#made progress from the initial draft but not Much

[tsukasageorge]

Fighting for my fucking life trying to design Mari magical girl outfit

#Currently have some weird ass half skirt + picnic blanket dress & fuckin piano key sleeves??? #made progress from the initial draft but not Much #mainly I've got the accessories locked in it's just the dress im having trouble with #I've made 5 sketches of mari's outfit today #maybe i should take a break to work on hero n omori #also debating. this is a headpsace au mostly so im going w an omori design #But im wondering if i should give sunny a design too #maybe just a colored ver of omori's w some tweaks #raey spam #current design progress report ( iput the au down for a while): basils done but i didnt color him yet #which i have Got to do #aubrey's passed the preliminary vibe check so I'll work on her final draft in a sec #kel's 100% done i might tweak it a little later but im leaving it alone for now #hero i haven't started but I've got Ideas #and then omoris just kind of a big question mark #also i still have to match aubrey n mari's actual Outfits #oughhhghfhghggghghghghghhg (he is having a great time actually)

[mirai-desu]

On the MSATD News

I didn't have time to post a knee-jerk reaction (which those of you from the Downton days know I was apt to do - thank you to all my long term mutuals of my side blog for sticking with me through those days), as I saw the news as I was getting ready to head out for work and it's been… a bit of a day.

Suffice it to say… I am devastated. And my initial reaction was (well after cursing), that it should have ended with S4, but with a different (happier) conclusion. It's called Miss Scarlet AND THE DUKE for a reason. And after all that happened in S4… it really feels like… what was it all for?? Especially if they knew WHEN FILMING THIS?? "Goodbye for now" is NOT "goodbye forever." They really, really really fumbled this.

There's a lot of theories going around, and I will admit it's too hard for me to listen to Stuart's new interview, but going off what other's have said and the parts of the transcript I did manage to read… I just cannot feel like this was actually his decision unless there's something else going on with him (either in his personal life or maybe he has some secret role he's got, because supposedly he hasn't worked since he did ADR on S4). He's been the captain of the ship, and he has always been enthusiastic with discussing the show and had just great insight into playing William. It doesn't feel like he himself was ready to move onto other things (and that's not even how it's worded - some BS about how the show needed it him to be gone for ~longevity~ of the show), like I've seen with other actors are on shows (e.g. Dan Stevens). He still promoted S3 (which came out in the UK after they filmed S4), he still even promoted S4! He was an executive producer for S4!!! Nothing makes sense!

So if it's due to RN… why keep having the other characters say William was only going to be gone a year? Why bother to have the flashback? why bother to have him stay at at Eliza's to recover?? hell I'm surprised they just didn't keep in the coma then--

But really, why even bother to have Eliza write to him? Or have Ivy say what she said to her?? The time apart was supposed to be them looking at their options. They literally foreshadowed him joining Eliza at her agency upon his return. So… what happened?

If it was actually for personal reasons that Stuart left, he has a right to his privacy. But then they should have rewritten S4 to be the end then, since they knew all this time. I can't believe we are getting the full story on this, one way or the other. The more and more I think about it... I do think it was RN's doing though.

Just two nights ago I drafted up a whole meta extolling how one of the best things this show has done has been how they developed William and how he grew as a character. The progression he made as he not only accepted Eliza having a career but encouraging her. His mentorship of Fitzroy. How he came from nothing, from a teenager living on the streets, to become an inspector at Scotland Yard. But they have chosen to toss that all out the window.

Who knows, maybe S5 ends with Eliza deciding to go to New York. But it doesn't seem like they are handling this like Babington's absence in Sanditon. They will make Eliza quickly fall for someone else, and slap fans in the face who have been following their friends to lovers slow burn for five years (because we had to wait for S2 in the first place thanks to the pandemic). And what sucks is that we still got promo saying they are in love with each other. From Stuart, from Kate, from Rachael New herself. We have still gotten promo promoting the romance. Why not have them have a big fight then or something, idk. They gave us hope. And you know what Fellowes says about false hope.

So I'm just supposed to believe that William gives up on Eliza and doesn't return…? No, I cannot. As much as we hated the deaths on DA when they wrote out actors, at least those characters still died in love with their spouses. And while I'd still be foaming at the mouth in anger if they killed him off… yeah.

William's last lines of the show is a flashback including him saying "is it all worth it?" And the answer is… no it's not.

#yeah I'm risking putting this in the tag #miss scarlet and the duke #msatd spoilers #honestly thinking about every damn scene they ever had #WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR #thought of the jewelry store scene and died #also does this make Arabella right? gross. #also I guess Alibi doesn't give a shit about the ratings for the last two episodes left to air in the UK #also I didn't bring up Theo J*mes because he left after S1 and it was different #if they recast William with Ben Lloyd-Hughes I'd take it #(wouldn't be the same but you know) #but don't make him a new character it doesn't work here with William still alive #I'm tired of men going to America #iykyk

[bentosandbox]

Lappy fancam animatic blogging/production notes

now that wolfgirlyaoi is out on global its rambling time about my powerpoint presentation

Concept

Originally I wanted to do an (Tex & Lapp) animatic with the boss theme (broken wall/Signore dei Lupi .mp3) ever since the event dropped but I thought 1) by the time I finished anything someone else would have probably already done it first (lol, lmao even) 2) I remembered the song exists and how much i looped it then while listening to the group's new album drop and thought the lyrics fit Lapp a little too well and also doesn't end abruptly like the boss theme + was shorter so yea

initial stickman storyboard where i put down the lyrics with event dialogue/happenings that i felt would fit nicely together > hastily scribble the images that form in my head

storyboards were basically what i wanted to see (same rule as my comics) lol especially if they weren't shown in the event CGs, eg. there's a CG of the truck crashing into the courtroom so I didn't do that but they didn't mention her physical acting in that scene + the song I used has a bow/salute at that exact part in their live choreo with the very similar line so I wanted to do a homage even though-

-I was like it's going to be such a pain to figure out an economical hand twirl and bow but I have to do this I need to transplant the image in my brain onto the screen because official media did not do a—

Honestly still don't know if its a common phrase and action combo because I was having so much trouble finding external references that wasn't just scrubbing the live video over and over anyway

part of the storyboards were 'recycled' from comic drafts I did (of the chocolate scene because ofc) when the event was running on CN

Originally I wanted to draw Lapp feeding Texas for The Girlyaoi Funny but I wanted to reference the plaque you get which is a Creation of Adam reference right but I also saw people saying it's referencing the scene from Silence of the Lambs lol so...peel the layers to your liking!!

(The chocolate flavour choice was from asking my Columbian friends what the worst chocolate flavour they ever tried which was white coconut)

my sorry attempt at colour keys > final spreadsheet to keep track of progress and paste all the dialogue i put in

Art Direction

A bunch of shots/colour schemes are references to Måneskin's stuff or other media tehepero I'll just put a few here

At first I was going to limit red/blue to tex/lapp respectively but since Omertosa is blue I just did away with that rule and lapp gets to have both (and more!) these two colours have pretty obvious emotional readings I think but also

red = self blue = society Siracusa or: red = yaoi & blue = yuri

for the others:

Purple = Alberto/Saluzzo, its not orange like the fruit he keeps holding because see below; I needed the colour for something else LOL Also the Saluzzos are iirc nobility or whatever and they have purple hints in their clothes so I think it was a good fit anyway

Yellow/Orange = Its supposed to be representing the last word in the story which apparently, yostar went with 'Savagery' which is Correct I guess but (laments again about how nuance is lost in localisation because imo savagery has a more derogatory kind of connotation while I think 蛮荒 in context of the story also has a 'nature/untouched by civilisation' side to it) which is why Texas setting the house on fire was not (entirely) red but orange (and it complements the blues both visually and thematically) and it's yellow at the end when they're frolicking(?) in the wilderness lol

(these colour rules don't apply to the penglog shot and technically a few frames like the shot with shocked penance, the one right after and 'im just lappy' because...i forgor my own rules lol)

The greens/teals were just a reference to the shades in the 3DPV I think

The silhouette/general style was inspired from the 3D teaser thing they had at the beginning of the 3.5 anniversary stream and the card suits that I..forgot to move to the other layers which is why only the green one had them (supposed to be 1 per set 💀)

The clash bit is basically the same as the event CG but with a flipped camera/POV sorry for world's worst screenshot lmao. Couldn't imagine the poses in my head so I ended up posing 3d models in CSP pretty good posing practice

These shots got rendered extra because..they were the first frames I started on and I was still figuring out how much to simplify lol

I also posed the chairs shot for some inexplicable reason…my file was lagging so bad

Headcanon part (kind of)

The childhood flashback scene is probably the part I took the most liberties (headcanon) on since it's not explicitly canon like the rest...the sequence/how I connected the scenes itself to fabricate a timeline of her childhood was kind of inspired by some weibo post musing about how (iirc) texas's sweet tooth maybe came from when she was being fostered at casa Saluzzo and Lapp treating her like a pet essentially and giving her a lot of treats since...you know what happened to her actual pet hehe except maybe texas offered her a stick first and then Lappy just reciprocated endlessly because its one of the few 'acts' she knew that wasn't violence haha yeah this section was basically a stealth doujin sorry

It's mentioned that she was brought up as the ideal Siracusan or whatever and she does the cute doodle in the 3DPV so I thought she probably had the Forced Music Lessons as a kid (The music sheets are Bella Ciao and of course)

The bow choreo was the one thing i really wanted to animate but the music sheet segment (based on that one split second shot above) ended up being my favourite part even though compositing the motion was a mini hell on it's own (ended up compiling a long png to scroll by with the red doodles layered over)

Other things

I will never live down my (self-imposed) shame of misspelling the title (I fixed the title on youtube but its why the ending shot in the upload says ZittE e Buoni instead of ZittI e Buoni) don't rush your fancam in 10 days 😔

I didn't look through the entirety of the EN loc but Idk why they had Lappy say 'Then go.' to Texas when it's supposed to be more like 'Let's go.' as in, 'let's go together' as opposed to 'alright off you go to the greyhall alone' lmfao also her saying goodbye forever padre when addio is right there

I don't think I'm insane enough to do another ppt soon but man this pair really makes the 'imagines a whole music video while listening to music' part of my brain go wheee like first it was Starset's Manifest then Signore de Lupi then this and while working on this one i was thinking how Måneskin's Torna A Casa would be another good track

ok ty for reading #GIRLYAOIREAL

#arknights #Il siracusano #bentodraws #bentotexto #I was going to have this post as a reblog but tumblr broke my copypaste so here's a completely separate post #feel free to ask me about anything else i didn't cover in here

[playertale-au]

[NOTICE] Thank you for the 300+ followers. To celebrate, bits of PLAYER!Tale AU concept( regarding Player) is shared

Reposting because Tumblr decided to post instead of saving it in drafts when I'm not even finished. Love you tumblr!  (╯ᐛ）╯︵ ┻━┻

◇◇◇◇◇

A/N: 

Oh, wow! We actually reach 300+ (as of now 310) followers!

⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ 

Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart, I’m glad all of you enjoyed the story despite my art not being that good. I actually wanted to draw for 250 followers but I didn’t realised we passed that milestone. 

Anyways! To celebrate, I wanted to share some concepts regarding the Player based on my memories, though sorry if there is like a black blotched in the drawing as that is considered as spoilers.

To start off, I began creating this AU maybe 5/6 years ago, on and off, (re-writing or removing some stuff along the way) I had loads of concept art and drawings back in 2019 but sadly those old arts were, ummm, forcedly deleted after a disagreement with someone I trusted, haha. The pain for a FT user in ibis paint. ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ

Then 2023, I wanted to move forward. So I decided to give it a shot and start drawing again. I wanted to share my AU (better late than ever),＼＼\(۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶//／／ and also I thought it will help overcome my fear of drawing and start liking to draw again.

Anyway, here we have Player’s design concept (+ explanation):

Version 1:

Player actually does not inhibit Frisk’s body, as they are not trap in the game, instead, they have their own “Avatar” basing on the data and sprites of Frisk and Chara. (The situation is more towards VR? AR? I’m not sure what to call it) The Player has their memories intact.

The story is just Player goofing around in Undertale, until plot happens, but I didn’t really like the idea as I have no clue how to progress the story forward, so the whole story was re-written.

Player mostly hack codes, while Frisk has the Reset/Reload button.

Initially, their eyes didn’t change colour when using abilities. But I wanted to distinguish what and when the abilities are used.

Version 2:

This is where, I decided that the Player actually inhibits Frisk body, though they are not amnesiac. Frisk is like a ghost (narrator?) here. The image above is post-skip version to maybe 1 year trapped in Undertale. This idea was scrap and rewritten due “Chara” ‘s story and I wanted to involved Gaster in the story. (Also, because I didn’t want to draw this version hairstyle anymore, hahaha (  ≧ᗜ≦))

Player has both the hacking and reset/reload abilities.

This version of Player is more uptight and serious.

Version 3:

I think this is like 2nd or 3rd version of the finalise concept. 

Our current Player. I made the hairstyle simpler.

This Player inhibits Frisk body and is amnesiac. The personality shifted so it’s easier for the player to act consistent. This version is more carefree than ver 2, they are similar to ver 1.

First design of the Player (ver 3).

Despite being ver 3, I wanted to keep a bit of the ver 1 and 2 hairstyle but decided not to. Again, I wanted a simpler hairstyle.

This personality is just them being stress and filled with anxiety. A nervous wreck and a crybaby. Cries a lot at the first arc until they pull themselves together. But I didn’t wanna make them cry all throughout the story, if I continued to write them like that, I might ended up smacking Player myself hahaha. I ended up toning down the personality. 

Gaster would have replace Frisk as the ghost (narrator?). But I decided not doing it, because it conflict with the plot. That, and the story would be over much quicker with him around.

Side note: I had to change the relationship between Sans and the Player(hate, confuse, no interaction, chill, idk? etc), a lot of times, but in the end I decided to make him not trust the Player. 

Previously in most iteration, he just hates Player.  I planned to have him to kill the Player the first time they exited the ruins, but decided to go against it as it doesn’t really fit his style. Also, the story would go very differently if he did commit to it. Maybe one day I can make him kill them. In an alternate timeline maybe. ꉂ (´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱª

Extras: Player in different outfits (loosely)based on the other fallen humans in this AU. (+ ruin outfit)

There is a reason, why the Player had worn some of these outfits in chapter 3 and 4. 

Don’t worry, it’s not originally the clothes worn by the other children, Toriel made them. She has spares. (Sorry, to the one that find it creepy, when it was first shown, hahahaha)

And, that’s all for now I am able to share, I wanted to show more, but I’m afraid, that’s already in the spoiler territory. 

Anyways-! Thank you again for the follow, each and every one of you are the best! And I hope you enjoyed the upcoming story! 

#PLAYER!Tale AU #Thank you all so much #no seriously #Spoilers? Maybe #PLAYER!Tale AU concept

[spacey-xannabelle]

Fateful Encounter...

Last month, at around April 10th, I decided to revisit an old project I started months prior which was to polish up a test sketch of a comic page about Lucy encountering Lumi in the dreamspace. And after slowly making progress on this, I'm finally finished with this!

I'm gonna leave some artist notes under the read more, but overall I'm super proud of how this turned out!! This is pretty much my first serious attempt at making comics in general so this has been a very interesting learning experience!

Artist notes: So this is what the original sketch for this whole thing was. It was just me scribbling out a scene I had in my head for Startrails that I wanted to put on paper:

This I'd say was made around 2020-2021 ish. At the time, I didn't really do much with it. Until several months ago, I thought of trying to redraw this page and expand upon it.

But my first attempt at doing this didn't quite lead anywhere. I barely got through the thumbnailing process and just gave up bc I lost motivation (and life/work stuff was Happening so yea I had to put this aside as I figured stuff out). Here's the first draft of the thumbnails:

It was just two pages at the time and was pretty simple. I left this project sitting in my files for a while until I one day just, started binging videos from Thestarfishface on YouTube, primarily her webcomic guide videos. And I decided I'd give this project another go.

It was here where I began making a second draft of the thumbnails and this was what I had to work with:

I wanted to experiment with the panels and get funky with the compositions this time around. The 2 page draft expanded to a 3 page thing. But I thought it would've been better if I added one more page at the end with Lucy waking up as a conclusion to wrap this whole thing together.

And in the middle of working on page 3, my friend had suggested to do a an impact frame page, which I hadn't considered during the thumbnailing, so 4 pages became 5. And this was the result!

I posted the pages as I finished them onto my deviantart so that's where a lot of my thoughts were journaled as I went along dfjsdh. To summarize my ramblings there, this project was a very fun (and a bit frustrating) learning experience! I'm hoping to keep practicing and improving my workflow, and hopefully one day make Startrails a full fledged webcomic :')

Additional ramblings:

The structure that Lucy finds Lumi in is inspired by an orrery.

For page 5, I initially didn't plan for much dialogue but as I drew it, it felt just a liiiitle bit empty, so I kinda just threw in some dialogue for Mira. But bc I was already in the inking process (and I just wanted to have this project completed), I didn't redo the page to even include Mira in it. So Mira's just out of frame sdfjskdh. If I had more time and energy to keep this up, I'd have made a revision of the page so I could include her.

This experience has taught me that I could seriously work on my rendering process a bit more, and that my layer management is just atrocious sdkfjksdfh

This has also taught me that while Medibang has the tools needed for me to draw these pages just fine, it also lacks some stuff that I personally need if I were to do a longer project like this. So I'll be experimenting with CSP next!

The dialogue throughout this whole thing wasn't all that planned out- I really just stuck close to what the initial doodle had which probably wasn't the best idea bc I just have like, 2 pages of Lucy's awkward sounding dialogue aaaa. I might do something a bit more dialogue heavy to help improve this skill next time.

Anyway, thank you for reading through my 1 am ramblings on this little project of mine shdkjhks

#artists on tumblr #Art #Digital art #comic art #original characters #OC lobby #OC art #Xan draws #Lucy #Lumi #Mira #Kinda dfjfkh #Startrails

[use-your-telescope]

When Everything's Made to be Broken - Chapter 18: You Were in the Darkness, Too

Summary: The aftermath of the attack on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Author’s Note: So… I meant to post a chapter two days ago, then Sunday morning I woke up and was like “nope I need to re-do some of this because I think it’ll be better if a certain event happens ‘on screen,’ so to speak.” Long story short, two days later, here we are! I feel like Oprah - “you get world building, you get back story reveal, you get plot progression, you get super self-indulgent hurt-comfort (maybe a bit more hurt in this chapter, but have no fear there is LOADS more comfort where this came from)!” 

Another random note - back when I started posting snippets on the beloved hellsite, this song initially was set with an entirely different chapter. Then I concluded it worked much better here. So if you have been around for long enough that you’re like “hold up a minute!” when you see the song and what happens here, that’s why. Tbh, I think most of the songs that were paired up with chapters have changed since I initially posted snippets. That’s the beauty of drafts, I guess? Anyways, thanks for your patience, and hope you enjoy <3 reblogs are always appreciated, and lmk if you want to be added to the tag list!

Contents: Descriptions of vomiting, in relation to describing a migraine. Nightmares. Tears. Loki being the actual MVP. 

Word Count: 5,913

Read on AO3 | When Everything's Made to be Broken Masterlist

Song: Cosmic Love - Florence + The Machine

A falling star fell from your heart And landed in my eyes I screamed aloud as it tore through them And now it’s left me blind

Some types of pain could be relieved with medicine.

Others… not so much.

From the moment Theo found Chris outside of the Met, standing amidst the crowd of attendees in a makeshift triage area that had been set up by blocking off 5th Avenue, she could sense a difference in the way he looked at her. He didn’t rush towards her; instead, he approached slowly, scanning over her appearance with wide eyes and the color actively draining from his face. When they met in the middle, Chris reached out as if he wanted to embrace Theo, but he froze with hands hovering inches away from her body, as if he was afraid to touch her.  

Even as Theo promised she was fine and that Chris shouldn’t worry – even as she checked him over, asking if he was okay, the short, half-hearted answers and the cold, wary look in his eyes didn’t diminish; instead of embracing her, he lowered his arms and stepped back, putting even more distance between them. 

He looked at her the same way the council looked at her: as an abomination, a curse. 

The exchange, however, was cut short - one of the medics employed by Stark to work with the Avengers spotted Theo and rushed over to request her help treating some of the most critical patients, who otherwise would not survive transport to the nearest hospital. 

So, Theo pushed the raw ache that settled in her chest to the back of her mind, ignored the churning of her stomach and the pounding in her skull, and set about treating the worst of the injuries, even if it meant she would blow past her limits and pay the price later on. There was a physical cost to using magic, and with healing that cost was much higher - particularly when the scope of healing required was practically bringing someone back from the dead. 

However, between someone dying or inducing a migraine from overexertion of magic, Theo would choose the migraine every time. At least when she healed, some good could come from her magic. Did it make her suffer? Yes, but she probably deserved it after everything.

And boy, she was suffering.

By the time she left, the only people who remained beyond the emergency response crews were paparazzi, lurking around the perimeter like predators stalking prey as they attempted to capture glimpses of the aftermath. They pounced at the sight of Theo, bloodied and drained after what was meant to be a celebratory occasion turned to a nightmare. Each burst of flash felt like an icepick to her skull and left her wishing she had enough energy to teleport herself home. Theo lifted one hand in a futile attempt to block some of the light, only for the shouting of the photographers to ricochet through her eardrums and into her skull. 

How Theo survived the ride back to the tower without throwing up from motion sickness, she wasn’t sure. By some miracle she made it back to her suite, only to make it a few steps inside the door before the nausea and sensitivity to light and sound made her beeline for the bathroom, scolding herself for her earlier recklessness as she dove for the toilet and prepared to empty the contents of her stomach. 

Over the sound of her retching, Theo didn’t hear her phone ring. Because her head was buried in the porcelain bowl of the toilet, she didn’t see the screen light up with Chris’s name. 

As the nausea faded, Theo remained firmly in place, bent over the toilet bowl with both arms stretched across the top of the toilet seat. Once she knew she wasn’t going to be sick, Theo carefully eased herself down to lay on the floor, having spent the last of her energy throwing up. 

Laying in her bed would have been more pleasant, but the thought of moving sent waves of churning heat through Theo’s stomach and made her entire body ache. Besides, the cool tile felt great against her uncomfortably warm skin and it was tolerable enough for her to pass out without even realizing she’d done so.

It was the vibration of Theo’s phone rattling on the floor that dragged her back to the world of the living, only to find she somehow felt even worse than when she passed out earlier. In her half-asleep stupor, Theo clumsily grabbed the phone from where she had tossed it as an afterthought. A wince snuck out as the light of the screen stabbed through Theo’s head; she squinted, trying to make sense of the contents on the screen.

The culprit was a text from Wanda, stating “you okay??”  and then including what looked like a link. But Theo didn’t open the text right away - a different notification on her lock screen caught her eye. A voicemail from Chris, from right around the time Theo got back to the tower, elicited a sense of foreboding dread from Theo that she couldn’t ignore.

With shaking fingers, Theo unlocked her phone and went to her voicemail. She selected the message, relying on the speech to text feature to read the contents of the message instead of listening.

“Hey, it’s Chris. I’d been hoping you would answer, but I guess it is what it is. Look, I’ve been thinking - I don’t think we should see each other anymore. I know it’s cliché, but I mean it when I say it’s not you - it’s me.”

Even if Theo knew it was coming, reading the words still made her sick to her stomach. 

“I know that you’ll always have to put your work as an Avenger first - I’ve always known that. I wouldn’t ask you to try and choose between being an Avenger and our relationship. But tonight, I saw you fighting, and I realized what it really means to date an Avenger, and– it’s too much. I can’t do it. If there’s stuff you left at my apartment, I’ll send it back to you. I’m sorry, Theo. Take care.”

Theo barely finished reading the transcription before bile clawed up from her stomach. She gagged, scrambling to her knees and barely managing to get into position before she threw up, this time expelling nothing but stomach acid in the process. 

Between the cramping of her abdominal muscles, the burning in her throat, the pounding in her skull, the uncomfortable heat of her skin, and the aches radiating from her bones, Theo was miserable enough. The voicemail, however - that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A gasp escaped from Theo before she could stop it, then a whimper. Her eyes were leaking - no, water poured from them. She tried to cover her face with her hands as a whine escaped her throat, but she couldn’t stop the sobs that shook her entire body. Moving was painful - crying was painful - but the ache inside of her was far worse than any physical discomfort.

She should have known it would end like this. This was always what happened when people got to know her - they realized she was no good, and then they abandoned her. Thinking this time would be any different was stupid. Even if she told herself that whatever she had with Chris was nothing serious, it didn’t make the fact that he saw her for the curse she was, and he left.

They always leave.

And the worst part? Theo wasn’t angry at Chris for leaving. As much as she hated when the council looked at her like the curse she was, she could understand why. Her family deserved better. The Aneterrans deserved better. They all deserved better than her. 

Chris didn’t know the extent of the bullet he dodged, but he knew enough to make the smart decision and leave before he got hurt.  

By the time the tears stopped, Theo felt like a mess through and through. She didn’t even want to think about what she looked like - eyes swollen, hair tangled, makeup smudged, her skin still sticky with dried blood, and her armor torn from fighting. 

She needed a shower, and then a real bed.

As tempting as it was to lay back down on the floor and continue to wallow, the desire to feel less disgusting won out. 

Theo sat on the floor as she peeled the layers of armor off her body, only standing when she absolutely had to in order to remove her pants. The addition of vertigo meant that she spent most of the short time beneath the spray of cool water leaning against a wall, eventually sliding down to sit on the shower floor when her legs grew too tired to support her weight. 

The process of drying and dressing in pajamas required multiple pauses - one to be sick again, the others a result of aching limbs and muscles trembling from prolonged exertion. It took a herculean effort, but Theo finally made it to her bed, falling asleep before she even had a chance to pull the covers over herself.

The stars, the moon, They have all been blown out You left me in the dark No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight In the shadow of your heart

Once a bustling metropolis, Meridia had been known for its opulence and innovation. The streets were packed with vendors peddling their latest inventions and entertainers attempting to woo the staff of the royal court in hopes of securing an audience with the king and queen. 

That Meridia was no more.

Theo stood in the center of a barren flagstone street, blanketed in the dark of a new moon. Broken glass clung to the window frames of weathered stone buildings long-abandoned, just one trace of the city’s descent into madness. Adjusting her mask, Theo pressed forward, relying on muscle memory to carry her into the underbelly of the city she once called home. 

Theo used to sneak onto those very streets with her cousins, placing bets on which performers would successfully charm whoever was tasked with the day’s errands. Sneaking amongst the city was how Theo first learned her governess had a crush with the Apothecary’s son, always traveling to him whenever she needed some sort of potion or supplies for Theo’s lessons. Theo also once caught Ravenna performing to a crowd while in disguise, though Theo immediately recognized her sister and used the knowledge as blackmail. If she listened close enough, she could hear faint traces of musicians’ voices in the wind.

A chill wracked her body. 

Throughout the streets, navy fog shimmered, emitting an iridescent glow as it weaved in and out of the alleys around her. When she left, this neighborhood had yet to be tainted by the arcane fog that had come to be known as the haze.  An orange glow and billowing smoke in the distance highlighted the silhouette of a broken skyline.

Even after all these years, the ruins had yet to stop burning.

The city was but a shadow of what it once was.

This was no longer the Meridia that Theo remembered, much less the Aneterra that Theo hoped to one day return to. 

Instinct led her down alleys and side streets, through what once were lush court gardens bursting with exotic blooms as she reached the rear of her destination. Dead vines of Ivy still clung to once-pristine stone walls; cracks in the weathered glass window panes only hinted at what Theo might find inside. Careful to avoid drawing attention to herself, Theo lurked in the shadows as she made her way round to the front of a building she once knew in and out, the place that she reminisced about on cold nights when the winds of winter rattled her windows as a girl in Michigan. 

Somehow, the front door - crafted of thick lumber and held together with intricate metalwork that reflected the status of the home’s former residents - hadn’t been destroyed in the massacre. 

Theo started to push the door open, but stopped short. She hadn’t been there since the night of the massacre, when she thought she lost everything. Even if Fury was right - even if Theo’s parents and sister were alive - they weren’t the only people Theo lost that night. The possibility that Theo might discover their remains just beyond the door was one she had to be ready to face.

Theo drew in a deep breath, steeled herself, and pushed the door open.

The creaking of worn hinges echoed through what once had been a grand foyer. A thick layer of dust coated the overturned furniture and picture frames along the walls, askew from the chaos of the massacre.

Theo’s boots clicked along the marble floor, each cautious step percolating through the air. The further she ventured into the room, the stronger the sense became that she was not alone.

Before her, a grand staircase curved up to the second floor, drawing the eye towards the massive windows which previously made the foyer feel particularly grand. In the dark, however, Theo couldn’t even tell if the glass remained in place, or if fighting had destroyed those windows too. 

Without consciously thinking about it, Theo crept towards the stairs and began to climb. Halfway up the stairs, Theo swore she saw a silhouette amongst the shadows cast by the window frame. Curiosity spurred her forward, past the top of the stairs.

Someone stood just in front of the window, looking out onto the ruins with their back towards Theo. They wore a black cloak, its cape brushing against the stone floor as it obscured the individual’s identity. 

As Theo drew near, they made no effort to look back and see who was there; as far as Theo could tell, they didn’t even seem to recognize she was there. With only a few feet between them, Theo opened her mouth and took a deep breath, ready to speak–

“...So…” The figure turned around, hands adorned with runes reaching out from beneath the cloak to lower the hood and reveal themselves to Theo. “... You are alive.”

Theo knew that voice like she knew her own name.

Ravenna stood before Theo, piercing lavender eyes filled with ice as she regarded her younger sister. Inky black hair tumbled over her shoulder, stopping just below her chest. Despite the lack of light, her skin cast a soft glow.

“Rae—“ Theo took a jarring step forward, only for her sister to step back.

“After all this time, you wander back here.” A bitter laugh escaped the elder sister. “What, are you here to save the day? We needed that years ago.”

“No, Rae–” Theo tried, “I had no idea—“

“No idea – what, we would still be here? Still fighting?” Ravenna spat, taking another step back. “Of course you wouldn’t - you brought this on us, why would you bother to try and fix it?”

She was the curse.

“No, Rae, please–” Theo extended a hand to her sister, desperate to plead her case. “I’m trying to get back so I can help–”

And in the dark  I can feel your heartbeat I tried to find the sound But then it stopped And I was in the darkness So darkness I became

Theo awoke with a jolt, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. The sudden movement sent a wave of aches rolling through her limbs while her pounding heart throbbed between her temples.

Dreams of Aneterra were nothing new, but the nightmare was different from anything she had seen before. This wasn’t seeing the world from someone else’s perspective, or watching like a third party; it was as if she had actually been there.

It was just a nightmare. It was just a nightmare - she had experienced plenty of them before. It didn’t take a witch to know that this wasn’t a premonition or a vision - this was a manifestation of her worst fears. There was no reason to give this particular nightmare any merit - her anxieties were unfounded, at least according to Memere.

But this one felt particularly vivid, and it was hard to shake.

Just the thought of her sister’s anger brought another round of overwhelming nausea. Throwing off the covers, Theo nearly tripped over herself as she bolted for the bathroom. She shoved the door open and stumbled inside, wincing at the crash of the door handle slamming against the wall. Collapsing to the bathroom floor, she barely managed to get her head over the toilet before throwing up. 

Despite the minuscule amount of bile, she continued to retch and gag for a couple minutes; it was as though her body was convinced something else was still in there, even though there was absolutely no way in hell that Theo hadn’t already emptied her stomach many times over. 

Completely spent, Theo closed her eyes and slumped against the toilet, temple pressing against the cool porcelain of the tank. Even without her eyes open, the ground beneath her tilted and swayed like she was on a boat during stormy seas.

God, she was a mess.

“Are you alright?”

Theo’s head snapped up towards the voice, only for her to wrench her eyes shut and groan as a fresh round of misery bashed in her skull. When the worst of it passed, Theo cracked her eyes open, blearily peering up through the dark to find Loki standing in her bathroom, staring at her as if she was a ghost.

“What’re you doing here?” The question slipped out, her exhaustion and malaise resulting in a far too blunt delivery.

“I had been on my way to the sitting room when I heard crashing come from inside your quarters; when you did not respond to my knocking, I grew worried and came inside…”

It took a moment for Theo to register what Loki had said, but when it finally clicked, she burst into uncontrollable tears. 

I took the stars from my eyes And then I made a map And knew that somehow I could find my way back Then I heard your heart beating You were in the darkness too So I stayed in the darkness with you…

Of all the things Loki expected in life, attempting to console a truly distraught Theo at three in the morning while sitting on her bathroom floor was nowhere among them.

And yet, that was exactly where he found himself - cross-legged on the marble tile as he cradled Theo in his lap, her face buried in his chest as she wept with such vigor that her entire body shook. 

Loki replayed the series of events that led to his present position. 

Like many nights, it began because of his inability to sleep. What was rare, however, was that his insomnia was not the result of some night terror, some monster that left his mind running in circles as if it were a dog chasing its tail. 

No, he had been quite content when he settled into his bed, his well-worn copy of The Eye of the World in hand for some light reading. Yet, instead of dozing off to thoughts of Moiraine Damodred and her search for the Dragon Reborn, his mind wandered back to the attack on the Met Gala.

Theo had been the only one to successfully defeat one of the mystery beings that had been discovered, revealing an ability to control the shadow creatures that continued to antagonize Midgard. The carnage left behind, however, indicated that the being proved to be quite a challenge - beyond the mess in the gallery, Theo walked away from the exchange with no shortage of wounds that would require a healer to address.

Still, she hadn’t returned to the tower with the other Avengers. Instead, she insisted on ensuring her beloved actor was safe and seeing if any victims needed care - all the while acting as if she herself was not actively bleeding from multiple parts of her body.

Selfless, stubborn creature.

From there, his mind shifted to the being who had wrought such havoc. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, there had not been much opportunity to examine the corpse before it was whisked away by SHIELD agents for further study; what he had been able to discern remained fairly generic. Humanoid in form, though the shriveled appearance of their flesh gave the impression of some type of undead creature. Spider-like black veins stretched beneath their skin, as if they had been poisoned or cursed in some manner.

Yet, he hadn’t seen anything quite like it.

At that point, Loki accepted his fate: he was nowhere near sleeping. 

With that in mind, he scoured his book shelves for one of the tomes he rescued from Asgard during Ragnarok - one that he referenced from time to time, usually when SHIELD requested his insight regarding creatures that Midgard had never seen before. Leatherbound book in hand, Loki began the familiar venture to the sitting room for a sleepless night of research.

Until heavy, syncopated footsteps and a muffled crash from the next room over stopped Loki dead in his tracks.

A heavy thud, as if multiple heavy objects had been dropped simultaneously, followed. The sound came from within Theo’s quarters - a realization which only brought an increased pulse and a festering sense of dread.

Loki approached her door, rapping his knuckles on the dark wood. “Theo?”

He pressed his ear to the door, listening for any signs of movement. If he strained, he thought he heard some sound - coughing, maybe? - but nothing indicating movement.

A twist of the doorknob indicated that it had not been locked. Before he fully thought the decision through, Loki pressed the door open. He slipped inside, carefully navigating the pitch black as he began to search for Theo. 

Though Theo’s space was never perfectly clean, the sitting room appeared as if nothing had been knocked over or disturbed. The sense of urgency grew as he explored further, knowing that such a racket followed by such silence never had benign origins. 

A painful-sounding retch came from the direction of Theo’s bathroom, followed by a groan.

Loki strode towards the sound, careful to remain quiet in case something foul was afoot.

He rounded the corner to find the bathroom door wide open, revealing Theo hunched over the basin of the toilet as if she had just been sick to her stomach. 

The pieces fell into place - he must have heard her running to the restroom and throwing the door open.

When she finished, she slumped down a bit, eyes closed as she laid her head along the seat, breathing as if she had finished a grueling training routine. 

Though Theo had clearly showered since her return, she somehow appeared even worse for wear than the last time Loki saw her. Her complexion rivaled that of a ghost. Her eyes, though closed, appeared red and swollen, lashes glistening despite the darkness. Wrinkled pajamas twisted around her body in a rather unnatural fashion; combined with an absolutely disheveled braid, Loki guessed she’d been tossing and turning in her sleep.

Loki stood there for a moment, completely dumbfounded. Should he say something? What would he say? After waiting this long, would it scare her? Would saying something make things worse? If he didn’t say something, would she think he was a creep? Should he just leave?

At one point, he stopped himself and nearly laughed. He was Loki, of Asgard. How a Midgardian would react to him should not have been of concern. 

However, this was no ordinary Midgardian.

He drew in a deep breath.

“Are you alright?”

The way Theo’s head shot up confirmed she had no clue he was there, or at least he had startled her. A brief moment of horror flashed across her face, only for a grimace to take hold as she clutched her head and groaned.

Loki cursed himself for startling her with such a pointless question - of course she was unwell, she would not be in such a position otherwise.

Theo lifted her head once more and cracked her eyes open, squinting up at Loki as she blinked slowly. Something about her gaze seemed… Off. 

“What’re you doin’ here?” The question came out half-mumbled and a bit slurred; she listed back and forth ever-so-slightly, almost like she could not keep her balance.

“I had been on my way to the sitting room when I heard crashing come from inside your quarters,” Loki replied, frowning at Theo. “When you did not respond to my knocking, I grew worried and came inside…”

Unsure of how to conclude his statement, Loki trailed off, running his fingers through his hair.

The predicament he found himself in was well outside of his area of expertise; comforting people was something Maximoff was far better with. He briefly debated leaving to fetch the Scarlet Witch – she would know the perfect solution in a moment like this.  Yet, Loki remained frozen in place, mind reeling over how to proceed. Should he try to locate a healer? Should he try to soothe her? Should he leave her alone?

The silence stretched as Loki stared at her, frantically running through different ideas in his head and dismissing them for all the reasons they might not work. Loki found himself frozen, unable to make up his mind about what he should do.

In turn, Theo simply sat there, blinking slowly as she stared up at Loki…

… Until her face crumpled and she caved in on herself, a small, hitched breath giving way to a heartbroken sob.

Such a desolate sound had no place falling from Theo’s lips.

Spurred to action by Theo’s tears, Loki lowered himself to sit on the floor beside her. He may have been an Avenger, but he certainly was not a perfect hero. Despite bravery being in the job description, he had to dig up the last of his courage to pull her into what he hoped would be a comforting embrace. 

At the new touch, Theo tensed, gasping quietly as her trembling hands flew up to cover her mouth and stifle her cries.

Loki froze. 

Yet again, Theo had startled, all because of him. Loki cursed himself - of course he would make a mess of what should have been a simple interaction. With his luck, she wouldn't have a thing to do with him after tonight. 

It was too far to turn back now; after all, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Just before Loki lost his ambition and pulled away, Theo settled beneath his touch, shifting so her face pressed firmly against his chest; hot tears dampened the knit fabric of his shirt as she somehow began to cry even harder. Her arms slipped around his waist, clinging to him despite the way her entire body shook. 

Loki cupped one hand to Theo’s neck, the pad of his thumb slowly brushing against her unusually heated skin. This time, Theo did not recoil or freeze at the change, instead melting into the touch.

Perhaps there was hope.

Motivated by a surge of courage, Loki shifted from simply holding Theo close to tracing gentle, unhurried circles along her back. 

With every new circle, the smallest hint of tension slipped from Theo’s muscles; as more of her body relaxed into Loki’s embrace, her cries slowed and grew softer. Even when Theo had loosened her grip and the only sounds she made were shaky, slow breaths, Loki had no intention of stopping his ministrations. 

“Theo?” He murmured, nose brushing against her hair as he looked down at her.

“M’m s’rry…” With her face fully buried in Loki’s shirt, Theo’s almost embarrassed response came out almost charmingly muffled; however, she made no effort to move.

“It’s alright.” Loki used the hand on Theo’s neck to sweep her messy braid aside, flattening his cool palm against the overheated flesh. “I take it you do not feel well?”

She weakly shook her head. “Feel Awful.”

“How about I help you to your bed so you can get some rest?”

“No, please – I can’t – ” The force with which Theo shook her head the second time caught Loki by surprise, as did the rising panic in her tone. “– Can’t go back–”

“Darling, you need rest if you’re to feel better,” Loki gently tried to rationalize, though if the heat radiating from Theo was any indication, her ability to rationalize likely had been impacted by some level of a fever. “The floor is no place for someone who is ill. You ought to rest in bed.”

“Not mine,” Theo begged, ”I can’t–” 

“Would you like me to bring you to the infirmary so you might rest there?”

Theo shook her head, tightening her arms around Loki.

“I’m not sure what other options there are, as I do not think I can bring bring you to your actor—“

“Broke up.” A new pair of damp spots on Loki’s shirt accompanied the two-word interruption, punctuated by a sniffle.

“Pardon?”

Theo blindly reached to the side, drawing Loki’s eye to her mobile. He unfurled one arm to retrieve it for her. Theo didn’t even pull away from Loki to look at what she was doing as she unlocked the device before handing it back. Loki accepted, eyes scanning across the screen. 

The most recent of Theo’s voice messages was from her lover, not long after the events at the Met Gala. White, hot fury shot through Loki’s veins as he read the transcription; despite what Loki had been told of the Midgardian’s supposed kindness, the message he left Theo was short, blunt, lacking any sense of care for the recipient. If anything, it was downright cruel.

Perhaps it was for the best that Loki needed to ensure Theo was cared for first, as he otherwise might have tracked the bastard down and made him regret his callous behavior. The first thing to sort out, however, was where she might be amenable to resting, since her bed and the infirmary were, for some unknown reason, unacceptable.

An idea came to mind; though it might cause others to talk, it was, up to that point, the best he could manage without waking anyone else and dragging them into the conversation.

“How about you come with me to my quarters?” Loki cautiously suggested. “You can rest there for a while, then decide later if you’d like to return to your own bed or seek out the infirmary. Would that work?”

A slow, almost sleepy nod brought a swell of tenderness to Loki’s chest and a soft smile to his face. 

Loki carefully adjusted to cradle Theo in his arms before slowly rising to his feet. In what almost seemed to be instinct, Theo pressed her forehead into space between Loki’s shoulder and the crook of his neck, letting out a strained breath before settling in. Though Loki had already established the presence of a fever, it wasn’t until carrying Theo that he noticed she was not simply trembling, but downright shivering.

Careful not to jostle Theo as he navigated the tower in the dark, Loki made the return journey to his quarters with restrained haste, relying on his Seidr to help with managing doors and other environmental obstacles that otherwise could have slowed or complicated the process of getting Theo to bed. 

Upon arriving in his own quarters, the dim, golden glow from a nearby lamp provided the first opportunity to take in Theo’s appearance under any sort of light; Loki paused for a moment to confirm his prior assessments regarding Theo’s condition. Much of what he discerned in the dark remained accurate, though he did find the smallest relief that it seemed she had fallen asleep while in transit and appeared almost peaceful… Were it not for the tell-tale signs of tears previously being shed, one might have been fooled into believing all was well. 

With a hushed sigh, Loki brought her from the great room to his bedchambers. A flick of one finger and shimmer of emerald seidr later, Loki lowered Theo onto the bed, carefully tucking her beneath the silken sheets and the plush duvet which Loki had crafted from the finest Asgardian textiles, pausing for a moment when a soft, breathy hum snuck out of Theo and she shifted, snuggling further beneath the covers. 

A few minutes later, Loki had placed a bin beside the bed in the event Theo became sick to her stomach once more, procured a glass of water and set it on the closest nightstand, and drawn the drapes shut so the morning light would not wake her.

With nothing else to distract him, Loki now had to answer the question he had yet to consider: where was he going to sleep?

The proper answer, of course, would be to find alternate sleeping arrangements, lest anyone make inappropriate assumptions about the circumstances. 

But doing so meant leaving Theo by herself, essentially abandoning her when she was in the midst of a particularly vulnerable moment. Surely, she would understand if he remained close by; after all, she trusted him up until this moment, enough to abandon her own quarters in favor of staying in his. Besides, he had stayed with her once before when she felt unwell. Precedent had been set to ensure no one mistook him for less than noble intentions, given the circumstances.

Yet, as Loki crawled beneath the covers on the opposite side of the bed, the distance still felt as if he were abandoning her. What if she woke up, delirious from fever, did not see him beside her, and panicked at the lack of familiar surroundings? If Theo laid with him, Loki would know the moment she woke and could ensure she had whatever she needed; even better, he could use his Jötun heritage for benevolent means, combining it with his seidr to reduce his core temperature so he could serve as a sort of full-body cool compress. 

Amidst warring thoughts, the weight of an arm draped across his chest ripped Loki from his indecision. Theo had rolled over in her sleep, curling into Loki’s side with her head resting atop the dip between shoulder and chest and one leg wrapped around his as if second nature. She nuzzled into him, oblivious to the waking world, her breath slow and deep in contrast to Loki’s racing heart. 

For a moment, Loki found himself dumbstruck by just how natural it felt to lay with her tucked into his side in such a manner. In her most vulnerable moments, she found solace in his presence. In her sleep, she sought him out. And though he could make any multitude of excuses as to why - she was not aware who she curled herself around, she was not of sound mind from illness - the excuses did nothing to dispel the pure awe that resulted from realizing the trust Theo placed in him.

In the morning, he would locate Maximoff and determine how to proceed; until then, he would embrace the trust placed in him, and hopefully repay it tenfold.

He willed his seidr to work, cooling himself to offer Theo some relief from her fever, then allowed himself to drift into a pleasant sleep.

The stars, the moon, They have all been blown out You left me in the dark No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight In the shadow of your heart

#loki #loki fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction #loki fanfic #marvel loki #mcu #mcu fanfic #mcu fanfiction #loki x ofc fanfiction #loki x ofc #wemtbb #when everything's made to be broken #loki fluff #loki angst #loki comfort #loki hurt #loki whump #whump #sickfic #loki sickfic

[elvirable]

Fast Lane | Chapter 2

[ Simon Riley x f!Reader ] | ao3 link

rating: explicit | word count: 3.7k | status: work in progress themes/tags: damsel in distress, protective Simon, smut, car chase scene, simon lowkey stalking you.. for a mission ofc, gun violence, loose plot ———————————————————————

Simon had never said a word to you, but he was beginning to know you. Only through the small details, of course. In other words: Simon “Ghost” Riley has kept a close eye on you for weeks now, waiting for the mission cue. Action ensues to rescue you, a thrilling car chase, and ends wrapped in hotel sheets.

(Ch.1)

-

Your fingers drummed against the side of your thigh, timid tension buzzing throughout your nerves.

Elevator doors parted to reveal high ceilings framed by walls of blue glass that overlooked the street. An oblong conference table dominated the floor space, leather chairs neatly tucked into the wooden surface; the room was nearly empty except for a few seated executives, broad men who could only be assumed as security, and a waitstaff who was rolling in a cart adorned with pastries and an espresso machine.

You must’ve looked like a wide-eyed doe in the headlights because your awe was interrupted by a smooth, older voice greeting you.

“Welcome,” one of the executives rose from his seat. “I hope you didn’t have much trouble finding our office.”

He was an older man, middle-aged with an animated smile compassed by trimmed facial hair and wrinkles. Like the other executives, he exuded an air of professionalism and prestige  — graying slicked back hair, a firm posture, and a well-tailored suit. He made his way over to you, extending a palm to greet you.

You shook his calloused hands and matched his welcoming smile. He introduced himself and the others as he guided you towards the conference table, inviting you to sit.

“If our secretary, Tanya, didn’t already tell you, we were absolutely impressed by your resume.”

“Yes,” chimed one of the other executives, this time a slightly younger man whose expression was sharp and slim. “Our managers spoke highly about your interviews. Your work ethic and attitude is exactly what we need to incorporate into our culture.”

“Ah,” you were admittedly flustered, taken aback by the rush of flattery. “Thank you.”

You were normally talkative and expressive, but the atmosphere instinctively caused you to urge composure. Honestly, you didn’t believe you would get this far. With initial shock, you had been invited for a final round interview for a job you desperately needed. 

“So,” the first executive paused to sip his coffee, “we invited you here today not only to meet the person behind the resume, but so you can get a feel for the office.”

He praddled on while an assistant offered you a freshly poured espresso and pastry, to which you nodded with quiet gratitude. Your eyes returned to the man speaking, but you couldn’t help to feel the two other men’s gazes lingering on you  — a sensation that didn’t feel too great, instead somewhat grimy.

“With remote work being so popular nowadays, unfortunately a lot of our staff aren’t in today. Feel free, however, to take a look around. Marcus here,” he gestured to the man with sharper features, “can give you a tour while Tanya drafts up the rest of your offer and paperwork.”

“That sounds great, thank you.” You held a cordial smile across your lips, sipping the espresso; it was extremely bitter, and you had to conceal the urge to twist your face into a grimace. So odd  — the man before effortlessly finished his. You weren’t in the habit of drinking straight espresso, perhaps it was an acquired taste. 

You placed your cup back onto the stained mahogany table, managing to finish the remaining sip. Lifting your gaze to the two men seated across from you, their eyes no longer traced your figure and were instead droning into your eyes. Marcus was the first to cut into the short silence by commenting on the weather and continuing on with material, surface-level topics.

Conversation was light, briefly landing on details about the company’s benefits and employee retreats. An odd feeling pitted your stomach. Maybe it was your nervousness, being in a setting you weren’t quite used to  — or the culmination of an extensive interview process. 

The chatter fell to a natural hush before you spoke.

“Alright, Marcus, I’d love a tour if you’re ready.” You offered another polite smile to which he immediately replied.

“Ready when you are,” his smile was flat, perked at the corners of his mouth. He rose from his seat after you, meeting you at the entrance of the elevator.

The third executive, who had been mostly silent until now, headed towards one of the sleek doors on the conference floor. As the elevator whirred, he wished you farewell. You thanked him with a parting wave, but your smile faltered as a rush of nausea coursed through you. It was rapidly accompanied by light-headedness. Again, however, you internally dismissed it by chalking it up to anxiety or standing up too fast. 

With a chime, the elevator doors opened. Marcus stepped in after you, completely ignoring your clearly unsettled demeanor. 

“We’ll start with the marketing branch. Some of our managers..” his voice began to fade, now replaced by a loud ringing clouding your hearing. Your vision was framed by a darkness, and your head felt unbearably hot as your knees began to buckle beneath your weight. Panic rushed through every muscle, hastening your breathing as you fought to grasp your consciousness.

The last thing you remembered were the steel doors rolling shut and arms catching you as your vision was engulfed by black.

…

Humming vibrations and muffled voices lulled you awake.

Bleary and blinking, your eyes focused on the ceiling of a car interior. Light streaks washed over the gray felt, the woosh of traffic sounding more clear around you as you regained your bearings. 

Stiff-limbed and still  — you were laid in the backseat of some standard SUV. You immediately became mindful of everything  — your breath, muscles, anything to refrain from drawing attention to yourself. Your hands and ankles weren’t bound, so you doubt they planned for you to rouse during the ride..wherever you were headed.

Two men, burly and toughened, were seated in the front; heads you haven’t seen before. A murky myriad of questions throbbed against your head, but you couldn’t entertain them. Fear gripped every shred of you, despair settling in at the impossibility of the situation. You wanted to scream, to bang on the windows in the hope some passenger car would call for help. But again  — you couldn’t; you were frozen with dread.

Raised voices dripped with frustration, drawing you out of your frightened inner echochamber. 

“Who the fuck is this guy tailing us?” came a growl from the passenger seat.

“Agh, we’ll lose him. Probably just some asshole,” replied the dismissive driver. There was a click of metal before the rich scent of tobacco permeated the air. 

“Pass ‘em over.”

“Let me get a drag in first, you ass.” Despite the roughness in his tone, the passenger let loose a throaty laugh.

Silence again, except for motors whirring around you and the quiet inhales of cigarettes. 

“Fuck, look at this asshole. He’s trying to pass us up.” You could hear the passenger vexingly shift in his seat, leering at the side mirror.

“Just let him, who cares.”

A mechanical whirr droned as the passenger window rolled down, the man starting to shout undoubtedly some creative curse before a softened pop sounded. Panic immediately ensued in the SUV as the car’s smooth speed now turned bulky and bumpy. Some car horns blared outside followed by the roaring of mufflers.

“Fuck, fuck! He shot our back tire  —” there was ruffling from the passenger seat before a click, the man racking the magazine of his tactical pistol. 

“We’ll push ahead,” said the driver, voice firm before he was interrupted by the buzz of a radio blotter.

“You guys OK in there?” questioned the radio.

“Yeah, yeah  —” said the driver in a rushed tone. “Back tire blown out, we’re still good with the front.”

“Detailing the escort car right now. They saw the shot come from a black pick-up.”

“Black pick-up,” confirmed the passenger. “Asshole has a silenced pistol, too.” 

“They’re three cars behind you, the escort  — just push ahead.”

“What do we do about the psycho?” inquired the frustrated passenger.

“Escort will deal with it, so just push ahead. Pull over at exit 42 and use the ‘donut’ in the back.”

“Got it.”

The radio feed fizzled as the voice faded out. 

Panic was boiling through the shock and numbing fear that had locked your limbs earlier. Adrenaline now coursed through your veins, riling up your thoughts as you combed through all the possible actions you could take to make it out of there  — to make it to the black pick-up, the only chance you had. 

More shuffling came from the passenger seat, his body beginning to turn in your direction. Instantaneously, you shut your eyes and focused entirely on regulating your breathing to a steady pace. It seemed to suffice, as the man turned back to the window in silence. 

Once he began talking again, you peeked your gaze to the tinted windows. Perhaps once the car returns, you could start banging or lower the windows to garner the attention of the black pick-up. Apprehension twisted your lips at the sight of the passenger’s pistol resting near the center console of the car. 

“There he is, coming up,” the passenger hastily blurted, readying his pistol and angling his head to get a proper view of the black pick-up in the side mirror. 

A sudden bang, followed by pitched metallic scraping, rocked the car. An off-guard yelp slipped through your lips. The man in the passenger instinctively turned to face you, proving fatal as another soft pop went off  — warm blood splattering onto your blouse. The passenger’s body slumped over.

Pure shock was trapped in your throat as you sat up, shaking any fixation on what had just happened. The driver’s movements were now rigid, struggling to turn the wheel; you could now view how the car was nearly pinned against the black pick-up and was edging closer to the divider.

“You’re fucking crazy!” shouted the driver, still wrestling with the wheel to prevent completely crashing. He was completely aware you were wide awake, sputtering towards the window while the car jolted, but he didn’t care. 

As you approached and lowered the tinted window, the sparking and scraping metal became unbearably louder. Your panicked eyes looked over towards the black pick-up driver, only to have your gaze met with dark ones. They were ashened, the only striking feature that hadn’t been covered by a skull-donned balaclava. 

You didn’t know these eyes, but they knew you. They had finally found you. 

“Get in. Now,” barked the man, his order direct and urgent. 

The backseat window of the pick-up lowered. For a brief second, in your hesitation, another car was approaching from behind visible from your peripheral view — a similar SUV as the one you were in.

With a deep and shaky breath, you climbed and hurled yourself into the backseat of the pick-up. Your knee and wrist throbbed with an immediate pain from your landing, but the adrenaline overrode any urge to wince. 

Almost instantaneously, the black pick-up pulled away from the SUV and shifted lanes. More car horns blared, distant police sirens swirling and oscillating far behind all of the commotion. 

You stuttered, mouth agape as you stared at the masked man. You had no option but to trust this man, and more questions began to batter against your mind.

“Who are  —” you began, abruptly cut off by his deep tone.

“Get down and stay down.”

His voice was enough to silence any burning questions you had in the moment, as you promptly followed his words. You ducked low, laying against the leather upholster of the backseat. However, your stare never left the masked man; the only window into this mysterious savior were his eyes, which droned forward with a calm composure. 

The car lurched as he moved over to another lane once again, and you clung onto the passenger seat to brace yourself. 

Sirens had grown louder momentarily, until he turned down a winding exit between thrushes of trees. The silence had now become deafening, matching the volume of your pounding heart. After a few minutes, the car stilled to a stop in a gravel parking lot. 

“C’mon.”

The car was still running as the masked man clicked the door open and exited. His stride was quick as he opened the backseat door and waited for you to stumble out.

“Where are we going?” you finally pushed the words out of your throat, fully processing them once they were spoken.

“Hop in, then I’ll tell you.” His gaze left your face to survey the surrounding roads, watchful as an occasional car passed the rundown gas station you were parked at. Urgency straightened his posture as he gestured to another pick-up, barely visible from behind the building. 

“I —” you closed your mouth just as quickly as it had opened, not sure what to even respond with. You were still confoundedly bewildered, frankly quite overwhelmed and haven’t begun to process what exactly had occurred. 

Gravel rustled underneath your footsteps, soon rounding the building and entering the new truck. It was white, a similar yet used model compared to the black one. Once you shuffled into the backseat, you looked over the contents placed behind the driver seat: a first aid box, a throw blanket, water bottles, and a small cardboard box with packaged food.

The man turned the ignition and the truck roared to life. He turned in his seat, arm extended against the passenger headrest to properly reverse the truck out. Quietly you sat, watching his focused eyes before they flickered briefly towards yours. 

“You okay?” his voice, originally harsh and low, was a softer tone now. You breathed for a few moments, perhaps to gather your thoughts or  the fatigue was finally settling in, while he turned and merged onto the main road.

You perused your body, which seemed fine, despite some bruising and the haziness still lingering in your eyes. The soreness of your limbs began to fade, and you sunk into the backseat after reaching for water. 

“Yeah, I think so.”

His eyes darted towards you in the rearview momentarily, watching as you drank the water. The car slowed to a pause at a red light, and he took more than a moment to study you while you stared out the window.

Small spots of blood were speckled across your blouse and exhaustion paled your face. You were now leaning against the window with your curled finger resting against your bottom lip.He had seen this face so many times wandering into the cafe or buried in a book. Peace was now replaced by a subtle distress, one lost in troubled thought. Those delicate hands were trembling, and your brows were furrowed.

The light flashed green, and he pulled his focus back onto the road.

“You can ask your questions now,” he cleared his throat. “Got a long drive ahead of us.”

His words seemed to pull your attention away from the passing outside view, somewhat successful in providing the ease he had aimed for. You shifted to lean comfortably into the seat, mulling over in your mind and twisting your lips. Chaos had fizzled into silence, and you needed help making sense of it all.

“Okay, first off —” you breathed, as if you had to brace yourself. “Who are you? Where are we going?”

“You can call me Ghost.”

“Ghost? You don’t have a real name?”  

“It’s on a need-to-know basis,” he replied before tossing you one of his task force badges. “We’re headin’ to a safehouse. You’ll get a medical check-up and be interviewed.”

“Okay,” you let the words swirl in your brain, lips pursed as his answers temporarily sufficed.

You held his laminated badge between your fingers — it was an official government issued card, which provided some relief. And you could almost laugh, if it wasn’t for the weighing exhaustion, 

that even in his photo ID this man still had a mask on.

“So, what exactly happened? I..” your voice trailed off, your thoughts sitting heavy on your tongue. You tried to recollect your thoughts in an attempt to piece it together yourself, but grew quietly overwhelmed.

Ghost glanced at the rearview mirror, watching your brows furrow and your soft face muddle with puzzlement. He waited for you to continue, but spoke when it was evident you were finished speaking.

“The agents will probably brief you, but you were being targeted. Not sure what for.”

He knew the details, but chose to be vague; to be honest, he wanted to spare you from the reality and didn’t want his words to be the cause of such anguish. However, Ghost’s words only spurred the confusion twisting your face.

He attempted to quell the trouble visible on your face, “You’re safe now.”

You smiled softly, finding some resolve in his response. Tucking your disheveled hair behind your ear, a strand slipped from your ear to frame the curve of your cheek.

Ghost noticed your smile when he glanced back at the mirror and felt a tug at his mouth to do the same. When you fell silent, he offered to turn on the radio  — something that he didn’t really do himself, but again to offer some ounce of comfort that he could. You responded that you would enjoy that, but at a low volume.. something to occupy your mind for the remainder of the car ride. 

And so the radio played softly for the entire ride. He’d notice when a song familiar to you would play, how you’d tap your fingers against your thigh. An hour in, Ghost would find you in the rearview fighting the urge to succumb to exhaustion since all the adrenaline had burned through you. 

Eventually, your eyes fluttered shut. 

During a stop to refuel the truck, he shook out the throw blanket in the back and delicately placed it over you. There was that default softly lonesome face of yours, at rest and fast asleep. His jaw clenched at some point  — a quiet anger tensing inside him at the plans those despicable men had in store for you. Oh, the grief that riddled through him when he imagined your gentle face wrought with fear and tears.

For the rest of the ride, he was diligent to drive carefully and avoid any bumps in the road while you slept away.

#sorry to my new mutuals #i am 80% aesthetic and 20% fandom #simon riley #simon riley x you #simon riley x reader #ghost cod #cod ghost #cod modern warfare #cod mw2 #cod mwii #cod x reader #mw2 #ghost mw2

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

Ren Faire progress is slow but steady as I stumbled through a bunch of failures before biting the bullet and deciding to tackle the very intimidating process of drafting and making my own bodice.

I had initially planned on using a pattern, but I didn't anticipate the fact that my pattern is old (as in no longer in print) and the sizing is way off. I would need to go up six sizes, and that would require an entirely different pattern.

This was pretty discouraging, but I ended up trying to draft my own pattern from a bodice I already own. It didn't go well, to say the least.

A few hours of frustrated sobbing later, I reached out to the Sewing for Ren Faires group I'm in on Facebook, and was pointed to some tutorials. One suggested covering an existing bodice with fabric, and I tried that too... but modern corset tops have a vastly different silhouette than the Tudor gown ~*vibes*~ I'm going for.

I was once again very discouraged.

Then someone pointed me to this website that allows you to input your measurements and tells you step-by-step how to draft your own bodice/corset pattern. I got some butcher paper, some duck canvas, and some Featherlite Boning in casing channels (so that I don't have to try to make/sew them myself), and set to work.

I made a basic mockup with scrap fabric to make sure I had the measurements right, and I could already tell it was miles ahead of what I'd tried to do before.

I laid out the three layers of my chosen fabric, traced out the pattern, cut them, pinned them, marked out where my boning would go, and started stitching it in.

The progress below doesn't look like much, but I am very pleased with it. I've actually sewn in three of the strips of boning, but since I'm doing everything by hand it's slow going. I'm actually starting to have hope that I may be able to finish this outfit by the end of May when I have my first Ren Faire of the season. Fingers crossed, and please send a prayer to the costume gods!

#sewing #projects #ren faire #tudor #let me be very clear I have no idea what I'm doing #but I'm pleased with this so far!

[n7punk]

"Lightbeam" Fic Notes

Pretend I posted this *checks watch* two days ago when I finished Lightbeam. I got busy lol and I was playing Stardew Valley.

Epilogue Life:

:) You’ll have to wait

Chapter 1:

⦁ This fic was originally written back in February after Embrace the Blame in preparation for the Bang. TLDR is we needed to have the fics ready early so the artists could then illustrate them, so I just wanted to write the whole thing at once because that’s how my projects work. I actually finished Embrace the Blame a few days before I posted the final chapter(s) because I had been posting it on a schedule and I could just continue using that as I worked on this to make the gap in my posting overall smaller. I think it actually took me like two weeks to write this, which is why there was a week and a half between the end of EtB and start of MMaM (and of course I had to write MMaM some too, but I already wrote the first few chapters ages ago). It’s also why there was almost two weeks between Start Your Engine finishing and Our Love Is God starting. I wrote the entire rough draft in February, and during that break I edited and finalized the fic for posting in May. I also just had a lot going on then, but yeah this fic has been slotted in between my others over the last few months.

⦁ Adora’s father’s information was left blank because she was an immaculate conception. More on this will be explored in the sequel fic <3

⦁ Norwyn is officially unnamed in the reboot I think but he’s one of the higher-ups at Mystacor. In the OG he was Shadow Weaver’s mentor.

⦁ Adora’s weather powers come up a lot in the first few scenes and I wish I had more “diversity” in magical incidents, but the problem is, as outlined later in the fic, Adora has no idea the stuff she’s doing (see: her coffee) and the weather stuff is pretty much the only consistent thing she has identified as maybe her fault. There was initially also mention of a drowning incident she miraculously survived when learning how to swim that even she knew was weird, but it ended up cut for flow.

⦁ In general, magic is normal, inevitable, and accepted, but there are still some “normie” communities that pop up in small pockets and want nothing to do with, say, a lesbian drowning the upper east side by accident on a Wednesday afternoon because she’s sad. Legally they can’t do anything to “discriminate”, but it’s a culture thing. Catra faced constant bullying and Adora was only safe because she didn’t even know if she had magic. Weaver moved there after getting cursed from her own incompetence because they easily believed the story that someone else cursed her and welcomed her in as a victim with open arms. Her understanding along with rejection of magic made her the perfect person to point to justify their ignorance (see, even a once-sorceress can be turned on and reject magic when she realizes the dangers. Etc). The main reason she moved there was just because there was less magic in the area, though (part of the reason a normie community popped up there), so it made it easier to manage her curse because it was weakened.

⦁ Oh boy, the Whispering Woods section. So first, I should say the version in the fic is pretty much what I originally outlined. The only big difference was Adora was supposed to find out about Razz from her research and went seeking her out rather than going there following her “mom.” I couldn’t figure out what that research would look like, though, so I went with the mom thing because that aligned with her backstory. My big problem was that I got a new idea once I got to writing the woods and the new idea was bad but it felt like reversing progress to go back to the original thing. The new idea was that Mara was an ancient She-ra who fell in love with Light Hope and, in her grief when Light Hope died, accidentally transformed her soul into a guardian spirit who would watch over future She-ras and “keep them safe” so they don’t get in a position where they, yknow, accidentally warp time and space and the laws of physics again. Light Hope was the one who actually sent the lightning, sent Catra, and protected Adora when she was drowning when she was seven. Adora would find the hut, would talk in circles with Razz, spot Catra who immediately fled, and get so frustrated and sad it started pouring rain, which forced Catra to flee back in through the window and into Adora’s arms for safety from Razz but she refused to change back because she was mad at her. While waiting out the storm, Adora eventually had the idea to google guardian spirits, found different methods for getting in contact with them, and tried meditation. This is around when I realized this whole set-up was bust, but the idea was going to be that she got in contact with Light Hope, had her powers she wasn’t in touch with explained to her, and told Light Hope to stop the wrath of god shit. Light Hope’s existence kind of wiped out everything I had planned for what was supposed to be the actual fic with her learning her powers. This new backstory changed everything and ruined what I actually wanted to write about, so I went back to my original outline. It’s way better for it and it meant I actually got to do the slow discovering and mastering of her powers I had planned, but boy can it be a struggle to dig yourself out of a hole and lose “progress”.

⦁ Catra eating the pie was actually a joke from before I started working on the fic. The original joke was that she was legitimately visiting the woods just to “steal” food from Razz and this was a thing she did on the weekends sometimes because they all lived nearby. Razz was fine with sharing with her cat “guest” in this version and seemed oblivious to the fact she was a person. This got changed because 1) Even if I changed it so they were all living near the woods and there weren’t barriers to Catra and Adora spending time together early on when she’s reluctant, that then posed the question of why the hell Adora hadn’t tried visiting her mom’s place already if it was easily accessible, 2) while I think Catra taking the pie once she knows about it is in character, her ever wandering through the woods enough to even find Razz to steal from wasn’t, so the basic set up didn’t really work, 3) the final version, with Adora’s powers going haywire and bringing her there, is way more impactful and in line with the fic’s story. It gives Catra a motivation to keep in contact with Adora after this point and illustrates definitively just how powerful Adora’s powers can be when she’s still in denial about the “warping the fabric of reality” thing.

⦁ Agatha Trunchbull was the basically demonic head mistress in Matilda, which, from my understanding, had a fucking torture closet she would lock kids into, in addition to regularly assaulting them like when she clobbered a massive serving tray over a kids head. I haven’t actually read the book, I just knew someone who liked it growing up and I went to the wikipedia to be sure when I went for the reference.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Adora’s spiraling and exaggerating, but empaths do need to actually hold the hand of someone and open their heart to feel their energy, so Adora isn’t likely to ever cause an accidental concussion as long as she’s careful about who she holds hands with.

⦁ “Catra sends her a condescending look that makes Adora blush for some reason.” It’s because you like belittling, idiot.

⦁ Catra’s kitten form is partially a result of trauma and partially natural self-defense. Having such a small form allowed her to hide and slip away when she needed safety from Weaver/bullies/etc. The trauma getting a little better is why she was able to “grow up” a little but she was right that it’s permanent in the sense she will never be able to have an adult form.

⦁ The meditation was actually a lot more helpful than Adora gave it credit for, but again, lack of self-awareness.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Adora’s whole thing about “oh, I’ve never actually experienced this thing I’ve heard talked about” is definitely a realization I’ve had a few times in my life, usually in some medical context though, like when I found out I’d never had an actual runny nose because I’d never breathed through my nose before.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Catra is being especially cuddly as a cat because it’s an “acceptable” way to get snuggled up close so she can then transform and properly cuddle Adora.

⦁ Catra showing up at her door as a cat was literally just because I wanted an excuse to write more kitten!Catra I was ready to be done with her yet lol.

⦁ I’m planning to write a sequel fic set a few years down the line once Catra and Adora are married, but as you know if you’ve been following my Tumblr, I have like three active WIPs demanding attention, so that’s going to have to wait.

⦁ This isn’t related to the fic so much, but this was my first time ever doing a fandom event! There’s definitely zines and stuff I would have wanted to participate in before but I only ever learn about these things after they’re already over lol. I loved being part of this Bang and oh my god do I love the illustrations so much Karo did an INCREDIBLE job. I knew I wanted to participate in the Bang the second I heard about it, but picking a fic was hard. I really wanted to write something in canon but didn’t think any of my current OotW ideas would be long enough for the word count requirement. At that time, I had a canon divergent AU ready to go, but it was Make Me A Monster and I wanted to do something happy so… yeah that was a no go lol even if someone might have wanted to draw the cybernetics. Lightbeam ended up being the perfect option because it was 1) fairly short for an AU but long enough to meet the requirement and post over the week, 2) light-hearted, 3) had plenty of scenes I thought someone might want to illustrate between Adora’s powers and kitten!Catra, 4) I’ll be honest, it kind of felt full circle, because…

⦁ At the start of this year I posted freak occurrence: confluence as a celebration of over three years of posting Catradora fics and finally getting to my fics being 1% of the entire Catradora tag on AO3 (next goal is 1% of the SPOP tag — JOKE THIS IS A JOKE THAT’S NEVER HAPPENING). It featured tons of my Catradora couples from various AUs — including one AU that hadn’t been posted yet. I’d had the freak occurrence fic idea for three years, so whenever I came up with a new AU I’d picture its Catradora in that scenario, which meant I’d already thought about what Lightbeam’s couple would do in that scenario even though I hadn’t written it yet. Getting to post it as part of the Bang was so exciting and I hope it lived up to expectations! The version that was featured in that fic was a few years older, when Adora had a better grip on her magic, but you’ll see a bit of that in the sequel fic.

Meta:

Playlist

Upcoming:

I have a one shot I’m probably going to post in the next couple days and then I’m aiming for Slipstream (my hacker AU) but uh….. Something is coalescing that may also demand attention. Stay tuned ig lol

#lightbeam #fic notes #ficmeta

[td-tbbg-official]

How soon will the first chapter drop? And is the story done or a work in progress? Also you’re doing a fantastic job of introducing and making this intriguing it’s like seeing official teasers for the show.

I thought of keeping this ask for Ask Friday, but I think it’s best to answer it now.

First of all, thank you! I’m so glad you like the teasers! :D Now for the realer stuff...

You might not have noticed, but the introduction posts of the blog have been edited to say the fanfic is coming soon and the chapters have been cut from 30 to 26. Initially, I said the release would be in February, then, in spring. Now I’ve pushed the date again - and now, not even to a definitive one! So, you might be wondering: what the heck??

Here’s the thing. I made this blog on a whim, and it may have been a mistake. In hindsight, I should’ve made it when I got much more done, but I wasn’t convinced I’d find the support later rather than sooner, so I opted for making it this month.

TD:TBBG is a work in progress. To be fully honest with you, I only have two chapters done, and those need major editing. Character arcs are far from finished, and I only have about 1/4 of the challenges. As I’ve stated in the Gen 4 teaser post, I’m a busy high school student with two extracurriculars and much more than I want going on in my private life at the moment. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I can’t get much done.

So, now, TD:TBBG is (hopefully) going to be published this year in no specific season. It’s a very... ambitious project. Probably stupidly so, especially for my perfectionist self. I strongly believe in putting out good content and quality over quantity, and I hope you do, too. This is why I hope you can understand.

In the mean time, I will try to keep this blog active with the short stories and teasers promised. In fact, one is sitting in the drafts!

So, yeah, sorry for being the bearer of bad news :( I will try my best to get out the best possible fanfic I can, and do that in my own rhytm. I hope you can understand, and thank you so much for the support! It’s so overwhelmingly good to see all your kind comments and fun reblogs 🥹 I appreciate you all so much 🩷

Geo :3

coming soon to an ao3 near you!

#total drama: the bridge between generations #total drama: tbbg #td: tbbg #tbbg #total drama #total drama 2023 #total drama island #total drama reboot #tdi #tdi 2023 #td 2023 #td all stars #tdas #total drama all stars #td fanseason #total drama fan season

[perfectlovevn]

hi boss! absolutely loved Perfect Love and you did such an amazing job with the entire game's execution! i loved how you were able to so clearly portray eris as f-ked up and the main instigator for everything, pulling the strings behind the scenes instead of the usual "i didnt do anything wrong" or "im just trying to survive" type of MC (which isnt bad at all, but im so happy with the freshness and utter depravity eris brings) i love your art and the intentionally messy style that highlights the disorganisation and chaos in both eris' and milo's mind, the recurring motifs of eyes, red, blue, god i can go on and on. really your vn is so well crafted with how intentional every creative decision taken seems, im going crazy with the amount of love, time and effort you put into perfect love.

ive read every single name easter egg you put and the references to other yandere vns/media (jd <3) AND went on to give us more with adding little quips later in the game depending on the nickname eris gives milo. i was literally going crazy with how i couldnt decode the 2nd type of cipher you scattered throughout the code until 2 days later when i was ready to give up and ask you hahaha

from there, if it isnt too spoilerish, is there reason you used the nihilist cipher that removed the letter J instead of the usual Z ? and ! i loved the snippets with the friendship gang, tysm for leaving in your writing process and brainstorming products in the game files i had so much fun <3 im so sorry for the rant and thank you so much for the game! 1000% looking forward to your next one if youre working on something!

Hello! Thank you for your kind words!

Yeah, one of the main reasons I made Eris like that because because of how much I really wanted to see more evil MC in visual novels (or just yandere media in general). While there isn't anything wrong with having a yandere who is just there to survive, there is something very fun about being the one who causes the yandere to become worse than he initially was.

I'm glad that you found such meaning in the art style! Honestly the biggest reason I drew it like that was because I was trying to get it done for the 2023 yanjam and I didn't want to overwhelm myself so I just made mostly everything black and white. That and it's supposed to symbolize more of the darker aspects of the game. Did you know all my assets were drawn with one brush?

Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy the details because I really did try to put as much as I could in there. Since I think it would be fun for people to see the neat details people put in the game (I know I sure do when I play visual novels), I tried to make everything very catered to what was going on in the story. It did take some extra work, but I think it's good for the game and my general learning experience. I'm also glad you enjoyed the easter eggs I put in for names and nicknames. I was very sleep deprived when I did it and I kept adding them in because I don't have good attention span (or at least, that's part of the reason).

For the cyphers inside of the code, I put a hint at the very top relating to each of the code. Each of the four types is represented of the three Milos with the one in English being from Eris. The Nhilist cypher is specifically for Manipulation and the key is in the second line based off of the capitalized letters.

Yeah! I'm glad you liked it. I'm still in the middle of writing the other ones (I'm working on the one with Poison in it, which recounts what Eris did to get Poison to fight Violent in his route). I always like leaving my drafts in there because I always find it fun to see people's thought progress in code and games.

No, no, I love your rant on it! I think it's really fun seeing what other people like, dislike and thought about the game in general! My next game will be a lot more light hearted, but still have a yandere character in it.

#perfectlovevn #male yandere #yandere #milo asks #yandere vn #yandere boy

[suleikashideaway]

2023

So I see a lot of people around here with their various wrapped updates regarding the progression of their art. I never really considered that I had much to say, considering I'm such a baby writer and haven't actually published anything. Who am I to join the conversation?

On reflection, I do have a lot to say, and yeah, it's worth saying. 2023 was a big year for me as a writer. So for posterity's sake, I want it known here in my blog.

The big project: FF8

Technically I've been working on a final fantasy 8 fic for years at this point. The fact that it's so personal and complicated kept me from sharing it with anyone. It was for me. It made me happy. But this was the year I decided to at least start the attempt at making it publishable.

After several drafts of this story, early this year I finally reached a point where I could write THE END and mean it. At something close to 140k words, It felt like I had climbed a mountain. Of course, now I look back and see that it was a tiny little baby hill, but it was maybe one of the most important hills I've ever walked.

To my surprise, I found a beta right away, and from there my 2023 trajectory took off into the stratosphere. They know this already, but I have to thank my beta (and now one of my very best friends) @failed221b-chill for lifting me out of the solitude and teaching me so much about everything, but especially taking on the role of my personal writing tutor. Together we went line-by-line through part 1 of my 3-part story, and my little baby writing mind EXPLODED.

Lemme tell ya. The confidence I gained from that. Woof.

It was also made very clear that I had my work cut out for me. Not only did I decide to double the entire fucking thing (by adding in another POV that was initially going to be a separate work), but I realized I needed to rewrite pretty much all of my existing draft.

In the span of a few weeks, I drafted over 35k of the other POV for part 1. With my newfound writing knowledge, I'm going through, line-by-line, and making this story what I want it to be.

Though I feel like I've grown exponentially as a writer, I still feel like this fic, as it stands, is not ready for publishing. Part 1 is almost there...I'm inching closer every day...but I don't know how long it will take to get it done to my satisfaction.

And I'm okay with that. My original goal was to have the entire 3-part thing written and completely done before publishing. Now, I may consider sharing before that goal is accomplished. Stay tuned.

Another Project: Stardew Valley

Something I learned incidentally (that I bet a bunch of other people have already learned before me, and here I am trying to reinvent the wheel of course) was that I actually needed another writing project to bounce back and forth between. Before this year, in between writing my ff8 fic, I wrote an entire Stardew Valley slow burn romance harvey/farmer fic, probably around 150k words. It was extremely cathartic and fun to write butttt I reread it now and cringe, hard, at my lil baby writing skills. I'll never delete it, because obviously it was another little baby hill I needed to climb. But as it is, it will never see the light of day lol. I keep having thoughts of how to completely rewrite this piece, but at the moment it's pretty vague. Not sure I'll ever return.

Instead, I was wildly inspired by @not-poignant's take on Alex, and feverishly wrote my first-ever Alex stuff, somewhere around 12k words. This is currently sitting on a back-burner, awaiting my soul-searching to decide what I really want from the piece.

What's Next?

My ff8 fic will always have precedence. But it's a mammoth. And due to the nature of the content, it is sometimes emotionally very difficult for me to write it. Sooooo it may be a while. That's okay with me.

In the meantime, I'm super excited that the first @ffviiicharacterweek is happening in January!!! It's given me an opportunity to write much shorter pieces that I never would have gotten around to. Hopefully I'll be able to participate fully and enjoy the works that come out of that.

Overall, it's been a damn good year for writing.

So anyway, if anyone has given this post the time of day, thanks for sticking it out to the end! I'm certainly open for chatting about any of this stuff, or if you just want to talk I'm up for that, too! I hope you have a joyous new year!

#writing #me #2023 wrapped #ff8 #stardew valley #i'm so so so grateful to be where i am

[raccoonfallsharder]

Hello! I’d like to ask questions #14 & #15 about Window.

eeeee so excited to get this ask!!! absolutely giddy. thank you, lovely ♡♡♡♡

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

on the surface, i would say that i initially had no agenda for window across the galaxy other than to give rocket a better life sooner. i never intended to post it or the other two rocket fics i'd started writing around the same time. but the more i think about this, the more i realize it isn't true. the minute i did start posting it, things changed for me.

part of what moved me about vol3 is that when i watched that final scene, i felt someone had opened my heart like a conch shell and whispered inside it: no matter how ugly or painful your past has been, you deserve to allow yourself the experiences of joy & connection.

i tried to infuse that message in my writing at that point. i thought about it with almost every single chapter. jo has a lot of my own idiosyncrasies and neuroses lol but i also tried to make her as relatable as i knew how because it was important to me that anyone who read it could hopefully see themselves in the two of them, in rocket and jo - as a protector, a healer, a fighter, a caretaker, a person worthy of healing & hopefulness & forgiveness & love & community.

tall aspirations for some raccoon porn but whaddaya gonna do, refuse the call?

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

i think i learned that i don't have to obsess quite as much as i do about each chapter. i have a lot of anxiety about my writing and whether or not it makes sense, if my narrative is flowing/paced properly, if the characters feel believable and relatable. in addition to that, i have a sequencing disorder that makes reading/writing a fucken TRIP, and as a perfectionist it's painful to have reread a chapter thirty-two times and then still find typos after posting, or sentences that are all out-of-order. but toward chapter twenty-ish i was like... these sweet, perfect, maple-sugar-readers - these flawless strawberries and emeralds... they do not give a FUCK if i leave a sentence unfixed or i have an imperfect paragraph. they are so kind and sweet and it's okay

so then i felt like i only needed to reread my drafts like twenty-nine times, and that's what i call progress

thank you for the ask this made me SO happy fanfiction asks

#rfh asks #hibatasblog #fanfiction ask game #fanfiction writer #window across the galaxy #gotg fanfiction

[lesbianchemicalplant]

I tried writing a post to organize my impressions after watching The Fly (1986) a little while ago, but it became unwieldy and is now buried somewhere in my drafts. this has also become unwieldy but I'm posting it this time

overall it was great, one of the better horror films I've seen personally. I was more upset by it than I thought I would be (because of it's strength, not because it was bad.) (also I know I know, what did I expect, but....)

contains personal tangents, CW body horror, ableism

so for a lot of the time while watching, the film made me think of disability

I don't talk about it on here much, it's relatively minor, but I have chronic physical issues with my shoulder/arm (it's complicated, stuff pulls on other stuff, also worse some days than others, stretches and exercises are helpful for it). and I think there are broad allusions to disability and ableism, not just (or even mostly) things that specifically apply to me. but I also personally saw myself in Brundlefly more than I expected along those lines

in no particular order (sorry for the very literal superficial tvtropes style listing)—

an accident, an injury, a progressive condition

social shame and isolation

adjustment and recognition of new and changing physical limits. looking in the mirror, trying things out. (the Brundlefly Museum....)

mobility and accessibility aids: the gloves, (iirc) at one point using two canes as a sort of walker....later adapting to walk on all fours, on the ceiling

adjusting to new ways of taking food, basic needs of life, but apologizing for it to Ronnie (“it's disgusting”)

explicit comparison to cancer (“No. I won't be just another tumorous bore, talking endlessly about his hair falling out and his lost lymph nodes. I know what that's all about and I won't go through it”)

how they talk about Seth to people who aren't in the know, or are only partly in the know. Stathis initially fears he could be contagious (“typhoid mary”); later, speaking with the doctor, Stathis and Ronnie refer to Seth as “deformed”, that the fetus could also be deformed

fear of being [seen as] less human

as a disclaimer, I had some pause about the last one when viewing the film this way, since Brundlefly is referred to as literally less human, by Percentage, by “genetics”—especially since Seth himself warns that he is less human and likely to be dangerous and violent because of this (“insects don't have politics”)

but I don't think that's borne out or what the film actually does. Seth doesn't actually seem to be less human on an essential eugenicist level—because of those anxieties, Seth is desperate to be human the entire time, all the more so as his body continues to change. his violence is not mindless or asocial. even his violation of Ronnie's bodily autonomy, preventing her abortion and kidnapping her to physically fuse with her body, is heinous specifically along social, misogynistic lines. none of the concerns of contagion or eugenicist danger from essential monstrosity are substantiated, only social violence

(and imo, Seth's later actions are not so surprising from what we know about him from earlier on? like, the entire time, he is perhaps a little self-centered or selfish (I mean this gently, in the sense I can also be selfish, and a lot of which is just from him not being around other people much)....which is innocuous and even relatable to me at first, but dangerous as he becomes more desperate)

anyhow not confident in any of this but just wanted to get this out somewhere. I vaguely know ableism looms over horror and especially Body Horror, but I haven't done even the basic film crit readings (part of why this is non-rebloggable. if anyone has any reccs please let me know!!)

(also: as well as disability, a lot of specific things reminded me of or in some cases seemed to intentionally allude to addiction, e.g. the mania and sugar cravings? and there are similar/overlapping anxieties around social contagion etc. there as well, but I think that's much less thematic and more in passing than the disability/ableism. I've never done stimulants other than cocaine though fwiw)

#my posts #' #\ #` #/ #the fly

[nanowrimo]

How to Win NaNoWriMo While You’re Busy Running NaNoWriMo

We couldn’t make it through November without the help of our amazing, talented, and dedicated interns! Today, our Fall 2022 Editorial and Programs Intern Josie Gepulle shares some wisdom on how she made it to 50K while also working hard to help keep NaNoWriMo running:   There’s a lot I accomplished during my time as a NaNoWriMo Intern. I found myself doing things I would’ve never thought I could do. I’m naturally a shy introvert, so could I really handle coordinating projects or running Virtual Write-Ins?

The answer is yes, I can do that, and so much more.

What really surprised me, though, was that I won NaNoWriMo for the very first time. I first learned about NaNo when I was around eleven years old, so what was different about this year?

How in the world do you win NaNoWriMo when you’re busy running NaNo itself?

Well, I can’t say I have the perfect answer, but these four things helped me a lot.

1. Take part in NaNo’s online events.

Maybe this is a little unfair, considering I was hosting Virtual Write-Ins. But whether it’s a VWI, Community Meetup, or even an Author Webcast, all these events helped me connect more with the amazing community NaNo has to offer.

My past NaNo attempts were pretty isolated and I was used to writing on my own.

I quickly learned, however, that writing with other people is the best thing in the world. Writers are strange and quirky, but we understand each other more than anyone else. We were able to support each other and give advice that genuinely helped.

There’s also so much community outside of these events too! Shout out to the DFW Rhinos Discord, where I did most of my writing sprints. Each sprint ended with congratulations from fellow writers.

Seeing everyone’s progress in real time is an amazing experience. It inspired me to keep writing too.

When I say any success during NaNo feels like a shared one, I truly mean it.

2. Consistency is the key!

As much as I tried to keep close to a daily word count goal, it was more important to write every single day. Building habits is hard, I’ll admit that.

I tried really hard for NaNo though. I did my best to write the same time every day, usually before work. Sometimes though, writing at night gives you the same feeling as writing an essay an hour before it’s due.

While my time of day wasn’t consistent, I quickly became accustomed to writing every single day. If I truly couldn’t sit down and write that day, I’d type one single word on my phone and count that.

Of course, I will always stress that you should be taking care of yourself first. If you can’t write every single day, that’s fine. Maybe you start by writing every two days or every week. If you can’t write at all, that’s cool too! You’re the one that matters first.

3. Be public about your writing.

Talk to your coworkers about your writing. Talk to your friends about your writing.

I made sure to put my word count in my Discord status and Twitter display name. Everyone was going to see my progress, even if they weren’t a writer.

I was very annoying about my NaNo project, yelling to my friends every time I reached a significant number. They didn’t mind though. They were glad to cheer me on.

The more people you tell, the more cheerleaders you have. Don’t underestimate the power of a cheer squad.

4. Return to your writing roots.

I’m very much aware that a traditional NaNo challenge involves coming up with a new novel idea. Except when you’re running around trying to prepare for November, prepping for a new novel can slip right out of your mind.

Initially, I was disappointed that I couldn’t work on a brand new novel.

Then I realized I had something I could work on. Something I’m very familiar with.

There’s a novel I wrote for my very first NaNo. I never finished it, but I’ve been revising the world and characters for years. I always thought the plot was too difficult for me and I wasn’t ready to write it.

I’ll be honest, I still wasn’t ready when I started writing that new first draft. I felt comfortable though, writing for old characters that I grew up with. The more time that passed, the more I started to enjoy the discovery process. You can do as much planning as you want, but you’ll still end up learning so much about your characters in the writing process.

Return to your old writing friends, the old ideas of your childhood, and maybe something will lead you to success. I’m proud that this is the project that led to my win. Isn’t it poetic? To win NaNo with the novel that inspired you in the first place?

In a lot of ways, maybe these tips are for the super specific version of me that existed last month. Still, I hope they can help a little bit, no matter who you are.

I’m thankful for meeting everyone on the NaNo staff and for all the cool writers I got to interact with. NaNo is truly driven by the principle that every story matters.

I got to experience a few of those stories. I can’t wait to hear more. And dear reader? That includes yours.

Lots of love, Josie

Josie Gepulle is a longtime NaNoWriMo participant and wrangler of characters that become just a bit too alive. She enjoys coming-of-age stories that bring magic to the mundane—sometimes literally! Outside of writing, she loves baking, analyzing media, and staring at hamsters. They’re also an artist and stop motion animator! Feel free to check out their newly created writing Tumblr (@josiewillwrite)  or art Instagram (@ubepengu.draws) for more shenanigans. Feel free to add them as a NaNo buddy as well!

#nanowrimo #writing #nano intern #by nano intern #nanowrimo 2022 #josie gepulle

[heartfragment]

Hi there! I hope you don't mind me asking, but how's book 3 going? I don't mean to ask this to pressure you or anything. Your own health and wellbeing come first and foremost above the game, that will never change and I hope no one ever makes you think otherwise! I was just curious. Hope you're doing well! 😊

Quite well! The first ending in Jasper's route is mostly done (needs a few scenes fleshed out and bugs that I'm squashing as I do test playthroughs of the game). The second is outlined but still needs to be written out of the rough draft.

I've admittedly hit some writer's block on Natalia's route though which has made progress a challenge. It's all been outlined well in advance but fleshing out Point A to Point B to Point C has served more of a challenge than I thought it would.

I would be progressing much faster if I had the funds to commission Jasper's Style A CGs (the only artwork that's not finished yet) but since I'm overbudget and can't afford to pay for them out of pocket as mentioned in a previous update, I've been taking that as an excuse to take it easier than I did with the previous releases where it was all rush rush rush and grind grind grind to get it done on time. I'm sure a few people have noticed that some CGs for Style A, though roughly the same in overall consistency, are done in a few different...well...styles. It's been hard to find someone who consistently stays in contact throughout such a large project with this many CGs, and as a result the cost of development overall has ended up varying significantly from what I expected initially.

Once both routes are written and coded, I think I might release the game in early access so that anyone who buys it in early access can help with funding those last few CGs for the complete release. :)

#heart fragment #asks #author note