking as far she can be.

He was abashed. For a while, he has to process his women’s behavior. Sung Eunyoung on her back, turning on the path opposite to him. He obliged to stop his tracks, prying the sight of her retreating figure from the glaring sun as he has to use a hand to protect his eyes.

“Sung Eunyoung!”

The voice that made halt her steps a bit till she continued. Stupidly scolding her own. “Mierda, Sung Eunyoung. What on earth are you doing? You’re running away, seriously?”

“Sung Eunyoung.”

He’s following, she can tell for his voice is getting nearer with her still whispering on her own, shaking head. “No. This isn’t true. He isn’t true. It’s alright. You’re doing the right thing, keep moving.”

But she wasn’t allowed to go further as the words of the man towing her finally make her stilled. “Don’t make me repeat myself woman, or you would not like what I’ll do next.”

Few more steps and she can already feel him behind her. Feeling the bazaar breath, she had not felt from the past three years. She’s tempted. “I’m here.”

His baritone vocal that had always fill the depth of her systems. She urged to be silent. She may not still see his actions yet she can picture his questioning look, tilting head, both hands intact in its pant pockets, waiting for her to turn to face him on her own accord. Suppressing himself not to give a single contact on her, but she didn’t for the only thing she did is to gulp an invisible lump in her throat, not even a peek was executed.

That’s how he decided. He’ll give in. Comprising their first touch after a long time. He missed her. Jerked by his sudden action, she can only stare of nowhere, riveting by the caress who had always given her goosebumps. Now, just a turn and will be meeting the reason again.

He longed for this. He realized that having the thought of feeling her tenderly, anticipates him like forever. His calloused hand that maneuvered the points of her elbow, he itched her to face him and she did.

She wanted to refuse but her body doesn’t want to. She’s moving how he wanted her to do. “There you are.”

Yet her consistence went through. Cannot attain to face him besides her lips parted in bewilderment, orbs staring so blankly at the expanse of his collarbone while gentle wind blowing the plain fabrics of his summer shirt. She ain’t still ready to look at him. “Hey, allow me to see you. Please?”

The drawing circles by her elbows and the softness of his plead isn’t helping either for she instantly became a hypnotize prey obliged to follow orders of her predator, not realizing how her actual reaction did to him.

“Why with that cold stare?”

By chuckling, he responded as anything doesn’t matter because she has always been the perfect image for him. An Aphrodite anyone cannot judge with flaws. That’s his girl. She is, well except that she’s not speaking to him still. “It’s me, Sung Eunyoung.”

Another try of pushing yet for another avoiding. She ignored his sight as she shifts by her side direction instead. “Talk to me, can’t you?” putting his most substantial voice which only made her gulp with no choice. “So you’re alive and flesh after all.”

Guessing her knowing words, he concludes. “You’re mad at me, I see.”

Feeling accused, she defended herself like a bulldozer instantly moving to its tracks stomping every rigid rocks that gets her way. So it did, the moment she finally faces him, word attack by words. Argument between arguments. They began each other’s impulsiveness.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Indeed, you didn’t but it seems you do.”

“Are you mocking me now, Jang Taeyoung?”

Straight as she wanted it, she felt proud all of a sudden. Even surprised by how she reacted, different to how she expected. Like the Sung Eunyoung he always knew, not the other way around. Not the vulnerable her now.

Yet for Jang Taeyoung, nothing was a defeat for it is accomplishment. Coy smile appearing as he was bestowed by the retort he’s been waiting with. “Finally. It’s been a while, Eunyoung-ah.”

There he expected air will go on light but seeing her unceasing coldness, he knew she’s being serious since. “If this was just all jokes for you Jang Taeyoung, then we should haven’t met all along. Everything about this meeting just became useless. “

In a snap, the coyness in him faded away as he watched her turning deportment. Passing by his sturdy stance, he decided to reveal swiftly.

“I was in coma.”

“What?”

Looking back like a flash, waiting by the shutters of facts she desired to hear right there and then. “Did I heard you right? Coma, you say?” shaking her head, she refused to believe. “I tell you Jang Taeyoung, if this is another of your schemes I swear I rather---“

“Left posterior cervical region of the neck, above and medial to the scapula.”

“W-what?”

Taken aback by how she has been given a quick medical terms, she urged to listen. Eyes which had bow down on the ground was now heading up to meet hers. “I was shot from that vital parts as it wasn’t surprising for my brain to be affected. I never intended to but except for your blur images, I can’t remember the rest of you Eunyoung.”

She was tongue-tied. Eaten by her own words, absorbing every details he inexplicably confessed. “I… I’m not following, loco.” Eyes bulge in more skepticism. “I have forgotten about you. That’s what I’m saying, Sung Eunyoung.”

Now she regrets everything she said. Wishing to withdraw even its already impossible. “I-I’m sorry… I didn’t know.” Words she can only utter almost unheard for it was her turn to meet the grounds. He comprehends. Tending the remaining steps between them, he softly lifts her chin up to face him again. Giving his very gentle response only for her to see. “Don’t be please. Hm, Sung Eunyoung?”

From her chin, he traces the side of her neck as she can only feel the warmth of his touch, friction of their frons. “I have never, once thought of you being sorry because of me.” She can only close her eyes to comprise the earnests of his every word. “You’re no fault. I want you to know that. You can, right?”

The curls of his brows, reassurance of his orbs. She knew, it will always be the death of her vulnerability. For only cascaded into her eyes was the blurry tears she wanted to show off since and when the trembles of her chest met his composed ones. The lenient embrace letting out each other’s yearnings at last.

“Guess, gathering back my memories of you wasn’t as bad after all. You were still stunning as I can still remember. My dazzling volatile bulldozer. I have missed you.”

A gentle peck by her eyes, a caress on her back. They stayed on that position before he finally decided to pull away, wiping her tears and cup her cheek. An eternal frustration of him back from the past years not given a chance to savor while a crazy dilemma she always been missing for. “S-stop it. I’m s-still mad at you.”

The airhead incoming smirk that had never failed to distort her, right then she knew. He has redeemed his coyness for she needed to find a best unfished excuse to hide her uncommonly embarrassment. “You’re blushing? Just like that, I’m not even half way of doing so?”

Being peeked by her obvious state anyway. Yes, she’s definitely hating herself right now. “Shut up.”

Crunched by her messed up terms, she walks out instead. Stomping through the fine smoothness of sands. She had finally manage to brought back her usual self even when the result isn’t what she pictured. Being followed by the overconfident loco who’s annoyingly laughing behind her.

“Stop. Teasing me, will you?”

Emphasizing her every word. She did mean all she said. Swiftly taking her wrist, he compromised. “Hey, I just miss doing it with you. I’m sorry? Forgive me, hm?”

There’s something different.

She can’t seem to figure it out well, except for one thing. She’s facing the soft Jang Taeyoung she had never imagine before. Giving up otherwise as she let him obtain what he wishes.

Funny how one moment they’re defending each other’s arguments but then here they are, ended lightly. He liked it. The feeling of their twist and turns, she opened the door for him. “C-Come in. Not a bit spacious like my usual though but anyway, soothe yourself well.”

Finally, her next word from the last compromising talk they went through. Indeed, they have been muted the whole time of their walks. The raging silence that field both them. She’s unable to create a topic except being quiet while he decided to go along. He waited and it did. Quite an interval but ‘whatever’ that’s how he thought, he doesn’t care anyway for her presence is simply enough for him. Not when their hands he hardly managed to intertwine would go in halt though.

Sighing, he halfheartedly let go, giving her intended nuance to get her keys and open her home. A by the shore abode he did not expect coming from her. Gone the luxury of a Sung Eunyoung for he has been introduced by the prim and modest today. Hurriedly stuffing things, she left disorganize. He urged to sit by a near settee, eyes cannot stop scanning her whole place, feeling new about everything.

For her, it was a disturbing one. She cannot even dare to meet his eyes which she knew he already notice as well. She can only thank him for not doing his usual teases. “Sorry, a bit messy. U-uhm. Want something though? Drinks in mind?”

He has a lot say actually, but he chose not to other than staring at her. She felt it, yet she can only act like heedless. She’s troubled. Or rather, she simply doesn’t know how to start over. “Anything will do.”

He took the simplest instead while swiftly answered by her nod. “O-okay. I’m going to get you one for a second then. You wouldn’t mind waiting?” as it was also his turn to nod over a small smile ahead. Palms starts to sweaty the moment she reaches her kitchen, becoming nervous all of a sudden.

“Mind if I look around?”

His permitting question from the living room, answered by her roaring dumbfoundment. “As… as you please!”

“Mierda. What the hell is happening with you, Sung Eunyoung.” For she can only share a pissing whisper on her own. Jang Taeyoung in the other hand, serenely let himself to look around just how he’s permitted as it did take a second for her to serve him refreshments. She found him standing by the displays of her achievements, putting off the tray on the living room table, she gets his attention clearing her voice.

A regarding look he has to show contemplating between something he wanted and what is needed. She notices, so she questions. “Is there something wrong?” A glint of diminishing response, he chose the latter. Simply moving to her pace instead, sitting back as he pay attention to the serve she offered. “Tea?”

Nodding, she answered. “Mint. Though I’m not quite sure if it’s one of your preference, knowing yo---“

“I’m learning. Thank you for this, Eunyoung.”

“—liquor has always been your best option. I’m pleased. Good for you then… Jang Taeyoung.”

Surprised indeed for she almost can’t hear her own words. Change. Time isn’t the only thing changes after all for it also the person she least expected. Talking with manners with a Jang Taeyoung never been on her list. She can swear on it.

But if not because of his chuckle and grip to her wrist, she could have still stuck in her position standing above him whose actually ready for his sensible bicker. “Guess my neck will definitely face his destined rigidity any minute. So will you sit for me now please, Eunyoung-ah?”

‘She’s spacing out.’

That’s the thought he could only think of. Even if he doesn’t like doing it so soon, he needed to. He has to give the time she seems requesting. Because from the moment she seated like what he wanted to, not a single flex conversion happened other than blandness, as if a simple questionnaire seeking for its straight answer which ends up in awkward silence instead.

It had never been a thing between them since, so why now? A kind of consequence from their releasing attraction, is that it? F*cking then. Yet even all of the cursing he wished to banter, he still chose to give it one more try. “Eunyoung, ask me anyth---“

Just to be halt by a phone call, yes. For that’s it! He’s close of deciding. Winced from the sudden call this time, it was her turn to be hesitant to ask for permission. “U-uhm. Would you mind if I take this call for a moment?”

He can only approve a nod on her. Standing up as she moves few steps away from him, she can only bite a lip by her own indicative excuse. To be honest, she can actually decline it easily, learning it was simply her nosy colleague Judy who called. But her retreating thought of chance avoiding him gave her the idea. Using it at least as a breathing break from their unhelping state. Screw herself for doing so!

“You’re leaving?”

She almost missed Jang Taeyoung quietly exiting without her knowledge. If not with her fast reflexes she surprisingly thanked afterwards. She had reached him by the steps of her porch, turning eyes glued by her gripping hand on his own shoulder. He looks up to her. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to---“

“I’ll give you time.”

“W-what?”

Facing her on the same match orbs this time, he repeated. “I said I’ll give you time.”

Not expecting the turns of event, she needed to retort abruptly. “But...” She swears. She doesn’t understand herself right now. A while ago she just wanted to avoid him. Now that he’s leaving to give her amply space, she doesn’t want him to. ‘Really, Sung Eunyoung?’

She can only scold herself once again. “How are you?”

It was a statement. She knew what he intended to comply. “Here, doing good.” Letting her remember how she actually behaving earlier. “I see you have become the educator like you dream of.” A big slap of her senselessness. Tucking in its both hands in his pockets, fixated eyes lock into her.

“And you only said thank you. Just by that fact Eunyoung, I can simply see you aren’t ready for this.”

“T-this?” Her degrading look on the ground can only let him convince of something. A blow through the air, he finally discharges his suppressing complains. “Yes, this. If you don’t want me to leave even, you should have talk to me in the first place Sung Eunyoung. You’re confusing me.”

Shutting eyes from the guilt she’s feeling, she admitted. “I really am so---“

“Enough of it please, woman. Apologies isn’t what I need anymore.” Crumbles of his brows starts to falter upon him.

“But it’s my fault! It was all my fault, Jang Tae---“

“Fuck this.”

Scoop by the raging man in front of her, brushing hers against his. She can no longer fight back for she also resigned. A savoring soul of fervor that always meant craving for him while a hidden plea for hers. The wilderness of his tongue that relentlessly a gasping for her and a tempting attempt throughout his by her silky ones. They truly equally banded. And with a last chaste by her plump lips, he opts to release. ‘For now.’

Yes, he thought otherwise. “Was that why you keep on pulling yourself away from me? Huh, Sung Eunyoung?” she chooses to answer in silence. And as if he understood what she meant behind the line, he nods by his sensing conclusion. “Dammit it is. I should have corrected you all the while about that f*cking faults!” Frowns of self-dismay pondered upon him.

“But I eventually did, Jang Taeyoung. I harmed you, can’t you see?”

“While you also heard me clearly that day.” Eyes laid onto her clutching hand of his shirt, she struck by her own words. “I did…”

“Then you expect me to blame the woman I confess my whole heart with? Bullsh*t. I didn’t even consider you one, and I will never be. Now, can’t you see?”

Eyes swiftly meeting his, she surrendered.

Towering Jang Taeyoung, taking her chin up for him to see whom he called his. “Jang.”

The word he’s been waiting for, finally uttered from her husky contralto he always admired. “God, how I missed that pet name of yours, woman. If you only knew.”

Hitch by her own breath as he brought her close to him. Nose touching the outline of hers. A hand to her neck while the other’s on the extremities of its forearm. He overjoyed. Invading another kiss saying, all of him. Dragged through the pillars of her porch, she can only get a hold by its banisters while free ones palpably clinging onto him. Bended by the intensity of their present. Hunger that had drought for a long time…

Has now flowing on its own.

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mcrmadness · 3 years

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Gosh I have a TERRIBLE urge to post some die ärzte fanart content or other creations here RIGHT NOW but the thing is: I should create that before I can post it!!!

I just spent some time editing a few art behind-the-scenes posts and idk if those interest that many people so it’s not really the same as posting actual art - all of those drawings or comics I have already posted here before anyway. And my comics are not really that liked here anyway so I guess I’ll keep drawing for myself and those... idk, 5? 6? people who seem to find them even relatively interesting. I still have 3 more comics waiting to be drawn out there. I mean, I did the lines for the panels and I should just get to sketching whenever I just get on that mood again.

I also have this other drawing process I’m very excited over and want to start working on asap BUT. There’s this one big but. My current pencil WIP. I usually never start a new project if I haven’t finished with the previous one because that reduces the chances for ever getting motivated for continuing the WIP in the future.

And I figured that I really love the part where I am drawing, blending and erasing and seeing the drawing to come alive and turn into 3D image BUT I hate the fact I can never get the lines perfect at one go and I then spend days on polishing some fine details and I still don’t get anywhere. I just feel that I’m trying to run in deep snow and all I do is to either walk backwards or simply just be stuck in that snow without being able to move forward at all.

With the current WIP I’m at that phase where I’m stuck to snow but just can’t get forward. There’s things to do and fix but I just absolutely hate it because no matter how hard I try, I cannot achieve what I try to achieve. Sometimes I don’t see what’s wrong (90% of the time), sometimes I do but I feel almost helpless because no line I draw will be the way it should. It’s like I can’t control my hand and I don’t understand why. I think I’m drawing the correct looking line but then I compare it to the image and it’s like from a different world and I wonder if I have even been looking at the same photo as what my hand is trying to copy.

So I really want to start the next project because it involves lots of drawing and blending and erasing - but I have the WIP, too. And I don’t want it to be WIP any longer. I want it to be finished. But I am too stubborn to call it a day because it will bother me forever if I now leave it like it is because it CLEARLY ISN’T FINISHED.

I still look at the previous pencil drawing I did and altho I really like what the technique looks like, it still bugs the heck out of me because it isn’t perfect. There’s so many things wrong with so many things, mainly the eyes, but there’s nothing I can do now because I already used fixative on it. Partially just to prevent mysef from ever touching the drawings again! But now I’m already having trouble looking even at my icon because I drew it but I feel more like I would have butchered that image instead and now seeing my icon will remind me of the bad decision I made and how much I hate the little mistakes in that drawing. Even when I told myself that it’s over now, we’re not gonna touch the drawing anymore, time to move on.

I always get the most angry and frustrated at this part when I try to get everything to look good. Like, I don’t mind if it doesn’t look exactly like the photo, as long as the people in the drawing are recognizable. But the longer I stare at my drawing, the less I recognize anyone from them anymore. I think my partial face blindness really steps out when I see a face for so long I stop... seeing it. Like, I see details but I can’t connect the details to a big picture any longer.

This whole “I can’t see” thing is my biggest flaw in arts. When I say that I can’t see, I really mean it. It’s not that I’m blind or even partially blind, it’s more like I mentally can’t see? It’s not aphantasia, I think I actually have the opposite aka hyperphantasia, but it just feels like my eyes are not connected to my brain correctly. The information that comes in gets partially lost on its way to my brain and my hand only gets half of that information it needs and it can only draw from what I can SEE instead if what is actually there TO BE SEEN.

That’s why I can’t do perfect drawings and that’s why it makes me sad that the comics, that are perfect or almost perfect in my eyes, because I can see them fully in my mind and draw from there what I see; are not appreciated anywhere. Be it fanart or self-comics but especially self-comics are not appreciated here at all. Those might be simple but I like doing them that way. There’s a reason for them to be so simple: my old perfectionism. I needed to invent something very simple to draw so that I don’t need to drive myself crazy with all unnecessary details in everything that eventually always led to me abandoning a comic because it was just way too much work for me to do every time and I was worn out. By my own comics.

Anyway, I try to find that energy and motivation for the current WIP at some point so that I can finally start with the next project sooner or later. Preferably sooner because I really am looking forward to that and can’t wait to get to work on that one! But it might be a good decision to do some or at least one of the comics first. It’s always a bit different process and much more free and easier to make “perfect”, but at the same also challenging and super fascinating learning process.

#mcrmadness' art talk #(die ärzte)

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lemongogo · 4 years

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HNNNNG ART ANATOMY STUDIES ARE SO FUCKING HARD. i can't fucking get it. just nothing looks right, i know you can only practise to improve but I'm not improving

All these artists talking about how anatomy just clicks after they've studied for a bit and proportions just come simply after a bit of studying, or how they study other artists and learn from them or just anything, I don't fucking get it, I don't get how to do it and I;m so frustrated and upset, idk how to get better from here. Obviously I need to practise but the practise always ends in my being upset and disappointed cause it genuinely turned out bad, either anatomy wise or just anything (2/2)

aa ! yeah i get you :-( its really frustrating coming from a place where it just doesnt click, like you said. i relate to u on a molecular level in the sense that. it just. doesnt make sense to me. i watch videos and read tutorials and people only ever talk about their visualization. how they See the body in their head, how they can Imagine the joints moving or how the body bends to accommodate certain poses based on what they’ve learned. but my!!! brain doesnt work like that !! i dont “see” anything. anything i try visualize is composed in mostly tangible thought (aka i feel it on my brain and the back of my head, i dont see a picture) and very abstract lines.

i was just talking abt this with some of my friends and it kinda helped me put into perspective that we (assuming you probably have some different way of “seeing” or thinking of things yourself) cant necessarily draw or learn as a lot of other artists can. i cant create an image in my mind, cant see anything imaginable in depth or be able to rotate anything to look at it from different angles. for me, it sometimes feels like im always playing a losing game?? and its really demotivating, i completely get that. i guess that just means u have to find a way that benefits how u more or less visualize and start adopting trends that make sense to u? revolutionize the way you study. if understanding the scientific aspects of it and applying it to form doesnt make sense, maybe look into sycra’s iterative drawing video. or look at different gestures for a set amount of time (say, 1 minute) and then try to draw the pose from memory. compare to what you referenced it from and make notes on what to improve. for me i guess it just helps to draw a LOT of shit and just slowly get better. i dont have any foundational understanding bc i simply dont know how to achieve that but. over time i just kind of start to adopt what looks “right” to me.

idk i wish i could say more to help u out :( i know its so hard. but youre essentially teaching yourself here when a lot of people who teach anatomy have been taught beforehand, have really good visualization techniques or understanding, and have been practicing soo much. comparison is the thief of joy !! u have to start somewhere and it might feel shitty it might look shitty but its necessary for u to be able to grow as an artist. i have dozens of sketchbooks full of. things that are Wrong or Bad. but i learned from those because i can see what i did wrong and try to work around it in the future.

u only ever see the art people want to post ! its a curated feed; u never see the months or years of practice leading up to those drawings u know.

u got this !! i believe in u !! im sry i couldnt give u any concrete help as to how to learn anatomy (something i struggle w nearly every day) but i hope u can figure out a method tailored to ur needs that make it more accessible to u

#asktag #anonymous #Anonymous

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raendown · 5 years

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I didn’t even realize it was Sunday, I almost forgot to update this >.<

Chapter: 4/9 Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 4161 Rated: M Summary: Walking patrol around a university for mages probably sounded like a wild time but Tobirama has never found it all that exciting. He’s not even technically supposed to be here. When responding to a tripped alarm becomes a desperate attempt to stay alive, however, excitement is the last thing on his mind. All he’s ever wanted is a quiet life alone with his books until he finds himself bound to Uchiha Madara in the most impossible way and finally learns to think about more than just himself - in a way.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 4

As soon as he stepped foot in the library Tobirama took a deep breath in and held it, savoring one of his favorite smells in the whole world. Madara eyed him strangely and gave a little sniff of his own. Underneath the dust kicked up by dozens of bodies shuffling around there hung the scent of old parchment, ink, leather bindings, the stink of the glue from cheaply made tomes. If peace and relaxation had a scent it would be this. Already Tobirama could feel the tension sliding away from him and he deliberately ignored the look Madara was giving him as he dragged them towards his favorite table in the far back corner where most people knew better than to disturb him. Just because he’d agreed to let Madara do his own thing with whatever students found him here didn’t mean he had to make it easy for them to do so. One or two at a time was one thing but he was really hoping this didn’t turn in to a full blown class right next to him.

On their way back to the table he snatched a few books off the shelves, handing most of them over to his partner without thinking much about it. He only had one hand available to him at the moment and it was busy pulling down new worlds to explore. Madara only really seemed to realize that he was placidly accepting them all when the pile grew so high it obstructed his vision and the weight of them all became painful where their hands were clasped under one side of the stack.

“I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?” he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“Perhaps. If I want more later I can always drag you along.” Tobirama snagged some of them back and together they trundled on over to the table he liked best.

As soon as they settled in to adjacent chairs Tobirama disappeared behind two books at once, furrowing his brows and determined to ignore the adolescent boy he could already see approaching them. He hadn’t expected anyone to find them so quickly, although he supposed they hadn’t made much of an effort to hide their entrance.

“Uchiha-sensei, it’s good to see that you’re okay! You’ve been out of class for days but no one will say why!” The boy even sounded earnest in his worry. Madara preened next to him while Tobirama rolled his eyes in disbelief.

“I’m fine, Kiba. Where’s Akamaru?”

A quite woof caught Tobirama’s attention, popping his head over the stack of books to see a cute little puppy grinning happily from his place inside the student’s book bag. He preferred cats himself but dogs had their own allure in some cases. The one hiding there was certainly cute with his tiny pink tongue and his floppy ears, not the sort of puppy one turned down a chance to pet.

“Don’t tell, please,” Kiba begged them. “He’s not supposed to be in here but he promised not to chew on anything! He just stays in my bag!”

“Familiars are supposed to stay out of study areas,” Madara reminded the boy. Kiba drooped sadly in time with his dog. “I won’t tell if you let me hold him for a bit, though.”

“Alright!”

Tobirama did a quick mental check to make sure his jaw hadn’t dropped entirely off his face as Madara maneuvered their hands apart while pressing their sides together so he could accept the little puppy and greet it cheerfully. Akamaru, as was apparently its name, greeted him back with another polite woof and a few licks up the center of his face. Instead of getting mad or jerking away in disgust Madara only chuckled and settled the pup in his lap for a good scratch behind the ears.

It was at that point that Tobirama began to question if this was really Madara that he’d been bound to or just a really close lookalike. Where was the uptight fool who never took so much as a step out of bounds or did anything unexpected? What happened to the man whose temper flared up at the slightest hint that someone might be breaking a rule? It was like he was holding a complete stranger’s thigh.

Which was kind of creepy and not a mental image he wanted to focus on.

He noted Madara giving him a look from the corner of one eye that would have been inscrutable if not for the connection between their minds. Even then it took a minute or so to work through the confusion and unravel everything, from the slight offense at being assumed so uptight to the mild smugness at having disproved such an assumption and even the mostly suppressed happiness to have Tobirama recognize that he wasn’t that bad of a person. That last bit they both ignored.

Despite his insistence that he would be spending their little outing doing his own thing, Tobirama found himself ignoring the book propped up in front of him while instead he observed the way Madara interacted with his students. He was a far cry from the warm paternal type but neither was he cold and aloof the way most of the other teachers assumed him to be. When one of the little buggers stopped by with a question he answered it with no sugar coating, explaining things further when they asked, and although he never held back on telling them they had something wrong he was never cruel about it either.

As much as Tobirama hated to admit it, the man was apparently a descent teacher.

Over an hour after they sat down he finally managed to peel his eyes away from the disturbingly heartwarming sight of Madara hunched over a half finished essay with a tearful young girl and pointing out all the parts where she was on the right track. Clearing his throat as quietly as possible, he forced himself to focus on the book in front of him and not the feelings of pride rolling off the man at his side. Giving his attention to some ancient dead man’s account of a water based summoning he may or may not have gotten to work one time was clearly a better use of his time than speculating over how all of those adolescents could simply ignore it whenever their professor’s fingers began to smoke with frustration. Much more interesting, obviously. It meant nothing that it took forever to convince himself to concentrate on the proper thing.

Like always, once he’d actually managed to sink in to the texts he was reading time seemed to pass him by in a great wave without him noticing in the slightest. It felt like only five minutes later that he felt a shoulder bumped pointedly against his own and resurfaced to discover that he’d gone through four different books as easily as turning to the next page.

“We should eat,” Madara said. When Tobirama looked around there were no students in sight and Madara’s body was turned at such an angle that it looked like he’d been reading the book over Tobirama’s shoulder.

“The hell are you doing?”

“Shut up! You were so absorbed and you felt so happy reading it, I just wanted to see what was so interesting!” He leaned back in his chair with a scowl but it did very little to cover his embarrassment at being caught. Tobirama wondered what was so bad about giving in and finally understanding the draw of research but he didn’t ask. Understanding this man’s brain seemed like a good step on the path to crazy town and he was already farther down that road than he would have liked.

Now that it had been brought to his attention, though, he realized that he was actually starving. Getting some food sounded like a marvelous plan.

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon,” Madara said, checking the shadows coming in from a nearby window.

“If we hurry we can be back in my rooms by the time Hashirama gets there to deliver us some food.” Convincing his brother to hand deliver their meals until they figured out what to do about the whole stuck together situation had actually been pretty easy. All he’d had to do was point out that it would a good excuse for them all to spend some quality time together. Unfortunately for his brother Tobirama had also already come up with a backup plan for sending the man away when he got tired of the company. A headmaster shouldn’t take too much time away from his work, after all, and he delighted in pointing that out every time.

“You, uh, I don’t suppose you were planning to check that one out?” Madara asked. When Tobirama lifted an eyebrow at him he balked. “What! It was interesting, okay? So sue me!”

He did indeed check that one out, along with a couple others that covered similar subjects, but not without projecting as much cocky amusement as he could. Still, Madara helped him carry them back home so he refrained from making any comments out loud.

The two of them had just enough time to find the right spot in Tobirama’s chaotically organized front room to store the new books before Hashirama arrived with a bright smile and three trays of food.

“Room service!” he called out cheerfully.

“Go service your wife,” Madara snapped back reflexively. Tobirama scrunched his face with disgust and shoved his partner against the wall.

“I didn’t need to picture that!”

“Well I didn’t mean it like that!”

Using the excuse of maintaining contact to keep the other shoved against the wall, Tobirama scoffed. “Of course you didn’t, you’re a prude.”

“Hey! I- I have dirty thoughts sometimes!”

“Oh sweet spirits, I didn’t need to picture that either.” He sniggered as Madara shrieked and squirmed with embarrassment under his hold, smoke all but pouring out from the tips of his fingers, while Hashirama hovered by the doorway with a sad little pout on his lips.

“And here I thought you guys had started getting along better,” he mourned.

Tobirama ignored him.

Not wanting to upset his carefully organized mess, he let Madara stand up away from the wall and – after dodging a half-hearted revenge swipe – led them all in to the next room so they could eat lunch. Hashirama had their food packed up in neat little bento boxes that he had clearly sat down and made from the food provided in the common dining hall. Working in sync without having to talk it through, Tobirama perched himself on the arm of his favorite chair while Madara sank down in to the cushions, their bodies connected but their hands free to reach for their meals.

In a show of incredible restraint, Hashirama managed to stay quiet and observe the two of them until everyone had taken at least a few bites each. Halfway through a mouthful of fried chicken he leaned back in his own seat and tilted his head to look at them from a different angle.

“You know, I’m surprised at you Tobi.” His words had Tobirama pausing with food raised halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t call me that. Surprised why?”

“Because you’ve been finishing all the food that I’ve been bringing every time. I only just thought about it now but I know usually you bring a bit of food back here and leave it out for those raccoons that live outside your window. Did they leave? I thought you said you were trying to help them through the winter!”

Trying very hard to convince the ground to open up and swallow him, Tobirama ignored the stare burning in to the side of his head as he leaned forward to hiss at his brother, “They were squirrels, not little trash goblins, now shut your face.”

Hashirama ducked his head like a chastised child.

“Now hold on a damn second.” Madara set his bento down and Tobirama could almost feel the smirk on his face through their link. “You? Feeding the little squirrels outside?”

“You can shut your face too.”

“What, were they helping you with an experiment or something?” He scoffed at his own joke until Hashirama tossed a chopstick at him, sending Tobirama in a coughing fit when it pinged off the center of Madara’s forehead.

“Don’t be mean to my brother! He’s nice! They were little baby squirrels and Tobi was worried that they weren’t going to make it through the season so he was leaving food out for them to stock up for the winter!”

Tobirama immediately stopping choking with laughter, mirth giving way to an embarrassed frown. “Brother! I said shut up! And stop calling me that!”

Snatching up the weaponized chopstick, he threw it back at his sibling and huffed irritably when the man dodged just in time. No one was ever supposed to know about the squirrels. They weren’t important. They were no one else’s business! Hashirama had no right to out him like that right in front of Madara who now had one hand in front of his mouth to cover the sight of his half chewed food while he laughed.

“Aww, has the cold hearted man gone soft?” he teased.

“Madara! I said don’t be mean to my brother!”

Picking out a piece of chicken from his bento, Tobirama threw that too. “Don’t you have work to do, brother? Go bury yourself in paperwork or something. And clean up the chicken!”

“But you threw it at me!” Hashirama sniffled but he did still lean over to pick up the chicken that had just bounced off his shoulder. “Why are both of you always so mean to me? I just wanted to come hang out for a bit! I mean, yes, I should be working on the admission slips for the next semester but still! So cruel!”

His feet shuffled on his way to the door but it wasn’t enough to make either of them feel bad for sending him away. After seeing him three times a day for several days in a row they had certainly spent enough time together not to feel guilty over cutting one lunch short. They both knew he’d be over it in less than five minutes anyway, off to find some other excuse to avoid the work he should be doing.

Alone again, Tobirama avoided looking down at his partner and considered the irony that they had been so looking forward to some kind of company and still ended up chasing away the one person always willing to provide it. Madara pressed at the barrier between their thoughts, the feeling of him still heavy with amused disbelief, driving Tobirama to concentrate as hard as he could on the bento in his lap. Chicken had never been his favorite but it was better than getting made fun of for having a soft spot for animals.

They were defenseless! And tiny! Only a monster would hate little creatures like that. Evidently Madara had thought him a monster but it was hard to find that offensive when he’d thought the same in return until recently. Being wrong was the worst.

“I think that’s the record for the fastest we’ve been able to chase him off,” his partner said out of the blue.

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Should I be saying something else?”

When Tobirama peeked down Madara was looking back up at him with a knowing light in his eyes, more than aware that he was waiting to be made fun of.

“Just shut up.”

“Always putting your best foot forward,” Madara snickered.

By now Tobirama had learned enough about the man beside him to know that if he said anything more he would just be asking for trouble and, while that normally wouldn’t bother him, he had never been a big fan of setting himself in the line of fire. It would be best to just eat his meal quietly and let them both go on about their day.

After lunch they spent the rest of the afternoon doing more tests trying to figure out the exact limit of how far apart they could separate now without pain and for how long. For the first couple of hours they only managed an inch or so for a couple of minutes at a time and always they needed a little while of solid contact to recover from it. Mostly they filled those stretches by sitting together and devouring one of the library books. After a while, though, they managed to stretch the distance to almost two feet and last for nearly ten minutes. It wasn’t much but for two people who had spent the past forever holding hands it was like a taste of freedom.

Hours after he had left with his tail between his legs Hashirama returned bearing three dinners and a smile.

“Guess what? I went back to my office and Mito was already there working on the admission slips! Isn’t that amazing? I just don’t know what I would do without her.” For a few seconds he was gone in to dreamland and Tobirama used that time to swap their meals around so he got the larger portion.

“Drown under your own responsibilities?” he suggested, bringing his sibling back to earth. Madara offered him a fist to pound before opening his own food.

“Tobi–”

“No!”

“Stop being mean to your big brother. I promise I helped her as soon as I saw that she’d started the work herself! It’s not like I actually just sit back and let her do all my work for me all the time. That would just be…well. We’d fight for sure.” Hashirama shuddered at the very thought – and rightfully so. Mito made an imposing figure even when she was in a good mood; when angered she was terrifying.

Half the meal passed by while all three of them were busy reliving their worst nightmares, all of which featured an angry Mito. The silence lasted until Tobirama stood up to brush the crumbs off his lap and Hashirama gasped with shock when he saw the lack of contact between them.

“Oh! Does this mean you two are all better now?” he asked.

“What? No.” Tobirama pinched his lips together disapprovingly. “Did you not listen when your daughter explained what happened to us? This isn’t something that’s going to ‘get better’ as you say.”

“But you guys aren’t touching! So does that mean everything is back to normal?”

Madara scoffed. “Afraid not. I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to normal, per se, but we do have a bit of leeway now and I must say it’s nice to have my own person all to myself again.”

Despite the confidence in his expression and the complete relaxation in the way he was sitting, Tobirama only needed one look at his partner to realize that the man was lying. He refrained from calling him out, however, because that would mean drawing attention to the fact that he felt the same way. Freedom was the jewel they had spent every day chasing after since this whole fiasco began and now that they had it they didn’t like it.

Freedom meant being apart and it was as wonderful as it was terrible. The more Tobirama learned about the man at his side the harder it was to keep insisting they hated each other. Irritating he might be and rough around the edges but not nearly as bad as assumed. Antagonistic and snarky for sure. Heartless dick not so much. Getting some space in between them at last was great when Tobirama thought about all the times one of them was restless and wanted to pace but the other didn’t. It lost a lot of its shine when he thought about how if they kept getting more space Madara could eventually move back in to his own rooms, a subject neither of them had even bothered to bring up since that first day.

“Oi, are you listening?” Tobirama blinked. He had not, in fact, been listening. Had not even been aware the conversation continued after he got lost inside his own morbid thoughts.

“Did I miss something important?” he asked instead of admitting to anything. Madara snorted but Hashirama forgave him with an easy smile.

“Well Madara was saying how nice it was to get out and see something other than these rooms for a change and we started talking about things that could get you guys out again. Just for a little while! I know how much neither of you want people staring and wondering why you’re holding hands.” Something in Hashirama’s smile looked hopeful for a few terrible seconds until Tobirama glared hard enough to make it go away again.

“Go on…”

Waving his friend off, Madara took up the recap. “I told him I was anxious to get back to class and he suggested you sit in with me. You wouldn’t have to do anything and you could sit at my desk where we would be close enough to touch; I’m sure we can manage to be subtle about it.”

“About as subtle as your hair,” Tobirama snapped. Then he wrinkled his nose and grumbled, “Habit. Sorry. That’s an interesting idea, actually.” It would be fascinating to compare how different the man was when faced with dozens of students at once rather than one on one, if his lectures were as boring as Tobirama remembered from when he took the class. If he tried very hard he might be able to convince himself that was the only reason he was agreeing to this.

“Excellent! If it becomes a regular thing maybe Tobi can be your teacher’s assistant! Oh, that would just be so cute!” Hashirama clasped his hands together with joy – then yelped when Tobirama leaned over to shove him sideways.

“Not likely.”

When he sat back down Madara was staring at him with a worried expression. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“I – what?”

“You said ‘as subtle as my hair’, what’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, I guess? It’s just…puffy. All that volume, it basically arrives everywhere five minutes before the rest of you does. I’d ask if you brush it but I know you do.” Tobirama lifted one eyebrow in judgment as Madara patted the sides of his head anxiously. He would never understand why anyone bothered to grow their hair out. After spending his childhood watching Hashirama nearly choke to death every time he forgot to braid his hair before bed Tobirama had decided that he would never grow his own out, not even as long as his shoulders. How Madara avoided the same fate was a mystery.

“Of course I brush my hair! You brushed my hair for me yesterday!” Madara crossed his arms in offense and turned away. It would have been more believable if he hadn’t then leaned back in to Tobirama’s side like an angry girlfriend desperate for attention.

Hashirama watched them with wide eyes and a smile that could not spell anything good.

“Brother…you brush his hair for him?”

“It was only a couple of times!” Tobirama protested. “And only because he was too lazy to do it for himself and I couldn’t stand the rat’s nest!”

“That is just so sweet of you! Aw, you guys really are getting along better!” Clasping his hands together again, Hashirama beamed like the annoying little sunshine he was, determined to find any excuse to shine.

With their minds melded the way they were Madara and Tobirama were able to look at him in perfect sync, wrinkle their noses, and grumble, “Ugh.”

Then they both turned away in silent agreement to ignore him for the next few minutes until he apologized for getting unnecessarily mushy. After that he made sure not to mention anything about how much nicer they were treating each other and instead started chattering about who had been covering Madara’s classes while he was away and how happy the students would be to see him back.

Used to spending most of his days alone with ink and paper, Tobirama eventually checked out of the conversation and let the two best friends carry on without him, subtly dragging one of the books towards him that they hadn’t had time to put away when Hashirama showed up. Neither of them seemed to notice when he cracked it open across his lap but before he could get lost in the knowledge awaiting him he peeked over at Madara with his eyes narrowed curiously.

Hopefully Madara wasn’t paying enough attention to the link between them to feel how interested he actually was in going to sit in on the man’s class. After learning so many new things about a man he once thought he understood inside and out, Tobirama found his attention piqued.

What else did he not know about Uchiha Madara?

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #fanfiction

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myfriendpokey · 5 years

Text

50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole.

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another. So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view” and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it.

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

#vgames #50 short games #indie games #gamechat #game criticism #notes

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miraculous-content · 7 years

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Miraculous Season 2: Episodes 1-6 (review)

A few people requested that I talk about the episodes of Miraculous that have aired in France. For those who maybe watch the show in other languages, I’ll be putting it all under a “read more”.

I’ll make another post - also under a “read more” - if anyone wants me to elaborate on any of my opinions, so feel free to send asks if you so desire!

Episode 1 - The Collector

Compared to the opening episode of Season 1, this - in my opinion - is a vast improvement. All of the tiny plot details mesh together beautifully and combine into a great episode.

Highlights

- The reveal of Gabriel being The Papillon. You already know before the de-transformation, but just the slow build-up is beautiful. It’s also great seeing Nooroo again eVEN IF IT RIPS MY HEART OUT.

- Marinette and Master Fu’s conversation. More plot development and another look at the fox and bee miraculous! I like seeing them occasionally.

- Chat’s reactions to Gabriel possibly being The Papillon. My heart was absolutely breaking. Also, Ladybug being supportive of Chat is A+ 10/10

- The fight scene is really good (a lot of the fight scenes in Miraculous are, honestly). The angles are really dramatic, and my favorite shot is when the camera is moving in a circle as they fight.

Lowlights

- I know this is kind of a nitpick, but it bothers me how Lila technically gets away with stealing the book from Adrien. I appreciate the character it took for Marinette to lie and say that she took the book for herself, and I know that Lila still technically got yelled at (just not about the book) and also had that whole episode where she was akumatized but, I dunno. The fact that Adrien nor Gabriel ever know who really stole the book irks me just a little. Anyone else agree, or is it just me?

Notes

- I wonder if the camera in Gabriel’s room only captures video, or only takes pictures every couple seconds? I looked back on Volpina just to check (the images don’t line up with the original footage by I digress--), and I feel like they’d at least hear Adrien talking to Plagg or see Adrien talking to seemingly nothing?

...Unless they really do know that Adrien is Chat Noir... oh dear.

- I no longer know how to feel about Gabriel.

- The biggest plot twist of this episode for me is that Nathalie knows. I was not expecting that at all. It also changed my opinion of her a bit because, I remember seeing her in Origins, looking away from Adrien when he was thanking her. At first, I thought she was just trying not to show emotions, but now I’m not so sure. How much does she care about Adrien, really?

- THE TAIL???? IT COMES OFF??????????????

the other big plot twist

Episode 2 - Baddy Bear

The “Chloe redemption” begins, I suppose? I know a ton of people have been wanting this for a while. I’m more of a “I love Chloe but I hate Chloe” person; I love how over-the-top she can be, but she’s really obnoxious when they don’t take her all the way with it. The episode finds a bit of a middle-ground with that, where I like her half of the time and find her a bit irksome for the other half.

Highlights

- Adrien being stern with Chloe made me gasp. I had been waiting for this moment since Kung Food and it was so worth it. (I think the scene itself is also very nicely shot.)

- The Papillon relying on Chloe’s “natural cruelty” had me laughing so hard. The fact that they actually referenced the fact that Chloe has akumatized so many people was a super nice touch.

- I already liked the butler from the Antibug episode (one of my few highlights from that episode), but I like him even more here! He’s so patient and nice and AHHHH.

- The Adrienette. Oh sweet love square, the Adrienette. This episode nearly killed me. Adrien, you oblivious fool. Also, Marinette’s look of complete dead as Adrien compliments her macaroon was beautiful.

- Chloe trying her best to be nice was enjoyable to watch, and she actually has some cute lines later on, like when she was helping Ladybug (right as she pulls on Chat’s tail and right before she starts turning the umbrella).

Lowlights

- Completely personal preference, but any comparison between Chloe and Marinette irks me (maybe because it reminds me of The Evillustrator?). I know Alya was teasing Marinette, but I kinda twitched at that one line. I suppose it just feels like a really obvious joke that the show’s above at this point.

- Chloe’s ego gets a bit cringe-y near the end of the episode. Ladybug and Adrien brush her off, but I still think they could’ve toned it down just a little bit.

Notes

- Nice subtle “Chloe’s mother left” for the few seconds we see Chloe’s drawing memories. I wonder if she left on a business trip or if she left because the mayor is such a jerkface. I could understand either.

- The bear is cute and I want it. WHERE ARE THE “CHLOE’S BEAR” PLUSHES, ZAG???

- I’m glad that Chloe didn’t turn in one episode, especially because I do feel that she made progress. She did something nice for the sake of Adrien, and now she just has to do something nice because she wants to.

- I know that most people hate that Chat got put under someone else’s control, but it doesn’t bother me when it happens, so I don’t have anything to say about it.

- I’m a dork for size-changing so tiny butler had me dying.

Episode 3 - Audimatrix

The meta is so strong in this episode. Also, CHAT JUST WANTS HIS KISS.

Overall, honestly not my favorite. I think it might be because I was getting second-hand embarrassment. I don’t think the episode is bad though. It’s good!

Highlights

- Ladybug’s entrance. It’s awesome and you can see her inner Marinette as she lands.

- Chat has finally seen the kiss. That alone is worth its own point in the highlights.

- The animation seems a little more bouncy this episode. It’s nice.

- I enjoy Audimatrix’s design and the lengths she goes to just to get her story. The episode reaches a bit of a dark place and I think that’s cool.

- Alya and Marinette’s talk when Marinette returns. I could really feel the friendship between them.

Lowlights

- I don’t understand how Marinette could make the mistake with her babysitting being on the same day as the interview? It’d be one thing if Nadja wasn’t doing the interview, but she is, so shouldn’t Marinette seeing Nadja remind her immediately of the interview on the same day? Whether Ladybug or Marinette accepted first, I feel like even fumbly Marinette wouldn’t make this mistake?

- Going off of the last point, the babysitting subplot feels a little awkward here. It might be because the plots of the last two episodes felt so solid, but the subplot and main plot feel disconnected.

- The people helping Nadja’s show are really frustrating. I know they’re supposed to push Nadja to her limit so she gets akumatized, but they have to nail her for every little thing that goes wrong. I’m guessing that maybe Nadja has already tried and failed to get her own show or something, but it drives me a little crazy.

Notes

- “I love croquettes!” Chat is cute.

- This episode has a different feel than other episodes, likely due to the interview. It’s not bad, not good, just different.

- Ladybug’s “lucky vision” highlighting all the boxes had my brain reeling. So many boxes...

- I need more of Ladybug just pinning akuma down. That move she did was rad.

- I was actually uncomfortable the first time I saw this episode because I didn’t have subtitles, and it made it seem like Ladybug was the only cause of Nadja’s akumatization, which I thought was so wrong because Ladybug has every right to leave after being pressured so much. I’m glad that wasn’t the case.

Episode 4 - La Béfana

Can we all agree that Chat Noir and Ladybug singing together is cute? Yes? Okay, great. Speaking of great, this episode was pretty great too!

Highlights

- Some plot development with the charm that Tikki gives Marinette! It’s so cute that Marinette turned it into a necklace.

- Marinette’s grandmother is a really solid character. Her design and personality are both very nice, and having her related to Marinette gives her a bit of an advantage since a connection is already there.

- This episode avoided a lot of tropes that I’d been steeling myself up for. I was ready for the whole “Marinette thinks they’re planning a birthday party but they’re not” since she was building it up so much, but no, they were actually planning her party! In-between, I was expecting the “Gina doesn’t understand that Marinette is a grown-up now” thing to go on forever, but they kept it relatively short. Then, I was ready for the akumatization being because “Marinette lies and talks about the dentist but then Gina comes across the party and realizes it was all a lie”, but they avoided that too by having Marinette be honest.

- Another interesting akuma, this time with both a witch and candy theme! How fun, considering this episode was first aired around Halloween!

- Everyone rallying together just to protect Marinette was so sweet. Not that I thought they’d just leave her, but the fact that they’re all trying to help really helps show that pretty much everyone likes Marinette, which not all episodes portray well.

- Yet another great moment with The Papillon - seems to be a lot of them this season - with him having to say “please”. My sides started hurting with laughter.

- So, this is the second look of complete dead from Marinette’s end, yeah? The Adrienette this season has been awesome and this particular one presents a nice callback to Gamer (regardless of how I feel about that episode, I’m fine with the lucky charm making a return).

- The fact that Marinette actually made something out of the tiny “shirt” that Gina gives her is precious. Marinette is almost too pure, honestly.

Lowlights

- Even though I am glad that they avoided those tropes I mentioned earlier, the first at least is still there, and even though it’s only about a minute long, it feels a little awkward having this motorcycle-riding grandmother doing all these simplistic things with Marinette. I’m guessing the reason is because, back in Gina’s day, she probably wasn’t allowed to do much at the age of fourteen, so she’s just a little back in her own time, but... I don’t know. I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense, but it’s probably the least fun part of the episode.

- I know that Gina wanted to spend the whole day with Marinette and she’s very attached, but seeing her sulk that Marinette is going to this other birthday party feels a little off. I’m sure Marinette would’ve taken her if it wouldn’t’ve been weird for a grandmother to be mixed in with all these teens, but yeah.

Notes

- This is our MariChat episode, and it delivers! Chat wishing Marinette a happy birthday warms my heart.

- Actually, Chat in general has a lot of good moments in this episode!

Episode 5 - Riposte

They somehow fit all four sides of the love square within the first five episodes and I am 100% okay with that. We also get another new character in this one, which is once again fun because this was a great episode!

Highlights

- This is another episode where the action is just top notch, particularly with Adrien and Kagami fencing. Marinette’s look of awe as it ends sums up my feelings pretty well.

- I felt bad for laughing, but the slapstick with Armand D'Argencourt was hilarious.

- It would’ve been so easy to have Marinette give Adrien the point just because it’s Adrien, but I appreciate how they made her seem very genuine in her decision. I legitimately believe that she thought Adrien touched first.

- I enjoy Kagami as a character. Even though she’s the akuma for the episode, you do feel bad for her, and she’s never aggressive with the other characters in her civilian state. She takes her loss like a champ, even if it upsets her. In akuma form, it also intrigues me how she doesn’t go after Marinette, the one who made the call that Adrien won. She just wants her rematch, and the akuma side of her is the one that doesn’t care if it’s an unfair fight.

- The character moments in this were nice and solid. Even though Adrien is still playing his “just a friend” card with Marinette, we see a little more of how he feels about her in general, and we get to see Marinette express a bit of sadness that she’s still “just friends” with him (after that dance in episode 2, can’t blame her). Tikki also plays her typical supportive role, which is good because I feel that Tikki is vital to keeping Marinette grounded emotionally.

- The Ladrien in this episode, I am so weak. I’m always happy whenever they’re just complete love-struck dorks with each other, and the kisses had me squealing.

Lowlights

- This is an extreme nitpick, but when Ladybug is calling Chat Noir, she talks about him “keeping them waiting”. I’m pretty sure she knows that they can only listen to messages on their communicator after they’re transformed, and Riposte hasn’t even been around that long, so the fact that she seems confused/irked by the fact that Chat isn’t here yet is odd.

Notes

- I went frame-by-frame in case you guys were curious; Adrien does actually touch first. I saw his “weapon” bending before Kagami’s did.

Episode 6 - Robostus

Probably the most fascinating akumatization; who knew a robot could get akumatized? Also, I couldn’t even believe it when this episode aired because it’s like, I know I’ve had my lowlights here and there, but I’m very picky and I’d actually liked the first five episodes so far. And then, guess what? I like this one too!

Highlights

- Markov. Just Markov. This little robot is so cute, so endearing, and I love his motivation for wanting to be human.

- Everyone who's been following me for a while know that I didn’t like Gamer, and I’m very pleased that I have an episode now that I enjoy where Max gets some good screentime. He hasn’t changed much in terms of my least favorite to most favorite students, but he plays a nice role here.

- The comedy in this episode isn’t half-bad. I started snickering when the lamp had taken over the mayor’s office. Honestly, I think it would’ve done a better job as mayor anyway. Also, Marinette tricking Ms. Mendeleiev into letting her talk to Mr. Damocles.

- My mouth dropped open as Robostus completely shut down The Papillon’s lair and started firing missiles at him. It blew my mind that Robostus could even do that.

- Bringing the virus back to shut down Markov was such a nice choice for defeating him, especially as the lucky charm also had to play a role in things.

- We got more explanation for how the miraculous wishes would work, so yes! More plot please! That’s always fun!

Lowlights

- I wish they’d used a different way of showing that the computer was infected with a virus. Both me and my best friend are computer nerds and... yeah, it kind of irked both of us. It didn’t ruin anything and it does show what’s happening better than portraying it as an actual virus would, but still. Also, the style of it doesn’t feel like it fits with the show.

- The animation feels a bit more stilted this time around.The animation on Markov and the electronics are fine, but, well, they’re mechanical, so that kind of makes sense. The other characters seem to move a bit more stiffly than usual. In addition, Master Fu’s eyes in the final scenes aren’t staring at Marinette correctly at times, and it’s a little distracting.

- I recognize that the akuma seems to pick its own appearance and Markov naturally wouldn’t be very creative, but I wish they’d either picked different colors or given Markov a human-ish design to fit with his desires.

Notes

- Mr. Damocles and Ms. Mendeleiev are so salty about Markov and Max fixing the computer and it’s very amusing.

- I’m not sure how I feel about Max debating on what to do with Markov, considering that Max has already been possessed by an akuma. I imagine the point is that he’s afraid Markov is too emotionally unstable, but still.

- I wonder if the miraculous wish had something to do with Fu and the Guardian’s temple being destroyed?

Overall

This season so far has surpassed all of my expectations! It’s incredibly rare for me to have this many positive things to say about episodes that come right after another, which means that I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the season!

As for if I had to rank the episodes (this is a bit rough because they’re honestly so close)...

1. Riposte

2. Baddy Bear

3. Robostus

4. La Béfana

5. The Collector

6. Audimatrix

#MC's reviews #ml spoiler #ml spoilers

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wesleybates · 4 years

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The Most Prevalent Web Design Mistakes to Avoid in 2020 and Beyond

Web design as we know it today focuses on deftly combining form and function, all to provide users enjoyable, interesting, and usable visits.

In other words, web design is now all about enhancing the user experience. Today’s web designers strive to fulfill what Internet users need, whether they’re creating a site with minimalist and simple web design or one that’s visually stunning.

Still, mistakes are not uncommon in the world of web design, most of which don’t do the user experience any favours. Let’s take a look at some of the most prevalent mistakes web designers should steer clear of in 2020 and the years to follow.

Pages That Take Forever To Load

There was a time when a page loading fully within 10 seconds or so already makes users happy.

That time is long gone. In 2020, the norm is three seconds or less.

Anything beyond that and people will label a page as one that takes forever to load. Yes, four seconds is already “forever” to many users, which speaks volumes about our ever-shrinking attention spans.

Slow page load speed is something web designers must address. Sure, some other factors may be causing the lag, like web hosting or the Internet speed of users, but web design is often at the top of that list.

Unoptimized images, heavy use of custom fonts, excessive ads, social media script overload, and other factors contribute to slowing down your pages. All of them are web design issues, which means you should avoid them when you can.

Random Use of Stock Photography

Let’s make it clear that there’s nothing wrong with using stock photography per se.

While it’s true that stock photos have nothing on original photography when it comes to setting your brand apart, some businesses simply don’t have the budget to commission a professional photographer.

For them, it’s almost always a choice between mediocre original photos of their staff and high-quality images of impeccably-dressed people in staged situations wearing smiles that come across as fake.

If you have to resort to stock photography, choose images that somehow represent your brand, not a random photo set that seems like something you just put together for the sake of featuring pretty pictures on your site.

If you want to present a polished image for your brand, you should at least pick stock photos where the lighting, the technology being used, the models’ outfits, and other small details are consistent.

Navigation Issues

For Internet users, few things are more frustrating than being led on a wild goose chase while exploring a website.

A bad website navigation structure can easily ruin the user experience. People have very little patience for issues like links that lead to the wrong page, far too many navigation options, and a search feature that doesn’t work, among other things.

You can’t expect people to put up with navigation problems. They will just drop your site like a hot potato, and you’ll end up with a much higher bounce rate.

Navigating your site should be easy, so tweak your web design and do stuff like adding clickable navigation elements, checking all links to make sure they lead to the right place, dividing categories clearly, and linking the logo back to the home page.

Animation Overload

Every year, web design trends come and go. Some trends, however, seem bent on staying. The use of animation and video in web design has been trending for years now and shows no signs of ever leaving.

Animation and video are great, but some web designers tend to go overboard with them. Add the fact that a growing number of web designers are now toying with moving elements, and they eventually end up with websites so distracting that focusing on one thing can be difficult.

Animation is particularly good at drawing the eyes of visitors. Instead of trying to impress them with an animation overload, try placing elements in an area where they will lead people to contact forms, live chat, offers, and other critical elements of your website.

Using Barely Readable Fonts

Video may be getting a lot of attention from users, but people still typically read the written content.

Sometimes, however, web designers use fonts that are either too small or difficult to read.

Ideally, body text should be at 16px, which is quite easy to read regardless of the device you’re using.

Also, avoid using cursive fonts, hand-drawn scripts, and other typefaces that look pretty but offer little in the way of readability.

Use no more than three fonts as well. And if you’re going to use colored typefaces, don’t torture readers with low-contrast text, like yellow fonts on a white background.

Too Many Colors

Colors play a very crucial role in making a website look great. Sometimes, however, web designers go to town and use as many hues as they want.

You don’t need to use a multitude of colors for your work. Ideally, websites should only have two to three colors, although some could reasonably go up to five or even six. Seven or more colors on one website can be uncomfortable for the eyes and confusing for the brain.

Zero Mobile-Friendliness

When users access your website on a mobile device, and they end up doing a lot of pinching and zooming and scrolling sideways just to read anything, don’t expect them to hang around. They will exit your mobile-unfriendly site without hesitation, and you will surely miss out on leads, conversions, and even sales.

Not being mobile-friendly is no longer an option for websites these days, when mobile users far outnumber desktop users.

You have to make your website easier to read, and its buttons easier to tap on mobile devices. Switch to responsive web design, and Google will also love you for it

Stuffing Pages With Too Much Content

A web page filled with quality content is okay, but cramming in too much content—even when it’s of high quality—on one page only makes the whole thing look cluttered.

Go easy on the content stuffing and make sure your web pages look clean and organized. It would also be great if you could leave plenty of whitespace, which allows your content to breathe and make the whole page look more professional.

Too Many Ads

Websites are a business, and ad placements are an integral part of that business.

Some overdo it, though. Too many ads on a page tend to be distracting—even annoying.

Aside from annoying visitors, a plethora of ads can end up undermining the web design in general.

Practice some restraint in this regard because visitors will likely leave if you bombard them with ads every single time.

Autoplaying Videos With Sound

This may be news to some web designers, but many people hate the idea of opening a web page only to be greeted by an autoplaying video with the sound on.

If you have to put that in for whatever reason, the least you can do is turn autoplay off or mute it. That way, you won’t be giving visitors wearing headphones a heart attack when they access your website.

Missing Contact Information

It’s odd that many websites have no contact information, or don’t display them as prominently as they should.

If you want prospective customers to reach you, make sure that your contact information—from your business phone number to social media account links—is displayed in a highly visible spot on your website, like the header or the footer.

Creating a dedicated contact page would also be great.

Ill-timed Pop-ups

There is nothing wrong with pop-ups. They can help encourage visitors to engage with your business more, among other things.

Pop-ups, however, can quickly turn annoying when they appear at the most inappropriate times.

In most cases, pop-ups urging visitors to subscribe or sign up to their mailing list appear the moment they open a page before they even get to read the content they were seeking.

The most irritating part is when the pop-up box is big enough to block the content visitors are about to read completely.

It’s preposterous to assume that your pop-up can convince a visitor to do its bidding without having read a single word of your content.

The right thing to do is give your visitors some time to explore your site before showing that pop-up.

More than twenty years in, web design as a science or art is still at its very early stages. The level of work today’s web designers are capable of turning in may be a far cry from how websites looked and functioned during the 1990s, but it’s still easy for them to make a mistake.

Web design is still evolving, and what may be considered good practice now may no longer be acceptable in the future. Nevertheless, following current best web design practices and steering clear of the mistakes listed above remain the right path to take toward achieving your business website’s goals.

To get more details on web designing please be in touch with the expert Web designer in Denver, CO.

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girl-next-door-writes · 7 years

Text

All I Want

Characters: Tony Stark x Reader

Summary: Post Civil War Tony feels he deserves everything that is coming to him. Being his own worst enemy and locked in his own head will he grab the small ray of hope or will he drown himself in self-pity?

Word Count: 1475 words

Prompt: Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran

A/N: This is the first of my little somethings for @yellowtheremarvelfan and her amazing celebration challenge. It’s a bit of a rewrite of a Dean fic (like a complete overhaul) and I warn you that it is a little angsty but for those of you who know me I couldn’t resist a fluffy ending.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been blasting classic rock constantly in the lab for the past few days which was a sign to everyone to steer clear, that’s if anyone was actually there anymore. The songs, although each with a kicking beat and some epic drum and guitar solos, all had a theme. The singers were pouring out their hearts and though the name of the girl was always different the sentiment was the same, each bringing back memories of that one girl they had once loved and had lost. The unspoken thought that maybe life would have turned out so differently had they just held onto her and Tony sat at a console with this head in his hands, eyes closed as he fought his demons alone. His eyes flickered up to the bottle of scotch. It would be so easy right now in his sleep deprived state to just drown his sorrows, numb the pain so he could just pass out and get some rest.

Letting out a frustrated yell and slamming his fists down on the bench in front of him he cursed himself for everything, each chastisement he had ever received playing on a loop in his mind until he gave in and unscrewed the bottle cap, not even bothering with a glass he took a large swig of the incredibly expensive and smooth amber liquid which burned the back of his throat. He shouldn’t be around people. He was toxic. Instead he had tried to lose himself in work, maybe something that would help Rhodey. The guilt of that whole situation flooded over him and once more the bottle made its way to his lips.

Perhaps partying would have been a better way to go, more of a distraction. It had been months since his last meaningless drunken hook up and although he was sure there were several potential partners in the nearby bars this evening he knew he’d once again be waking up alone. There was something missing. He wasn’t sure why these brief encounters did nothing but make the ache inside his chest worse. No, that was a lie. He knew exactly why but he wasn’t about to let that thought linger in his mind. He certainly wasn’t about to think of her. Letting that thought in gave it potential to grow and he was having enough trouble fighting it without it getting any stronger. It just wasn’t going to happen. Girls, no, women like her, they weren’t for the likes of him. Just look what had happened with Pepper. He didn’t deserve a love like her, not after everything he had done. No. He had been right to barricade himself here in the lab and work. He couldn’t hurt anyone if he was alone.

Just as the lure of the alcohol had grown too much, the temptation to call her was increasing with every sip. Slamming the bottle down as if it had betrayed him, he rose to his feet and began to pace the room like a caged tiger. He had been so certain he was doing the right thing, had been on the right side but the images of his friends in those cells, Rhodeys body laying broken, the hurt and confusion in her eyes as he refused to listen to her, they all haunted him to the point of madness. Something had to give, and maybe that would be his sanity.

He had pushed them all away, so desperate to save everyone he had ended up here, alone, slowly turning his blood into alcohol. Did he not deserve some comfort? Just the tiniest hint that he was not the bad guy. Maybe he should call her, maybe tell her how he felt, hold her in his arms, lose himself in the scent of her shampoo. No. All he needed was a little time. All these feelings should burn out sooner or later given enough time and alcohol. His hand gripped the bottle once more and by the time it hit the table again it was half empty. He was definitely well on his way to alcohol poisoning. He huffed out a chuckle at that thought. A fitting end to a not so super hero.

The image of her from happier times slid effortlessly from his subconscious. She was sitting at the kitchen counter watching him make breakfast, eyes bright as she had laughed and leaned across, reaching out her hand gently wiping the smudge of pancake batter from his cheek. A jolt of electricity had raced through his body at her touch and his eyes fell on her soft lips. All he had wanted in that moment had been to lean across and taste those lips but Steve had appeared and the moment broken.

It was these brief moments that his brain seemed to hoard and pull out just to torture him, especially when he was tired or drunk, probably both. Knocking back the whiskey he felt the edges of the world getting fuzzy as the heat of the liquid slid down his throat. Lately he had been craving more of those little moments. His life had been so dark, so suffocating without her around. Selfishly he want to draw out the happy moments until they all ran into each other leaving him with just one life filled with her. When he was with her he felt safe, like he could finally rest. Looking down he saw his phone in his hand, her picture smiling up at him and the urge to press the button and hear her voice was alluring.

Shaking his head he dropped his phone as if it was a piece of molten rock. Maybe he should just let her go, let the thought of her disappear. Hell, there was no maybe about it. He would only end up hurting her either emotionally or physically, maybe even both. No. He had to let her go. She deserved so much better than him.

And yet… The soft lilting tones of Ed Sheeran drifted through the room and his brow furrowed at the sudden change. Turning a little unsteadily his eyes fell on the open door and mixed in with the memory of her laughter, her sarcastic tones, the way she looked first thing in the morning when she hadn’t quite woken up yet was the very solid form of her standing there, her arms folded across her chest and eyebrow raised. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The corners of his mouth twitched up and the urge to run to her, hold her, taste her lips rose within him. His heart beat loudly in his chest and he gripped the nearby desk to steady himself. Yeah, he was gonna tell her. It might be the alcohol talking but suddenly he was so sure. He wanted love. He wanted her love so badly.

“Tony?” her voice was soft and low, as if she didn’t want to startle him and he could hear her concern and with that one word from her the thought that maybe he could be saved sparked inside him. She crossed the room, her eyes scanning his face and when she reached up to cup his cheek his eyes fell closed and he leaned into her touch. A touch that felt like fire and ice, soft and solid all at once. Gently taking him by the hand he followed her from the lab wordlessly like a child.

Once inside his room she tugged at the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it into the pile of laundry that looked it had been building since Pepper had left. He became aware that he probably smelled really bad right now, he hadn’t washed for days and stale sweat combined with alcohol was never a seductive scent. She turned and he felt a panic raising in his chest. Reaching out he grabbed her arm. “Stay.” He looked so young and lost, she smiled warmly.

“I’m just gonna grab something to sleep in. I’m not going anywhere okay. I’ll be right here with you.” He nodded, feeling relieved and a little bit silly for coming across so desperate, he just needed her.

Nothing more was said as they both changed for bed and slipped under the crisp Egyptian cotton sheets and as he felt her curl into the crook of his arm, her hand coming up to rest on his chest, he felt at peace. He needed love, wanted to beg for her to love him but instead he bent his head and placed a tender kiss to the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her. Exhaustion began to take over as he sighed out “I love you.” And he could have sworn he heard her say those same three little words before he descended into sleep.

Tag: @deanxfuckingadorablexwinchester @nea90sweetie@knittingknerdy@feelmyroarrrr @vintagevalentinexx @goody2shoessmut @cojootromuelle@palaiasaurus64 @littleblue5mcdork@littlenerdgirl16@iwillbeinmynest @buckyhawk @almondbuttercup @beccaanne814-blog @canumoveyourseatup-no @callamint @like-a-bag-of-potatoes

#myfic #something I wrote #deidre'scelebrationchallenge #Tony x Reader #Tony Stark

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schadenfreudefreude-blog · 5 years

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On expectations and pessimism

Our lives are powerfully affected by a special quirk of the human mind to which we rarely pay much attention. We are creatures deeply marked by our expectations. We go around with mental pictures, lodged in our brains, of how things are supposed to go. But expectations have an enormous impact on how we respond to what happens to us. They are always framing the way we interpret the events in our lives. It’s according to the tenor of our expectations that we will deem moments in our lives to be either enchanting or (more likely) profoundly mediocre and unfair.

What drives us to fury are affronts to our expectations. There are plenty of things that don’t turn out as we’d like but don’t make us livid either. When a problem has been factored into our expectations, calm is never endangered. We may be sad, but we aren’t screaming.

Unfortunately, our expectations are never higher, and therefore more troubling, than they are in love. There are reckless ideas circulating in our societies about what sharing a life with another person might be like. Of course, we see relationship difficulties around us all the time; there’s a high frequency of splitting, separation and divorce, and our own past experience is bound to be pretty mixed. But we have a remarkable capacity to discount this information. We retain highly ambitious ideas of what relationships are meant to be and what they will (eventually) be like for us – even if we have in fact never seen such relationships in action anywhere near us.

We’ll be lucky; we can just feel it intuitively. Eventually, we’ll find that creature we know exists: the ‘right person’; we’ll understand each other very well, we’ll like doing everything together, and we’ll experience deep mutual devotion and loyalty. They will, at last, be on our side.

Our expectations might go like this: a decent partner should easily, intuitively, understand what I’m concerned about. I shouldn’t have to explain things at length to them. If I’ve had a difficult day, I shouldn’t have to say that I’m worn out and need a bit of space. They should be able to tell how I’m feeling. They shouldn’t oppose me: if I point out that one of our acquaintances is a bit stuck up, they shouldn’t start defending them. They’re meant to be constantly supportive. When I feel bad about myself, they should shore me up and remind me of my strengths. A decent partner won’t make too many demands. They won’t be constantly requesting that I do things to help them out, or dragging me off to do something I don’t like. We’ll always like the same things. I tend to have pretty good taste in films, food and household routines: they’ll understand and sympathize with them at once.

Strangely, even when we’ve had pretty disappointing experiences, we don’t lose faith in our expectations. Hope reliably triumphs over experience. It’s always very tempting to console ourselves with an apparently very reasonable thought: the reason it didn’t work out this time was not that the expectations were too high, but that we directed them onto the wrong person. We weren’t compatible enough. So rather than adjust our ideas of what relationships are meant to be like, we shift our hopes to a new target on whom we can direct our recklessly elevated hopes.

At times, in relationships, it can be almost impossible to believe that the problem lies with relationships in general, for the issues are so clearly focused in on the particular person we happen to be with – their tendency not to listen to us, to be too cold, to be cloyingly present … But this isn’t the problem of love, we believe. It wouldn’t be like this with another person, the one we saw at school. They looked nice and we had a brief chat about the theme of the keynote instructor. Partly because of the slope of their neck and a lilt in their accent, we reached an overwhelming conclusion: with them it would be easier. There could be a better life waiting round the corner.

What we say to our partners is often quite grotesque. We turn to someone we’ve left everything to in our will and agreed to share our income with for the rest of our lives – and tell them the very worst things we can think of: things we’d never dream of saying to anyone else. To pretty much everyone else, we are reliably civil. We’re always very nice to the people in the sandwich shop; we talk through problems reasonably with colleagues; we’re pretty much always in a good mood around friends. But then again, without anything uncivil being meant by this, we have very few expectations in these areas.

No one can disappoint and upset us as much as the person we’re in a relationship with – for of no one do we have higher hopes. It’s because we are so dangerously optimistic that we call them a cunt, a shithead or a weakling. The intensity of the disappointment and frustration is dependent on the prior massive investment of hope. It’s one of the odder gifts of love.

So a solution to our distress and agitation lies in a curious area: with a philosophy of pessimism. It’s an odd and unappealing thought. Pessimism sounds very unattractive. It’s associated with failure; it’s usually what gets in the way of better things. But when it comes to relationships, expectations are the enemies of love.

A more moderate, more reasonable, set of expectations around relationships would include the idea that it is normal and largely unavoidable that people do not understand one another very well in a couple. Each person’s character and mind is hugely complex and convoluted. It’s hard to grasp exactly why someone acts as they do. And, by extension, we’d be assuming from the start that no partner is going to have a complete, reliable or terribly accurate understanding of us. There will be the occasional things they get absolutely right, a few areas where they really grasp what’s going on in us; that’s what makes the early days so charming. But these will be exceptions, rather than standard. As a relationship developed, we then wouldn’t get hurt when our partner made some wildly inaccurate assumptions about our needs or preferences. We’d have been assuming that this would be coming along pretty soon – just as we don’t take it remotely amiss if an acquaintance recommends a film we detest: we know they couldn’t know. It doesn’t bother us at all. Our expectations are set at a reasonable level.

In a wiser world than our own, we would regularly remind ourselves of the various reasons why people simply cannot live up to the expectations that have come to be linked to romantic relationships:

One is dealing with another person.

Much that will matter to us cannot possibly be in sync with another person. Why should another human being get tired at the same time as you, want to eat the same things, like the same songs, have the same aesthetic preferences, the same attitude to money or the same idea about Christmas? For babies, there is a long and strange set of discoveries about the real separate existence of the mother. At first it seems to the child that the mother is perfectly aligned with it. But gradually there’s a realization that the mother is someone else: that she might be sad when the child is feeling jolly. Or tired when the child is ready to jump up and down on the bed for ten minutes. We have similarly basic discoveries to make of our partners. They are not extensions of us.

The early stages of love give a misleading image of what a relationship can be like.

The experience of adult love starts with the joyful discovery of some amazing congruencies. It’s wonderful to discover someone who finds the same jokes hilarious, who feels the same way as you about cozy jumpers or the music you love, someone who is really able to see why you feel as you do about your father, or who deeply appreciates your confidence around form-filling or your knowledge of wine. There’s a seductive hope that the wonderful fit between the two of you are the first intimation of a general fusion of souls.

Love is the discovery of harmony in some very specific areas – but to continue with this expectation is to doom hope to a slow death. Every relationship will necessarily involve the discovery of a huge number of areas of divergence. It will feel as if you are growing apart and that the precious unity you knew during the weekend in Paris is being destroyed. But what is happening should really be seen under a much less alarming description: disagreement is what happens when love succeeds and you get to know someone close up across the full range of their life.

Any upbringing will be imperfect in important ways. The atmosphere at home might have been too strict or too lax, too focused on money or not adequately on top of the finances. It might have been emotionally smothering or a bit distant and detached. Family life might have been relentlessly gregarious or limited by lack of confidence. Getting from being a baby to a reasonably functional adult is never a flawless process. We are all, in diverse ways, damaged and insane. The child might have learned to keep its true thoughts and feelings very much to itself and to tread very carefully around fragile parents; and in later life, this person may still be rather secretive and cagey in their own relationships. The characteristic was acquired to deal with a childhood situation, but such patterns get deeply embedded and keep on going. Our adaptations to the troubles of our past make us all maddening prospects in the present.

The error we’re always tempted to make is to see defects as special to our own partner. We get to know the irritating and disappointing sides of one particular person – and draw the conclusion that we’ve been especially unlucky. We’ve become involved with someone who seems lovely on the surface but has revealed themselves strangely disturbed and defective. What a curse! What a problem to correct! We therefore look around for a new partner with whom we can finally have what we always knew was promised to us: a problem-free relationship. Our romantic impulses are continually renewed. We blame everything but our hopes.

And yet, the reasons why other people are disappointing are universal. The problems may take on a local character, but everyone would have them to a significant extent. We don’t need to know the specific eccentricities we would find in a prospective partner. But you can be sure there will be some – and that they will, at times, be pretty serious. The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.

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sherrybaby14 · 7 years

Text

Daryl Who?

Summary: You’re very into Daryl, but he shuts you down because Rick wants you too.

Words: 3500

Warnings: Non-con, NSFW, sex, toys, smut

A/N: I’ve been doing a lot of Negan and Daryl stuff, and Rick needs some love too. After all he’s pretty Alpha male!

Tags: @marauderice

@kellyn1604

@megandrawsspace

@idonthavehusbandsihavelovers

@miiraal

A flick of dirt hit your back. You swiped it away and turned to see Daryl with a shovel in his hand, digging in the garden next to you.

“Hey, watch where you toss that stuff.” You playfully throw a handful back at him.

“My bad, my bad.” Daryl holds up his hands in defeat.

“What are you doing here anyway?” You ask. “Aren’t you normally in the woods? Hunting squirrels for your signature redneck soup?”

“You use that word like its an insult.” Daryl smiled back at you.

Your eyes look over his biceps and you let out a small noise of approval, audible only to yourself. That man looks mighty fine right now. You stand up and move closer towards him, right behind him in fact, as he kneels in the dirt.

“What are you planting?” You try and put your face as close to his as possible.

“Tomatoes I think.” Daryl does not respond to your advance.

You reach over and grab his hand, pushing downward.

“Tomatoes need those wire thingies.” You smile at him.

“Wire thingies?” He turns his head around, your faces centimeters apart. “Is that the technical term?”

You laugh a little and move even closer towards him. His lips look so inviting and you lick yours in anticipation. You’ve been watching him the last few months and are certain there is an obvious attraction. His presence at the garden proves it, you don’t normally work here and neither does he. Daryl has to be trailing your work schedule.

“Y/N stop.” The smile drops from Daryl’s face.

An overwhelming sense of stupidity runs through you. You bite your lips in embarrassment and pull away.

“No.” Daryl reaches out and grabs your forearm. “I think you’re sexy as hell, but Rick is a brother to me. I could never do that to him.”

“Rick?” You jerk your head back in shock. “What does he have to do with this?”

Daryl’s eyes alternate between yours, looking for some sense of recognition. When he sees none he finally speaks.

“Rick is obsessed with you.” “What?” That’s the craziest thing you’ve heard in a long time. “If you’re not into me it’s alright. You don’t need to go making up excuses.”

“Trust me.” Daryl turns back to the dirt. “It’s no excuse.”

You stand up from the garden, wanting to be anywhere but here and cursing yourself for making a pass at a man who is clearly uninterested.

“Y/N,” Daryl says. “Talk to Rick. If I’m wrong try again.”

There is no way you’re turning around to see Daryl’s lying face.

Rick into you? The idea is insane. You’ve been in Alexandria for months now and outside of the initial three questions he’s never paid you any attention. In fact, the only one you’ve had eyes for has been Daryl. You never even got to know any of your roommates.

Images of Daryl dance in front of your eyes. The picture of his muscular body on top of yours pumping into you excites you in ways you haven’t imagined since before the walkers. You think about his sliding him kissing your neck while he rocks his body and feel a flash of warmth wash over you. The fantasy is enveloping you so much you don’t pay attention to your surroundings and walk straight into someone.

“Watch it!” You bounce back against the person.

“Y/N.” Rick is right in front of you. “Sorry I was distracted too. Are you alright?”

Rick leans forward and touches your arms. You didn’t know if you looked upset from Daryl shutting you down or aroused from your recent thoughts. Not wanting to lose the nerve or opportunity you blurt out your question.

“Are you into me?” It did not sound so juvenile in your head.

Rick is clearly taken aback. He has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen and they immediately dart away.

“What?” He laughs. “What makes you say that?”

“I tried to make a move on Daryl.” Based on Rick’s response you know Daryl was lying and feel even dumber. “He shot me down, said you were his brother. I knew he was making it up. If he didn’t want me I wish he would have just told the truth.”

You can’t believe how naïve you were, even for a second and don’t want a pity look from Rick so you keep walking, hoping this conversation is over and you can bury it with your other secrets.

“Yes.” Rick reaches out and grabs your arm. “Yes. I am into you.”

At first you think Rick is trying to cover for Daryl, but one look into his baby blues lets you know he is dead serious. You glance down to your arm and notice that he is grabbing much harder than necessary.

“I’m sorry Rick.” You pull away. “It’s not mutual.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Rick crosses his arms.

You don’t understand and your mouth hangs open, unsure what to say.

“The second you arrived in Alexandria I made it clear you are mine.” Rick has always presented as confident, but not he seems almost dominate as well.

There were already too many dominate men in your past. It was not a turn on. You cross your arms and roll your shoulders back, trying to give the same posture.

“I want Daryl. Not you.” There is no doubt in your voice.

Rick examines your stance and then starts laughing. He uncrosses his arms and puts his hands back on you. In the process he makes sure you’re eye level.

“That doesn’t matter Y/N. You’re off limits to everyone here, but me.” There is a strange satisfaction on his face.

You don’t know how to respond so you take a few steps back. Rick stays on the sidewalk, not moving or speaking. He watches you as you walk away. You turn around and can feel his eyes glued to the back of your neck. You think you may have stepped into some alternative reality and glance over your shoulder. Sure enough, Rick is standing in the same place. Even with the distance you can still see the blue in his eyes.

“What the fuck?” You mutter out loud to yourself.

Rick has always been nothing but reasonable. Telling you you’re off limits is so out of line for him. Then you realize you don’t really know him that well. You’ve only seen leader Rick. Either way it doesn’t matter. You only have eyes for Daryl and aren’t about to change your end game when you were so close this afternoon. Rick must have been joking. That’s the only thing you can convince yourself. If you look over your shoulder and he is gone your theory will be confirmed, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. Mainly because a corner of your brain is gnawing at you that he is still there.

A few weeks have passed and you managed to avoid both alpha males. There is more than enough work to forget about Daryl shutting you down and Rick’s strange pronouncements. Both are the farthest thing from you mind when you find yourself cleaning the guns one day and low and behold Daryl walks in.

Sweat is glistening from his body as he drops a bag of weapons down on a table in the armory. You forgot how attractive you find him and within seconds your feet are walking towards him.

“What did you bring me?” You get right next to him and go up on your tippy toes.

“Nothing fancy.” He doesn’t look at you. “Just a few handguns and some ammo.”

He immediately turns to leave and you realize how much you’ve missed his company the past few weeks.

“Wait.” You feel vulnerable, but to your relief he stops. “Can we talk? I miss you.”

Daryl turns around to face you, but looks at the ground.

“Y/N, I like you, but not as much as I love Rick.” Daryl slowly draws his eyes up. “We can be friends, but that's it.”

“The man doesn’t even know me. Even if that were true I have zero feelings for Rick.” You move a step closer towards him. “But I can’t stop thinking about you. If you don’t want me then be honest. But stop lying.”

“I’m not lying.” Daryl raises his hands. “I’ll never cross him like that. He said he told you the truth and you’re avoiding him.”

“Avoiding him?” You want to yell in frustration. “I can’t avoid a man I’ve never talked to.”

“Well talk to him.” Daryl turns to leave. “Figure this out. I need his blessing before I move forward with anything.”

Daryl storms out of the armory leaving you stunned. Your confusion has turned to anger. You take a few deep breaths and then leave with one destination on your mind.

By the time you lock up the armory Daryl is nowhere to be seen. There is no doubt Rick will be at the makeshift constable station. If he’s not there you’re willing to wait, regardless of who is prisoner in one of the cells. You march right in and by luck Rick is sitting at his desk. He puts down whatever he is working on and looks up at you.

“What a pleasant surprise.” He puts his hands behind his head. “What can I do for you Y/N?”

“Why the fuck did Daryl shut me down again?” You can barely open your teeth as you spit the words out.

Rick calmly stands up from his chair and approaches you. He gets inches away from your body and you never realized how tall he is. You crank your neck upwards to make sure he sees the anger on your face.

“Because you’re mine.” Rick does not touch you. “We already had this conversation.”

“That is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard.” You shove against Rick’s chest, but only move yourself backwards. “I don’t know you. I don’t talk to you. I don’t belong to anyone, let alone some power tripping police officer.”

You’re unsure if you actually believe what Rick is saying or still think Daryl is lying to you. Either way it is insulting. Rick continues to stand in the same spot, unfazed by your actions.

“Either you’re telling the truth and that is a fucked up way to court a girl or Daryl is a liar and that is a fucked up way to reject a girl.” You fight the urge to punch Rick in the face as he looks down at you with a smug smile.

He says nothing and you let yourself unload some more.

“News flash. If you want me, I don’t want you. It’s never going to happen between us so being a macho piece of shit won’t lead to anything.”

Rick continues to stare at your with the same smugness. It’s only adding to your anger.

“Drop this charade and tell Daryl that you don’t give a fuck about me.”

There is an eerie silence in the room. The only sound is your heavy breaths. You move forward and try to push Rick one more time, but again he doesn’t move at all.

“Are you finished?” There is some glee in his voice.

Your anger is rising and you glare up at him and nod your head.

“Good.” Rick reaches out and grabs your wrist.

“Hey!”

He ignores your protest and bends it behind your back as he forces you forward onto his desk. The movement was too quick and unexpected that you put up no fight. You try and push yourself back now, but the way your arm is twisted you quickly realize you have no choice but to lay with your chest flat against the desk.

“This isn’t funny!”

SMACK!

You just forward as a hand collides with your ass.

“Ow!” Your body moves closer with the desk. “That hurt.”

SLAP! WHACK! SLAP! WHACK!

“Stop!” You try and wiggle away again.

SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

Now the stinking in your ass hurts too much and you don’t protest or move.

“Are you done behaving like a spoilt brat?” Rick’s voice shows no sign of exhaustion.

“Let me up.” You try and move again.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

The spanks are coming in quick successions. Even through your pants they are starting to really hurt.

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

Finally you can’t take it anymore and a sob escapes your lips. Tears start running down you cheeks and you’re unsure if its from the pain or humiliation. At least Rick has eased up and you hope that the spanking is finished and you can get out of here.

“I told you Y/N. Yes I am ‘into you’ and no you cannot be with Daryl.” Rick twists your arm tighter and you cry out. “I don’t know how I could have made myself any clearer.”

“Alright.” You take a few breaths, just wanting Rick to let you go so you can run away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”

“While I appreciate the apology, I’m not certain you understand the lesson.”

The unmistakable sound of a handcuff clicking mixed with the cold feeling on your wrist makes you buck your hips. Rick is crazy and you need to get away. There is a yank on your hand and you find yourself falling backwards. As you try to recover Rick pulls you to the other side of the jail and attaches the rest of your cuff to the bars of a cell.

“Are you fucking nuts?” You try and punch him with your free hand.

In a second you realize what a bad idea that was as he grabs your fist and attaches another handcuff, spreading your arms like an eagle he attaches it to another cell bar. You try and struggle even though you know it is useless. You’re about to scream when he speaks.

“While I was hoping for a more civil first encounter you would not come to me.” Rick walks over to his desk and opens the bottom drawer. “Now we find ourselves in this situation and trust me when I say if you don’t co-operate it can get much worse.”

Rick grabs a box from the desk and walks back over to you.

“This isn’t funny, uncuff me now.” You try and hide the fear from your voice.

Calmly Rick starts to pull items out from the box. There is a very mean looking ball gag set out on the table, then a vibrator, next a pair of silver clamps, and finally a mean looking silicon plug. He glances up at you with a smile.

“I’ve found all sorts of things on runs lately.” The way he is so relaxed tells you he is dead serious. “The next time you act out I’m thinking the gag, then if you keep fighting I’ll fill you with this.”

He picked up the plug and you realized it was for your ass. You never saw a remotely kinky side of Rick before and you almost want to act out. The idea of being gagged, plugged, and clamped turning you on more than you want to admit.

“Don’t worry Y/N.” Rick walks around the table closer to you. “There are more toys in the box and we have a long relationship in front of us. I’m sure at some point we will use all of them.”

His mouth is on yours in a second. You know you should bite his tongue or pull away but instead a moan escapes your mouth and your welcome him in. His hand reaches up and caresses your chest before he brings his other hand up and pulls your flannel shirt to the side, sending your buttons flying. Never one for undergarments you’re now bare to him.

“See, I knew the second I saw you what a kinky little slut you were.” Rick presses his forehead to yours and backs away.

Nobody has ever used those words to describe you and for reasons unknown to you your body is responding more than you ever anticipated. Rick’s eyes are on your chest and you desperately want some attention. He darts forward and his mouth wraps around your nipple. There is no forewarning as he bites down.

You throw your head back and scream, not expecting the first touch to be so intense. Rick moves his head to your other breast and bites down again. It sends a convulsion through your body and you almost start to slide down the poles.

His hands are on your pants and in less than five seconds they are ripped off of you, panties included. You are now totally nude for him and to your surprise you don’t mind at all. Rick comes closer and his hand grips your ass.

You wince, having already forgotten about the abuse your cheeks took earlier. He starts kneading them and you let your head fall foreword against his shoulder, unsure if you want him to stop or not. He backs away and the sensation makes you moan. You miss his touch and realize there was no way you wanted him to stop.

His back is to you and he is looking in his box again. You hear the sound of something squirting and try to look what he is doing. When he turns back he has a much smaller plug in his hand, but you still force yourself back against the bars on instinct.

“If you try and resist it will only hurt worse.” Rick walks towards you holding the plug in front of his face.

“Please don’t. I’ve never had anything up there before.” The admission makes you realize how bad you want him in your pussy.

“Trust me Y/N.”. Rick grabs one of your legs and wraps in around his waist. “You would rather have this inside your ass than me.”

You feel pressure at your back hole and immediately clench down. Rick drops his head and bites your nipple again making you yip.

“Don’t make it harder on yourself. Relax.” He moves to the other breast and repeats the action.

The coolness of the lube enters your asshole and the plug slides right in. Rick’s bites distracted you and to your surprise it doesn’t feel bad. You clench and unclench and are grateful for how small it is.

“From here on out you will wear this everyday.” Rick picks up your other leg and you obediently wrap it around his waist. He taps the base of your plug. “If I come and check and you’re not stuffed I’ll assume you’re ready for my dick in your ass.”

“No. That’s not something I want.” Your protests are met with Rick’s lips against yours.

His kiss is much harder than you expected. You imagine that dominant man on the street weeks ago and it makes you gush. The sound of his pants dropping makes you moan and you try to pull your arms foreword, forgetting about the cuffs. The catch and you let out a whimper into Rick’s mouth.

“Touching me is an honor.” Rick is so close to you you can’t look down. “One you have yet to earn.”

There is no denying that his dick is huge. He wastes now time slamming it into you. You want to look down and see it, but he has hooked his shoulder under your chin. Your back aches as he starts moving himself roughly, causing you to crash into the bars. You try and arch your back to lessen the blow but he only sees it as an opportunity to move faster.

Rick keeps moving in and out of you and starts to shift his hips upwards. You let out an uncontrollable moan. Your pussy starts clamping down on him, but with the plug in your ass you’re already so tight. The pleasure starts to build and you give up feigning resistance.

He pummels into you sending you slamming against the metal bars. You are sure bruises will cover your wrists, butt, and back but you don’t care. He bends his head down again and bites down on your nipple one more time. An orgasm rips through you. Your body starts shuddering. Your legs fall from his waist. Without the support the cuffs slide down the bars and you crumple underneath him as his hot cum hits your body. It covers you from stomach to head and your sure there is some in your hair.

“You still want Daryl?”

“Who?” You look up and finally get a look at the gigantic dick that was just inside you.

Rick smiles and walks away. You try and catch your breath, wanting to wipe his jizz from your less comfortable parts. The sound of your cuffs being undone grants you the request and you wipe yourself off.

He dresses himself and tosses you your clothes. As you dress the anger starts to rise. This man you barely know just locked you up and fucked you. It didn’t matter that you just had the most amazing orgasm of your life. That was not okay.

“Fuck you.” It’s the only insult you can think of.

“Come back to me when you’re ready.” Rick just sits back in his chair.

You storm out of the building. How dare he be so confident! What just happened was wrong on so many levels. You try to focus on the negatives as you make it back to your house. You slam the door and lean against it, then let yourself fall to the floor.

Before you let the emotions take hold of you you understand the reasons for his arrogance. The plug is still in your ass. You know you should pull it out and never speak to the man again, but you wiggle yourself and a wave of pleasure comes back. There is no way you’re taking that plug out and there is no way you’re passing up on round two. After all, in your orgasmic haze you had muttered: Daryl who?

#rick grimes #rick x reader #smut #walking dead fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic

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Do Religion and History Conflict? -- Temple and Cosmos Beyond this Ignorant Present -- HUGH NIBLEY 1992

Do Religion and History Conflict?

A true philosopher can no more pass by the open door of a free discussion than an alcoholic can pass by the open door of a saloon. Since my hosts have been kind enough to invite me to say what I think, the highest compliment I can pay to their tolerance and liberality will be to do just that. This is not going to be a debate. I would be the most unteachable of mortals if at this stage of life I still believed that one could get anywhere arguing with a dialectician. One might as well attempt to pacify or intimidate a walrus by tossing sardines at him as to bate a philosopher with arguments. I have accepted your kind invitation because I think the subject is worth discussing.

“Do Religion and History Conflict?” Only a philosopher would word a question so strangely. If history and religion are different things, as the question implies, isn’t comparing them like comparing a rose and a submarine, or might we not ask as well whether free trade and tapdancing conflict? All things—whether ideas or concrete objects—compete for our attention, but that is plainly not the kind of conflict our questioner has in mind. Nor are we asked whether the laws of history and religion conflict. Such laws as we have in history—fundamental principles such as propounded by Thucydides or Buckle or Spengler—are simply generalizations based on insight and analogy: there is nothing rigorous or binding about them. Furthermore, your religion may conflict with my history and my religion with your history; but for that matter your religion and mine probably conflict, as do your history and mine.

Still, I think we can agree that the idea behind the question is clear: does the story of man’s life as taken from the documents, that is, his history, resemble the life story of the race as taught by revelation, i.e., in holy scriptures? The question is valid for all Christian sects and for non-Christian religions as well. The alternative to the general question is a chaos of special problems. Every church comes before the world with certain basic historic propositions peculiar to itself. Every church may be judged by those propositions when they are clearly stated: if a group announces that the end of the world is going to come on a certain day or, like Prudentius, predicts victory in a particular battle as proof of its divine leadership, or claims like the Mormons that there once was a prophet named Lehi who did such and such, we can hold that church to account. Incidentally, it will not do to project those accepted propositions into inferences and corollaries of your own, and then criticize their supporters in the light of those inferences and corollaries. We must be very careful to determine exactly what is claimed, by exactly what particular group, and then to determine exactly what happened and is happening. At this point the discussion breaks up into thousands of special topics, none of which could be handled here tonight.

The religions of the world take their stand on history to a far greater extent than is commonly realized. Christianity is by nature apocalyptic—a definite concept of world history is implicit in its teachings, its scriptures are at least half history, and it rests its whole case in the last analysis on the fulfillment of prophecy. My own church by its very name takes a definite historical stand: these are the “last days,” not the end of the world, but a time of continual crisis and mounting world conflict accompanying the “wasting away of the nations.” I would like to spend all the time in an historical vindication of my religion: but no general conclusions can be drawn from one personal case. Something more general is indicated.

In civilized societies it is customary for educated people to carry around in their heads two images of the past, present, and future world—the one religious, the other secular. Here we have two drawings of the same landscape: are they identical, is there a general resemblance between them, or are they in hopeless conflict? If one has attended a liberal Sunday School, the two pictures will tend to coincide because they have, conscientiously, been made to coicide; the same is true if one has been trained in a fundamentalist school or college. It is apparent that both pictures are highly adjustable—there is an orthodoxy and a heresy in history as well as religion. History is as much what a man believes as his religion is. History vindicates the proposition that God loves the Jews; with equal force, if you want it that way, it vindicates the proposition that he hates them. History has long been taken as a superbly convincing illustration of the working out of the principle of evolution in human affairs; today some scholars see in it a smashing refutation of any such idea. History is the story of man’s progress or his frustration, depending on how you want to read it.

If we are to judge our two pictures on the basis of artistic merit, that is, of subjective appeal, we are under no obligation to declare either one the better picture, nor, on artistic grounds, is there any reason why they should look alike. If, on the other hand, we are judging for accuracy (and that is what is here clearly implied), there is no point in comparing the pictures with each other; we must instead compare both with the original model. At once the nature of tonight’s loaded question becomes apparent. For the obvious intent of the question is to test religion’s claims in the light of historical discovery, or as the newspaper phrased the question, “Can religion face its own history without flinching?” There is no hint that history might flinch in the face of religion (as some historians have): the question proposes a beauty contest in which one of the contestants has already been awarded the prize, a litigation in which the prosecuting attorney happens to be the judge. History is above the storm; the only question is, Can religion take it?

That won’t do. We cannot assume at the outset that either picture is perfect. We have no right to treat “history” as the true and accurate image of things. Like science and religion, history must argue its case on evidence. This body is like a jury: every member must do his own thinking and make up his own mind (that is the beauty of these meetings, we have been told), but only after viewing all the evidence. This is a staggering assignment, but no one can evade it and still form an intelligent opinion. Professor W. S. McCulloch, the authority on the mechanics of the brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written: “[Man’s] brain corrupts the revelation of his senses. His output of information is but one part in a million of his input. He is a sink rather than a source of information. The creative flights of his imagination are but distortions of a fraction of his data.”1 In other words, we all receive information much better than we report it; so much so, that however bad the evidence may be, it is always better than any man’s report of it. Every juryman must examine and, if you will, distort the data for himself, whether we are dealing with special or general problems of history. The prospect is terrifying—and it is the historian, not the prophet, who flinches.

What we are up against may be illustrated by the case of a speaker in this series who maintained that there can be no true religious knowledge because one can never produce reliable evidence for it. He was such a ferocious stickler for evidence (and in that I enthusiastically agreed with him) that when he said three or four times that the Egyptians in 5,000 years produced nothing but the sheerest nonsense in religion and insisted on using that supposed fact as evidence for his most questionable claim (i.e., that religious teachings need not be true to be valuable), I could not help asking myself on what evidence he could possibly rest such a statement? Five thousand years is no small slice of history, and the Egyptians have left us a very respectable heap of documents. I remembered that a severe and exacting Egyptologist, T. E. Peet, had written:

As long as our ignorance is so great, our attitude towards criticism of these ancient literatures must be one of extreme humility. . . . Put an Egyptian [or Babylonian] story before a layman, even in a good translation. He is at once in a strange land. The similes are pointless and even grotesque for him, the characters are strangers, the background, the allusions, instead of delighting, only mystify and annoy. He lays it aside in disgust.2

Our speaker was properly disgusted with the Egyptians, but to charge them with uttering nothing but nonsense for 5,000 years really calls for a bit of proof.

At the first opportunity I hastened to the stacks of your excellent library, hoping to find treasures indeed, and there discovered just one Egyptian book—a religious work, incidentally, which I value very highly. I looked for other Oriental treasures, the heritage of great world civilizations—and found nothing! Surely, I thought, we can’t talk about history intelligently and leave all that stuff out. But that is precisely what we do! And that raises the all-important question for the student of history: Is there not some way of obtaining a reliable impression of the past, or of building a plausible structure of history without having to examine all the evidence? The problem that concerns our historians today is that of reducing the bulk of evidence without reducing its value. The futility of the quest is a corollary of the oft-proved proposition that the quality of history is a function of its quantity: the more information we have, the better our picture, and the rule is in no wise vitiated by the fact that some information is more valuable than other information.

The historian’s problem was correctly formulated by the scholars of the Renaissance and Reformation. These men suddenly had an enormous heap of documents dumped in their laps. They were tremendously excited about the new treasure and saw immediately that the whole pile would have to be gone through piece by piece and word by word: there could be no question of priority or selectivity or elimination, because there is no divination by which one can tell what is in a document before one has read it. This is a lesson which modern scholars have forgotten. The only legitimate question is: “By what method can one properly examine the greatest possible amount of material in a single lifetime?” The challenge has small appeal to a hurried and impatient generation like our own. We look for easier and quicker solutions, as did the Sophists of old. And like them we find those solutions in the endless discussions and expensive eyewash of the university. Consider what goes on in the history business.

1. First, the academic mind wants neatness, tidiness, simplicity, order. It is impatient to impress an order upon nature without waiting for the real order of nature to become apparent. Historical events occur in an atmosphere of perplexity. Whether we are dealing with unique events or characteristic and repeated ones, as in culture-history, we are given no respite from the unexpected: we never know what hit us. The historian must always step in and impose order after the event. He is like a general who, having all but lost his shirt in a campaign, blandly announces when it is all over: “We planned it that way!” History is all hindsight; it is a sizing up, a way of looking at things. It is not what happened or how things really were, but an evaluation, an inference from what one happens to have seen of a few scanty bits of evidence preserved quite by accident. There is no such thing as a short, concise history of England, any more than there is an authentic three-minute version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. One might construct such a thing, and it might be a work of art in its own right, but it could only be a parody of the real thing—a pure fiction.

As I read the journal of Samuel Sewall, the letters of Cicero, the memoirs of Joinville or Froissart or Xenophon or Ibn Battuta, I cannot but feel myself getting involved in exciting and vivid situations that will forever be as much a part of my experience as, say, the invasion of Normandy (I still remember what I read in Normandy as vividly as what I saw there). But if I read a paragraph or a sentence or two about each of the above in a college textbook, I have really had no experience at all. Yet it is not in those great neglected writers that the most valuable evidence is found, but rather in such completely neglected trivia as letters, diaries, notebooks, ledgers, etc., which few historians and no others ever care to look at.

2. The modern college teaches us, if nothing else, to accept history on authority. Yet at the end of his life the great Eduard Meyer (who wrote a history of the Mormons, incidentally), marveled that he had always been most wrong where he thought he was most right, and vice versa. No man of our time had a broader view of world history than Professor Breasted, or was ever more dogmatically sure of himself or, in the light of subsequent discoveries, more completely wrong. To be open-minded in history one must be working constantly at one’s own structure of history, not passively accepting any secondhand solution or textbook opinion that floats down from the shining heights, as crabs and mollusks in the depths gratefully receive the dead and predigested matter that descends to them from luminous realms above. Everybody knows some history, nobody knows very much. Your strengwissenschaftliche Geschichte (“strictly scientific history”) is nowhere to be found. Ranke tried for it, but I believe with the historian Frowde that our best historian was Shakespeare.

3. The insights of men like Taine, Mommsen, or Bury are not to be despised. Do not for a moment think that the only reliable evidence comes from brass instruments. But insight offers no escape from evidence. Insight requires in fact to be properly checked by the most exhaustive evidence of all—that which comes only by constant, intimate, lifelong familiarity with the sources. There is no more merit in armchair humanities than there is in armchair science: the learner must come to grips with the real thing at first hand; he must run the evidence to ground as in a laboratory, and never be content with the fourth-hand hearsay of a textbook or the private evaluations of a translator.

4. The most popular attempt to grasp history at a gulp is the Cook’s Tour, for which Mr. Toynbee’s lumbering and laboring rubberneck bus is at present in great demand—though no one really seems to enjoy riding in it. Here the interest is in the monumental, the routine, the conventional, the accepted. The student is a tourist, a spectator, always detached, never allowing himself to become emotionally involved except at the prescribed stations where the guidebook instructs him to swoon. At best our college humanities are a sentimental journey, a scenic-postcard world of the obvious and theatrical: the Great Books, the Hundred Best Poems, the Greatest Works of the Greatest Minds, etc. What makes the study of history possible today I call the Gas Law of Learning, namely, that any amount of information, no matter how small, will fill any intellectual void no matter how large. It is as easy to write a history of the world after you have read ten books as after you have read a thousand—far easier, in fact. This is the historian’s dilemma: if his view is sweeping enough to be significant, it is bound to be inadequately documented; if it is adequately documented it is bound to be trivial in scope. It is a cozy and reassuring thing for student and teacher alike to have our neat authoritarian College Outline Series Syllabi of Western Civilization, Surveys of Great Minds, and what not, to fall back on. But please don’t point to these pedestrian exercises in skimming and sampling and try to tell me that they are a valid refutation of the prophets!

5. To handle problems requiring data beyond the capacity of students and educators impatient to shine, the ancient Sophists devised certain very effective discussion techniques. In these, the most important skill was that of presenting evidence by implication or inference only. Since it is quite impossible in a public discourse (or in print, for that matter) to put all one’s evidence on display, one must be allowed on occasions to present one’s knowledge merely by inference. The Sophists seized upon this welcome path of escape from drudgery, and by the arts of rhetoric made of it a broad highway to successful teaching careers. A limited use of jargon is indispensable in any field: having solved for “x,” we do not have to derive “x” every time it is mentioned, but simply to indicate it by a symbol, such as those useful keywords commonly used to power historical discussions: the Medieval Mind, Sturm und Drang, the Frontier, Hellenism, the Enlightenment, Puritanism, the Primitive, Relativity, etc., each of which is supposed to set a whole chorus of bells chiming in our heads—the echoes of deep and thorough reading. But by a familiar process these labels are no mere labels any more; they have become the whole substance of our knowledge. The student today has never solved for that “x” about which he talks so glibly—he has got its value from an answerbook; the cue word is not just a cue; it is now the whole play. The stock charge against the philosophers in every age has been that they have made themselves experts in the manipulation of labels to the point where they live in a world of words. The art of implying the possession of certain knowledge without actually claiming it has become one of the great humanistic skills of our time, in Europe as well as America. Without it the teaching of history would be almost impossible.

My own self-confidence in sounding off on historical matters need not reflect any solid knowledge at all, but may well be the product of a careful grooming, a calculated window dressing. Today the typical academic historian does most of his training before a mirror. The modern world, like the ancient, is a world peopled largely by zombies. Occasions like this one tonight are not meant to teach but to impress. If it was knowledge we were after, we would all at this time be perusing the evidence, not listening to me.

The confusion of discussion-born ideas with evidence is the root of much trouble in education today. People wishing to be liberal demand that their ideas be given the authority of evidence with the general public and in the classroom. If we refuse to accept those ideas, however hackneyed and unobjectionable they may be, as legal tender in an economy where only evidence passes as such, they complain that their ideas are being held in contempt and that they are being persecuted—which is not true at all.

6. What about those great historical systems which the giants have erected from time to time—do not such give a faithful picture of the world? Alas, system is the death of history! The great historians have all been random readers. Werner Jaeger has said, “It must never be forgotten that it was the Greeks who created and elaborated not only the general ethical and political culture in which we have traced the origin of our own humanistic culture, but also what is called practical education and is sometimes a competitor, sometimes an opponent of humanistic culture.”3 One builds systems by excluding as well as including. When you choose to build one structure rather than another you are not merely rearranging materials in new combinations, you are emphasizing some things at the expense of others. Excluding or suppressing evidence is dangerous business, and what makes it doubly dangerous is the way in which systems of history by their very exclusiveness convey a powerful and perfectly false sense of all-inclusiveness. The product of the System is the closed mind, the student who has taken the course and knows the answers, who has been systematically bereft of the most priceless possession of the inquiring mind—the sense of possibilities.

“The Bible excels in its suggestion of infinitude,” said Whitehead and, as a friend describes it, “suddenly he stood and spoke with passionate intensity, ‘Here we are with our finite beings and physical senses in the presence of a universe whose possibilities are infinite, and even though we may not apprehend them, those infinite possibilities are actualities.‘ ” Later he added, “I doubt if we get very far by the intellect alone. I doubt if intellect carries us very far.”4 The study of history in the schools today, with its “intellectual” orientation, effectively stifles that very sense of possibilities which it is the duty of history before all else to foster. For every door it opens, our modern education closes a thousand. We cannot insist too emphatically on the endless mass, variety, detail, and scope of historical evidence; every page of every text is a compact mass of a thousand clues, and every reading full of new and surprising discoveries. That is the essence of history, and the modern academic presentation completely effaces it. The modern scholar is eager to reach his conclusion, get his degree, and stop his investigations before there is any danger of running into contradictions. From a safe and settled position he wants only to discuss and discuss and discuss. The via scholastica is well marked: first one takes a sampling, merely a sampling, of the evidence; then as soon as possible one forms a theory (the less the evidence the more brilliant the theory); from then on the scholar spends his days defending his theory and mechanically fitting all subsequent evidence into the bed of Procrustes.

7. But surely there is a general overall picture of history, or some really basic points, upon which a massive consensus exists. Surely the verdict can be imparted to students in a few lessons, and it must be fairly reliable. There is a charming study by the Swede Olaf Linton on the basic certitudes of church history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—what he calls the Consensus with a capital “C.” Mr. Linton shows us how the consensus changes with time and circumstances just as completely and just as surely as the fashions in women’s hats. The Homeric question furnishes us with a good illustration of present-day consensus. What we call higher criticism is the application to the Bible of methods of textual criticism developed in the study of the Homeric problem. That problem is really far simpler than the biblical (there is hardly a book in the Bible that is not as mysterious as Homer), yet after 200 years of intensive investigation where do we stand? Listen to Professor Wade-Gery of Oxford: “Homer, who wrote the Iliad as I believe sometime in the eighth century . . . lived (as I believe) in Chios, and knew the Eighth City of Troy. He was (as I also believe) a man of exceptional genius. . . . I feel sure that almost all which makes the Iliad a great poem is the poet’s own creation.”5 And listen to Professor Whatmough of Harvard in the same issue of the same journal:

Nothing is, or could be, more puerile than the notion that the Iliad could possibly have been composed by one man. . . . The complex descent (rather than “origin”) of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey is as certain as anything can be in this very uncertain world. . . . I know [of] no competent linguist . . . whose knowledge of Greek and Greek dialects I respect enough to quote his name, who holds any other opinion. . . . To use the term author or authorship . . . is simply to sin against the light.6

Note it well: “As certain as anything can be.” Yet a host of big names are quite convinced of the opposite! The consensus has its fads and fashions like everything else.

As for the scientific consensus, with all its vaunted objectivity, let us hear Whitehead again:

In those years from the 1880s to the first war, who ever dreamed that the ideas and institutions which then looked so stable would be impermanent? . . . Fifty-seven years ago . . . I was a young man in the University of Cambridge. I was taught science and mathematics by brilliant men and I did well in them; since the turn of the century I have lived to see every one of the basic assumptions of both set aside; not, indeed, discarded, but of use as qualifying clauses instead of as major propositions; and all this in one life-span, the most fundamental assumptions of supposedly exact sciences set aside. And yet, in the face of that, the discoverers of the new hypotheses in science are declaring, “Now at last, we have certitude“—when some of the assumptions which we have seen upset had endured for more than twenty centuries.7

And but a few months ago Professor McCulloch wrote:

At last we are learning to admit ignorance, suspend judgment, and forego the explicatio ignoti per ignotius—”God”—which has proved as futile as it is profane. . . . So long as we, like good empiricists, remember that it is an act of faith to believe our senses, . . . and that our most respectable hypotheses are but guesses open to refutation, so long may we “rest assured that God has not given us over to thraldom under that mystery of iniquity, of sinful man aspiring into the place of God.”8

I can answer the question, “Do religion and history conflict?” for myself, but not for anyone else. At present, my religion and history do not conflict, as once they did. Well, you say, of course they agree because you make them agree. That is not entirely true. There are controls. Within the last three or four years leading Jewish and Christian scholars have been forced to relinquish a concept of history which they had painfully built up through the decades to an almost perfect consensus. Some of them put up a magnificent fight, but in the end the evidence was too strong, and one by one they gave in. It is a healthy sign when religion and history conflict: it means that they are not being bent wilfully to force them into agreement. In most historical fields the difficulty of the languages in which the sources are written is enough in itself to guarantee the minimum of intellectual integrity in the researcher: the documents simply refuse to speak unless one approaches them with a really open mind and is willing to swallow his pride and suppress self-will. In much the same way the rigorous demands of mathematics guarantee a measure of honesty in any scientist who is equipped to work in a field.

But unfortunately there are no such controls in those more socialized fields of learning which, for that very reason, have completely banished the older disciplines from our secondary schools and supplanted them at the university by pretentious techniques of discussion and pseudo-scientific “quantification of the obvious.” In such an atmosphere it is futile to attempt a serious discussion of history.

I believe my history and religion agree in a way that is objective enough to justify my conviction that the agreement is not entirely the result of my own manipulating. But whether this agreement is significant or not must be decided by everyone for himself, on his own examination of the evidence. As to the general question, “When do we flinch?” the answer is: Wait until history comes up with all the answers, or with any answer we can be entirely sure of—then we will know whether to flinch or not. Meantime, it is the historian’s duty (for it is he who appeals to an uncompromising objectivity) to flinch every time an answer of his proves defective—which is, roughly, on the hour every hour.

Does life on the moon resemble life on Mars? It is a good question, but premature. When I was a little boy we used to sit in a tent on hot summer afternoons and debate loudly and foolishly on just such lofty themes as this one. I think we all felt vaguely uncomfortable about the whole thing, and that made us all the more excitable, dogmatic, and short-tempered. The trouble was that we were not yet ready; we did not have the necessary knowledge. But when would we be ready? Are we ready yet? If not, we should stop playing this game of naughty boys behind the barn, smoking cornsilk and saying damn and hell to show how emancipated we are. It is much too easy to be a “swearing elder”: knowledge is not so cheaply bought. We are not free to discuss any imaginable question simply because we say we are. I am not permitted to discuss botany with anybody, at any time or place; it is not the jealousy of a reactionary society or the dictates of a narrow church that cramp my style—I just don’t happen to know anything about botany. Prejudice, says Haldane, consists in having an opinion before examining all the evidence. If anyone draws any conclusions but one here tonight, they must needs be prejudiced conclusions. If we have gathered here to read lectures to each other or to the Mormon Church, we might as well spare our breath; or if you are looking for a stick to beat the Church with, my advice is, leave history out of it—it will come apart in your hands. For our knowledge of the past is too trivial to serve as an effective instrument in real situations—that is why it is often appealed to but never actually used.

What do we have then? Well, I have a testimony: I may be ignorant, but I am not lost. Socrates counted a life well spent that ended only with the discovery that he knew nothing. That was not a figure of speech or a clever paradox: that was his solemn testimony delivered in the hour of his death. And if the most profitable activity of the mind is that which leads to the discovery of its own ignorance and ineptitude, we can all take heart in the thought that we have not entirely wasted our time in coming here tonight. At this point we can begin the study of the gospel; there is no further need for waiting around until “history” can make up its mind.

Notes

W. S. McCulloch, “Mysterium Iniquitatis of Sinful Man Aspiring in the Place of God,”

Scientific Monthly

80 (1955): 39.

2. T. E. Peet, A Comparative Study of the Literatures of Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia (London: Schweich Lectures, 1931), 6, 12-13.

3. Werner Jaeger, Paidea, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford, 1945), 1:317.

4. Lucien Price, “To Live without Certitude, Dialogue of Whitehead,” Atlantic Monthly 193 (March 1954): 58-59.

5. H. T. Wade-Gery, “What Happened in Pylos?” American Journal of Archaeology 52 (1948): 115-16.

6. Joshua Whatmough, “Hosper Homeros Phesi,” American Journal of Archaeology 52 (1948): 45-46.

7. Price, “To Live without Certitude,” 58; cf. Lucien Price, “Visit and Search, Dialogues of Whitehead,” Atlantic Monthly 193 (May 1954): 53: “I had a good classical education, and when I went up to Cambridge early in the 1880’s my mathematical training was continued under good teachers. Now nearly everything was supposed to be known about physics that could be known—except a few spots, such as electromagnetic phenomena which remained (or so it was thought) to be coordinated with the Newtonian principles. But, for the rest, physics was supposed to be nearly a closed subject. Those investigations to coordinate went on through the next dozen years. By the middle of the 1890’s there were a few tremors, a slight shiver as of all not being quite secure, but no one sensed what was coming. By 1900 the Newtonian physics were demolished, done for! Still speaking personally, it had a profound effect on me; I have been fooled once, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be fooled again!”

8. McCulloch, “Mysterium Iniquitatis of Sinful Man,” 36, 39.

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