#not actually that long but longer than normal when it comes to art pieces

[sukibenders]

consolation

FEATURING: percy jackson x reader

summary: y/n has been cooped up in their cabin for days, only leaving to attend breakfast and lunch at their siblings' insistence. it's not that they mean to, it's just that their art is doing anything but coming together as of late and it's making them doubt their abilities. good thing for them that their fantastic boyfriend is there to save the day!

contents: soft!percy, cute couple moments, possibly some angst in regards to self doubt but mainly fluff in the end, references to passing of time, worried!percy, gn!reader, no stated cabin or godly parent but mentions of siblings, percy referring to you as 'babe'

note" this is my first actual piece of written work on here, and it seemed fitting that it would be pjo related. I'm so nervous about it, so please be kind and give this some love! it's stated that the reader is in an art slump, and that's for the sake of the plot behind this so sorry to all those who aren't interested in the arts or things like that!

You would say that it wasn't a normal occurrence for you to compare yourself to others to anyone who asked, but you yourself knew that that simply wasn't true and, in this moment, were being proved wrong as you stared at the messy array of art supplies circling around you--from crumbled papers of failed sketches to messy rags layered with dried paint. While the mess was contained to your side of your cabin, you were sure that your siblings cautious of just how long that would last.

Your appearance faired no better. Your camp shirt was littered is paint marks from sloppy movements of your hands, the orange holding more life to it than the fresh canvas in front of you. Three had laid crestfallen along the floor, thrown down carelessly during fits of frustration after another failed attempt tallied in your mind. Just when you thought things where going to go smoothly, fate had other plans and took another direction. Maybe this was a sign of the Gods punishing you, but for what? You couldn't figure out.

The more you stared at the blank canvas, at the mess around you, the more dishearted you felt. Your mind wandered to a group of kids that you had seen at the arts and crafts center last week, some Apollo campers you had assumed, albeit bitterly, when your eyes fell on their stunning art pieces making it hard for you to look away. They were so beautiful and held your attention longer than you'd hope to admit outloud. You had desired to master a similar affect with your own piece. That did not seem likely.

"But they did it so perfectly," you muttered to yourself (more like growled), hands gripping your paint brush tightly to the point where you were sure that the wood would snap under the force. "I'm sure they didn't have to go through all this." Your brows furrowed and you were just about to give up when a familiar voice spoke up.

"Man, it looks like a hurricane rolled through here." You looked up and were met with a pair of sea green eyes, of which held a mirth to them that only increased tenfold when they landed on you. "Maybe I should take you to seek shelter, just to be safe."

This caused you to snort. "Haha, very funny. I know that, if ever in a hurricane, to simply call out your name and you'll be there to save me, won't you?"

"Always!" A toothy grin broke out over Percy's face and it was almost enough to draw you back from your creativity haze. But when your eyes drew back to the blank canvas, the sense of dismay returned. Subconsciously, your shoulders sagged in response, but you were none the wiser. Percy, however, being the attentive boyfriend that he was, took notice. "I take it things aren't going as planned?"

You shook your head. "That's an understatement. This is my third attempt so far, and I can't even put paint to the material. At least with the others I could say that."

Percy shifted forward, reaching for one of the lone canvases and studied it with interest. "This one is nice," he said honestly. "Why'd you stop?"

"Because it's bad." You answered simply.

But Percy didn't believe that. "No it's not, you're just being hard on yourself." Like always hung in the air, but it was moreso a thought of your own rather than Percy's himself. The inky haired boy gave you a brief once over, brows furrowed with tinges of worry. "When was the last time you took a break? Stepped outside for something other than going to the dining pavilion?"

You blinked for a moment, attention slightly divided between your boyfriend and the work before you. "Uh, I think it was like...yesterday, one of my siblings dragged me out to the strawberry field with them." Or, at least you thought it was yesterday.

But Percy shook his head. "That was Tuesday, babe, I asked one of your siblings. Today's Friday. We need to get you out of this cabin, doing something other than painting."

Slightly shocked by clarification, you body tensed at the thought of being pulled away from your workstation, especially so prematurely into your journey. If you stopped now, what was to say that you would ever finish? Or that this was possibly your last chance at recreating and if you left now, all that went down the drain.

"I can't." You sighed weakly, hurriedly drifting your eyes to your boyfriend, who you had just discovered, that you hadn't spent much time with at all during this week. "If I don't get this piece right now, I might never-"

Percy raised a brow in response of you cutting yourself off. "You might never what?"

With a frustrated and embarrassed sigh, you explained to him your dilemma and the set backs it had provided you, refraining from looking at him the whole time. A part of you had fear some sort of mockery or lack of understanding that conjured up a simple dismissal without actually helping. You had grown accustomed to that after a few occasions and, while you didn't believe Percy to be like, it still hovered in your mind.

To your surprise, though not really, a pair of strong arms wrapped around you so gently yet fiercely that you felted tethered and set free all the same. Your face subconsciously pressed into Percy's bicep and you inhaled his scent, feeling the burdens of the weight you had placed on yourself slowly slipping away one by one. Faint tears welled in your eyes, but he made no move to comment on them.

"I wished you'd came to me sooner, I could've helped you. While not with anything art related, because it would have ended poorly for the both of us, I could have been here to keep you company and show some support."

A small sound that was a mix between a cry and laugh bubbled from your throat. "I don't think I would have been much fun."

Percy snorted. "Please, we would've had the time of our lives here. You're siblings would have kicked me out and banished me from ever entering." While this drew another laugh from you, it wasn't hard to notice the seriousness enveloping the boy's tone. "I think you need a break, for real this time and with no objections."

"But-"

"This piece, can wait. You can't. So what if some other camper made a cool piece, that doesn't mean anything. It especially doesn't mean you're a bad artist just because you're having trouble recreating it." When you fell silent at his words, he rested his nose against your temple, breathing you in. "You're very talented, and that shouldn't be doubted."

A part of you wanted to argue, to say that he was only telling you that because you were dating, but the more you thought about doing anything other than laying in your boyfriend's arms, the more exhausted you felt. Maybe it was your sudden drop in weight, but Percy had maneuvered you around until you were far from the canvas that had been torturing you for hours and closer to your bed.

"Let's get you some rest, babe." He moved to lay you down when your hand reached out, stopping him. "Babe-"

"I got paint on your shirt." You said simply, eyeing how your, still paint riddled, fingers smeared over your boyfriend's tee from his abs to his side. You had been so wrapped up in savoring his embrace, that you had forgotten about your own mess clinging to your frame.

Rather than wallow in the new stain, Percy reached for a damp, less paint splattered cloth and held it to your face. "It's no big deal, but it will be if you get paint on your sheets. Let's get you cleaned up."

By the time he was finished, you were already dozing off no matter how much you tried to fight. Your body rocked and swayed softly, and the action only made Percy laugh even more. Resting you gently on to your bed, head braced against your pillow, the inky haired boy moved to stand when your hand latched around his wrist.

"Stay," You whispered, eyes hopefully. Even with how busy you made yourself, you had missed him deeply.

"I gotta clean up around here. Wouldn't want you to trip in this mess, now would you?"

This caused you to wave him off. "Ah, well you'll simply just have to take care of me again, which seems like a win if you think about it."

Percy chuckled. "Yeah, it does. And maybe I'm so inclined to be against it." He patted your side. "Move over, babe, I'm coming in."

You cheered softly, doing as told just enough for him to rest his frame an inch away from you before you practically melted into him, arms wrapped around his waist and face tucked under his chin. You could feel Percy's chest rumble in satisfaction before he followed a similar manner. The two of you laid like that for a few minutes before you whispered.

"I'm sorry for not spending time with you these last few days." You apologized. "I was just...so wrapped up in this project and my own thoughts that I lost track of time. It's no excuse, but-"

"It's all right," Percy cut in, shushing you softly as you tried to protest. He was in no mood for you to get worked up, especially over something that was so easily fixed and could be settled even further once you were rested. "I understand, and I'm not uupset. I missed you, for sure, but we'll find a way to spend time together later, once you've had a decent amount of sleep."

You nodded in agreement, a yawn pulling from your lips. "I propose a date, anywhere you'd like and we can do whatever you want. You deserve it."

"I don't think taking care of my partner necessarily guarantees a reward," Percy commented, watching with mirth as you sent an eye roll his way. "But I'll hold you to that deal later. Love you."

"Love you, too."

#percy jackson #pjo fandom #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson x reader #percy jackson x y/n #x reader #percy jackson x black!reader #percy jackson x poc!reader #[🪐] - lunars writes

[raccoonfallsharder]

How do you think Rocket would react to origami? To many people it seems like a pointless waste of paper, but for others it is something to master, the art of using your hands to turn a simple square of paper into complex shapes, a medium where the point is to make mistakes and learn and then make another one thats even better

omg this got so long. it was hard to write but i couldn’t stop apparently. thank you for making my brain think about this, you dear little raspberry truffle

˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.

similarly to coloring, i think that rocket grapples with the idea of origami at first. when you first introduce it to him, the fur on his nose wrinkles and his lip curls back in confusion.

but why? he asks flatly. it's just paper. it doesn’t do anything. doesn't blow up even a little bit.

rocket has a hard time with the idea of making things just to make them. he's spent too long just trying to survive, and even longer trying to justify his existence. creating is in his nature, but it’s always been intricately bound up in trying to escape, to get away, to live.

the first time he watches you fold a crane, he smirks, and then replicates it perfectly — even better than you had, with all your years of practice.

‘m a frickin mathematical and engineering genius, he reminds you smugly, and you sigh.

it’s supposed to be a meditative, learning process, you tell him with a raised eyebrow.

he frowns at you and scrutinizes the crane. you sayin i did it wrong?

that’s not the point, you tell him. or — it is the point. you’re kinda supposed to do it wrong at first.

that’s the most moronic frickin thing I’ve heard, rocket says flatly, and leaves.

you kind of can’t stop thinking about it though. at all. that evening, youdecide to set about crafting one of the more complex pieces you know. The next day he strolls by your typical spot casually, like he’s not just coming by to see how he can bug you (he totally is), and you show him the finished product.

figure it out, you tell him.

he takes it as a personal challenge (which it absolutely is) and it takes him about three or four attempts before he presents you with a perfect replica. you’ll have to try harder than that, he tells you snidely.

the next few rotations continue like this — then cycles, until you run out of forms you think will actually challenge him. but he’s looking forward to them now — it’s part of his daily routine, and it’s one of the only times you see him pause in his frenzy to focus solely on what he’s doing. like maybe he’s tapping into that quiet, thoughtful, intentional space without meaning to.

so the next day, when he comes to you, you don’t greet him with empty hands. instead, you give him a small stack of folding paper.

make the bowie, you tell him.

he blinks at you. how?

you shrug. you’re the frickin mathematical and engineering genius, you remind him mildly.

he takes the stack of patterned paper and runs one hand over the surface of it lingeringly, like he can call the form right out of the paper itself. like you’ve given him the gift of possibility.

he starts coming to sit by you every day, and he works on his sculptures. he’s his normal, mocking self before and after, but in those moments, he goes still and thoughtful. he folds and unfolds, studies his angles, sinks himself into every little crease and bend. even his fur seems quieter in these moments: laying calmly against his skin. it takes him three cycles — a laughably short time for anyone else — before he hands you a little ship.

it’s lovely. it only takes you a moment to realize that the runabouts can actually undock from the bowie’s frame, just like the real thing.

keep it, he tells you casually. it’s yours.

you hold it delicately, lovingly. thank you, you say to him, and mean it.

he just blinks at you. what’s next?

you hand him another stack of paper. make knowhere, you tell him.

he does.

make the hadron enforcer.

he does.

make the benatar.

he does.

make one of mantis’ abilisks.

he does.

the ritual continues. the platinum-haired children of knowhere start running around with little paper sculptures: all the captain’s practice versions, salvaged from the recycling bins.

and one day you tell him, make what you want, rocket.

he looks uncertain at first.

and then he does.

but here’s the thing. what i actually like to imagine most isn’t rocket figuring out and finding the value in crafting origami. it’s imagining him in twenty, thirty, even forty years (because i believe he lives a nice long life). old, with more gray than black in his mask and his ringtail. maybe a clipped ear from getting nicked by an ion blast while saving a planet from some tyrant or another. whiskers drooping, voice like he’s been smoking four packs a day for his entire life. the most lovable, grumpy granddad on knowhere. i like to imagine he sits at a little checkered tabletop outside his apartment, right at the edge of the dusty street. he’s got a beer and a stack of paper. the children of the children of knowhere giggle and hide behind the corners of buildings and he scowls at them, and folds away.

when one brave kid finally dares to come up and ask him what he’s working on today (because it’s always something different, every time), rocket doesn’t answer. he rolls his eyes and grumbles and hands them a little paper dog in a spacesuit. soon the table is lined with all the figures the children know: personally, or from stories. the cyborg who runs the city, wings extended. the golden sovereign and his f’saki. the adopted son of the old man himself. one by one, as they screw up their courage, the children come forward to claim their paper prizes, grinning and giggling their delight.

and rocket decides that there’s a purpose to all this paper-folding after all.

#rfh asks #rfh headcanons #wren-phoenix #rfh fluff

[lovelyleclercs]

Chapter Seven- Guilty Tears

Arthur Leclerc x Sofia Sine

->goodbye's have never been so hard for Arthur and Sofia, but this goodbye in particular held so much more behind it.

warnings: mentions of cancer, fighting cancer alone, mentions of death, I think that's it but please let me know if there is anything else, I don't know how cancer treatments actually go, I only ever heard of bits and pieces so if anything is wrong, I am sorry, I'm writing a fictional story regardless.

word count: 1500

a/n: I sobbed writing this one, sorry bestie boos

Seven days post treatment and Sofia was finally feeling somewhat normal again. 

This past treatment had taken a toll on her, knocking her off of her feet for five days straight- only waking up to go to the bathroom or to try to get some food and water in her system. 

Despite only sleeping most days, Arthur had never left her side once. Every time Sofia woke up, Arthur was in her bed, at her desk doing work, or even sitting on the floor reading a book. 

Sofia had told him countless times that he didn’t have to stay- that there were far more interesting things he could be doing than being cooped up in an apartment with her all week long while she slept her treatment pains away- but Arthur insisted on staying. 

When Sofia had finally been able to keep her eyes open for longer than an hour at a time, the two of them would watch a movie, talk about the upcoming F2 season, and eat food as long as Sofia could stomach it. 

Sofia had appreciated Arthur’s company, it made the idea of treatments and recovery just a little bit more bearable, though she knew it wouldn’t last for long. 

In a weeks time, the F2 season would be underway and Arthur would be home less and less, meaning that she would have to attend her treatments alone, recover from them alone, and fight off this horrible illness alone. 

The thing she hated the most about it though was the fact that she would be unable to attend any of the races this year- at least not for the first half of the season. 

Due to the intensity and side effects of her treatment, Dr. M had put Sofia on a strict no traveling ban. 

Thankfully though, F2 did race in Monaco and she would be able to see parts of the track from her bedroom window, but that wasn’t the same as attending a grand prix weekend with him. 

When Arthur came into Sofia’s room late that Wednesday night, she knew it was him coming to say goodbye. Arthur would be gone for three weeks, having no time to fly back home and visit in between race weekends. 

Sofia looked up from her book and saw Arthur standing in the doorway of her room, his face holding an expression of sadness and sorrow- almost as though he felt guilty for having to leave her. 

Arthur smiled sadly, walking over to her bed before sitting on the edge of it and picking up her hand gently. “I’ve gotta go… my flight leaves in an hour”

Sofia put her book down and nodded a little, her eyes meeting his for a moment. “Ok, have fun, I’ll be watching every session, you know that” 

Arthur nodded and looked down at their hands as he felt himself getting emotional. “I’m sorry I won’t be here for your next treatment… I really tried to get some time off to fly here for the day but it’s just not possible…”

Sofia squeezed his hand a little and nodded. “It’s ok, Art. I understand. You’ve got a busy season this year, I can’t expect you to be here with me 24/7 nor can I expect you to be able to come with me to every appointment”

Arthur sighed and shook his head “This isn’t fair, Sof. You should be coming with me. You should be with me for my first F2 race” 

Sofia teared up a little, the realities of how much this disease was truly taking from her finally hitting her. Arthur would never have a first F2 race again. She would be missing out on the start of what could potentially land him a seat in Formula 1- and she hated it. 

“I know, Arthur. I know…” she whispered, her voice beginning to crack as a few tears managed to slip down her face. 

Arthur pulled Sofia into a tight hug, not knowing what else to say or do. He hated the fact that he couldn’t even sit with her for very long-he was on a strict time schedule and this goodbye was already taking way longer than he had time for. “I’ve gotta go, but please know that I love you and that I'm here for you, even if I'm thousands of miles away, ok?”

Sofia nodded and pulled from the hug “I know, Arthur. I love you too”

Arthur sighed and let go of Sofia’s hand, pushing himself off of the bed as he made his way towards the door.

Sofia stared down at her fidgeting hands, already missing the hold Arthur’s hand had on them just seconds prior. Tears were falling down her face, a few drops landing on her hands in front of her. Silent cries, ones that she was hoping Arthur wouldn’t notice. She hadn’t expected this goodbye to be so hard- goodbyes were something her and Arthur were used to- but this one held so much more behind it. 

It meant she would be alone for the next three weeks- Nobody to hold her while she suffers through her treatment, nobody to wake her up just to try to get her to eat or drink, nobody to keep her company when she felt alone or sad

It meant missing out on seeing Arthur start his F2 career, something he had longed for and dreamed of ever since signing his F3 contract two years ago. 

But the one thing that weighed on her the most was the possibility that maybe this was the last time she’d ever see Arthur.

What if something happened when he was gone and she didn’t make it? The last memory she had of him would be that sad, guilt ridden face as he apologized for doing what he loved. 

Arthur turned around as he was about to walk out of her bedroom. He didn’t fail to notice the few tears dripping off of her face and onto her hands, nor did he fail to notice the way her breathing had increased despite her being able to keep her cries silent. His heart broke at the sight before him, knowing that he was partially to blame for the tears falling. 

Without saying another word, Arthur walked out of the room, knowing that even though it was the last thing he wanted to do right now, he didn’t really have a choice. 

He got out to the car, climbing into the back seat as Charles and Charlotte occupied both front seats. “Someone really should have stayed with her, you know” he mumbled, sort of as a stab at Charlotte for choosing to attend a race instead of sitting with her sister, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was doing the same thing. 

He could’ve chosen to stay home with her. He could have chosen to take a year off of racing and hoped that Rene would give him his shot at F2 next year, but no.

He chose to leave her. 

He chose to let her fight this fight alone. 

He chose to fly thousands of miles away to pursue his dreams. 

“Sorry, that was rude of me to say, I'm sorry..” he whispered, his voice shaking as tears began to form in his eyes. 

“It’s ok…” Charlotte said as she noticed the pain in his voice. “She doesn’t want me anywhere near her.. She only trusts you right now… I hope you understand why i’ve chosen to attend the first grand prix”

Arthur nodded and looked out the window. Charlotte was right. Sofia had pushed everyone away except for him. She only trusted him. She could only be vulnerable with him. She didn’t want to be around anyone but him. “Do you think I made a mistake by leaving her? Should I have stayed?”

Charlotte shook her head. “You know she would be disappointed if you had chosen to stop racing to be by her side. That’s what she was afraid of in the beginning and the main reason why she waited so long to tell you. She wants you to do what you love, Arthur.”

“Yeah but I can always do it next year..”

Charlotte nodded a little. “I say we see how this first race goes and if she really can’t handle being alone, then you can reevaluate the situation, ok?”

Arthur nodded “yeah, ok” he said before staring out the window. 

Was this truly the right decision? 

Would Sofia be ok without him?

Would he be able to perform well with so much on his mind?

Maybe he should’ve stayed. 

Maybe he should have Charles stop the car so he could run back to her apartment and hold her in his arms again. 

Maybe she would be ok without him.

Maybe she can handle this on her own.

Maybe she wants nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms.

Maybe she’s scared of fighting this alone.

Maybe tragedy will strike and leave them both wishing they would have done something different…

#arthur leclerc fanfic #arthur leclerc fanfiction #arthur leclerc fluff #arthur leclerc imagine #arthur leclerc #f2 fanfic #f2 imagine

[isfjmel-phleg]

The latest installment of my unintentional series of analyses of narration in 1990s solo comics of teenage heroes (Part 1: Tim & Kon & Bart and Part 2: Grant): Ray, who has two solos.

The 1992 miniseries is short on narration. It usually occurs very briefly at the beginning of each issue to set the scene. But what there is a lot of are thought bubbles for Ray, which keep the reader on track with his running commentary on life, and first-person accounts from the characters themselves. At the beginning, Ray relates his life story to a cousin he has just met, he first learns a piece of the truth about his past from his dying foster father/uncle, and his actual father tells various versions of his history which may or may not be true. The subjectivity of these stories is important to the narrative, with its themes of hidden truths and being kept in the dark (both literally and figuratively). None of these narrators are fully reliable, for various reasons.

Ray's understanding of his past is limited by how little he knows and what he can or can't remember, and the visuals sometimes juxtapose what actually happened with his hazy memories. (He says he can't remember what happened to end his eighth birthday party so abruptly; the art reveals that he had a flare-up of his powers when a camera flash went off.)

Thomas Terrill, the uncle whom Ray believed was his father, tells a story on his deathbed that is presented as his own history but is in fact about his brother. Yet...he never really says that he did or experienced anything in this account. Every sentence begins with a verb, no specific pronoun subject. Things like "Quit...didn't want the burden...wanted a normal life...a family." Never "I quit..." Because he didn't. This is a story about Ray's real father, a completely different man.

...whose own accounts range from claiming that he is "not of this world" and that Ray is thus half-alien (a blatant lie) to a more detailed and relatively plausible-sounding scientific background of how he acquired his powers. He doles out information as he finds it convenient, and the frustrating inconsistency establishes him as less than trustworthy.

Narration is more at the forefront of The Ray 1994, the longer-running series. In previous analyses, I've focused on the association of the narrator with a guiding/parental voice for the young protagonist. Ray's stories are frequently told in first-person, usually by him. Like Tim, he is telling his own story because he doesn't have a solid parental presence in his life and thus has to be his own guiding voice. Of all the young heroes whose solos I've read, Ray is the most introspective, more so than even Tim. He's constantly in his own head, observing, overthinking, getting emotional. The greater thoughtfulness can be partly credited to the fact that he's older than the protagonists of comparable books--eighteen and later nineteen, technically a young adult although still a teenager. But his upbringing has left him very internally-focused too. He has grown up isolated, spending his time reading and watching TV and tinkering with computers. There were very people around to talk to, and even fewer with whom he could open up. Interacting with the outside world is strange and foreign, so he has a very active inner life instead.

And yet he still longs for connection, which is where the narrative device of the earlier issues comes into it. Ray met Dinah Lance one (1) time, developed a crush on her, and has started writing her unsolicited letters in which he pours out his soul to her, relating every detail of recent adventures, every difficult emotion and insecurity. Even as he overshares, though, he self-censors sometimes to put himself in a better light (as in his account of his encounter with Kon, which opens the series). The letters are very revealing of his character and allow the reader to not only get in his head but understand how he wishes to be perceived. The letters to Dinah come to an end for plot-relevant reasons, so the narration style takes a different turn, but always we are given access to Ray's thoughts so it's as if he is narrating indirectly.

The lack of a third-person narrator for Ray's POV underscores how lacking he is in guidance, as I said earlier. His father is a recurring, unwelcome, intrusive presence (he can read Ray's thoughts if he chooses and shows up at inconvenient times, like on the bus) who comes to scold and criticize and belittle, and Ray repeatedly rejects these attempts at mentorship. "You're not really my dad," he keeps saying. "You haven't earned it." As caught up as Ray is in the mess created by his father's lies, he refuses to let him set the tone for his life or identity.

But Ray isn't the only narrator of this series. Sometimes Dinah narrates, and we learn how she feels about this infatuated teenager who persists in writing to her. Not only does it provide insight into her character, it clarifies actions she will take and acts as a counterpart to Ray's limited perspective.

Another issue is narrated through an account written by Happy Terrill as a young man in 1941, recounting his acquaintance with a mysterious young man with an inexplicable earring (a time-traveling Ray!) and how he acquired his powers. Again, this allows us to better understand Happy, who has evidently always been a self-important jerk--a trait only exacerbated by his becoming the Ray. So much hubris.

Later on, third-person limited narration shows up for Joshua Terrill, who is too young to have thoughts introspective enough for first-person but whose perspective needs to be given for him to make sense. Joshua is just a child and in need of the guidance represented by a third-person narrator commenting on his actions--but the narrator doesn't comment. Only reports his thoughts. Like Ray, Joshua is alone in the world, no thanks to their father.

But the most surprising narrator is in a very late issue: a version of Bart Allen as an adult. This is jarring; Bart doesn't narrate normally. He thinks in pictograms. It's weird getting introspection from him, even twenty years into his future, and he comes across as a completely different character. But the narrative point here is less to develop Bart's character and more to reveal how badly future!Ray has gone downhill through the commentary of a close friend who has (mostly) maintained his moral compass where Ray hasn't. Future!Ray's thoughts and narration aren't a thing anymore because he's no longer self-reflecting. He has sold out to money and power and has left behind his essence in the process.

By the end of the series, the narration has more or less ended. Happy tells his final version of "the entire truth" (or is it?), another very subjective account designed to make himself look the hero despite his questionable actions. And Ray...he's finally reunited with a mother who now knows that he's her son. Things are about to change for him. He doesn't need to narrate his own life totally alone anymore.

(And he won't. Never again. The comics quit caring about his POV from here on out.)

#comicsposting again #RT: born with the light #I know this isn't going to mean much because no one else has read this #but *I* have and there are so many thoughts and I am going to make that everyone else's problem :P #so thanks for humoring me

[fortunatelyenchantingtaco]

"I know Alan's marriage with Alice is wonderful" man idk, i have no doubt that they love each other but i thought a major thematic piece of aw1 and 2 had everything to do with the fact that he treated her like absolute dogshit sometimes. obviously there's more going on and alan is better than that in the long run, but from alice's perspective especially scratch is such an allegory for an abusive spouse it's not even funny 🤔

I mean Scratch is basically everything bas in Alan but warped and maxed out to a degree that himself he would become

Alan is pretty depressed even in the first game, even if it manifests in his anger, it is still rooted in a very low view of himself. He’s convinced he’s a horrible person, an abusive husband, a failure of a writer

Which we dont actually see — like we see some of their fights, but it is normal in a marriage especially considering this is Alan being in writers block. It doesn’t justify his actions but often times relationships are a thing you have to work at. Its a conscious decision and effort to make it work, and people like Alan being temperamental when it comes to their art isnt a reason to just say that oh hes not fit for marriage hes abusive

Their trip in the first game is an effort on both ends to actually make it work because they love each other but Alan’s block is hard to deal with

Both games Alan’s sole purpose is to save Alice cause he loves her, loves her enough to stop writing and be locked in the Dark Place to keep her safe, we can see it in his flashbacks

And in the second game we can finally see Alice no longer being a damsel in distress but taking action. Like idk if its just me but the last message alone is for me a big confirmation there is so much love between them. She is so soft, so confident in him, in herself. She doesnt mind that he needs time, she knows he will eventually get there. That last video is personal, only for him to see, and its filled with so much love

I wouldn’t begrudge if they got divorced after everything settled down because of the amount of trauma they both experienced, but they love each other. Scratch might be a part of Alan but thats not all there is to him, there is anger and possessiveness in everyone, his just got a paranormal boost and got a mind of its own

We dont see much love in the first game cause narrative wise Alice very much played a role of a damsel in distress. But in the second game??? She is actively participating, her goal is not to get rid of Scratch, its to get Alan back

Like i dont think Scratch is an allegory for an abusive husband its not really a major point in any of it. Im not even sure if the haunting was actually that bad — we only see what Alive shows us, and all of it feels reallt pointed specifically like look here, here, you go. She guides him by the hand to where he needs to go

Fights between couples are normal and we dont really see any abuse happening or Alice wouldnt have been trying to save their marriage. Alan might have been shitty at times because of his obvious struggles, anger and drinking problems but nothing we know of shows actual abuse. Like i dont wanna just go oh he wasnt!! But what we see are arguments that genuenly happen to every couple

One of the big points of the game for me is that Alan is flawed. Hes not what you would typically call a good person, a hero, but he loves his wife, he sacrificed himself for her, he keeps trying to go back to her. The possessiveness and anger of Scratch, even if hes part of Alan, isnt everything he is, because we all have it

The whoel ending and ascension talk is specifically about accepting that there is dark in you. But its not all there is

Like idk the first game does make it a bit ambiguous but the second one is pretty clear in pointing out their love and active effort to make it work, which is honestly more than you can say about a lot of couples

#alan wake #alan wake 2 spoilers #remedyverse

[professor-rye]

10, 20, 30, 40 for the weird writer asks!

Thank you for sending me some questions! Apologies in advance for how much I ended up rambling 😅

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

Oh gosh. Definitely Dapple. I was worried that I wouldn’t finish the very beginning idea I had (which ended up just being act 1), so I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when not only did I finish that, but then it kept going… and going… *and going.* I’ve always been good at coming up with ideas for long fics, but never before (or since) have I ever been able to actually *stick* with writing them, let alone so consistently. For some reason, for Dapple, my ADHD brain said “This is your life now and you are addicted”. It literally was what kept me on this earth for a while there. It unironically saved my life. And then it just… disappeared. 

My brain no longer wanted to think about it, and it was only habit keeping me going for a while there. I pushed past that point way too far and got burnt out, and I’m still waiting, desperately hoping, that the floodgates will open again. And not just because I want to finish it, mind you. Like I said, writing and posting dapple did so much good for me. It was a safe harbor in a storm. It helped me process some of the worst traumas in my life. It got me *so many friends*. I can not express enough how much I miss it. …. Gods, okay, that got way deeper than I intended. Apologies! Gods… well uh, on to the next question!

20. If a witch offered you the choice between eternal happiness with your one true love and the ability to finally finish, perfect, and publish your dearest, darlingest, most precious WIP in exactly the way you've always imagined it — which would you choose? You can’t have both sorry, life’s a bitch

Well, after the last question, I think the answer is probably obvious lol. No question at all, I would pick to perfectly finish Dapple (Gods, and if that also let me get the sequel idea I had as well?? And also all the side fics??? Shit I would sell my soul for that). (It also doesn’t help that I am ace and have trouble contemplating the idea of magically gifted eternal happiness, so like… it was just very stacked in Dapple’s favor already)

30. Talk to me about the role dreams play in your writing life. Have you ever used material from your dreams in your writing? Have you ever written in a dream? Did you remember it when you woke up?

So, its kind of complicated? I am very much so that writer who just daydreams about fic ideas as I lay down to sleep every night, so there is a very hazy period during the in between where sometimes I’ll get ideas that I can actually remember the next morning.

But I don’t think they’re actual dreams, because my normal dreams tend to be a) incredibly stressful and b) about the most boring stuff imaginable, which is quite the combo. 

But I will say that the pre-sleep daydreaming feels so different from any other actual plotting that I do. It’s very… gods, how do you describe this… 

There’s a thing I learned in art school where you step away from your composition and squint till you can only see the hazy outlines of the different elements of the work. Or like when they tell you to turn the painting upside down for a bit to see what isn’t working. The pre-sleep daydreaming always involves reimagining the scenes I had already thought about during more lucid moments, but looking at the broader strokes and the pure emotion of it (because sleepy). 

So most of the “ideas” I got from those moments were realizations that certain elements didn’t quite work the way I wanted them to, and then once I was actually lucid, I could think back on it and then (sometimes) realize a better way to handle that particular part. 

So… yeah? It’s hard to say if that counts as dreams specifically, but it’s also a really big part of my writing… existence? Process feels weird to say there lol. But yeah, it felt relevant to share. 

Gods, I’m rambling again. Last question! 

40. Please share a poem with me, I need it.

(not me taking several days to find this poem because my memory is terrible and I kept mixing up the line I was searching)

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. ~ Mary Oliver

So yeah, if anyone else wants to send questions, here is the original question list post thingy. I will try not to ramble quite so much next time 😅

#my writing #writer ask game #dappled shadow and penumbral light #fan fiction writing

[kariachi]

Companion piece of yesterday's fic. Takes place after it, post teaming up with Tennysons. A bit of introspection on the effect of being most raised by whers for years.

~~

Kevin was under no illusion that he’d turned out ‘normal’. Not that the label had ever fit him, or that he’d ever really expected to attain it- even in his darkest moments that had never been more than a pipedream. But five years raised by whers had taken those abnormal edges and sharpened them into something that would never quite mesh. Really, he didn’t want to anymore, not like he had before the pack had taken him in, when he’d been different and not even in a way that people could forgive.

His powers were a skill to hone, rather than a future, a threat, looming. The pack had encouraged his practicing, his learning, celebrated every improvement just as they did the rest of the youngsters’.

His pushing against authority was ‘ranker behavior’ rather than a sign of immorality. Even now he only answered to Lachia, even then only just, and this was accepted as simply the structure of their pack.

His drive towards machines and art rather than ‘proper’ jobs for a mutant like emergency services and heroing were delightful rather than a waste of potential. In the end his siblings had learned over his shoulders, both his hobbies and everything his tutors had taught, and the pack had come out all the better for the knowledge.

His gender and such were a complete non-issue. He had a name, pronouns he preferred be used by those who couldn’t just use telepathy, and while he hadn’t yet run or chased he had every intention of doing both eventually, all of which were simply facts and manners and in the case of the last one only used in knowing his place in the complex web of relationships that was a wherpack.

‘Weird’ as he may have been, it was hard to feel like it in those circumstances.

And yes, the whole ‘raised by whers’ thing had left indelible marks. He’d missed out on cultural touchstones that his human peers took for granted. There was some struggle with interacting with humans his age. Sometimes terms got messed up, or he needed longer than others liked to pick up on something. Sometimes, especially when he was tired or stressed, he forgot that he had to actually speak to non-telepaths. Recently he’d been hit with the glaring realization that he didn’t know what proper, realistic courting looked like in humans. Many of his mannerisms had edged away from human and toward wher over the years. If Ben introduced him without his title one more time he was going to start biting people.

No, he did not care that only whers supposedly cared about the titles, it was rude at best and belittling at worst. And if there was anything he’d never taken well to, it was belittling.

Really, you would think that the fuckers that had been dealing with a wide range of species for nearly as long as he’d been dealing with two would adapt faster. Or at least figure out that he was happy with his lot, not yearning to leave his pack behind and rejoin ‘normal’ human society, no matter how happy he was to regularly indulge in it. No, not even because Gwen was cute and it would make her life easier. The whole Tennyson lot could get used to his eccentricities and his pack, the same way he was getting used to working with non-whers his age again.

After all, no matter what, he certainly couldn’t be the oddest fucker they’d ever dealt with.

#fanfic

[theunrealinsomniac]

As you know, I'm not familiar with your NaruSaku kid OCs. Character and design-wise, how do you imagine them being different from the more famous fankids, Shinachiku, Hanami, and Arashi?

In fairness D, I don't think anyone other than me is actually familiar with my NS kids lol, but I gather your meaning lol.

Okay, let's be clear first and foremost cos I have run into this problem before and I don't want anyone to misunderstand me when I say something in a moment.

I have no ill will against Shinachiku, Hanami and/or Arashi. I've just been here a long time and the NS kids I came up with have been knocking around my noodle for a lot longer than Shinachiku has ever even existed. I have my own, I'm not dropping them for anyone or anything. I'm also not co-opting them and merging my characters with them either. I patently refuse.

It's rude you know?

Cool? Cool.

As for differences beyond the obvious, there's four of my kids, they look different slightly, well you'll have to tell me, I don't know too much about them outside of the bits and pieces I've gleaned from other fic and art.

I strongly suspect the biggest difference is less to do with the kids and more to do with the differences between my Naruto and the Naruto we typically see in stuff about Shina et al.

We are made who we are by the people who raise us, no matter how much we may fight against it as adults, we are the people who came out of our parents/guardians parenting. For good or ill, we are all reactions to our parents, so if my Naruto is different to everyone who writes Naruto for Shina etc ... well I'll have different kids.

I very much get a bumbling sitcom dad/fourth child vibe from Shina and his siblings' dad. And that's fine, it's a perfectly fun and popular take on how Naruto would be as an adult and parent.

I just ... disagree.

I think this comes slightly from two key differences between me and the majority of fanfic writers still knocking around in the NaruSaku sphere.

I'm a man.

I'm a father.

So I have a distinctly unique perspective on fatherhood to most of the people writing Naruto as a dad for NaruSaku. Not a better one to be clear, just a different one.

And because of this, any particular differences between Shina, Hanami and Arashi with my four kids, Sachi, Ichika, Yuuto and Akihiko ... would be kinda like comparing apples and oranges to be honest.

So what I'm going to do instead is just describe the four of them as just them. And you'll have to tell me if that's like Shina etc or not like them.

I do actually have a post where I detail my kids a bit but I was a bit lackadaisical on physical descriptions. So this post will focus on that and I will link the other post with more of their personalities here.

Now, let's start with the appearance of the eldest Uzumaki child.

Sachi Uzumaki

Sachi is our eldest, she's got pink hair a couple shades darker than her mum, eyes just a little lighter blue than her dad and her face is mostly a perfect mix of both her parents, except for the grin. She's got her dad's grin and mouth. Her hair has been all sorts of length but as she settles into teens and active ninja duty, it is cut just a little longer than Sakura's was for most of the story.

When she hits her full height she stands at 5 foot 7, has a generally toned physique like most ninja and kunoichi do with one key exception. Sachi Uzumaki's arms are jacked. Girls got guns and knows how to use them lol. Think an Olympic swimmer for reference but not quite as bulky.

As for clothes, she typically dresses for action, she's what we who grew up in the 90s and early 00s would call a tomboy. There's a general mixing of colours, Sachi is very comfortable being the centre of attention and her clothing reflects this. While she's never gone out wearing full orange or anything like her dad, she has been known to walk around wearing some of Naruto's old jackets.

She does love a good pair of combat boots, the laces normally being fluorescent colours. Sachi's go to look from about the age of fourteen was an oversized top of some primary colour, normally blue, light grey trousers like the ninja uniform and sometimes Naruto's old jacket, sometimes a black leather jacket with the Uzumaki and Haruno symbol, which Naruto and Sakura made once they got married and merged their clans, yes I like this idea too, I'm sure it's also all over the other fankids lol, she wears her headband over her forehead to keep her hair out of her face and because she won't shy away from headbutting people with it.

Ichika Uzumaki

Ichika, Ichi to the family, is Naruto and Sakura's second daughter, sometimes their second or third child depending on the story.

She typically keeps her blonde hair long, think Kushina's lengths for the most part, but the style changes from braids to long flowing locks depending on her mood. She has the same shape and shade of green eyes as Sakura and like all of her siblings, Naruto's grin and mouth. But aside from her mouth it's all Haruno all the way down, you could see Ichika from a mile away and pick her out as basically a blonde Haruno.

She's very lithe to contrast her more muscular sister, if Sachi has a swimmer's body, Ichika has a gymnast's. She's also a few inches shorter than her sister and when all four of the kids are adults, she's the shortest of the bunch at 5 foot 3.

In yet another contrast to her big sister, Ichika is decidedly more traditionally feminine in her attire, favouring pinks and baby blues in her clothing. She's also more inclined to dresses and skirts. She loves summer because it's an excuse to wear sundresses and she loves a good sundress.

It does contrast to what she wears when on mission or training, she favours more form-fitting and close clothing in that scenario and her go to ninja gear is basically the typical uniform but with leggings and turtleneck under her eventual Chunin and Jonin vests. She wears her headband like a belt buckle.

Yuuto Uzumaki

Yuuto, Yuu to the family, is their first son, normally their third child, sometimes second.

He's a dead ringer for child!Naruto. If it weren't for his hair being less spiky and more flowing, think Minato basically, and his eyes being a couple shades lighter green than Sakura's you wouldn't be able to pick out which was five year old Naruto and five year old Yuuto. It's uncanny.

That is until he hits puberty, and his hair gets longer and his face more angular and it's like looking at Minato Namikaze's face on Hokage Mountain come to life. He styles his hair differently but if Sachi is a blend of Uzumaki and Haruno and Ichika is a Haruno ... Yuuto is a Namikaze. At least in the face. Body wise he's basically the same as Naruto, muscular in an agile way with a bit more bulk than his dad and standing at a full 6 foot, the same height as his dad. I don't care if he's actually 5 foot 10 in canon, it's my world now lol.

Yuuto wears as much black as he can as well. It's actually somewhat comical to see the flash of colour at the top of him, blond hair and a dark red headband over his forehead, and then just all black. Black dress shirt open at the second button and untucked, black jeans and black boots. If it didn't suit him so well, he'd get made fun of viciously by his siblings.

He forgoes the Chunin and Jonin uniform unless he's directly ordered to or it's a formal occasion and in fairness to the boy ... it does look weird on him.

Honestly, he looks a bit like a stylish super saiyan lol.

Akihiko Uzumaki

And last but not least, Akihiko. Aki or Koko to his family, I will let you guess who calls him what, but let's just say only Sachi gets away with calling him one of them.

Anyway, Akihiko has dark pink hair, which almost darkens to a very, very light red when he hits early adulthood. He keeps it shorter than the rest of his family, not buzzcut short or anything but no longer than the bottom of his ears. It's still a mess of hair though, no sign of mousse or hair gel lol. As an older man he even grows a beard.

He's the child who most resembles Sakura facially, including the forehead. But his eyes are a glorious merge of blue and green. Honestly they're quite astounding to look at. And of course he has Naruto's mouth and that damn grin.

He's a bit shorter than his brother and father, coming in at 5 foot 11 when he stands up straight and 5 foot 10 when he slouches, which is often. And he is very lanky, he's the least muscular of his family and that actually makes him look taller than he is because of how willowy he is.

Clothing wise, I dunno how to really put it, he dresses normally? Akihiko basically dresses to blend in, he doesn't stand out and he'd really rather you didn't look at him too long. Lots of earth tones and dulled colours. His headband is the brightest thing, and he ties it around his upper left arm on a flash of pink cloth.

And that's basically it for now. I hope this was worth the wait and let me just remind everyone that my takes on Naruto and his kids are just that, mine.

I have nothing but respect for people who use Shinachiku, Hanami and Arashi as their NS kids, but maybe now you've learned a bit about mine ... you'll see why I'm so attached to them. And I hope you look forward to reading the future stories I have about my Uzumaki family.

Ta ra!

#ask theunrealinsomniac #long post #narusaku #naruto uzumaki #sakura haruno #uzumaki family #oc kids #naruto oc #i just love them okay

[sylvie-fics]

Dissension’s Dynamism (part 3) Machine Herald Viktor x Reader

part 1 part 2

Summary: you fucking poison Viktor, and he’s not sure if he’s on a date with you

Content warnings: mentions of weapons, mentions of death, mentions of poison. 

word count: 1.2K

(Y/N) approached Viktor some few hours after their encounter. From what she could tell, it seemed to be mid-afternoon, though what day it actually was…. Was a bit unclear. She wasn’t entirely sure how long she had been here, or how long she had been unconscious after her unsuccessful experiment. Though, such trivial things didn’t matter. 

What really mattered was her finished commission, which she proudly held in her hands as she approached the desk where her favorite metal man was working. She leaned one arm against the desk, and used the other to reach the papers out to him.

“Delivery for Build a Bot Workshop!” She teased.

(y/n) was met with a rather cold glare from Viktor. As much of a cold glare as a mask could give, that is. He snagged the papers from her hands, reviewing them with quite a lot of intensity.

“What’s this one for?” He spoke, holding up one of the designs. 

“Oh, that's for when I inevitably die from one of my projects. You can take my lifeless body and transform it into… that!” (y/n) pointed at the drawing, “You know, since you care so much about my wellbeing.”

“No.”

“What? Come on, isn’t ‘glorious evolution like, kind of your thing?”

Viktor sighed, and turned fully to face (y/n).

“Yes. But glorious evolution, in your case, means that I have to be around you longer, and I don’t particularly enjoy that thought.”

He stood up and made his way over to another table. (y/n) trailing closely behind him.

“Still, I will admit,” he said, placing down the concept art titled ‘blitzcrank’, “While you have shown a severe lack of intelligence for safety, you’re quite proficient when it comes to design.”

A sort of dismissive scoff came from (y/n), as she brought her hand up to brush a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. 

“No need to flirt, you can just skip to the part where you say that you're in love with me. I know, it's really hard to resist someone who’s so talented and great at what they do.”

She began to walk away from Viktor and towards his kitchen. Viktor, at this point, had snapped his head up in shock of what he had just heard. (Y/n)’s statement was incredibly wrong. Despite that, he was even more confused at how she went from adamantly hating him to somehow being convinced he was in love with her over the span of 5 hours. He thought *his* human emotions were complicated, but yours seemed to be in a whole other field.

“Really, I do, I hear it all the time…” her voice began to drift off as she entered another room, “even Tony with the knife fights, I mean really.” The last audible thing being, “My hot girl summers in Piltover.” 

He considered asking what she was doing, or what anything she just said meant— but ultimately decided against it. He’s found that sometimes asking (Y/n) questions leads to answers that spark… Well, even more questions. He would rather work on his robot project than lecture the strange woman in his home. 

And so he did. For an hour or so, at least. At some point there came a time where he had to wonder why it’s so quiet. He wasn’t exactly a fan of (y/n)’s loud nature, but silence from her often seemed to be associated with danger. This was assuming she was still in the house and hadn’t decided to crawl out a window. No– Viktor thought– normal people wouldn’t do that. Well–Viktor thought– this one isn’t very normal. He hadn’t heard any explosions up to that point, though truthfully he was expecting to hear one any moment now. Any moment now… any moment… any… 

He can’t focus with all this stress. His curiosity overtook him, finally forcing him to remove himself from his project and venture to the kitchen. The sight before him was unbelievable. (y/n) was fully alive and conscious, not messing with dangerous chemicals. That was a miracle.

“Just in time!” she squealed, “Thanks for showing, I was sure you were gonna stand me up.”

“Huh?”

“You eat, don't you? Do you eat, generally? Can you? Do you have a digestive system?”

“What?”

“Is that mask like, superglued to your face?”

“No? What is this?”

(y/n) grabbed Viktor’s arm, leading him to a chair and sitting him down. She turned to grab two plates, placing them on the table. Then, she sat across from him.

“It's dinner, obviously.”

Viktor was not prepared for this. Externally, his mask showed a face of pure stoicism. Internally, his mind was running rampant trying to find an answer as to what the hell he just walked into. (Y/n) disappeared for over an hour. (y/n) thanked him for not ‘standing her up’--implying there was an option to do so. With some thought, Viktor came to the conclusion that he *might* be on a date? In any other scenario, he might think about how inexperienced he is in this field. Right now, though, he’s just lost.

“Take it off.” 

That snapped him back into reality. He physically jolted upon hearing that statement, gripping his hands on the table.

“The mask. You can’t eat with it on.” 

He seemed to be a bit less tense after hearing that.

“I can’t take it off.” he said 

“Oh, it *is* superglued onto your face… I feel like that would hurt.”

“No, it’s, it's not that.”

“Really ugly face?”

“I….”

“Really cute face?”

“Uh…?!”

“Identity thing?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Ah, I see.” hummed (y/n), reaching down to grab the hem of her shirt, “Its okay, I can work with that.” 

With that, there was the sound of fabric ripping. (y/n) tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of her shirt, and tied it around her head as a sort of makeshift blindfold. All the while muttering something about how ‘it's okay, because crop tops are great for hot girl summer.’ 

It was a strange solution, but it was, in fact, a solution. Viktor was hesitant for a number of reasons. But… it’s just been so long since he had a homemade meal. He couldn’t even remember the last time. While he had his internal debate, (y/n) had already began to attempt eating. It was quite a sight. Completely missing her mouth on some bites, completely missing the plate on others. Occasionally just using a fork to shove air into her mouth. The blindfold definitely worked. 

He held his breath as he took off the mask. It was a habit. As if taking it off would be like taking off a helmet in space, completely depriving him of oxygen. It never did, he knew it wouldn't. Still, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of anxiety as he removed that wall that covered up all the vulnerability and insecurity a person could feel. He sat it on the ground beside him, picking up a fork and biting into the food. 

It was actually good!

“Has the poison kicked in yet?” asked (y/n), with no indication of whether or not that was a joke.

“Seems not.” Viktor responded, “try harder next time.”

#viktor x you #viktor x reader #arcane Viktor x reader #arcane viktor x you #League of Legends Viktor x reader #machine herald x reader #machine herald viktor x reader

[c0rvidbones]

Out of all your OCs, who's your favorite and why?

>:D YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD OF A QUESTION THIS IS BUT IVE BEEN DYING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ABOUT MY OCS

GAH okay okay its a HUGE tossup between two of them and it doesn't help they are Brothers but I think I will have to say it's Umbra! Infodump that's super long and also art by my sick ass friend under the cut.

This is him! My feral bastard man, the one with the blue hair and pronouns! I realised while selecting these I literally do not own a single piece of art that is him by himself, he's basically glued to the hip of his husband, Penchant (written by my friend over at @/cherryfull, who also does draw all of this GORGEOUS art. The other person in the very last picture is his little brother, Axel)

Please know Umbra isn't small, Pen is just a fucking Giant of a man at a hearty 6'7"

[Quick info; he is a like 5'8-5'10 ish polynesian-french transman and a [very, Very fallen] angel of knowledge, and he struck a deal with the primordial Chaos to share and gain all the knowledge he possibly could in order to bolster his magic to an unreasonable level when he calls on it.]

He's a weird little man who I have been writing for like, 11?? Years now? He started out SO different, all warm and bright, passive and pastel/cottagecore, but through all of his batshit insane Events he's ended up this goth mildly aggressive edgelord (affectionate) who is mean for fun but is also still secretly helpful.

I think a huge part of him being my favourite, aside from him literally being my oldest, is that he has always been how I processed a lot of stressful things and got through unhappy times. I love calling his current era his "villain era" but it literally kicked off with him deciding to stop being a doormat of a boy and stand up for himself. Most of what he does is direct response to his own boundaries as he is STILL learning how to set them.

That said, he did once break someone's leg and dispose of them on said someone's ex boyfriend's doorstep with a boxed homemade cheesecake that said Happy Birthday on it; it was because those two were Yet Again pining for each other but were not doing Anything about it, and it was driving him nuts. He's still the village bastard because of this, and, even if it was a really convoluted plan to get those two back together, it wasn't exactly something a Normal and Sane man would do.

He also has a BLATANT disrespect for personal space with others most of the time, at least in terms of their homes. He has often and frequently, Uninvited, portalled into other people's homes. It has caused more than one fight, and once he agrees to not coming over unless he has asked permission or invited, he usually stops coming altogether because to him, it's no longer "fun."

I know, I know, you may be asking, why do you love this objectively terrible man, Observatory. Well, you see. I find him very funny. YES I know I write him but my very small rp group all agree sometimes the muse writes themselves and in the case of Umbra, he does so often and with wild abandon. He got jealous of a set of weights his husband put on his back and frisbee'd them into the wall so he could perch there like he usually does instead. He nearly threw a vampire off a yacht into a river because they were eyeing him a little too much. He regularly makes Nyquil Chicken and gives it to unsuspecting fools who, for some reason, keep forgetting he loves giving people Nyquil Chicken. Do you see why he's hilarious to me.

ALSO, while yes he is a terrible person with zero (well, One, but he's his sister-in-law's husband's brother so. Distant-ish family?) friends outside of direct family by marriage, if you DO manage to earn his loyalty, he is actually not just a Better person to you, but he is a Kind and Caring and VICIOUSLY protective person. He seeks out bountiful physical contact and often offers food and company, he will help you with everything in his power (which is a lot, because yeah, he has kinda ended up overwhelmingly overpowered because of RP events) when you need it. He doesn't like to use his healing magic anymore, it feels too much like an echo of the doormat boy he used to be, but if he cares, Actually cares about you, he will offer it, and it will mean the World.

Unfortunately because of how complex he's become over the years, he's nearly impossible to RP with new people because he has such Thick history and I, an autistic person and his creator, can't help myself and will talk about him nonstop whenever possible.

tl;dr He's an awful person but he makes me laugh and that's the most important thing.

#me #c0rvidspeaks #ask #ask me about my ocs #im so sorry asker #this is just my favourite bastard man ever #umbra #pen and umbra #penumbra #umbra trylle #pen trylle #anon

[fountainpenguin]

Blog Stuff

^ Like, "FYI if you want to block tags" stuff

Little announcement here: Factor It In is on hiatus for now, probably for the rest of 2023. I know where the story is going overall and I know where the next chapter's going, but I struggled more than expected with the "Torus" voice (took like 6 weeks longer than the other chapters and all of it painful :'D)

I don't want to face a timecrunch struggle with TJ and Rose POVs (two characters who will be new to me), so I'm taking the bi-weekly update stress away and putting the 'fic on hiatus for now. But I wrote 77k before a hiatus was needed so I'm proud of that <3

We've got some 130 Prompts coming up as well as "Unicorn Years" for Origin in September (and hopefully a special Friday the 13th piece in October). In other words, FOP stuff is still bi-weekly as usual.

-> As a reminder, the 130 Prompts are posted in the order they are for a reason. You don't have to read them all if you don't want to, but extra context is always nice. If you've been dragging your feet on "Looking Back" by any chance... I might recommend that before the next update, which is "Sentry" ;)

On the "off" Friday I'm planning one-shots for various fandoms, especially shorter character studies. Really want to practice capturing a variety of voices, some quicker one-shots, and maybe I'll try some characters I don't use a lot. Or I'll be self-indulgent and focus on my faves... who knows.

Hoping to post more Come What May as well since you guys were excited to see it back <3... and it would be nice to actually finish a non-one-shot 'fic for the first time in. 7 years.

It's probably been obvious, but I also took a long hiatus from digital art. Traditional art is more comfy for me and I've been trying new digital programs, but haven't fallen in love with anything (i.e. I've been a vector artist for 10 years and moving from my safe space to different programs and styles is... painful).

I think I'm ready to start pushing my comfort zone, but be forgiving of my digital style because I'm playing around with new tools and this is a big jump for me, ha ha. I think I'm going to do some silly, low-stress fanfic doodles with very little attempt to make them look good, just testing stuff out.

I miiiiiight have a few PMV / animatic ideas, so we'll see

By nature of me posting art for my own 'fics, spoilers be upon ye if you're not up to date with my writing. Relatively recent stuff and/or stuff I consider "big" will get the #ridspoilers tag, but stuff I wrote 6+ months ago is less likely to get the tag, so that's how that goes.

-> #Dog's Life spoilers will get a unique tag because the weekly updates and drama make me say "Yeah, a special tag makes sense," so if that's a 'fic you think you want to read someday without spoilers, consider blocking that sooner rather than later :)

-> I'm also adding a #Pixels Imperfect tag to stuff from that universe (and I'll go back and add it to the chapters I already posted). "Pixels Imperfect" is the series name on AO3 for my digital gremlin Traffic SMP content (Everyone can freely wander around New Star Station outside the game and just puts on their roleplay hats when they go in, everything under this series fits under one umbrella of universe canon, etc.)

-> #Neighborhood Watch is the series name for "we take the roleplay lore seriously, this is their life, no digital world and no roleplay hat to take off" Traffic SMP content. I haven't posted anything for it yet, but I've got stuff in the works (I'm playing with a couple "making every season as canon as possible in one storyline" pieces and </3 it's big divorce speedrun hours for Clocker fam rn)

As for the other 'fics, I've been posting stuff like Origin, the 130, and Knots for 7 years and I feel okay about how that's going- I don't normally get spoiler Asks, but my general rule is to wait 1-2 weeks before I say anything spoilery on my blog. I think that's been working fine and we've got a good system, so I'm not changing anything there.

Lastly - and this is also part of the reason Factor is going on hiatus - it sounds like Traffic SMP Season 5 is just around the corner. For my followers who don't know much about this Minecraft deathmatch series, the creators only play for a few weeks - I think the shortest season was 6 weeks and the longest was 8 - and each creator puts out one episode a week (usually Friday).

So, it's a pretty short chunk of time and I don't want to be juggling too many things while it's coming out. I think this year I want to jump in and create some nice content while it's ongoing instead of just doodling off to the side and keeping it to myself... I need to dig up my old liveblog doodles I never shared, hm.

-> The traffic story canon gets reset every season (i.e. it's unscripted play, there's no continuous plot, and each season starts relationships from scratch), so if you've been enjoying any of my Traffic SMP reblogs, consider looking into it and riding that wave while episodes come out for a couple weeks and we can be hype together <3

-> Stuff for that season will be tagged #traffic spoilers, which is the tag I use across all the seasons, and I'll make a new post with my Season 5 spoiler tag once we get the name reveal.

-> As is traditional when I liveblog, I'll also use the tag #Riddle watches Traffic so you can block that too if you like. Just wanted to let people know in case I have any Traffic SMP followers who want to go in blind and don't want to risk seeing my posts before they have time to block my spoilers tag. #traffic spoilers still covers everything, including new season.

-> I also need to look into maybe switching from Traffic Life SMP as my blog tag to Traffic SMP because I think that's. the right name and it would probably be smart to tag properly... hm.

I think that covers everything I wanted to say. I'll add a list or link to my pinned post as well so people can figure out what to block for spoilers and stuff.

Thanks for enjoying my blog!

#99% true as far as we remember #ridwriting #Pixels Imperfect #Neighborhood Watch #Factor It In #130 Prompts #FAIRIES! #Dog's Life #ridspoilers #Clockers #Riddle watches Traffic #/squints. If I put these next ones at the end of my tag list then this won't show up in public search right? I think so: #trafficblr #traffic life smp #traffic spoilers #mcyt

[gloriousmonsters]

next morning pickman’s model (cabinet of curiosities ep) review

good

- ben barnes really seemed to be doing his best i think. of course it’s hard to tell for sure but the weird moments he has seemed more to do with the script and however the fuck he was being directed than personal acting flaws. still don’t think he was the right man for the role but yknow. gold You Tried sticker

- crispin glover was kind of in the same bucket. not the right man for Pickman, not the best performance ever and they barely gave him three scenes altogether, but he seemed to be doing the best he could with what he had, and he was somewhat entertaining to watch

- that one moment where thurber sees one of pickman’s sketches for the first time and does a weird spasmodic hand flex while his hand is still dripping from the sink actually made me hope that the episode was going to be way hornier and weirder than it wound up being

(and bad is under the cut because it’s. Far, far longer :))))

b a d

- the way it was trying to be every recognizable lovecraft story so hard???? the incredibly awkward comment that pickman is a ‘wet fish’ who comes from ‘old new england’ blood and the random sea creatures popping up, the yog-sothoth references and shub-niggurath imagery, the sudden references to what I can only assume is cthulhu at the end (because we aren’t given any other explanation!!!), the switch of the setting to Miskatonic in Arkham for the first bit instead of the whole thing being set in an art club in Boston--Pickman’s Model was one of Lovecraft’s most effective semi-standalone stories! make a couple references if you like but don’t wreck it because you want it to be a Lovecraft™ mishmash instead of a good horror story!

- fuck i feel like we could argue it shouts out Medusa’s Coil, the way it adds an Evil Depraved Witch-Woman when it really didn’t fucking need to 🙃 and speaking of, love that the already ‘we should treat this reeeeeally carefully and think about it hard’ element in the original story of ‘the creature race steals human children sometimes to add to their numbers’ is replaced by ‘the evil beings and evil crazy women associated with them EAT BABIES, let’s show an art of long-nosed ugly witches giving a baby to a monster’ 🙃🙃

- ‘well the original story’s horror derived from how clear and realistic the pictures of horror were (which beautifully led to the reveal that pickman is drawing from life when he draws malevolent inhuman beasties)... let’s throw out that ‘pickman draws from life’ setup by having him draw a normal model with two arms and rotting flesh in scene one, make a lot of the sketches and smaller pieces more spooky and fantastical looking, and whenever we have a big painted piece--well, art can’t scare people on its own! we can’t trust the actors to carry this! quick, shake the art really hard in front of the camera, animate bits, and play really loud child crying and monster growling sound effects over it. perfect.’

- ‘what do you mean it’s about doghuman fairy-ghouls living under boston and eating corpses? that doesn’t sound scary!! it’s about a depraved witch-woman--wait no, it’s about big ol’ monsters that eat babies! both? idk, we don’t have time to really connect the two properly, throw in some witch imagery, we have to get to the bit where pickman’s art survives a fire with no explanation and suddenly starts converting people who look at it to self-mutiliation, fantastical Insanity, and Cthulhu worship. we’re so good at creating coherent horror narratives’

- ‘i see the original story is somewhat homoerotic. well, that won’t do. give thurber a girlfriend, have him be repulsed by pickman 5 minutes into their acquaintanceship, then give him a wife and son and make the horror all about the perfect little hetero family setup being threatened. perfect! none of that nasty ‘horror and tragedy derived from a devastating revelation about someone you were not only a close friend too, but deeply admired the art of and were utterly dazzled by’

- ‘of course this doesn’t mean we’ll have developed female characters! just an Evil Witch-Woman, a Generic Girlfriend, and later a Perfect Little Wife.’

- I ranted about this in my first tags but this episode was just a badly made story. The brief ‘happy normalcy’ scenes (which are always the painfully heterosexual ones :)))))) are awkward as hell and jar against the other scenes, not in a ‘oh no good things but now bad things’ way but in a ‘is the director aware of how a tonal shift properly works?’ way. Things will happen where the payoff kind of matters and then we just don’t see it. The writing is mediocre at best; when it cribs a few lines from the original story, they now don’t really make sense in context, and the writer’s seen fit to only use the first half of some lines and chop of the second, more interesting half. Ben Barnes goes to Lovecraft Madness stage 4 after one encounter with a scawy picture and then I guess. Gets over it??? there’s a timeskip of 17 years with no note on whether anything’s happened during that time. He then nearly stabs himself in the forehead when looking at another scawy picture and is dissuaded by someone saying ‘sup?’ to him. everyone else looking at the pics either doesn’t react except with ‘ew’ or they go completely Fake Fantasy Mad. why is the protagonist different????? who the fuck knows!

- all in all the writer and director clearly didn’t understand the actual horror of Pickman’s Model or like, care about adapting the story, and didn’t have the chops to make something different but good, and elided an ounce of racism to include a bucket of antisemitism and make it more homophobic and sexist, so my overall conclusion is kind of like that Persuasion review. everyone should be in jail for just a little bit to think about what they’ve done

#we need to talk about horror #pickman's model

[spaceprincessem]

it’s a miracle [we found true north] | 29k buddie fic || ao3 link

{or a slight au where Buck can draw and Eddie is a little undone by it}

all art for the fic made by the lovely @justlovehimanyway

“I was just looking for you,” Buck announces like they’re the only two people in the room. “Do you have a minute?”

Eddie swallows, forces his attention back on Buck’s face and nods. He then clears his throat and lets his shoulders relax (he can’t remember them tensing up), his smile coming easy now, “As long as the alarm doesn’t sound,” he jokes before he sends the bell a challenging look.

Buck laughs, a huff of air before he moves to sit down on the couch. Eddie’s eyes dart over to Chim and Hen, who suddenly look much too interested in their cards for it to be convincing. Eddie doesn’t keep Buck waiting, but with every step he takes his heart beats harder against his ribcage and he has to rub lightly at his chest just to remember how to breathe again. He sits down next to Buck, letting their knees touch, a line of heat from where they are pressed almost too close together for the amount of room left on the couch.

“What’s up?” Eddie asks immediately, stopping himself from burning a hole into Buck’s sketchpad with an anxious gaze.

Buck’s leg begins to bounce as his fingers fiddle with the edge of a loose piece of paper, “It’s nothing special,” Buck shrugs, “it’s just something I like to do for everyone on the team.”

Eddie just raises an eyebrow, not trusting his brain or his mouth to say something that wouldn’t completely embarrass him.

“I um, sort of like to draw,” Buck rubs the back of his neck, cheeks tinting a rosey pink, “and this took me way longer than normal because, well,” he laughs nervously, “I had this idea after the earthquake, you know? But I couldn’t get the moment quite right, so I had to restart it a million times and—”

Eddie thinks Buck would endlessly ramble if given the opportunity, but Eddie feels like he is vibrating out of his fucking skin because he knows what Buck wants to show him and he has never wanted to lay eyes on a piece of paper so badly in his life.

“Buck,” he hears himself say, lays his hand over Buck’s wrist, giving the man a gentle squeeze, “show me.”

Buck exhales slowly, smiles, and then flips his sketchpad open to some page in the middle. He carefully turns it around and passes it over to Eddie’s waiting hands. The groves of the paper are a comforting feeling beneath the pads of Eddie’s fingers and he runs his thumb over Buck’s initials before he allows his eyes to travel up the page to the black and white sketch. There’s a moment where Eddie truly believes his heart actually stops beating because he looks down at the drawing Buck made for him and he wants to cry.

He remembers this moment. He wouldn’t be able to forget it if he tried. The earthquake was one of their first, really bad calls since he joined the 118. Eddie could handle the stress of his job, he’d proven as much in Afghanistan, but not being able to reach Christopher sat like a weight on his chest for far too long. He remembers when they finally made it, Buck taking him by the school where his son was kept safe while the rest of Los Angeles slipped into chaos. He held Christopher close, couldn’t wait to introduce him to his new partner, and carried his son to the Jeep piggyback style. Christopher had told him a joke, something corny that made his face light up, sending a warmth Eddie hardly felt those days down his spine.

This.

This is what Buck drew and Eddie is pretty sure he’s about to lose it.

read the rest on ao3

#buddie #911 fox #eddie diaz #evan buckley #christopher diaz #buckley diaz family #fanart #fanfic #buck x eddie

[rkn001]

How long does an art piece normally take you?

it depends on the style! usually if i start out with linearting my sketch, the piece might take two or three hours on average (usually no more than half a day), whereas if i color-block my sketch and make it painterly, it might take an aggregate total time of half a day on average. i find that the more careful i am with colors, the longer it takes.

if it's a comic though, i'd say it roughly takes thirty minutes to three hours per panel, depending on the complexity.

(you might question about how i plan these things but…i'm actually an impulsive planner and i tend to go with my gut feeling with whatever i do. it doesn't help when it comes to long-term projects, so it's something to work on i suppose 🤷🏻‍♂️)

#ask #thanks for the ask! #i am not consistent when it comes to drawing stuff but i am okay with that; hence the hand-wavy response

[withoz]

❀ *ﾟ park sooyoung. trans woman. she/her. bisexual biromantic. ⇝ hey, isn’t that da-eun “dorothy” graves-seong? i think that the twenty three year old from aurora, west virginia works as a trapeze artist at carnival of time and a scare actor at house of judgement, but outside of that people describe them as plaid dresses, catchy pop songs that stick in your head, and the smell of a bath and body works lotion. i hear they are nervous & easily intimidated, but they are also known to be kind & dedicated. consider giving them a visit at their home in the seal resident apartments and get to know why they’re called the quiescent.

trigger warnings for intro: bullying, transphobia, murder, burglary

PINTEREST: link

Ever since she was little, Dorothy knew there was something different about her. It would take her a few years to exactly pinpoint it, but when she did come to the conclusion that she was a girl who hadn’t been living her life as one up to that point, she was still quite young. 

Unfortunately, she would never get the chance to make this revelation known to her parents, although from what memories she’s been told from her siblings, they would have been accepting. She has little memories of her own of her parents, and some she’s not sure are even her own or just feel like they’re hers from how many times she’s heard them recounted. 

When Dorothy was just a year old, still a baby, a home invasion that was intended to be just a simple burglary would go wrong, resulting in the death of their parents. 

What Dorothy actually remembers from her childhood is being raised by the circus family that her parents had been a part of before their untimely deaths. It was definitely a unique and, possibly eve, unusual upbringing, but also accepting and supportive environment. 

Still, that didn’t mean the childhood didn’t come without its hardships in addition to the family’s tragedy. Not only did her gender identification make her a bit of an outcast, it also didn’t help that she was seen as a freak from the circus, as she was often spending her free time practicing or performing the art of trapeze rather than more normal extracurriculars. 

This would only worsen during her teenage years, where she would eventually drop out of high school to begin traveling with the circus for the first time. There was nothing tying her to Aurora, West Virginia any longer with her siblings moving onto other things, and she was certainly tired of the peers that seemed to only exist to torment her. 

Dorothy would stay traveling with the circus for years, not only getting to be alongside the people she knew as family, but the opportunity to see more of the world than just the Eastern town she grew up in. She would never return to school, and, to this day, lacks a high school diploma or GED. 

It would only be when reached out to by the other Graves-Soeng’s would she find her way to Anchorage, only planning to visit for a couple weeks but deciding to stay for a multitude of reasons. Finding a new position to work as a trapeze artist at the carnival didn’t hurt. Besides, it had been quite a long time since she had a place to call home that wasn’t mobile. 

FUN FACTS

Dorothy can speak Korean, at least partially. She sometimes needs certain phrases repeated for her and there are times where her spoken language in it can be a bit broken from the years in the circus where there weren’t too many situations to use it in.

She often makes her own clothes, even if they can seem a bit unique, with lots of bright colors and different textures. Some pieces are very obviously homemade, but she has gotten better at it over the years. (Heavy Andie from Pretty in Pink inspiration for this headcanon.) 

She is generally soft spoken and hates confrontation. This is partially just a natural characteristic of her personality, but also just reminds her of the bullying she would face as a child. She much more likely to run away from a situation than fight against it, as which can be seen from previous decisions. 

As a child, she loved the Wizard of Oz, feeling special that her American-given name was that of the main character, and that can still play an influence on her style sometimes. 

#anchorintro #tw ; bullying #tw ; transphobia #tw ; murder #tw ; burglary #every time i write another one of these i'm like haha i'm not gonna write that much. i don't even have that much to say and then

[loganmarloe]

Prompted Writing #9

Prompt:

You’ve bought an old chest of drawers and discover a piece of paper stuck inside. What is written on that piece of paper?

It should include a time machine. Also use the sentence ‘You’re an idiot.’ Bonus prompt: There seems to be no one left on the planet.

—————

Chania Timper checked her phone. 4:29. The delivery guys would be here in a minute. She’d purchased a chest of drawers from a strange little thrift shop she’d never seen before. Granted, she didn’t go to the Mussano Peak neighborhood often. The last time she was there, she was chasing what her best friend Trent called the “most perfectamous” baguette. She’d found the baguette, but it wasn’t all that.

The door buzzer sounded and she hit the button to allow access. She went out to the stairwell and looked down. She could see two people and just a corner of the chest. She recognized the lovely grain of the wood from two stories up. It had a sworl in it that shouldn’t exist. Trees just don’t grow like that, but it was real wood. The shop clerk, a twenty-something whose eyes had the cast of someone who’s seen much in their life, assured her it was a genuine antique made by hand.

She didn’t catch the name of the place where it was created, but it didn’t matter. The piece spoke to her and that’s all she needed. It would fit in with all of the other eclectic pieces of furniture and art that helped her express herself.

The delivery guys got to the second floor and she gave them a little wave. They eased it through the door and asked her where to put it. She directed them to the perfect spot in her bedroom, right under the window. They were very gentle with it and she thanked and tipped them well.

After they’d gone, she turned to go fill it with her favorite clothes when her phone rang.

She saw it was Trent and answered. They talked for a long time about the chest and his favorite subject: food. While they spoke, Chania prepared and ate a soup he described on the fly. They talked for a while longer and made plans to go to a medieval-themed festival the coming weekend.

By the time they got off the call, it was pretty late. Chania went into the bedroom and put a few items in the top drawer. She started to feel sleepier than she thought she’d been. She decided to put the rest of the clothes in the chest the next morning. On top, she put a framed photo of herself with her little brother, who’d passed away a few years ago. They’d just finished making pancakes from scratch in the photo. Every time she saw it, she smiled at how much flour had not gone into the bowl.

She threw on an old t-shirt of his in lieu of pajamas and slipped into bed. She was asleep in seconds and dreamt of that day in their mother’s kitchen.

—————

Chania woke as the sun hit her eyes. She realized she’d forgotten to draw the curtains and groaned. She tried throwing the covers over her head, but the blanket was lightweight for summer, so it was still bright.

She got up and went to close the curtains, but hesitated. Something wasn’t right. She looked around, but nothing in her bedroom seemed out of place. She looked through the window and down to the street. There wasn’t anyone down on the sidewalk nor cars in the street. Normal for early Sunday, she thought. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong.

She watched the street for a few more moments, thinking about the hot dog guy. He started serving “breakfast dogs” a few weeks ago and they were actually pretty good. She picked her phone up from the dresser, where she’d left it the night before. Too early for hot dog guy, she thought and decided to go for a jog and maybe bring back a coffee from that new shop a couple of blocks down the street.

She opened her closet, but was astonished to find it empty. She knew she’d been very tired last night, but she was sure she hadn’t put all of her clothes in the new chest of drawers. Doubting herself, she opened the top drawer and found only a pair of black jeans and some underwear.

She shut the drawer and opened the next one down, but it was empty. Well, empty except for a yellowed, old folded piece of paper jammed into the back joints. They must have missed it when the dresser was being readied for sale in the shop. She shut that drawer and yanked open the third just to be sure, but it was even emptier.

She went back to the second drawer and grabbed the note. It was really stuck back there, but she managed to rock it and get it out of the joint. It turned out to be three pages of thick note paper that looked like it was from a bygone era. Maybe WWII.

Opening the pages, the words she expected to see weren’t there. It was a diagram with geometric designs she’d never seen and some exponential numbers. The next page was a different diagram, this one with some words in what looked like German. The last page was text written in a fine script. Three blocks of text seemed to be written in different languages.The first two looked like German and French. She was relieved to discover the last one was English, as she’d only studied Spanish as a second language. She read it and dismissed it as nonsense.

Chania folded it back up and set it on top of the chest. She walked out into the living room and shrieked loudly. All of her furniture was gone. In their place were remnants of old, broken furniture; they were covered in a thick layer of dust. She dashed into the kitchen and found it similarly dilapidated.

She crossed to the front door and tried to open it. It groaned, but stayed shut. She twisted the knob again and gave it a mighty yank. It shrieked as loudly as she’d just done and then cracked open. Paint chips and dust showered down on her. She poked her head out and saw the building had aged something like a hundred years while she’d slept.

She noted that nobody had poked their heads out at her shrieking or the door opening loudly. It was as if nobody lived there anymore. She pulled her head back inside and shoved the door shut as best she could. It didn’t really fit back into the jamb, so she left it, turning instead toward her bedroom.

She could see her nice curtains from here and everything looked clean. She walked back into the room and it was like everything was okay, except for the rest of her apartment.

Considering that, she looked again and was surprised the street and surrounding buildings didn’t look more broken down and dusty. She pulled on the jeans that had been in the top drawer and pulled off her brother’s old t-shirt to put on one of the bras that had been in there, as well. She hadn’t placed one of her own tops in the chest, so she just put the t-shirt back on.

She grabbed her keys and then put them back on the chest. There was nobody around to lock out of her apartment.

Out in the hallway, she nearly fell through the floor when she put her weight on the first step down. Grabbing the railing, she pulled her foot out of the hole she’d just created. She tested the edges and gingerly made her way down both staircases to the ground floor.

Out on the street, she was again shocked. The street was dilapidated and old. The asphalt had cracked and tufts of grass had grown in with it before dying. The air was chill for summer and Chania wished she had a jacket.

She couldn’t fathom how the view from her window had been so different. She looked up at her building and marveled at how it was still standing. There were holes where most of the windows had been and the facing had come away in large chunks. A block away, she found what looked like the hot dog guy’s cart. It was practically smashed flat. She didn’t go far before going back up to the apartment.

Chania looked out her window again and couldn’t understand that the city looked like it had yesterday. It was green and everything was brightly colored. There weren’t any people, but everything else was fine. She even saw a couple of birds and a cat. It was like she was watching a very boring television show through her bedroom window. She decided she had to go figure out what had happened

She looked around at the rest of her things. Nothing that hadn’t been in or on the chest was still there. She saw a lump under the covers of her bed. She pulled them back and found her backpack. She’d forgotten to put it away. Inside it was a half-full bag of homemade granola she’d made for an outing, as well as a bottle of water, a tube of sunscreen, and a ball cap. Everything that was good for a trip to the farmer’s market, but maybe not enough for an apocalypse.

She picked up the bag and turned toward the chest of drawers. She stuffed the notes from the chest in her back pocket, along with her phone, though she wasn’t sure what she’d use the thing for. She looked at the photo and thought she’d better take it, just in case she didn’t return here. She packed it with the underwear inside the backpack, zipped it up, and went to the kitchen to top off her water.

She turned on the tap, but nothing happened. She sighed and looked around for other provisions. Nothing was in the cupboards. The fridge’s door was hanging by one hinge and nothing had been cold inside for a long time. She just left it all and carefully descended the stairs again.

She seemingly walked aimlessly around the city. She went into random buildings, finding more devastation. She did note there were no people, dead or living. The lack of bodies was curious and she felt like she was just having an elaborate dream.

About an hour later, she found herself in her old neighborhood. She walked a little more until she found the street she’d lived on with her mother and brother before they’d both passed away.

A couple of blocks later, she walked up the steps of her old house. The porch was only held up on one side. The other was almost a ramp to the second floor, though it was so full of holes, only a squirrel could venture up there without falling through.

Chania pushed open what was left of the door and entered; it was yet another ruined building. She looked around, conscious of the fact that the house had not been hers for long before this disaster happened. Other people would have been living here at the time of whatever catastrophe this devastation reflected.

She stepped over broken furniture and bits of ceiling plaster and made her way to her old bedroom, somehow compelled to see how it, too, had fallen. She had just entered the upstairs hallway when she heard a crashing sound. Chania screamed. She looked around and saw dust billowing out of what would have been her brother’s room.

She covered her nose and mouth with the top of the t-shirt she was wearing and waded through the debris. When she looked through the door to the room, she initially didn’t see anything, but then saw a big hole and the kitchen below.

The biggest shock of her life came next. Emerging from beneath a pile of rubble was her brother. The one who’d been dead for three and a half years. She gaped at him, trying to understand what was happening. Then he looked up. Their eyes locked and he said, “Sis? Thank the universe you’re here! I can’t find anyone and everything is broken.”

She continued to stare. He was the same age as when he’d died. He looked full of health and strong. “Stefan?” she squeaked out finally.

“Why are you staring so hard, Chania? Come down here already, would you? I can’t find Mom.”

She stepped back from the hole and nearly tripped on an aluminum baseball bat. She looked at it. The handle wraps had rotted off, but it could be a good weapon. She wasn’t sure why she’d need a weapon, but if her brother could be alive, somebody else could be, too.

She stuffed it into the backpack, handle end sticking out and put the bag on her back. Downstairs, she stopped in the entrance to the kitchen and looked at her brother dusting himself off. He stood up and opened his mouth to speak, but she rushed up and gave him the biggest hug she could manage.

“Hey!” he said, startled. “You’ll break me!” When she didn’t let up, he pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. “What is going on? You never hug me. Hey, did you cut your hair?”

She shook her head. Her vision started to blur as her eyes teared up. She pulled up the t-shirt again to wipe her eyes when he noticed what she was wearing.

“Hey! Why are you wearing my favorite Star Wars shirt?!”

Chania looked down at herself and started giggling. Her brother just stared, mouth open. He stepped back as she started laughing huge guffaws. Finally, her laughter turned to sobs.

“Wait,” Stefan said, hands outstretched. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

Chania turned and ran through the front door. Once outside, she sat on the curb and sucked in huge breaths as she tried to calm down. One thought kept running through her head: He’s alive.

A few moments later, she heard sneakers running up behind her. She turned and was somehow surprised again to see her brother, in the flesh.

“What gives?” he demanded, his brows nearly knitted together. “Why’d you run?”

She stood up and took a deep breath before turning to him. “You’ve been dead for over three years, that’s what!”

His lips twisted in amusement. “Sure, I have. I’m totally dead.”

“You’re an idiot. Don’t you think there’s a lot that’s odd about what’s happening?” Chania said. “I mean, everything is old and broken. I woke up in my apartment and everything but my bedroom had turned old.”

“Your apartment? Wha-” he started as she kept talking over him.

“There was no food or anything. My clothes were almost all gone and I wouldn’t have this backpack if it hadn’t been in my bed, even though I have no idea how that works!”

She kept going for a few minutes, telling him about her journey through the ruined city to here. He absorbed only a few things she said, however, as his mind was reeling from the revelation that she thought he’d been dead for three years and she had her own apartment now. Just yesterday, she’d been living at home with him and their mom.

“So, that’s what’s happening,” she said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

He shook his head and turned away from her. She started to speak again, but he held up his finger in a ‘one sec’ kind of way, so she waited. When he turned back, he had one question: “Where’s Mom?” He saw her face fall and knew. “She’s dead. How?”

Chania took a breath. “She died in the same car crash you did.” Her eyes watched as the pain of loss darkened his features. He didn’t cry, but only stared, mouth working a bit as he silently repeated, she’s dead.

She let him sit down and absorb the information and let her own mind wander. Some things - many things - didn’t add up, here.

After several minutes, she said, “Stefan? Do you remember where you were when you woke up? Were you in bed?”

Startled, he started to nod, “Well, yea-, wait, no. I woke up falling through the ceiling into the kitchen. I remember seeing the hole first thing and then I hit the floor. Hm.” His eyebrows continued scrunching together.

His sister sat down next to him and made the sound he was fond of hearing when he imagined the gears of her brain were turning. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking all of this has to do with the chest of drawers I bought yesterday. It had a weird note in it and only stuff I’d put on it or in it, along with my bed and everything on it, survived this disaster.”

“So?”

She opened the backpack and pulled out the photo. “You’re in this photo with me and we’re the only people who seem to be alive.”

“Whoa! We just made pancakes yesterday. When did you have time to get it printed out?”

“A lot of time has passed since this day, bro,” she said, shaking her head. “I moved in with Grandpa and he sold our old house and put it into a fund. I moved out after I got a job and I’m using the fund money to go to college, or I was. I guess college is dust now, too.”

Stefan looked at the photo for a long time. Then he handed it back to her and stood up. “Let’s go.”

She put the photo back inside the pack and said, “Where?”

“To your apartment, no, wait. Let me see the note you were talking about.”

Silently, wondering where this was going, but open to anything at this point, she pulled the note papers out of her pocket and handed them to him.

He looked at them for a long time before he said, “Did you read the back page?”

“Yeah, some fantasy nonsense to do with time travel.”

“Maybe not so much nonsense,” he said. “Somehow, this paper has something to do with bringing us both forward in time, but that doesn’t make sense. If I’m dead, it would have to be the past.”

“The chest of drawers,” she said.

“What?”

“The chest of drawers,” she said with more emphasis. “The note was inside, jammed in the back of the second drawer. I pulled it out this morning before I discovered the apocalypse, but didn’t really believe it.” She suddenly zipped the bag back up, stood and hoisted it onto her back. “We have to go there.”

Stefan followed her lead. Ideas whirled in his mind. He couldn’t figure out why the world looked like this or why there weren’t other people. If he was dead and this was some kind of post-apocalyptic era, how could they be here together?

When they got to the building, she showed him how to climb the rotten steps. They got up to the apartment and he followed as she went directly to the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway as she went around the room, as though looking for something.

Chania was relieved to find it hadn’t changed. She looked over at her impossibly alive brother and said, pointing, “Come here. Look out the window.”

Not knowing what to expect, he gingerly approached and looked out the window. He gasped aloud. “How the hell? That’s not what it looks like down there!”

“I know! I think it has something to do with this chest,” she said, looking down and stroking the smooth top of the old dresser.

Stefan looked out the window again and pointed, “Hey! There’s someone there!”

Chania looked up and squeaked. “That’s the hot dog guy!”

His quizzical look prompted her to explain. “That’s the guy who sells breakfast hot dogs downstairs in front of the park almost every morning. Regular ones, too, but the breakfast dogs are new.”

“Okay, that’s weird, but okay.”

Chania suddenly leaned over and hoisted the window up so she could yell down below, but when it opened, the scene changed. It was just as they’d left it a few minutes ago. There wasn’t a hot dog guy. There was only the smashed-up cart and all the debris around it.

Chania screamed in frustration. Stefan tapped her arm. She moved aside and watched as he put the window back down. The scene changed back to the bucolic street, empty save for the hot dog guy starting to set up his cart.

“What. The. Hell?” she said, voice rising. “I-. What the hell are we looking at, Stef?”

“Sis, I think we’re looking at the past. I don’t know how I came back from the dead or how this window works, but this looks like something that’s happening, but not now.”

They stood there for several minutes just watching the hot dog guy. The man put blocks around the wheels so it wouldn’t roll. He then took out a pack of hot dog shaped objects and put them into the warmer and turned it on. Then he set out the condiments and brought out a little old fashioned cash register. Finally, he unfurled and opened the broad umbrella that kept the summer sun off him as he worked.

Shaking herself, she finally asked, “What is it we’re supposed to see? I mean, he probably won’t have customers for a little while. It’s still early.”

“I suspect we’re about to find out,” her brother said. She looked at him and saw worry wrinkles around his young eyes.

They both watched for a while longer. Chania hoped to see some people come out and do normal things, like walk their dogs or stop at the hot dog cart. After a few minutes, though, they saw a great flash of light that seemed to encompass everything. It partially blinded them for a few seconds. There was no sound at all, like one might expect from an explosion.

When their vision cleared, they saw the world on fire. Chania saw an SUV barrel up the street, too fast and out of control. It hit and then rolled over the hot dog cart and continued into the park. The hot dog guy was nowhere to be seen. The SUV kept charging down the gentle slope of the park and only stopped when it smashed into a tree.

Nobody was about. The people had disappeared. Chania gasped and then started crying. Stefan just stood there, shaking. After watching for several more minutes, it became apparent that they’d just witnessed the event that made the world the way it is, though they were no closer to an answer to the mystery of what it was.

Stefan moved to the edge of the bed and sat down. He pulled the note papers from his pocket and looked at them again. Pointing to one passage, he looked up and said, “This part here, listen: ‘The chest is used by placing objects in it. Otherwise it sits inert, unmoving. Once objects are inside, the events will manifest.’”

Chania shrugged. “That just sounds like instructions for an idiot on how to use a chest of drawers.” She hesitated. “But wait, ‘events will manifest’? What events would you expect from putting clothes in a drawer?”

Stefan stood up and paced back and forth. Chania took his place on the edge of the bed and watched him trying to figure out the note.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay, go with me, here. Somehow the maker of this dresser knew what was going to happen. Maybe he even set it up to happen. He planned this with someone else. Maybe it was a doomsday device that was supposed to destroy a city.”

“Like we did to Hiroshima?”

He pointed emphatically, “Yes! Exactly like that, but somehow magically.”

She scoffed and he put his hand up to stop her. His face was deadly serious. She shut her mouth and listened.

“It must be magical or something, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, right? I mean, I’m sure it’s science, in some way. Magic is only what we don’t understand yet.”

Chiana struggled not to smile, though she was very glad to see her science-nerd brother doing his thing again. She nodded encouragingly.

“So, we know that the last page is a Rosetta stone-like translation page. It seems like instructions for whoever would be setting it off. The makers didn’t know which language the bomber would speak, so they put it in three languages. It looks like German first, then French, and lastly, English.”

“I thought the paper and the ink looked kind of old,” Chania said. “It gives me WWII vibes. Plus, there’s the diagrams and symbols. I could swear that tiny one in the corner is a swastika.”

Stefan looked closer and agreed it could be, though it was really very tiny. “So,” he said finally, “why wasn’t it set off during the war? How did it get here? Why hasn’t it been set off accidentally before?”

His sister’s eyes unfocused. She tried to puzzle it out. Then she slapped her leg. “The clothes and the picture!”

He shrugged and shook his head at the same time, hands out to his sides. She explained. “When I bought it from this thrift shop I hadn’t seen before, I thought the person working there was a little weird about it. They seemed only concerned with this chest of drawers. In fact, only this piece was clean and polished.”

“What does that even mean?” Stefan said, annoyance coloring his voice.

“Listen, you little dipshit,” falling back into old sibling patter like when they were kids. “What if it was a setup? What if that guy had been waiting for the right time and place and sold it to me so I’d set off the apocalypse? It was a really good price and delivery was free, even though I lived several miles away.”

“So?” Stephan said. “A lot of things get free delivery.”

“Not anymore, kiddo,” she said. “A lot of things happened while you were gone.”

“Don’t call me ‘kiddo’! I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not that much younger than you.”

Chania dipped her head down. “I’m sorry, yeah, you have.” She took a breath. “What if, to make things happen with this thing, it had to do with where to put stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, setting off the apocalypse could have been its endgame, but instead, it pushed me into the future - me and my dead brother! Why is there a time travel aspect?”

“Does it matter? How do we fix it, if we can?” Stefan sat down beside his sibling.

“I put your picture on top of the chest after I put clothes in the top drawer. What if the clothes were to set off the disaster, but putting things on top caused the time travel?”

“I won’t pretend to understand this, but what do you want to do?”

Chania picked up the bag and rummaged in it for a bit. Then she pulled out the photo and placed it inside the top drawer and shut it.

Stefan scoffed. “What’s that supposed to do?”

“If I’m right, it’ll reverse the apocalypse and bring us back in time.”

“Okay, but in your time, I’m dead,” Stefan said slowly. “I might not make it - again.”

Chania’s throat constricted and tears stung her eyes. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just leave things as they are.”

“One probo, sister of mine,” he said with a wry smile. “There’s no food and I don’t think we can trust the water. It would be better if we tried to save the world instead of starving to death in what’s left of it.”

Her face fell as she realized this truth. He held her while she sobbed into his shoulder.

After a while, she sat up again and said, “I don’t want to lose you again, but I also don’t want to watch us both die.”

“What do we do?” Stefan asked softly.

Chania sniffed and wiped her eyes. “We go to sleep. When we wake up - if we wake up, or I wake up, we’ll see what’s happened.”

The siblings were exhausted, so sleep came easily after they laid down side by side, holding hands like small children.

—————

Chania awoke as the sun hit her eyes. She thought, I’m back in my apartment. Is Stefan, too?

She looked over to her left and found the space next to her was empty. She shook from the sobs that overcame her.

When she sat up to blow her nose, she found her old alarm clock where her tissue box should be. She wiped her eyes with her shirt and looked around. She was in her old bedroom and it wasn’t ruined.

She popped out of bed and looked around again. Everything was as it was the day they made pancakes. She looked down and saw she was wearing the purple pajamas she’d worn that morning.

Tearing open the door, she jumped across the hall and crashed through her brother’s door. He was already up and standing, amazed, in the middle of his also-not-ruined room. They locked eyes and screamed, “Aaaaahhhh!”

From downstairs, a voice called, “Would you two please stop screaming into this ‘void’ you keep talking about and come downstairs?”

“Mom!” Chania said breathlessly. “She’s alive!” She turned to run downstairs, but Stefan caught her arm and stopped her.

“What?” she said, annoyed. “Let me go!”

“We’re back before everything,” he said emphatically. When she didn’t seem to get it, he said, “This means we can stop all the bad stuff.”

Chania finally relaxed and nodded. “Okay, but first, pancakes with Mom. Then, we cancel the plans to go camping.”

“What? Why? We’ve been planning that trip for months!”

“It’s when you two died.”

“But you were supposed to go. What happened?”

“I broke my leg in a bicycle accident the week before and had to stay with Grandpa while you two went.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, camping is off and so is bike riding for you. Let’s go see Mom.”

Chania got there first and bear-hugged her mother as hard as when she’d seen her brother in the future.

They made up a story as to why they didn’t want to go camping, which their mother accepted. She never wanted to go in the first place, but didn’t want to spoil their fun.

Years later, Chania and Stefan went to the thrift store on the day Chania would have purchased the fateful chest of drawers and did just that.

Instead of getting it delivered, they’d rented a truck, which they drove to an isolated, empty lot in the country and burned the chest of drawers to ashes, notes and all. They didn’t care how it worked. They were only happy that the world didn’t end and they had each other.

#writing #original writing #prompted writing #fiction #time travel #fantasy #apocalyptic #writers on tumblr #chania timper #stefan timper #siblings