#that hand is terrible but I decided I am breaking my art block so I am posting this anyway

[akins-art]

#my horror spree continues #what do you mean I cant just get back to doing digital art after months of not doing it and expect it to be easy #that hand is terrible but I decided I am breaking my art block so I am posting this anyway #hadn't done one of these guys in what feels like years #oh well #bo sinclair #slasher community #slasher movies #slasher #house of wax 2005 #house of wax #digital art #my art #fanart #hope you like it

[marvelmymarvel]

Okay so I have major writers block but I have to share my LOTR idea with yall. And I'm almost certain I am breaking so much cannon lore with the idea but I wanna do it anyway because I can. So please do not correct me, I know I'm wrong just have fun with it.

So here is my idea.

The reader is someone from here and ends up in Middle Earth. Elrond found her and put some of his blood in her to make her immortal. She technically is an elf but looks like a human. The orcs have been chasing after her for thousands of years. so Elrond, to keep her safe, sends her off to Mirkwood to stay with Thranduil. She hates it and manages to sneak out and join the dwarves on their adventures. They don't know she has elven blood in her until they meet with Elrond in Rivendell.

The scene where they are in Rivendell is where my newest idea is placed. Elrond pulls her aside and states that they (Elrond, Thranduil, Gandalf, and Galadriel) haven't been honest with her and have finally decided to open up about her true origin.

Also, all of this is to the song Ptolomaea by Ethel Cain (https://youtu.be/aLy27Xo-gos?si=AcO8odVHGrtgKGIp) Mainly the last part where the darker voice is talking... Art of Elven Sauron below is by Csanikainferna

Elrond eyed you, hesitant with how much to say and how much to show. "I haven't been honest with you... How old do you think you are?"

Your eyebrows furrowed and your eyes slid to Gandalf standing beside the fountain. The three of you were outside in the courtyard, the moonlight shining down and illuminating his gray hair. "I'm around 3,000 years old..." you trailed off as you looked back to Elrond who only stared at you blankly as he gnawed on his lip. "Who found you?"

"You did, what are these questions??" you bit back, nerves finally eating away at you as dread fell over your senses. Elrond sighed before moving towards you, "I should have done this a long time ago, but I was afraid doing so would put you in danger-"

You stepped back away from him, hand coming up to stop him from advancing. "I'm scared-"

"3,000 years ago I took your memories away. I'm going to give them back. All you need to remember is that he won't hurt you... Do you trust me?"

You were frozen but slowly felt yourself nod at the one person you trusted more than anyone else on this continent. His fingers came up and rested on your forehead, "You're safe, I'll be here when you come back-"

Darkness sucked you in before he had a chance to finish his sentence. Your eyes blinked open, blearily looking around the dark space around you. Rocks stabbed into your skin and a terrible heat was making it hard to breathe. Suddenly, ugly faces hovered over you and you gasped in fright as the orcs hauled you up from the ground. Your feet were kicking and you screamed out for them to let you go as they dragged you to the castle. It had dawned on you rather swiftly that you were in Mordor.

Fear coursed through your veins as large doors opened before you, showcasing a large room with a man sitting rigidly on the throne. It felt as if the wind had been knocked out of you at the sight of the blonde man before you. You didn't know how and you didn't know why, but he felt familiar.

He felt like home.

"Why hello there... What might your name be?"

You knew who he was, knew him as the dark lord. He was the nightmare mothers would tell their children about when they were misbehaving. He was murderous. A monster.

And yet, all you felt when looking up at him was peace, as if you had been searching for him for many millennia and you finally found him.

"I'm-"

The scene shifted and suddenly multiple images and moments flashed before your very eyes. Tears started to stream down your face as you took in just how much the feared man loved you. You had begged him to give up his desire for power and control, questioning if he really loved you. That argument seemed to anger him, because he loved you more than anything, and his power would be shared with you.

The both of you would rule the world.

The scenes continued to flash quickly as the conversations morphed into a high-pitched scream before it all went silent and you were looking down at your peacefully sleeping body that was wrapped in black silk sheets. The door to the room opened and you whirled around in fright.

From the darkness emerged Elrond and it finally dawned on you that you weren't saved from Sauron.

You were taken from him.

You stepped in front of your sleeping body but Elrond moved through you as if you didn't exist, only reminding you that this was a memory.

A memory that was stolen from you.

"Oh my... What... Who is she?" Another voice came from the doorway and you knew it was one of Elrond's generals. "I thought she was a myth... But I can already see his magic wearing off... If we don't give her something, she won't last through the night..."

Your eyebrows furrowed as you looked over their shoulder and you noticed the color from your face draining. Elrond scooped you up in his arms, "Gandalf can transfer some of my life force to her, but we must hurry" he said swiftly as they moved out of the bedroom.

The scenes morphed again before flashing, showing you the memories you were allowed to remember. From waking up in Rivendell, acclimating to immortality, being transported to Mirkwood, meeting Thorin, to all the way up to now where you were on the ground kneeling in front of Elrond. Tears streaming down your face as he held you close.

You tilted your head down at the sight, confused as to why you weren't in your own body still, but you would soon get your answer. Your head fell backward, mouth opening as a scream ripped from your throat. Your chest lifted up into the air as if you were being possessed.

The scream cut off, leaving you all in silence. Gandalf was gripping his chest in disbelief as Elrond stroked your cheek with his thumb. "Y/n-"

Your head snapped forward, e/c eyes now blazing red, the same red of the lovers they stole you from.

"Y/n, wake up-" Elrond stated firmly as he tried to shake you out of it.

"I am no good nor evil, simply I am and I have come to take what is mine" The dark tone coming from your lips had you reeling back in fear, realization dawning on you that you had indeed been possessed.

Elrond paled at the words as my possessed lips slipped up into a snarling grin. He opened his mouth to curse at the dark lord in your body, but you continued. "I was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood. I am here now, as you run from me still."

Gandalf rushed forward, hand coming out to try and rip the dark lord from your body.

Your red eyes flicked to Gandalf, "Run then, child," Gandalf ignored the threat and slammed his hand onto your head, making you start to slump over. The red in your eyes started to fade and you began to feel the pull of your by-standing soul into your once-possessed body.

"You can't hide from me forever."

#lord of the rings imagine #lotr imagine #hobbit imagines #sauron imagines #elrond imagine #hobbit imagine #the hobbit imagines #lord of the rings imagines #mairon #imagine

[katastronoot]

Summer Reading/Writing/Arting Tag

Tagged by @friend-of-giants tysm! I have fun doing these :)

Tagging @vidvana @the-sunlit-earth @evilwriter37 @downontheupside @alma-amentet and anyone else who wants to do it

1) Describe one creative WIP project you’re planning to work on over the summer.

I am really having fun writing right now. It’s a great break from arting all the time and I feel like if l take breaks between the two I have a better chance of avoiding that nasty creative block :D I have a childrens story that I am working on writing out as well as a novel (I was real scared about this one). I started writing it for fun and doing all of the world building and what not and I really feel like it’s a solid story and interesting fantasy world. It’s a monster romance so really my cup of tea and I just want to write a lot of stories in my own fantasy world that I have created. I daydream all the time so it’s the perfect way to get these ideas somewhere other than my head XD

2) Rec a book!

Okay the last book duet that I read was King of Flesh and Bone and Queen of Rot and Pain by Liv Zander. The plot was super interesting and one of a kind. If you are fine reading something more dub con in a romance I would recommend it. It had me glued to my tablet screen binge reading for two days and I was so sad to see that the author has yet to write more in the series. It’s on KU so that’s a plus and it’s 🌶😮‍💨

3) Rec a fic!

Okay this one is for my Morrowind junkies. Blood and Trust by Liaegypt on ao3. This is hands down one of my fav elder scrolls fics that I have read. The author also has another fic about an ordinator romance- Broken Vows and omg it’s a masterpiece too I honestly can’t decide which is my favorite actually. Seriously they are wonderful and I think are looked over a lot. Pls for the love of everything good in this world read them :)

4) Rec Music!

I have been on a 70s acoustic kick here lately. Been listening to a lot of Carole King mostly from the Tapestry album

5)Share one piece of advice!

I agree with @friend-of-giants pls create for yourself and no one else! Also try something NEW even if it scares you. I was told my whole life that I wasn’t a good writer. I always did terribly in my reading and writing courses in school. I even had ‘friends’ before look over my work and tell me how terrible I was. It really put this idea in my head that I could never write. Well I started writing just to see if I could do it and guess what I can and I’m proud of myself. I started writing a novel! and if someone told me years ago that I would be doing these things I would have called them crazy. Life is too short. Try the thing.

#tag game #personal

[docholligay]

Never Have I Ever

This is a short story collection I got as a gift quite awhile ago, and as one might expect it took forever for me to work it into my reading list because I’m just like this and I have 86 things I always want to read. 

Anyway, very glad this wasn’t a commissioned read, as I apparently have managed to lose the book somewhere between my room and pool deck, which is admittedly pretty impressive, even for me. I’m hoping it’s just under something back in the room. 

SO! Non-spoilery: This is a Filipino-American paranormal collection of stories, that leans heavily on the knowledge of FIlipino culture and creature. Like all short story collections, it’s definitely patchy, but comes in with some really beautiful stuff here and there. Yap seems to struggle a little bit with endings occasionally. 

SPOILERY: 

So I can’t actually decide if I liked this or not. Yes? But also no. I saw the pull quote from Tamsyn Muir on the cover and was like, ‘Oh great, when it came down to it, I did not like Gideon the Ninth. Fantastic” BUt there was a lot lot lot more for me in this book than Gideon. 

I CAN tell you that I wish I hadn’t been reading it poolside, because I don’t have a lot of exposure to Filipino culture and go I had to google a LOT for this collection, which I absolutely do not mind doing, I like to learn, but while I’m trying to relax in the hot spring, having to google a bunch of stuff to try and grasp the context of what’s going When I say this book requires a solid footing in Filipino culture, I mean, there are entire lines of dialogue, untranslated, in Filipino. 

It is patchy--A Spell for Foolish Hearts, for example, feels TOTALLY out of place in the collection, which is mostly darker in tone and subject, and then...we have a fluffy gay boy story in San Francisco. The story itself, while not being to my taste, isn’t BAD, just a bit saccharine--okay, a LOT bit saccharine, and it turns out he’s dating the mist of San Francisco and there’s a funky sitcom mixup that leads to a romcom style breakup and gag gag lots of you would LOVE this but it just ain’t for me-- but it feels like a friggin pothole in the interruption of the flow of the collection. The first story, which I can’t remember the name of, was, for me, very “yeah, yeah, the monstrous feminine, we’ve all seen it” and while it’s not terrible, I suppose, it doesn’t break any ground. Many of her stories end hanging, which is fine, but they feel unfinished in a way. There’s not a lot of great drop lines. Sometimes I think Yap gets real tangled up in THE MESSAGE I AM CONVEYING and it takes away from her truly good handle when she allows things to get creepy. 

Now, to stories I loved: 

Have you Heard the one about Anamaria Marquez?: This was a great story that really played into gossip and what it is to be remembered, with a fairly light touch of possession and belief. I loved the way the rumors about Anamaria’s ghost wavered from wildly ridiculous to plausible, in keeping with the ways that all high schools have a ghost and that ghost always has a tragic story. 

Asphalt, River, Mother, Child: This was maybe my favorite story in the whole thing, despite the fact that if someone accused it of being heavy-handed, I wouldn’t disagree. My friend actually said this story reminded her of my writing, which I found insanely flattering. Its about corruption and death and innocence and best intentions, and the exhaustion of compassion, how you can help so little, even if you are a goddess of sorts, but that small but still means something. 

Hurricane Heels: This is a grown up magical girl story! I could have written a variation on this idea, I fucking love it. I don’t even know that I think it’s the most artful story in the collection, but this was the story that made my friend decide to give this to me, and you know what? She’s right. 

How to Swallow the Moon: You see literally every beat of this story coming, if you’ve been around the block once or twice, but it kind of doesn’t matter. The only thing I don’t like about this story is that it’s written in second person, which is not the first time Yap does that. I don’t know if it’s to prove that she can, but there’s nothing about this story that fucking requires it to be in the second person. But, otherwise, it’s a beautiful and lyrical take on the whole ‘princess and handmaid’ type story trope, which really flattens how good I genuinely think the story is. The description in this story is as good as Yap ever gets in the whole collection, and I actually suppose if I had any other mild criticism of this story, which is once again a criticism of the collection itself, is, this story doesn’t fit. I actually think this would go better in a different collection, maybe one with Spell for Foolish Hearts, actually. I think many of y’all would love this one--nicely written stock fantasy beats, gay, happyish ending but not cloying. 

So, yeah, there we are! I guess I would say I DID like it, in general

#doc reads #This took forever to write ahaha

[sarilolla]

Alright….I think Nick Nack deserves some love.

So….nick name fluff as a writing request. Anything from hurt comfort to just maybe bee making me feel wanted ( since you can tell he doesn’t feel that way)

So sorry this took so long, but school has been/still is a lot recently, so thank you for your patience :)

Decided to go for those more subtle hints of care, even if it is also pretty straightforward. This one-shot is set in my Bee au, but not specified exactly when. Enjoy!

Request - 884 words

No needed TW

Summary:

Poems, tea, and safety. What a great combination.

----

One line. One line was what he had been stuck at for hours. Another poem to add to many others, but he still wanted it to be perfect. He would even settle for good!

Nick knew he didn’t have to stress with this, he was just writing to enjoy himself after all. Ever since he came to live here, in a safe environment, and without that demon attached to him, he could do whatever art form he wanted to and actually enjoy it.

And yet, he got an art block. It was terrible, truly terrible.

“Hey, Nick?” A soft knock on his door, Bee’s voice chimed through, “Are you doing alright?”

She waited until she heard a “come in”, always so respectful of when she could and couldn’t enter his room, or anyone else's for that matter.

“You’ve been away for an awfully long time, so I just wanted to see if you wanted something to drink or anything?”

She smiled at him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder as she peeked over at his work.

“No, I don’t need anything.”

His voice was bitter, and he stuttered a bit, realizing how it sounded like he was angry with Bee. He didn’t want that. Luckily, she just chuckled a little, not taking offense.

“Writer’s block, huh?”

“Yes! I am stuck on this one line. It won’t go anywhere!”

He put his head in his hands, letting out a dramatic sigh, causing Bee to giggle again.

“Don’t laugh at my misery.”

“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She smiled at him, and he knew she had meant no harm.

He let her read through the writing piece, “Sorry, Nicky, but I don’t think I can help with this. I’m no writer.”

She patted his head, “Maybe you need a tiny break? I know when I get a block on how to work something out, a tea or coffee break always helps.”

“I- Alright… Care to bring me some tea?”

“Will do.”

Staring down his unfished poem again, he waited the few minutes it took for Bee to come back.

“Here you go. I got you mint tea, cuz I remembered that’s your favorite.”

“Oh. Thank you. I didn’t think you would care enough to remember…”

He sipped his tea, surprised at how appalled Bee looked at that.

“Of course, I would. I gotta make sure I have what you and the others like, even if I think I have to cut back on how much coffee Riley is getting recently… Point is, I want you to have what you like.”

That was… still confusing to him. He had realized by now that Bee wanted them to live a good life, but had he truly realized it? Sure, his eye was unstuck, he could freely move his arms again, and he had legs, but that was things she had done to all the puppets.

But… Remembering that his favorite tea was mint? Always restocking his paints and other materials when asked? It was the little things.

“Thank you, Bee. Really.”

“Of course. You look like you needed a break.”

“Not just that. Just… everything.”

She took his free hand and squeezed it lightly. They went silent, the only noise being the ticking of the clock. No words were needed, not even the ones he could write down in the unfinished poem that was still laying on his desk, mocking him for his inability to write anything more.

Another sip of his tea, letting out a relaxed sigh and putting the cup down.

“You know, you don’t have to do the poem if you’re stuck on it.”

“I know, but I should. Once I have powered through one, the rest will flow, I just know it!”

“Alright, if you say so. Just don’t overwhelm yourself, Nick,” she gave him a light kiss on his forehead, a gesture he had come to associate with her, as she did it with them all, all those she considered family.

“I will try not to.”

“Gonna have to believe you on that one, Nicky, but if you do feel the pressure start to rise, come find me. I’ll be downstairs and making dinner.”

She left the room, leaving him with a warm feeling that wasn’t just from the warm tea still standing on his desk. She had closed the door behind her, knowing he liked to work in as much peace as possible.

It really was those little things, huh, that made the difference. Back at the studio, even if he knew the others cared about him and he cared about them, it was still that hint of always expecting something back, never fully trusting each other. Here they could, thanks to one human who cared.

Here he could get mint tea, his door being closed was always respected, and just the fact he was checked on when they had only been apart for a couple of hours. Sure, the others had checked on him, and he checked on them, but back then time was a blur. Had it been hours or days? It didn’t always matter.

He decided not to dwell on it, finishing his tea. It was safe here. Perhaps that should be the driving point of this poem. With new motivation and inspiration, he started writing again.

---

I don't know if mint tea would be his favorite, but it just fit the vibe.

#hello puppets #hello puppets fic #sarilolla´s writing #request from tumblr

[snflwrlulu]

June 12 2022

Happy Halloween And HAPPY every other holiday that comes after it my Tumblr survivors <3

Its been a long year and this one isnt even finished yet i believe the last time we spoke i was still a 2.0 student and had hopes for my future well a lot has change since that thats for sure… I turned 21 and had a small party that most of my friends didnt show to there was a piñata in the shape of a tequila bottle that I didn’t get to break because i was to busy eating jello shots and drinking double shots.. long story short i didnt get drunk and i didnt get a hangover which i am thankful for i did gain closeness with a guy friend who showed out of nowhere the next day and asked if i wanted to date him and when i said he had to at least try first he said he wouldnt even know how to so that was a dead end that 3 months later then argued with me on Dms over how gross beer is.. later asked to go out and walk at the park which i said yes to because i was feeling like i was trapped at my own house. All while i was having a life crisis over how alone i was and how i needed friends AND how terrible i was doing in school. Anyways… he told me his life story and i told him mine thinking we bonded he then asked permission to kiss me and to hold my hand and i let him and that was the moment everything went down hill. He asked if I’d take his virginity which I hesitated to but eventually agreed to do it… i was many of his firsts but i did not go through with the plan he had… as we talked we got closer and well i thought there was a connection, which he then ruined with jealousy and the art of trying to make my traumas of the last les valid than his and this was a red flag. His coworker at the tome happened to be a friend of mine from when i was a little girl still innocent to the world when i was 12, i asked for his info because how small could the world ever get and he got upset we argued all night and he then said “i hope you two are happy together” and he blocked me. Being the petty girly i am i blocked him back on all the socials he had and that ended things for us or so i thought but the universe had other plans for us. My friend will call him “J” said he had just gotten married and i was so happy for him it feels like everyone has life figured out but me. He would ask everyday about the boy who tried so much to make me feel so little defended him but that was all there was to it he was a married man and i would never. 1 month passed and i was not over it because my biggest flaw is getting to attached to people that deserve less of me. 3 months passed and i thought less of him only sometimes he would come up in my thoughts or only when “J” would bring him up but i was more stressed about finals coming up. 6 months went by and i had completely moved on and blocked him from my hear, “J” stopped talking about him after that one chat of the boy that lived in my mimd was trying to go out with another girl which he respected because he took her out on dinners or to dates like the movies but she called them “hang outs” and he had a double thought in his mind for them but she did not. Maybe i’m an easy girl or maybe i wasnt enough but still the universe put him back on my path. After failing my 2021 fall finals i must’ve cried at how sad my life was… i had no job, a 1.67 gpa, i was on probation and no guy would even look at me.as spring started my best friend got a girlfriend and he stop speaking to me with the excuse that he had to take a break from his phone and social media which i will always believe it was code for “i cant talk to you anymore youre getting clingy go away” he built us a life together and i still cant believe he left that day i think he was the only person i thought wouldnt abandon me but in the end he was fixed and he got up and left. Like he always did. i mad friends in my spring semester which I absolutely love. There is also many pictures of me at many events around campus because even stressing i decided to give no fucks and just live for a moment for my own university experience.

I missed all of this… Happy Sunday :)

#my writing #writers on tumblr #anxiety #journal #writing

[tangledstarlight]

2. “Sure, you can use me as a pillow.” For willex 😃

hello hi this could have been so much longer but it’s 2am and i gotta go to sleep, but i also felt compelled to do this tonight so here we go! and yes okay i nearly forgot there was a prompt my bad 😬 hope you like anon!! 

hurt/comfort dialogue prompts!!

2. “Sure, you can use me as a pillow.” 

The thing about traveling is that Alex really hates traveling. 

Sure, he likes going to new places and experiencing new cultures and buying hotdogs from street vendors in New York who don’t work out of a car. But that actual act of traveling? Of getting from one place to another long distance via plane? Absolutely hates it. As he sits around in hard plastic airport chairs he often finds himself wishing he could just teleport himself. Think of where he wanted to be and poof! there he was. 

But he couldn’t poof around the world and instead he was stuck on a flight back to LA from New York that was already an hour delayed and was now a further two hours delayed on the tarmac while they were on the damn thing. 

Balling up his jumper and stuffing it behind his head Alex tries to relax, to stretch his legs out in front of him a little and let the tension leave his shoulders. He thinks about the apartment that him and the band had rented for the three months they’d been in New York working on their new album. Of how he could be on the plush grey sofa right now, listening to Reggie talk over whatever film they’d picked and trying to throw popcorn into Luke’s open mouth after he’d fallen asleep ten minutes in while Julie tried with m&ms. 

But no. He’s stuck in a plane and starting to get cramp in his leg and regretting not accepting the travel pillow Reggie had tried to give him before he left. God there had better be an open bar at his sister's wedding to make up for this experience. Though he knows that’s partly a lie, because seeing his little sister walk down the aisle in her white dress will be worth it, but the way his parents will avoid him the whole weekend? Oh yeah, he’s gonna need an open bar for that too. 

“Sorry folks, looks like we’re going to be stuck here a little while longer. Please remain in your seats and if you need anything––” Alex, along with the majority of the plane, stop listening to the pilot's voice on the speaker. There’s a collective groan and he can hear people complaining and the little tell-tale ding of someone calling for assistance. 

Alex blows out a breath and tries to go back to relaxing in his seat. Which feels awkward and uncomfortable and exposed, probably due to the fact he’s got an aisle seat. Logically, he knows that. Logically, he knows that no one is really judging him right now because they’re all too busy dealing with their own shit. 

The sleeve of his jumper slips free, dropping to his neck and, without thinking, he swats it away. Belatedly, and okay yeah, only after the responding grunt, does Alex remember that there’s someone sitting next to him. 

Eyes snapping open he looks at the man next to him, takes in the long hair and the tie dye sweatshirt and the wires of his headphones and the raised eyebrow as he looks back at him. 

“I am so sorry I just––” Alex trails off because he doesn’t have an excuse. He just forgot there was someone sitting next to him. Which, the longer he looks at his seat neighbour and takes in the jaw line and the lips curving into a smile and the way his eyes haven’t left his–– how the hell did Alex not notice him when he first got on the fucking plane? (He’s going to blame it on how much he hates traveling, it blinds him to all hot people in the vicinity, even if they happen to be right next to him apparently.) He can feel his cheeks growing warm and he realises he’s just staring and hasn’t actually finished his sentence. 

“Fell– neck, y’know?” He gestures vaguely to his neck, and the sleeve of his jumper that’s still on the other man's shoulder and god fucking damn it Alex that wasn’t even a sentence, get it together! If Luke or Julie or Reggie were here right now they would be laughing at him. 

“It’s all good man,” the stranger says with a light laugh and–– god he’s got such pretty eyes that Alex is almost distracted from what he says next, “You seem a little tense there though man. You goo?” 

And see, this is exactly part of the reason why Alex hates traveling. It’s the awkward small talk on the plane or the train or when you’re unfortunate enough to end up next to an extra chatty person on the bus. It’s why he shoves headphones on and pretends he can’t see lips moving. Though, he’s maybe willing to break that rule just a little today.

“Not a big fan of traveling,” is all he says, trying not to grimace about how much of an understatement that is. 

“On planes or just in general?” 

“Just in general. Though after this it might be a plane thing,” he tries to joke, and he’s pretty sure it’s a terrible attempt but the stranger giggles and oh man Alex hadn’t thought he could get cuter. 

“Yeah, this has been a pretty shitty few hours,” he agrees, biting down on his bottom lip for a moment before seeming to decide something, “I’m Willie. By the way. Since we’re going to be stuck next to each other for a while.” 

“Alex. Hi,” and, for some strange reason he lifts his hand and waves at him. That magical teleportation power would come in handy right about now, he decides. 

But, for whatever reason, Willie doesn’t find it weird and they start talking. Alex learns that Willie’s flying back to LA because he’d been in New York for an art show, and that he’s into skateboarding and he looks really good when he ties his hair up in a bun. In turn, Alex tells him about the band and recording their first album and about his weekend. 

“So wait, your parents don’t want you going to the wedding?” Willie asks, body half turned towards him in his chair and there's a look of confusion on his face. 

“They’d didn’t explicitly say that but we all know they’re going to be disappointed when I show up,” he shrugs. It hurts, but it’s also just been a fact of his life for so long now that Alex sometimes forgets that not everyone has the same experience. And anyway, he’s not going for his parents, he’s going for his sister. 

“Man that’s fucked,” he mutters, eyes seeming to zone out for a moment, only to refocus as Alex claps a hand over his mouth to block a yawn. 

“Sorry. I put off going to sleep so I could sleep on the flight but,” he shrugs, shooting Willie a slightly sheepish smile but he just shakes his head, another smile on his lips. 

“You’re all good. When this thing finally takes off you can use me as a pillow,” there’s a slightly teasing edge to his words but a challenge in his eyes. 

And maybe it’s because he’s been stuck in an airport and then on a plane for four hours longer then he’d expected to be, or because he’s just really tired or maybe he’s just feeling brave in the face of his weekend ahead, but Alex smiles back at him and says, “You’re probably much comfier then my jumper.” 

There’s a beat before Willie laughs, knocks his knuckles casually against Alex’s shoulder. Half an hour later, when the pilot announces they’ve been cleared for takeoff and the majority of people cheer, Alex and Willie share a high five, palms lingering maybe a touch too long, but he’s not going to complain. 

He doesn’t sleep on the flight, but he does leave LAX in a taxi with Willie’s number saved in his phone with the first text he’d sent being the address of his sister's wedding and an assurance he didn’t need to bring a gift. 

So okay, maybe traveling isn’t the worst thing in the world.

#anon #julie and the phantoms #alex mercer #willie #willex #jatp #ok i am going to sleep now farewell xox #Anonymous #*prompts

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 10/15/2021

Hey, you know how you’re downloading something sometimes and it’s just going along, like 4 minutes left, and all of a sudden something happens to your network and the progress bar informs you that your download will be done 35 hours from now? Anyway, that’s me.

I was sick last weekend and I have been stuffed up every since. My kids had two days off school this week. I’ve been doing a bunch of yardwork (which is probably why I am stuffed up).  Anyway, I have many various and sundry excuses for why I wrote nearly nothing this week, but the real reason is because I had the absolute hubris to project a date of completion last week, and now I am paying the price in writers’ block. 

I did write a little, mostly yesterday, and immediately decided I was probably going to end up deleting it (I might be able to ravage it for parts, we’ll see). I did edit a few early chapters and sent them off to my beta, like I said I was gonna. I refuse to do a word count this week, hopefully, next week I’ll do better and I’ll just do a two-week word count.

I’ve been trying to use the not-terrible title I came up with, and it’s not working, the title is terrible. I guess I’m back to not having a title. 

I feel like I should have planned myself a break in here, but I am pre-stressed out about the holidays and I feel like either I will finish this thing up before the end of November, or it’ll be next February and I really do not want it to be next February. As they say, tho, if you don’t plan breaks, breaks happen to you, which is possibly what is happening right now. 

I finished the art I promised you. It is autumnal and cute! Yay?

Anyway, in an attempt to make myself more excited about this story, and also because I promised, we’re doing excerpts now. Here’s the whole-ass prologue, because it’s short and, uh, why not?

Renji waved his hand in the air. “Juniper-y, with hints of melon,” he proclaimed.

“I like this one,” Rukia announced, motioning for the bottle back.

Renji took another swig and handed it over. “Yeah, it’s not bad. What’s the name of it again, Chrysanthemum Pond?”

“Chrysanthemum Lake,” Rukia read off the label, and took a long draw. 

It was fairly common for dinner guests at the Kuchiki household to present Lady Rukia with a bottle of fine sake as a welcome gift. She had long despaired over what to do with this surfeit of high-end booze, until her good friend and partner-in-crime had noted that he wanted to “know more classy stuff,” so Rukia had hauled a few bottles up to the hill that overlooked the Thirteenth Division training grounds and so they could get ripped while making a lot of utterly uninformed hoighty-toighty commentary.

“Hey, Renji?” Rukia asked, examining how much sake was left in the bottle.

“‘Sup?”

“I got a… a question for you. Important question.”

“Hit me.”

“When is your next um, stripeys? Tattoos. When are you getting more tattoos?”

“That,” Renji said, pointing a finger at her. “Is a good question.” He leaned back in the grass. It was late March, not yet really spring, but the night was warmish, and they were making the most of it. 

“You get ‘em when you do cool stuff, right?”

Renji scratched at his stomach. “Yeah, I used to get them to mark my achievements. First Hollow I killed, every seat I climbed, every certification I got. But then I kinda fell behind.”

“Fell behind?” Rukia echoed.

“Yeah, it’s your fault mostly. I mean, I got the ones for bankai.”

“The butt stripes are for bankai.”

“They’re not really on my butt! They are on my very upper rear thighs!”

“That’s just the lower butt.”

“There is no lower butt. That’s a thing you made up.”

“Lower butt.”

“Arright, arright, shut up. Anyway, got my butt stripes, noted. I also fought your brother, that was a Big Deal.”

“You didn’t win.”

“It’s true. I didn’t die, though, that’s kind of like an achievement. To be honest, everything after that was the same sort of mixed bag. I led the Advance Team, but it was kind of a shitshow.”

“No one died.”

“It’s true, and we came in under budget, also very important. Uh, we went to Hueco Mundo. I fought an Espada and once again, did not die, also did not win. I helped back up Ichigo, along with you and everyone else. Which doesn’t sound like much, but if all of us hadn’t fought our hearts out, Ichigo might not've made it and if Ichigo hadn't made it, we might all be dead now. Might be the most important thing I ever did. You an' me went on a mission to the Living World and got commendations for it, but then we got our memories wiped, so we don’t know what the commendations were for. I got invited over to your house for fancy dinner. That was like an achievement.”

“That was not a fancy dinner. That was just regular dinner.”

“It was the fanciest fucking dinner I’ve ever been to. Anyway, my point is, I don’t know how to count anything anymore. I thought once I made vice-captain, there would be all sorts of very clear-cut milestones, and I was wrong.”

“You should just go get some more fucking tattoos,” Rukia suggested, taking another sip from the bottle.

“Yeah, maybe I should.” He stretched out his legs. “You’ve been achieving stuff. Vice-Captain Kuchiki. Who actually killed an Espada. And has summoned her zanpakutou spirit. Maybe you should get some fucking tattoos.”

“Well,” said Rukia slowly. “That’s actually why I brought it up.”

Renji abruptly sat up, despite the fact that it sent his head spinning. “Let’s. Talk.”

#writing update #art update #i have been down for like three weeks in a row i really hope next week turns it around #actually i just looked back and it's been like 5 weeks with one okay week in there :/

[haliyam]

interim (v)

zeke x reader/oc

summary: You return to Liberio not long after the Warriors arrive home from their failed mission in Paradis and discover that things have changed. (Or they will, and maybe a little more with Zeke than you expect.) [Season 4 and manga spoilers ahead]

AO3 link | Ch 1 | Ch 4

Hi again! Forgive me for this chapter and the next few ones, guys. I offer you this art I commissioned and an itty bitty happy-for-a-millisecond Zeke/Reader oneshot in the meantime 😪 (Please notice this I am so happy with it)

As usual, Reader default name Lucy is a cis-female Eldian character with a set background and family name. But feel free to set the substitution for Lucy to your chosen First Name using the InteractiveFics browser extension!

Chapter 5

“Why are you helping me?”

You grit your teeth, peering over at Zeke as he lets go of your foot. He was helping you stretch, seeing as you’re too fatigued to do it yourself, not to mention you’re covered in a heated blanket and he’s put hot towels over and under your limbs. 

He ignores you, like he’s been ignoring you since he entered your room with all of these items, asking instead whether you wanted help or not. Like he’s been ignoring you since you arrived as a guest at the Yeagers’.

You don’t really like Zeke, and you’re sure he doesn’t like you either. You’re six, after all, with all the confidence the world can offer a child in your position, and he’s twelve, with all the arrogance of a boy already training to become the Beast Titan when the war in the South is over. 

That’s why his help is so strange. And without Mrs. Yeager forcing him into it, too?  It’s suspect, and you’re not even sure you know that word yet.

“Why—”

“Shh,” Zeke hisses, looking very displeased about having to respond in any way while you glare at him. When your brows unfurrow and you continue to stare at him expectantly, he rolls his eyes. Still, he finally speaks again. “Why are you like this, anyway? Aren’t you Magath’s new star would-be candidate?”

You were, until the ideology tests began. You don’t know they’re called that, but you’ve been doing terribly at the written exams which ask why Eldians are the dirt between the toes of  real  humans. Your answers show a well-read knowledge of Marley-sanctioned history, but distinctly lack the Eldian shame that comes naturally to your classmates. 

This is concerning to the program and to command in spite of your potential, so it’s up to your instructors to beat that shame into you by keeping you running for far longer than the others, leaving you out of meals, or shortening your breaks and then making you stay behind so you can do everyone else’s grunt work, especially after you dared to look Captain Magath in the eye the first time your class fell in to formation after the first round of exams. And every other time since, like an idiot. 

“Not anymore,” you answer, struggling to keep his gaze. You don’t really want to talk about this with someone who now must only wait to inherit his Titan. It makes you feel small, and nobody in Marley should have that authority.

Zeke wrinkles his nose. “That’s not an answer. It just seemed like you were doing great… and now you’re a baby that has to be coddled?”

Your glare returns, shame be damned, but the pain that suddenly pulses through your body as surely as your indignation quickly drains it. Your pride and your strength are depleted for the day, and you need to save what remains for tomorrow, when you have to face the instructors again. And besides—Zeke has already seen how weak you are. What’s the point? Tybur pride will do nothing for you now. 

You lower your gaze for once. “Are you going to tell the captain?” 

Zeke stares at you. “No? Why does Magath hate you now, anyway?”

You know why. Because you’re still a Tybur, and you refuse to be nothing. Even if nobody knows it. Even if you feel like nothing right now.

Zeke sighs again—a concession of his own, though that is unknown to you. “Fine. Just... my grandparents will get worried if they hear you crying because you can’t sleep.”

“I wasn’t crying,” you lie. Your body hurts so much that you haven’t been able to stay asleep for very long. You just didn’t think he could hear you crying.

“Sure,” he scoffs. He’s lied, too. It’s difficult to hear much noise inside your rooms from the hall—but you did pass him on the way to the bathroom with those puffy eyes just a little while ago. “Just make sure they don’t see you as pathetic as you look now—they already have enough to worry about. If you have to be pathetic… only do it in front of me. Understand?”

You still want to glare at him, but somehow, his words are almost as much comfort to you as the towels he’s heated for you. You don’t know the last time you let your guard down since the Warrior program began for your class, and you’re so tired. His words, however cold, warm you in your newfound frailty.

“Okay,” you murmur in defeat, relaxing in earnest. Your eyes are slowly starting to close.

“Hey!” he snaps within a whisper, quickly reaching for your shoulder and shaking it. You’re too sleepy to notice his reluctant concern. “Don’t fall asleep wrapped up in all this. It’s just a few more minutes, and then you have to go to the bathroom and put this ointment on your muscles like I told you. Remember?”

You do your best to widen your eyes and shake your head awake. The effort ends with you groaning in pain, but you eventually manage a nod. “I’ll stay awake,” you promise. When he sighs again and pulls the seat out from next to your desk to sit at your bedside, you murmur something else.

He frowns at you. “What was that?”

“I’ll stay awake,” you repeat, “but will you tell me a story?”

--

Are you surprised that Willy is coming to visit? Yes and no. Over the years, Willy has perfected the art of making his presence in your life known while somehow remaining completely absent. The nature of the new Lord Tybur’s existence in your world became immutable the summer after that fateful one, after you came crying to him and to Lara when you could no longer bear the loneliness of ignoring your friends’ letters for an entire year. Willy’s response, as with everything regarding Mila, was to turn away and change the subject. It was Lara who couldn’t resist your tears and confessed it all to you—what father told Willy hours before he became Lord Tybur, and then all she learned when she devoured him.

The new Lord Tybur was furious. It was only the second time in your life you had ever heard your brother so angry—but he never stays that way with you or with Lara for very long, and wouldn’t you have discovered the truth after thirteen years anyway? In true Willy fashion, he only smiled days later and expected you never to mention it again. The fact that you have, many times hence, is part of why your relationship is so frayed.  That and his tendency to appear, shower you with affection, and then shrink at the first sign of trouble. After all, how can anyone expect you to love a man who can’t bring himself to stand up for you?

Your resignation to this is mostly what keeps you from worrying too much the next morning, when Zeke leaves for HQ and you elect to join the Yeagers for market day. Part of it is guilt—apparently you and Zeke now consume much more than you did as candidates, and you want to make sure that you’re paying your share—and part of it is that you still feel ashamed for letting Zeke see you act the way you did last night. You still have to take care not to groan outwardly when you remember how you shrugged him off when he tried to be a friend, or how much you practically wailed into his chest. Never mind how you hid behind him from Mila when he let you, like the coward you are.

“You’re so pathetic, Lucy,” you mutter to yourself.

Standing not far from you by a vegetable vendor, Dr. Yeager glances over his shoulder. “Hmm? What’s that, Lucy?”

“Er—nothing, Dr. Yeager. I was just thinking to myself,” you smile sheepishly. Drawing closer to avoid getting jostled by the crowd, you search over his selection. “Oh! That’s… a lot of potatoes. You don’t need to avoid other items on my account. I’m happy to pay for my share.”

Dr. Yeager chuckles. “No, no. You know how much Zeke likes them. And don’t worry, Lucy, I can carry them.”

“No,” you say slowly, exchanging a look with the vendor when Dr. Yeager gives his smaller basket a faithful pat. You reach for it instead, tugging a little when he stubbornly refuses. “I’m taking these. You can carry some of the fish, but I’ll be taking most of the baskets. Hand them over and I’ll bring these to Mrs. Yeager.”

Dr. Yeager sighs. “Very well, Lucy. But only because I know how much you like carp from our friend down the road.”

You grin, and he lets you take his basket so you can fill your much larger one with (apparently) Zeke’s potatoes. As you part ways so he can go and buy you fish, you set out to find Mrs. Yeager. She should be waiting outside a little cafe not far from the market—Dr. Yeager likes doing most of the groceries nowadays, and Mrs. Yeager’s one very important task is to buy the household’s favorite seasonal dessert: grapes. Unfortunately, the best grapes in the zone market are sold by an old man who has a bit of a crush on her, and he doesn’t like seeing Dr. Yeager if he can help it. Or Zeke. Or you. 

That should be her only task, which is why you’re surprised when you find her with a man and a basket full of cured meats when you arrive. 

The truth is you almost miss her, if not for the sweet sound of her amused chuckle right as you decide to head inside to find her. Walking around the man blocking her from view, you approach. “Mrs. Yeager?”

“Lucy!” she waves. 

Her raised brows tell you she wants you to meet someone; evidently, the man carrying most of her baskets along his arms, wearing an apron over a button-down and slacks with his sleeves rolled up. You turn toward each other at your name, and after a blink or two between the two of you, you realize that the man’s shock is more familiar than you first realized—probably because it’s your second time bumping into each other this weekend. 

“Lucy?” he gawps at you.

You give him the same look. “Kellan? What are you…?”

He follows your gaze to Mrs. Yeager, and the way it dawns on his face is enough for you to trust that this is another funny coincidence. “Oh—” He gestures to her, “I was just helping, er…”

“Mrs. Yeager,” you help him.

“Right, Mrs... You’re Mrs. Yeager?” he asks, glancing at her. It’s clear he’s seen her unmistakable red armband, but it’s not polite to ask which child earned you Honorary Marleyan status. 

Mrs. Yeager is accustomed to his curiosity, which he soon realizes along with his manners with an embarrassed flush that makes you smile. Luckily, she takes over for him with a pat on his arm. “Kellan here was helping me with the meats I bought from his family’s shop. He was just telling me that he’s studying to be a doctor, and I thought, what a coincidence—but it seems you two already know each other! Isn’t he handsome, Lucy?”

Such a pointed question. You and Kellan meet each other’s gazes with mutual embarrassment. 

“You really don’t have to answer that,” Kellan laughs nervously, which helps you snap out of your stupor and look at him. You suppose he is handsome, even with his dark hair mired in sweat and slicked back today. He’s tall, taller than Zeke and maybe even Reiner, with a strong nose and gentle eyes that watch you hopefully in spite of his words.

The Warrior program and boarding school means no one has ever looked at you like that before, and the novelty has excitement blooming in your chest. Maybe a slight pink on your cheeks, too, which you try to hide with a smile. 

“I think so,” you say, his gaze and then his shock making you feel a new kind of brave. “And I have bumped into him a few times. ...Sorry again about yesterday.”

“That’s all right. Bumping into you isn’t so bad,” he says almost smoothly, very nearly matching your courage until he remembers Mrs. Yeager and, as such, his embarrassment. “...You know, because Mrs. Yeager bought so much. I’ve never seen my aunt so thrilled.”

You’ve never been this thrilled either—attractive boys were a constant topic for your peers at boarding school, but then you’ve never had the chance to meet one. You still haven’t. Kellan is an attractive man, a few years your senior and hardly a boy. And you aren’t a liar. He’s very pleasing to look at, especially when his eyes search yours so intently. 

“Of course,” you say, trying not to look nervous when you take a step closer and reach for the baskets he’s holding. “Well, thank you for helping Mrs. Yeager. But I can take those.”

Kellan withdraws the arm holding her basket, giving you a once-over. “What do you mean?”

“Lucy is our guest at home,” says Mrs. Yeager, who looks far too pleased with herself. “Even if she refuses to let us carry our own things.”

“Please,” you feign a sigh. “I haven’t kept up with some training for nothing.” 

Kellan looks confused as he glances between the two of you, but he’s determined when you meet his gaze again. “Lucy,” he begins, “remember that bookstore I mentioned yesterday? I was thinking—did you want to drop by after this so I can show you which books you can start with?”

“Really?” you ask. Perhaps you were hoping to see him again, make a friend or two at campus, but you didn’t think your encounters could actually move past hello and goodbye. But Mrs. Yeager was right. He is handsome, dark-eyed and tall, and the idea of more of those shy smiles is a flattering one. “Well… I’d like that. But I wanted to bring these home first. And aren’t you helping at your aunt’s stall?”

“I can take a break,” he says easily, smile growing just a little more confident. “And I can help you bring these home! You shouldn’t be carrying all these yourself. Er… If that’s all right with you, Mrs. Yeager. And I’d just have to change quickly. Been out here since early this morning.”

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Yeager answers for you, giving you an openly suggestive look. You pretend not to see it, but stifle a smile yourself.

Politely averting his eyes to spare you the embarrassment, Kellan reaches for the basket on your right arm, and for a moment you understand the Dr. Yeager of a little while ago. But you’ve never experienced anyone’s chivalry before, excepting Bertholdt (and he was an angel to just about everybody and he was twelve). You can suffer Kellan’s for now. 

“Thank you,” you say reluctantly. “But only that one. I have my pride to consider, you know.”

“If you say so,” he chuckles, readjusting the baskets along his arms. When he shifts them all to just one arm so he can wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, his damp hair glistening slightly, you imagine the tales you’ve read of countryside romances at the school library and remember to swoon a little. When he catches you looking and glancing away, Kellan smiles. 

“Where to, ladies?”

--

You find Dr. Yeager with your carp, and he is just as pleased as his wife to have another helper no matter how much he claims he can take another basket of his own. Your fears of Kellan’s talk of med school bringing out unhappy memories in Zeke’s grandfather come to nothing when Dr. Yeager expresses interest in the university system nowadays, and you’re happy to listen to the men converse about Kellan’s plans for specialization on the way home. 

“I’ll get it,” Mrs. Yeager says when you arrive, hurrying to unlock the door, and the three of you file into the house while she keeps it open. To everyone’s surprise, the door to the kitchen is already ajar: Zeke and Porco are sitting at the table, poring over folders together in silence. It seems they didn’t hear you come in.

“Good morning, you two,” Dr. Yeager’s surprised remark shatters their deep focus, and both of them spring out of their seats. They immediately turn the folders over and stack them next to a small paper bag.

It’s Zeke who relaxes first. “Grandpa,” he greets, casually nodding at each of you until he spots Kellan coming in from behind you. He doesn’t notice himself straightening up to his full height.

Before he can ask, Mrs. Yeager beams at the sight of Zeke’s guest. “Porco! What a nice surprise. You rarely come to visit.”

Porco’s suspicious brow slackens into a smile for her. It’s almost sheepish, and if that’s the case, is it really Porco? “Sorry, Mrs. Yeager.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Things have been really busy.”

“What are you two doing here?” you ask, rubbing your arms as you set the baskets down by the counter. You join them standing by the table at Dr. Yeager’s urging. “I thought you worked Sundays.”

It is Porco, because he snorts, only a little more politely since the Yeagers are around. “We were supposed to, until our Warchief realized he left work at home.”

Zeke shrugs helplessly. “It slipped my mind. I hardly ever bring home work.”

Porco remembers that you were the one in a hurry to leave HQ two days ago, prompting Zeke to forgo leaving the files in his office when Boy Wonder decided he would accompany you home, which is seriously stupid because you don’t really need any more babysitting. But then the two of you did pass by the family bakery and Mr. Finger—so he decides to stay quiet for now.

On that matter, anyway. He gestures to Kellan, who is quietly helping Mrs. Yeager unload the baskets. “Who’s the guy?”

You shoot him a reproachful, wide-eyed look. “Porco—!”

“This is Kellan. He’s studying to be a doctor, a few years ahead of Lucy,” Mrs. Yeager interrupts. She hardly knows him and she’s already proud of him, it seems, pushing him next to you by the table. He apologizes when the surprising force of her shove has him bumping into you.

“Right.” You steady him with a hand on his upper arm and are unsurprised to find muscle there. “Uh, Kellan helped us bring the groceries home. We’re heading out in a bit so he can show me some textbooks I can study ahead of time, regardless of which professors I get.”

“Textbooks?” Porco repeats with a chuckle. “Since when do you study, Blanchard?”

“Since a while ago, Galliard,” you say pleasantly, even with your teeth gritted, wondering if it’s possible to burn alive with embarrassment while hoping Porco catches alight himself. When the new Jaw only continues to look amused, you sigh. “Kellan, this is Porco, and that’s Zeke.”

You could announce their last names, but everyone in the zone knows who the Warriors are, and Kellan already seems uncomfortable. You hope it’s not because of Porco’s remark and consider throttling the man.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Kellan says anyway, politely offering his hand.

You hold back when Porco shakes it. It goes on for a little longer than you expect and their knuckles are paler by the end of it, but you suppose that’s better than nothing, which is exactly what Zeke gives when Kellan extends a hand to him next.

“The pleasure is ours,” Zeke says in lieu of doing anything else. He’s smiling, one hand in the pocket of his uniform while the other holds half the stack of folders. “Kellan, right? You’re pretty persistent, huh?”

Kellan presses his lips together as he withdraws his hand. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Zeke stares at him a little longer before he chuckles. “Nah.”

You’re not surprised. Zeke always takes his time warming to people, if he ever does. When he meets your gaze, his amusement softens into something a little more natural.

You smile back, unsure why you feel embarrassed all of a sudden when Mrs. Yeager comes up from behind you. “All right, Kellan, thank you for accompanying us home. Now, off you two go.”

You survey the kitchen counters with a grimace. The groceries still need sorting. “But Mrs. Yeager—” you and Kellan start in unison, and then exchange glances. His light laughter is a little more than charming.

“Ugh,” Porco mutters, echoing more than just his own sentiments. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Yeager says before you can notice. She rounds the four of you to pat the shoulders of Zeke and Porco. “I’ve found two new helpers in your stead. You can spare a few minutes, can’t you, dears?”

Kellan looks to Dr. Yeager. “But—”

“We can handle it,” Zeke cuts him off, but he’s decidedly ignored the man, waving at you instead. “Do what you need to, Lucy.”

“Thanks,” you beam at him, feeling oddly silly. Like a child playing adult as Kellan opens the door for you. “I’ll see you later.”

“Have fun, kids,” Porco calls out. He chuckles when you glance over your shoulder to shoot him a deadpan look, only to find Zeke giving him the exact same one once the front door clicks shut.

“What?”

--

“I’m sorry about that,” you say as soon as you leave the Yeager household and head down the steps toward the street. You glance back at Kellan, waiting for him to follow. “Zeke and Porco are nice when you get to know them. And vice-versa.”

Kellan nods, looking at you. “You seem close.”

“Yeah,” is all you can say. When you don’t say more, he doesn’t pry. 

He asks to drop by the market again so he can pick up his things and an extra shirt, and you walk in relative silence until you reach it.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, open palms pressing at the air as if you’ll disappear the moment he leaves. It’s cute from someone so much taller than you.

“Go ahead,” you smile, and he does too before diving back into the crowd.

You adjust your armband as you back into a nearby building and watch the coming and going of Eldians through the tightly-packed throng. Long ago, during your first foray into one of the zone’s open air markets, you were disgusted and confused. Only your growing regard for the Yeagers and the thought of Zeke’s sarcastic surprise at the little you knew of the world had kept your mouth shut. 

Over the years you came to accept it as part of this temporary home, and market day a time when Eldians could happily interact with familiar faces and keep one another apprised of their trials amid life in the zone. The strong stench of the place became a reminder of this affection you could only find within a community, one completely nonexistent in the grand, empty gardens of the Tybur estate. 

The first summer after you left showed you that to Eldians outside of Marley, the Liberio internment zone—a place you still consider a prison for people you care about, where stepping outside its gates to look for a pharmacy when those in the zone have nothing more to offer can end in a beating—is paradise. It’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, but it’s your world. The world that the Tyburs have allowed to flourish. 

Alone with your thoughts, you find yourself nervous. Why is Willy coming here? Only Mila was ever permitted to come and visit you—but that was when father was still alive. 

Perhaps if Willy sees Liberio, the place that raised you...

You find yourself hopeful. Maybe it was father all along. Maybe Willy isn’t a coward after all.

“Sorry about the wait. Lucy?”

Kellan stands before you, hair no longer damp but brushed down a little more properly. The apron has disappeared in favor of a new button-down, the strap of his messenger bag slung over his shoulder. 

His sleeves are still rolled up. You like that.

“Don’t worry about it,” you smile, readjusting the purse at your side. “Ready to go?”

Kellan nods, and is much more talkative now that he feels more presentable around you. He apologizes for his silence earlier—his own scent was bothering him, and he was embarrassed—and he starts to tell you about university as soon as you ask. 

The bookstore he mentioned is a little far from the Yeagers’, but it is useful. Many are secondhand, but the store is vigilant about keeping only those published in the last five years. It regularly gets donations, perhaps from sympathetic Marleyans, though how they would know about it you can only wonder.

Kellan advises you as to the best books when it comes to basic medical subjects, which are what you’ll be taking up in your first year. In spite of Porco’s little joke, you’re eager to get started working toward that degree. General List’s words may hang over your head, but now that Willy is coming to Liberio, you have time to wait to tell him instead of putting off writing Lara about it. 

“Wow,” Kellan remarks, once you’ve bought everything. “You really are serious about this.”

You glance up at him with a frown you can’t help. “You thought I wasn’t?” 

“It’s not that,” he says at once, holding the door open for you as you leave the shop. He offers to take the books off your hands, but you hold the pile to your chest, waiting for his reply. “No, it’s more—I thought I was the only one who did this kind of thing. Study ahead of the year if I can.”

You relax somewhat at his words. “You do this too?”

Kellan nods, and when he reaches again, you let him take half your books. “My friends made fun of me, but I mean to become a physician. There aren’t enough Eldian doctors to attend everyone in the zone, and… I want to help.”

“I see,” you murmur. Suddenly, Kellan seems a lot more charming than he is already. “I bet you’re at the top of your class or something.”

Kellan only smiles, and you blink at him.

“Are you?”

He looks embarrassed about it the way you know most men in your life wouldn’t be. “One of my professors said if I wasn’t Eldian, I might have been offered a scholarship.”

“That’s amazing,” you say, a mix of admiration and pity swirling in your stomach. You wish you could help him. Do more for a man like this. 

“Yeah, well…” Kellan shrugs, but he easily replaces his bitterness with a smile when he looks at you again. “You have a good study ethic yourself. You’ll do great.”

You can’t help but laugh at that one. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like passing the state exams was a fluke.” 

“You wouldn’t be here if it were.” It’s his turn to frown. “None of us Eldians would.”

You wish that were true. Of course, you took the exams as Lucy Blanchard, and for all intents and purposes Willy had nothing to do with your results. You studied ridiculously hard to earn your grades and the state exam score—it’s just difficult not to wonder when Lord Tybur has always known what you were up to.

“Look.” He stops, moving to stand in front of you. “I know we just met, but—I don’t like hearing you say that about yourself. Okay?”

You can only smile. You haven’t known Kellan for half a day, but you don’t feel like challenging him the way you would the others if they said that to you. It feels like he deserves more than that. “Let’s just say I was always the more sports-oriented type. But thank you.”

Kellan looks at you as though he thinks you might say something self-deprecating again and he’s ready to gainsay it. When you don’t, he nods with approval and looks ahead. “Uh, so I was thinking…”

“What is it?”

“My friends study with me nowadays on university grounds. We’re allowed to, and the university library does have some books the store might not. The cafeteria has great food we don’t have in the zone, too.”

He glances over at you, and when you continue to wait for his point, he asks, “Do you want to study with us, maybe tomorrow afternoon? We have lectures to attend this summer, but I can maybe… pick you up afterward? The permit office will let you if you show them that you’ve confirmed your slot. If you want to,” he adds.

His offer is surprising and exciting and daunting in equal measure, because of course someone wanting to spend more time with you is nice, even if you’re ambivalent about meeting new people. Of course, the new people you met at boarding school knew you as Lucy Blanchard, the daughter of some Eldian servant for the Tyburs, and they were Marleyan to boot. Kellan’s friends are Liberio Eldians too. Maybe they’ll be just like him.

“I do want to.”

His uncertain expression immediately lights up. “Great,” he beams. “Will you be at the Yeagers’ tomorrow?” 

“Uh… yeah,” you answer, after some thought. You’ll be at HQ most likely, but you can always leave ahead of Zeke. “Just tell me what time you’ll arrive and I’ll have my permit ready by then.”

“Okay,” he says, pleased. “That works.”

You exchange smiles, and he walks you back to the Yeagers with a more relaxed silence than when you left. He hands you your books once you’ve unlocked the door to the house.

“I really have to get back to my uncle’s, but…” He scratches the back of his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, right? Maybe… four?” 

“Yeah,” you grin. When he waves, disappearing down the street, you hurry back inside toward the dining room. But it’s empty, with everything sorted in the kitchen. The Yeagers have left a note on the dining table about going out on a Sunday date, apparently presuming you would be out all day, but there’s another note from Zeke on the folded paper bag he and Porco brought home earlier. 

Crybabies only, it says. You thought it was part of Warrior work, but you open it and find a few jars of your old favorite fruit jam.

“Tch,” you chuckle, fishing out the jars and storing them, but you take Zeke’s note and bring it upstairs with your books. 

You get started on a simple lunch soon after. You want to re-wrap your new books in time for tomorrow afternoon, and make a note to replace Mrs. Yeager’s roll of plastic entirely since you neglected to buy your own. Once you get your permit for tomorrow, it’s still early enough that you have time to visit Mr. Finger, especially since you forgot to yesterday, and you end up sharing his dinner. You were embarrassed about dropping in when he was cooking, but he’s happy for the company, especially while Pieck is away.

To your relief, there are no guards in plainclothes outside the Yeagers’ when you return, and Mr. and Mrs. Yeager are in the living room chatting quietly between them. You greet them and hurry upstairs before they can ask you about Kellan, and allow yourself to linger in the bath when your reflection on Kellan inevitably leads to Mila and the night before. 

Given how angry she was yesterday, you already know what she would say to you if she found out about any man like him. Not that you have ever considered sharing your life with anyone, but surely she would accuse you of trying to find some way out of your duty again, even when she knows that the family made sure—

The doorknob turning to no avail rattles into your thoughts. It must be Zeke, since you share a bathroom, so you hurry to get out and get dressed into your pajamas again. Once you’ve brought your things to your room, you give his door a knock.

He opens it pretty quickly. It seems he wasn’t expecting you, because he looks surprised to see you still drying your hair with your towel. On his part, he’s still in his uniform—just without the coat and the belt, one side of his shirt unceremoniously tucked out of his pants. “Hey.”

“Hey,” you smile, more pleased than you should be. You feel like you’ve been waiting to see him all day. “Was that you? I’m done with the bathroom.”

“Ah. Thanks. I’m still finishing something anyway,” he nods, and leaves the door open when you don’t immediately turn and go.

You follow him inside, flopping at the edge of his bed while he goes to his desk again. “What are you working on?”

“Warrior stuff.”

Something must have him in a mood, but there’s no use poking him at this stage. “I saw the jam. Thanks for that.”

Zeke turns away from his desk, his serious countenance lingering just a little before it finally falls away for mischief at the reminder of his little gift. “Like my note?”

“No. And only because it means I’ll have to share it with you.”

“Heh. Yeah, sorry—just putting off turning in paperwork I should’ve gotten done before.” He sighs, obviously trying to settle down, at least until he seems to recall something else. He glances back at whatever he was writing, his pen swaying noisily between his fingers as it hits his desk. After a beat, he slides his work a little further away from him and asks, “How was the date?”

You’d almost forgotten about that. “Oh—it wasn’t a date,” you say, and realize how strange it feels to be discussing a boy with Zeke. “Kellan is just helping me study ahead of the semester.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you say, like a promise. You don’t care to mention that you’ll spend time with Kellan and his friends tomorrow afternoon. That was implied, right?

Zeke shrugs, sitting back against his desk chair. “When did you get so fond of studying, anyway?”

You shoot him a dirty look. “The way you and Porco tell it, it’s like I didn’t know how to read.”

“No,” he laughs, making the denial sound a lot more like affirmation, “I just mean you hated it. Before Bruning knew who you were, you were in the running for either the Jaw or the Armor for a reason.”

You peer at him. When Zeke only lifts a brow, challenging you to deny it, you click your tongue. “I guess. But I didn’t inherit anything, so what was I supposed to do? I was never interested in the varsity teams… not that they would have let me join as Lucy Blanchard. And I wanted to be useful somehow. I mean, actually useful.”

“I know,” Zeke says, watching your fingers lightly pinch at the hem of your pajama top in frustration. It’s almost amusing how your tells haven’t changed a bit, but he can’t deny that it’s endearing.  “Well… I’m glad you’re doing something apart from getting me in trouble for once.”

Your jaw drops. “I never got you into trouble for that long, did I?”

The two of you meet eyes for a moment, knowing the answer to that, but you both choose not to bring it up. He wouldn’t put you through that memory again.

“I don’t know,” he grins. “How long did I stand there getting an earful when you glued Nickel’s belt together?”

You stare at him, genuinely trying to remember—before you burst into laughter, hand over your mouth in sheer horror at the memory, as though you can’t fathom ever having done such a thing. Zeke is shaking his head, trying not to smile, when you finally calm down enough to present your defense. “That—that was Pieck’s idea!”

“No, Pieck said she wanted to do it. You actually did it.”

“But it was funny,” you grin. “And Nickel deserved it. Besides, I paid for that too.” 

“Yeah…” Zeke’s smile falters. He remembers. You had been about this close to being force-fed the glue you used that afternoon, when you found one of Magath’s fellow instructors asleep in his office. “Nickel deserved everything that came to him.”

He remembers what you looked like when they found you, busted lip still stubbornly set in a line, trembling as Pieck shed silent tears when Magath dragged Nickel out of sight. But then your foot nudges his leg, pulling him from his reverie so he remembers what you look like now. Not a bruised or bloody memory that still wakes him at night sometimes, covered in sweat, but Lucy in the flesh, with a knowing expression on your pretty face. Zeke supposes he’s just as easy to read when you know his tells, too. 

“Well... sorry about that anyway,” you say. “Pieck had a name for my brand of stupidity for a reason.”

Zeke knows what you’re doing. He grants it to you with a sigh. “No sense of self-preservation.”

“That. Don’t worry—I’ve developed one since then. Or Pieck’ll really give up on me this time.”

You give him a smile, as if he’s the one who needs comforting when it comes to that night. Why did he have to bring it up? He would put his foot in his mouth if that didn’t remind him of Paradis—of his most recent nightmare. The thought of everything you don’t know makes him feel like an ocean separates the two of you all of a sudden. Like you’re here, and he’s still on that island, a blade jammed into his maw. He shivers. 

You lean a little closer, elbow on the footboard. Of course you’ve noticed. “What’s wrong?” 

Leaving his pen on the desk, Zeke moves over to sit next to you on his bed. If nothing else, he can at least shorten the distance in one way. 

He has a lot to tell you, Paradis foremost of them all. He knows Pieck must have said something, but he’s managed to avoid the topic so far. 

He has a lot to ask, too—what was normal school like? Did you really not have any friends? You seemed to make easy enough friends with that Kellan character.

Zeke looks at you like he wants to say something, and then gets as far as opening his mouth before clearly thinking better of it. 

“It’s Pieck.”

Alarmed at his tone, you inhale sharply. “What about Pieck? Is she all right?”

He was holding his breath himself, but he relaxes with a chuckle.

“Yeah. She’ll be back with the Panzer Unit in less than a week.”

“Oh! Good,” you say, but then stare at him, obviously catching the lie in his old answer now. But he sees it when you shift priorities (Pieck was always one of them)—you’re clearly excited to have her home earlier than she promised, but the why of it is giving you pause. “So soon?”

“Yep.” He shifts away so that he’s moving up his own bed, at least until he catches you giving him a disgusted expression. You can’t stand it when someone still in their  out  clothes wears them to bed, and he knows that very well. That earns you an eyeroll, but you’ve had so many arguments about it at this point, many of which began with well it’s my bed and which ended only because he couldn’t stand hearing you talk any longer, that Zeke only sighs and practically vaults himself off his sheets so he can grab a change of clothes before you can start.

He makes a twirling motion with his finger when you look, and you turn to face the wall. This must be the quickest that Zeke has ever grabbed or changed his clothes outside the rush of Warrior training as a kid. He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly conscious with you in the room. It’s just you.

“You know it doesn’t count if you don’t shower, right?” you ask.

Zeke makes a snorting sound as he climbs back onto his bed in a shirt and a pair of pajamas, even if he feels like he’s twelve wearing the whole get-up right now. This time he ignores you until he’s got his back against his pillows and the headboard, legs stretched out over his blanket and his arms crossed over his stomach. “Do you want to know why Pieck is coming back soon or not?”

Your turn to roll your eyes. “Fine.” 

Smiling triumphantly, he pulls out one of his pillows and tosses it on the empty space next to him. You wrinkle your nose at him, but he did give you the clean pillow when he’s given you the other before, so you let yourself fall forward on your stomach and rest your head on your arms, both crossed over his pillow. Your hair looks warmer than usual against the light of his lamp as you peer up at him. “So?”

Zeke looks away and shrugs. He shouldn’t be telling you this. But if his room isn’t safe for secrets, then where is? “One reason. Lots of movement in the south these days.”

Between the old Southern borders of Marley and Ulodana lies its new Southern territories, swept off the board by Marley and into its net in years past through the efforts of the Warrior generation before yours. Mr. Ksaver’s, to be exact, before they started training children. You had heard of minor attempts at guerilla warfare within those former nations in their bid for freedom, but little else. After your summer excursion with Mila, you began to distance yourself from news of the world when it came to Marley’s expansion, the Warriors’ activities especially so. Ignorance was better than guilt back then, but Zeke doesn’t know that.

“The South… you quelled a small rebellion there, right?”

“Yeah, but…” One of his hands drums near your pillow, tugging once at its corner as he asks, “You don’t know?”

“The Tyburs aren’t told everything.”

“Fair enough. Between the two of us,” he says, giving you a meaningful look you return with an earnest nod, “a couple of the leaders escaped into the eastern peninsula. Who knows what support they’ve gotten since then?”

You take a deep breath and hum as you exhale. “...That explains why General List reached out to me.”

“List? He’s the one who called the meeting with you?”

You prop yourself up on your elbows. “Didn’t the commander say he was there?”

“He doesn’t tell me everything. So have you decided?”

You almost look amused. “You know I can’t move without Willy’s say-so.”

He shrugs. Needless to say he doesn’t care all that much for the new Lord Tybur, who sounds just as absent as your old man was back then. “I meant what do you want?”

When your surprise at his question starts to fade, you lower your gaze at his quirked brow, slouching a little. “I don’t know. List wants me to… ‘be the new face’ of the Foundation. Distance it, myself from the regime so we can build headquarters abroad and bring in intelligence. That way we can bring more Eldians into the safety of the organization, but...”

“What?” Zeke snaps, sitting upright all of a sudden, but all the reasons you shouldn’t do it skid to a halt behind his teeth when you recoil in surprise. He pauses, clearing his throat, and reaches up to scratch behind his ear instead. “...would your brother put you in danger like that? What about Tybur non-involvement?”

You scoff, eyes narrowed at nothing you can see here. “That’s not what the general thought. He only said Willy wouldn’t do it to Mila.” Zeke grunts at her name, and you shake your head. “I mean… maybe it’s moot. She would never give up control of the Foundation.”

“Yeah... Maybe.” Maybe it’s enough that you’re ambivalent. General List is one of General Calvi’s close allies, and he’s well-known in certain circles to get what he wants. But even he can’t change the century-old tradition of Tybur ‘neutrality,’ even if part of Zeke is curious to see if Mila Tybur or Hulbart List would win in a battle of wills.

He sets that aside when he catches a distant look in your eye. He’s only ever seen one reason you’ve looked like this. Or two. “She didn’t drop by again today, did she?”

You shake your head. “She had Foundation business yesterday. She must have gone from the city last night the minute she left here.”

“Then what is it?”

You look at him, and now he knows what it is. “I just… ugh,” your eyes fall to his sheets. “I don’t know. I was so pathetic yesterday. I wish I—I wish that I could have said something to her.” Your voice is quieter when you add, face flush with embarrassment, “I wish you hadn’t seen me like that.”

“This again,” he says at once. It was difficult not to cut you off from the get-go. “Have you forgotten already? If you have to be pathetic…” He reaches over to graze your chin with the curve of his index finger, tilting it forward so that you meet his gaze. “You can be pathetic in front of me. Understand?”

His soft smile is the same as it was in the hallway yesterday. Warm still, like the solid expanse of his chest when you wept in his arms, but suddenly his finger beneath your skin feels hot. Tingles where he touches you. Like your face, now that he’s looking at you like that. 

That’s not right. Zeke is either an annoying jerk who should shut his face forever or all comfort, blankets tucked up to your nose after a grueling day of work and a warm bath; a good night’s rest. Wrapped up in a hot blanket, the murmur of his voice lulling you into a deep and restful sleep. Not standing over a precipice with only the whim of the wind behind you or the rush of blood pounding through your ears without warning. 

This is not the Zeke you’ve wanted back for the past six summers.

His touch scalds you—or maybe the memories you keep closest to your heart, as if any closer, any longer and it might burn them away forever. 

You tremble, but not with pain, and decidedly ignore it as you stare at him, forcing a slight wince on your mouth. You hope he doesn’t notice you gulp. “That was probably more impressive when I was a kid.”

Zeke lets his jaw drop—it must have been a while since anyone denied him their awe—but he only laughs, so deep and hearty you feel his mirth in your own chest, before he flicks a finger at your nose. “You little ingrate. That was supposed to be touching!”

“Yeah, yeah,” you grin, a little too widely for your own good. Batting away at his hand, you sit up and slide off his bed. You’re strangely hyperaware of the way you gulp again once your feet find your slippers. When your eyes meet, he’s pretending to be cross with you. Maybe you like it better that way. 

“But thank you,” you say, rubbing an arm. “Really.”

Zeke only nods, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as you head for the door. “Lucy—you still coming to HQ tomorrow?”

You glance back only once you’ve got your hand on the doorknob. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he says, but he looks pleased. “All right, get out. Distracting me from work and then telling me I’m not impressive anymore…”

“Spend more time with the kids. They still think the world of you. Good night!”

Zeke could probably chuck a pillow at you when you give him a little cackle before shutting his bedroom door, but he lets you escape with your dignity intact. 

At any rate, he’s in a much better mood when he gets back to work.

////////

If you're worried about Kellan, you can click the fic list link on my bio for spoilers. (assuming you haven’t already read the other oneshots ahahha) 

The flashback at the start of the chapter (as well as the others in the next few chapters) is something of an edited excerpt from a long-ass oneshot I wrote detailing Lucy’s childhood from before she left the Tybur estate, going through her Warrior training, and until a little after the time Lara inherited the War Hammer which I was/am debating with myself about editing&posting maybe after finishing the sequel fic to this which occurs during the Mid East-Marley War. I wondered if I should keep flashbacks out except for 2 crucial flashbacks toward the end of the story, but I’ve been sad about the dumb leaks post-139, having this feeling of ‘what’s the point of all this then if it all ends in that’ (even if this will be canon divergent), and I decided I would like to show the most important bases for Lucy’s relationships with at least Zeke and Pieck before she left, plus editing this in made me happy, so yeah.

Also! I know Zeke was a sweet little boy... but he was alienated by his classmates when he did poorly at first and burdened with expectation his whole life. No doubt that alienation shifted to sudden praise, admiration, or jealousy as soon as he became a candidate, and my hc is it made him a cynical kid when it came to others his age and even older people. Of course, he does eventually learn to be more charming (or annoying) and does have friends (as much as you can have friends in his position and with his life view), but that to me is why he’s like that at 12. Mr. Ksaver is exempt from this obviously as he completely trusts the man.

Another note: This is tagged zeke x reader because it’s in 2nd person POV, but also zeke x oc because reader or Lucy has a set background and family name. If you've gotten this far in interim I'm sure you already know what that is. XD So... please don’t send me hate or frustrations about why she looks like she does in the commissioned art I linked in the top of this chapter. Her family name necessitates that she’s white, I'm sorry. I hate having to say this but I'm not white either, or white-passing or w/e, but as I said in my note in chapter 1 I want to write a Tybur OC. If you’re going to send hate about me making a Barbie doll to complete Zeke or whatever I’m just going to delete it. Lucy is much more than that, in fact Zeke is not an entirely positive force in her life though they may appear to implicitly understand one another, and I have an entire background story and development for her that I‘m excited to write and share. I’m (not) sorry if me taking the time out from that to commission art that makes me happy grinds your gears. Of course I hope that readers will enjoy what I've written for myself but if you don't like it, just click away please. I won't be responding to complaints about that from here on out.

Anyway, thank you as always for reading! Would love to hear what you think. Of the flashback, of Kellan, of Zeke, of Lucy's blatant denial of certain things (I love and hate this), whichever! (Also can you tell I love Porco? He notices everything. Or almost everything.)

#zeke x reader #zeke x oc #zeke yeager x reader #zeke yeager x oc #zeke jaeger x reader #zeke jaeger x oc #zeke yeager #zeke jaeger #attack on titan #aot #shingeki no kyojin #snk #fanfic #fic #fanfiction #haliyam #interim #slow burn #it'll pick up i promise #heheh

[starlight-vixen-emiko]

Lukanette June 2021 Day 26 - Do Not Disturb

Another for @lukanettejune

Thank you lovebug community for your support. Because of you lovely lovebugs I was encouraged to post this...I just hope it doesn’t suck too much I edited it a few times and it’s late...I just wanna post.

I think the alternate title for this fanfic is “The Laws of the ‘Do Not Disturb’ Sign,”

Also this may just be my first Alya salt...Then again a majority of my Miraculous fanfics are alternate universe where Alya is a much better friend.

But this fanfic still contains Alya being Alya. And if you can’t handle Alya being Alya (like I can’t!) then you may want to advert your eyes!

Also as you lovebugs may have suspected from my preview...There is a few instances of sexual innuendo...Nothing big enough for me to slap on the mature rating though...

So without further ado...

"What are Marinette and Luka doing?" Alya asked.

Marinette and Luka and all their friends were all vacationing at a resort. Alya and Nino decided to meet up with Marinette and Luka at their hotel room.

Although it is 9:30 in the morning, their hotel room door already has a "do not disturb" sign hanging on the doorknob.

Alya and Nino were absolutely bewildered.

"I know Luka and Marinette have a sickenly sweet romance, but this is ridiculous!" Nino said.

Alya was ready to disregard the sign and knock on the door, but Nino took her hand before she could knock.

"We should respect the rules of the sign," Nino said. He was a bit disturbed thinking about what Luka and Marinette could possibly be doing at this time of the day.

Alya was also ready to text them, but Nino encouraged her not to.

"They don't want to be disturbed Alya, I think that includes phones!" Nino said.

Alya ignored her and tried to call Marinette, but a revelation hit her like unexpected rainfall.

"Her phone is on 'do not disturb' too!" Alya cried.

"Must be serious," Nino said.

Alya sighed, and she and her boyfriend decided to leave, but she stopped for one moment to look back at the door.

"Well, we came to the resort to vacation, so they better not ditch us for the sake of wrecking a hotel room!" Alya cried, not caring if hotel guests passing by gave her slight side-eyes.

Nino placed his hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. "It could be anything, Alya."

But after two hours, their other friends started to wonder when Alya single-handedly told everyone. Marinette and Luka were still nowhere to be seen.

Adrien and Kagami started to stop by next, and the two of them stared at the door for a good 3 minutes, wondering just what on earth the two were up to.

"We should respect the law of the 'do not disturb' sign," Adrien said.

Kagami pouted slightly. "All of us are about to eat lunch. It would be strange if Marinette and Luka weren't present."

Adrien gave his girlfriend a worried look.

"A simple knock shouldn't hurt," Kagami said.

Adrien didn't feel like arguing because he did agree with her. He and the guys were already causing lots of fun mischief at the pool, and it wasn't the same without his best friend, Luka. And now Luka and Marinette were skipping out on lunch.

Kagami made a gentle but firm knock. 5 agonizing minutes passed as if nobody was inside.

"Nothing!" Kagami cried, slightly irked now.

But the sound of that knock was blocked out by the sound of Marinette's sewing machine. She was sewing many sun hats for some clients while her boyfriend Luka was helping whichever way he could.

Marinette wiped the sweat off her forehead, frustrated that she was given projects to work on the first day of the vacation but determined to finish the projects anyway.

Marinette smiled as her blue-haired boyfriend gave her some ice tea and a towel like a guardian angel.

"Pace yourself Marinette, you can always finish this tomorrow," Luka said. "I am sure our friends will understand…."

Marinette went to work making giant butterfly hair clips. "Luka, the reason I suggested putting 'do not disturb' on the door and on our phones was that I knew our friends would bug us."

"I know they love us, but this is an important matter, and I need to be away from everything right now and give my 110%..."

Marinette stood up and gave Luka a quick kiss on the cheek before returning to super gluing model butterflies on hair clips. "Except for you, of course."  

Luka blushed.

"You have been amazing, absolute perfection, and I know I will finish these art projects by evening," Marinette said.

Luka smiled at her and sat on the bed, but Marinette took a moment to rub her stomach.

"Ok, I wish I was eating at the buffet with the others," Marinette grumbled.

Luka stood up. "I'll get you food, Marinette, and I will make sure to not catch anyone's attention."

Marinette smirked. "You would do that for me?"

Luka pulled his hood over his head. "You need food, or else you will faint. I'll get you whatever you want. Chinese food, pizza, sandwiches, anything!"

Before Luka got out the door, Marinette raised her hand.

"Wait! Take one of the wigs and one of the outfits before you go!" Marinette said.

Luka understood and took the long blonde wig and the purple tuxedo with sparkles on it. He figured none of his friends would recognize him in this attire.

Marinette took a moment to giggle before heading back to her work. "Perfect!"

Luka went into the bathroom, changed into the tuxedo, covered his blue hair with the blonde wig, and covered his blue eyes with black sunglasses.

Marinette had her eyes glued to her projects, but she heard her boyfriend's voice and was stunned to see he looked like a completely different person.

"Don't worry, Marinette, I'll bring back food as quickly as possible."

~~~~

Back at the resort pool Luka and Marinette's friends sat at a table eating lunch and were totally bewildered as to why Marinette and Luka weren't present. But they still had fun and knew they shouldn't stop having fun regardless of some people who would rather spend all their time in hotel rooms/

Kim looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but he held his tongue.

Adrien and Kagami ate snow cones but glanced at Kim for a moment.

Max used his high IQ to try to read him.

"You ok, bro?" Nino asked.

"Oh yes! I am doing great at a resort!" Kim said as he brought his drink glass to his face.

Juleka sighed as she ate her food. "Let's just leave them be, you guys! It is the law of the 'do not disturb' sign. Besides, my brother is in love! Give him a break!"

"You use that excuse every time Jule," Alya said.

"Yeah, Luka and Marinette must be having some serious fun in that hotel room," Kim blurted out.

Such a remark lead to multiple spit takes from his friends.

"Kim, why?!" Max cried.

Alix, on the other hand, smirked at the thought as she continued eating her parfait nonchalantly. "I'm not surprised. Good on the adorable couple!

Rose, Max, Nino, and Alya all did a spit take at once, and Kagami gave Kim a disgusted look while Adrien was just speechless.

"Sorry!" Kim cried, gritting his teeth.

Kim then frantically got out of his chair. "Y'know, I am just gonna go for another swim!"

Kim ran for the pool, but Nino stood up.

"Yeah, I hope you enjoy a water fight, Kim!" Nino cried as he ran after him.

Max stood up, "Wait for me!" He cried as he followed the boys.

Alya got out of her seat. "Kim, you will regret saying that!" She cried as she ran after the boys and dived into the pool.

The friends that still sat at the table went back to eating their food in silence. But now, Juleka was starting to become curious about the whereabouts of her brother and his girlfriend.

"They have to come out any moment now," Rose said as she sipped what was left of her strawberry smoothie.

Juleka placed her elbow on the table and rested her face on her hand. "Maybe they ran off somewhere by now."

Adrien was busy shifting in his seat, and Kagami looked to see what her boyfriend was staring at.

"Hey, look at that guy! He's got a nice tuxedo," Adrien said.

It was a bit strange for them to see a guy with much longer luscious blonde hair than Adrien and wearing a purple tuxedo with sparkles at a resort. His eyes were covered in sunglasses, and he was carrying multiple take-out bags.

"Hey, brother!" Adrien cried as he waved his hand.

That man in the tuxedo seemed a bit startled as Adrien called to him. Luka was afraid that Adrien saw right through his over-the-top disguise.

"Great tuxedo, brother! And you gotta teach me how you get your hair so shiny!" Adrien said.

Luka merely waved back and then walked away to avoid further interrogation.

After that, all of Adrien's friends turned to him.

"What? I admire a guy who could make his hair look good at the pool," Adrien said.

Kagami grabbed her boyfriend's arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "You're fine, dear! That man's hair looked like a doll's hair."

Everyone managed to laugh a little except Juleka, who couldn't shake this feeling.

~~~~

When the sun started to set, everyone was at their wit's end.

Alya was practically stomping to Luka and Marinette's room, and Kagami tried to calm her down, even if Kagami was a bit upset herself.

All of Marinette and Luka's friends stood in front of the door.

"So should we all knock," Alya asked.

Adrien and Nino were starting to regret being a part of this.

"Guys! The laws of the 'do not disturb' sign!" Nino cried.

"Yeah, maybe this is a bad idea," Adrien said sheepishly.

"But what if something bad happened?!" Alya cried, almost breaking the being quiet in the hallway rule.

Juleka bit her lip. "Maybe Alya is right.

Rose grabbed Juleka's arm. "Juleka, just because you watched a bunch of murder mysteries that happened in hotel rooms doesn't mean anything is wrong."

Regardless Juleka pulled a room key out of her bag. "I got an extra key."

Kim towered over everyone else. "Well, let's get Marinette and Luka out of there!"

Juleka walked in front of the door while everyone else waited in anticipation. She was starting to think maybe this wasn't such a good idea, but she was also paranoid that something terrible happened. So she quickly swiped the room key and gently pushed the door open to see a pile of Marinette-made crafts.

Juleka was the first to quietly step through the door, and then everyone heard what they thought was a moan.

"Now you did it, Juleka!" Max cried softly.

Guilt filled Juleka, but Alya walked in apologetically. Juleka tried to run after Alya as they passed the living area filled with hats and butterflies made by Marinette. 

Alya was about to peek through the sleeping area.

"Alya, no!" Juleka cried softly.

But Alya ignored Juleka and lingered in the doorway.

"Aww!" Alya cried.

Juleka froze for a moment before shamefully peaked through the doorway as well. Luka and Marinette slept soundly on the hotel bed. Nothing suggestive at all. They were just napping.

Juleka admitted this was cute, but she tried to tug Alya's arm so they could leave, shut the door, and prevent any drama.

But in their smiling sleeping states, Marinette and Luka were starting to open their eyes.

Juleka and Alya both gritted their teeth as Marinette screamed.

"What are you two doing here?!" Marinette cried.

Alya and Juleka shared in their humiliation.

Luka managed to calm everyone down and call everyone to the hotel room like a council meeting.

Marinette paced around the room, rubbing her temple, visibly annoyed.

"I just wanted to get my projects done today, so I can spend the rest of the vacation without stressing out!" Marinette cried.

All her friends were mortified. They were all visibly regretful but felt any apologies would be moot after getting on Marinette's bad side.

"We wouldn't have bothered you, Marinette!" Alya cried.

Marinette gave Alya a sour look. "I don't believe you, Alya! I would be distracted even by text messages!"

After moments of remorse, Kim threw his hands up. "Well, at least everything is alright! No murder and no…." Kim paused. "Fun stuff!"

Alix and Rose couldn't help but cover their laughs with their hands.

Marinette rubbed her forehead again and threw her hands up. "Well, I am done now! But I think I need to spend the rest of the night with Luka because he stayed here and helped me the entire time, and breaking the laws of the 'do not disturb' sign are not easily forgiven!"

Everyone gave soft agreements. Luka smiled and wrapped his arm around Marinette. "Let's go out to dinner," Luka said, and through Marinette's aggravation, she managed to smile.

Juleka walked up to the couple. "I'm really sorry, you two. I used the extra key Luka gave me. I was just worried!" She handed the card key back to Luka. Although he pushed the card key back to her.

"Keep it. I left it with you for a reason, Jule," Luka said.

Juleka still felt guilty about this whole thing and clenched the door key in her hand, almost attempting to crush it to get back in Marinette's good graces. But Marinette didn't argue with her boyfriend's decision and seemed to calm down after letting her feelings out. Juleka felt it would hopefully be water under the bridge by tomorrow.

Kagami and Adrien walked up next.

"Just so you know, I had no part in this tomfoolery, and I wish you and Luka a pleasant evening, Marinette. But I hope you two will at least join us for lunch tomorrow," Kagami said.

Marinette smiled. "I will." And Marinette and Kagami gave each other a quick hug.

Adrien placed his hand behind his neck. "I understand you two were busy, and it's great you got those projects done. You two certainly missed out on a lot of fun, though."

"Heck! I tried to befriend a guy with long blonde hair and a tuxedo. I wonder if he was a Vegas performer or something."

Luka blushed in embarrassment, and Marinette giggled. The blue-haired man had to explain to Adrien that it was all just a disguise so he could get take-out and avoid distraction.

Adrien ended up having a good laugh which caused their other friends who witnessed Luka's disguise to laugh as well. Kagami looked like her sides were hurting as she leaned to her boyfriend's side, and Adrien placed his hand on her shoulder to keep her stable.

"Looks like you found your next concert outfit, big brother!" Juleka teased.

Luka sighed.

Adrien took a moment to place his hand on Luka's shoulder and smile.

"Maybe you should try dyeing your hair blonde one day, Luka." Adrien winked at his best friend. "Then you'll really be my brother."

Marinette threw her arms up again. "Alright, everyone! I love you all! Even you, Alya! But everyone, get out of the hotel room and let me eat dinner with my boyfriend!"

Everyone mutually agreed and said their goodbyes.

Luka then took Marinette's hand and smiled down at her. "Alright, now the vacation can officially begin." Marinette smiled back at her amazing boyfriend.

~~~~

When Marinette and Luka got back to their hotel room after dinner, Marinette let out some last vents while she took off her earrings and her coat.

"I swear, what did they think we were doing in the hotel room this entire time?!"

Luka didn't mind listening to his girlfriend vent. He laid on his side on the bed as she continued.

"I mean, we came here as a friend group! Of course, we wouldn't ignore everyone to spend all this time in a hotel room…."

Marinette paused for a moment and placed her fingers over her lips.

"...Oh."

Luka smirked as a selfish part of him wanted a little fun in the hotel room. It was a long day, and he could use a recharge too. 

But this was a time for friends.

Luka got off the bed and placed his hands on Marinette's shoulders while bringing his lips to her ear.

"We can also plan another vacation in the future, just the two of us," he whispered.

Marinette blushed hard, and she could have sworn she almost bled from her nose at the thought.

"Well, um…" Marinette said.

"Hmm?" Luka said as he nuzzled her from behind.

"We told our friends this night was just for us," Marinette suggested as she gently pushed her index fingers together.

Luka lifted his head. "You mean…"

Marinette let go and headed for the bathroom. When she came out holding a bath bomb in hand, Luka smiled at her.

"I made this galaxy bath bomb, and I…." She paused, rolling the sparkling sapphire orb in her hands. "I would love to try it with you."

Marinette saw Luka's smile of approval, and she didn't waste time running back to the bathroom to run water in the tub. Humming one of Luka's romantic tunes.

Luka ran to the nightstand and quickly grabbed the "do not disturb" sign and excitedly placed it on the doorknob of their hotel room.

Thankfully none of their friends were asinine enough to disturb them that night.

Author’s Note: God...I was actually tempted to continue that. Marinette and Luka bathing in a tub of galaxy bath bomb...

But again I doubt I can write anything that intimate!

Anyways, I hope you lovebugs enjoyed this and...Jeez! We are approaching the last days of Lukanette June 2021 and I am getting really sad! :( This was my first theme month!

*sigh* Anyway, this is Emiko Gale and....Goodnight sleep tight! My beloved lovebugs!

#pro lukamari #lukanette #lukanette june 2021 #my writing #my fanfiction

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

#sw #salt #more unhinged rambling #anyway dowload the despecialised editions #unsubscribe from Disney+ #be free #usually we'd be having a big family thing for Boxing Day but you know #so God bless us all at home separately #I hope everyone had as happy a Christmas as possible in keeping with the situation #I should see if I can drag my brother outside to build a snowman

[chibisketches]

Guess who just finally finished watching Star Wars Rebels this week?

Yes, I know, I’m like 15 years late, but I never had the time or inclination to sit through it before this year.

**EDIT: I don't know why, but for some reason I had 2006 in my head as the year this show first aired. I have been informed that it was actually 2014, so the show actually has a lot less excuse for its problems.**

I doodled this while thinking about the show earlier this evening and since I was happy with the result, decided to share this brief break from the art-block that has been gnawing on my brain for the past few months.

My thoughts on the show as a whole:

While the show suffered from a nasty case of ‘Saturday-morning-cartoonitis” in the first season and a half or so, (and even after that still had some lingering janky pacing and tonal issues - and Star Wars usual clumsy/bad or non-existant handling of non-white characters), I overall enjoyed it. The Twlight of the Apprentice was hands-down the best episode(s) of the entire show, where the tension felt genuine and the characters really had depth. It was also one of the first times in the show that I felt like Ezra doing a dumb thing was the result of a 15-year-old kid doing his best but being way out of his depth rather than just making unreasonably dumb choices. That finale was where I actually started to be invested in the show and want to see where it went.

Unpopular opinion: Not gonna lie, I didn’t like Ezra. He’s kind of painfully dumb of ass for the entire first half of the show - and even in the third and fourth seasons, he has his moments. I personally found him obnoxious for a lot of the show, but I also accept that he was a teenage boy protagonist in a Disney show from the early 2000s, so I guess his fate was already sealed on that front. He did get better by the end of the show, at least, and I think if he reappears in other media, he’ll be a lot better handled.

In fairness to the character, I think it’s not so much that he’s a fundamentally bad character as it is he’s wrapped up in too many tropes and cliches that I am just SO tired of. -And that he regularly does outright stupid things that he knows are a terrible idea/super dangerous to himself and others for no apparent reason than to create drama for the episode. That kind of things is usually down to either poor writing choices or just a useless character. Given that Ezra CAN actually be a good character when they try hard enough (Twilight of the Apprentice for example), I’m pinning this on bad writing choices making poor use of him rather than the character himself just being broken.

I am also annoyed but not surprised that the show VERY HEAVILY IMPLIES that Kallus and Zeb are a couple by the end but never actually comes right out and says so. I know it was the early 2000s and we didn’t have shows like Steven Universe or SheRa paving the way for openly queer cartoon characters yet, but it’s still frustrating. If those characters ever resurface in other shows, I really hope they’ll just say ‘yes they are indeed together’ and that’ll be that.

Back to the drawing: Hera here was easily my favorite character. I liked her overall design and personality, and I really appreciated that she was treated with respect by both the story and the characters as the captain of her ship, an ace pilot, and an important figure in the Rebellion as a whole. She is very competent and formidable, but she doesn’t get sucked into that cliched ‘strong female character’ territory where she loses all personality and just scowls at everyone while being ‘cool’. Also, the closest she ever comes to the ‘oops, you have to wear a skimpy outfit to go undercover teehee’ cliche was wearing a reasonable tank top and slacks instead of her normal flight-suit, so they actually did right by a female character on that front for once :D 

Also, her (actually healthy - and in a SW property??) supportive and loving relationship with Kanan was refreshing and cute.

...Or at least it was right up until the show murdered the shit out of him like 3 episodes from the end for no discernable reason except that they wanted to kill a main character, I guess?

On that note, seriously, writers, did you base that poor man’s character on your highschool bully? The guy who your wife cheated on you with? Why the raging hate-on for this character in particular? Who hurt you?

I’d definitely like to see the main cast return in other shows - at least if they’re handled right - and see them interact with other more well-known characters. I think there’s a really solid core to this show that unfortunately got weighted down with some shaky 2000s animation that just wasn’t QUITE there yet, and Darth Mouse trying to force the concept to be something it just wasn’t. The show seemed to be trying to take its story pretty seriously for the most part, which suited the subject matter - but then it was also pretty clear that someone from above was making them insert tired jokey clichés and forced slapstick to ‘appeal to the kids’ for a while there. Kick off that baggage, and I think you’ve got a strong cast of characters with good chemistry and a compelling story to work with.

__

Also, I know this should PROBABLY go up on my art-only blog, but since it’s also full of long and rambly thoughts about the show, I think I’ll leave it here and let my eventual formal blog post with the drawing go up there instead. 

I may or may not draw more characters from this series as inspiration takes me - stay tuned! :)

#star wars rebels #Rebels spoilers #Hera Syndulla #twi'lek #my art #chibisketches #My thoughts on the show #kanan jarrus #Star Wars #tv

[think-thonkin]

Different kind of grief

Have you ever experienced a friendship or relationship breaking apart so terribly and irreparably that you grieve it like you'd grieve for a recently deceased loved one?

Like you don't even grieve the person, but the companionship, the late night talks that exposed questions about existence and deeply hidden feelings coming into star-brightened darkness, the occasional laughing fits, the warm smiles, the content silences...

She was the last one I had. In person I mean. I cherish and appreciate my online friends with a soul-crushing passion, but the in-person companionship I crave is a kind of void that they just cannot fulfill, not anytime soon at least.

We were unhappy even before our relationship changed labels, I think. We didn't have much in common anymore, after (then) 15 years of having been friends, our interests and expectations in life and romance had drifted apart instead of closer together and it should have been the first sign that turning our relationship into a romantic one was a terrible idea.

I was unhappy, I ended up being the initiator of practically everything, be it touch or conversation or addressing problems. It was always me that stepped forward, and the lines between platonic and romantic felt like a blurry and dangerous path to tread on without her telling me what is too far and what isn't, so sticking to small displays of affection like occasionally holding hands and a few gentle kisses to the cheek or forehead were the most bravery I could muster and the most I received in turn. I was touchstarved and desperately craving physical proximity, in part to battle my internalized self hatred that told me I was undesirable and only her last resort choice after 3 failed relationships of her own.

One time she exploded on me, her years worth of bottled up frustration and anger at the world bubbling up over a relatively small situation via text, intentionally twisting my words to be angry with me and vent more of her tension. She apologized later, but the panic attack I had that day would stick with me for far longer still.

I would start noticing when she lied about her feelings.

The way I recognized her typing style shift, her voice grow meek, the sudden increase of time required to form responses. Seeing the signs was easy, but discerning the cause was always about as clear to me as milk.

I was taught that honesty and communication were key in maintaining healthy relationships, so I would ask her if I did something wrong or if we needed to talk something out in any way, because I had noticed her tone change mid-conversation.

She would always insist that everything was fine, maintaining her facade of the perfectly composed adult.

I believed her and reinforced the chains that bound me to her.

We would start writing less, seeing each other less, despite only living two blocks apart. It was more and more difficult to get any mutually beneficial conversation going and we'd get frustrated being around each other in person after as little as 3 hours too. She at some point insulted my interests and got angry at me for struggling to share hers. I've tried to bring our lack of intimacy and unclear boundaries to attention too one day, only to have her shake her head and tell me that she's fine with whatever, that she doesn't need much to be happy. What we had didn't cut it for me and it had hurt, having my feelings ignored like this, so I refrained from trying again.

I thought it better to not poke the sleeping bear anyways.

Then, someone new tumbled into my life, someone with a passion as sparkling and intense as my own, a lonely soul masked in a charmingly awkward, ironic bravado and bluntly thrown quips. It didn't take long for us to click and converse on the daily. The more we learned of each other, the more similarities we found.

He lives several hundred kilometers away, but it still took only two months of daily texting and several hours of voice and videochat for me to fall head over heels.

I felt so unbelievably guilty.

I couldn't sever the chains that tied me to her out of fear of playing into her insecurities, but by the time I met him I had already been feeling like a bird stuck in a cage - solely there for her comfort, putting her feelings before my own, always. I was unhappy, we weren't working. But I cared more about her than myself, so I told myself I wouldn't break up with her.

And yet she’d deserved to know the truth, so as soon as I realized my feelings I confessed about it to her.

Things got messy from there, too much back and forth with me desperately clawing for any bit of selfish compromise I could get my hands on.

She eventually had enough of it and broke up with me, but we promised we'd stay friends.

She put on her porcelain mask of careful indifference and things went smoothly for a while.

It didn't take long for the mask to crack though. It was too frail to withstand her jealousy, her heartache, and eventually it fell apart.

She came to me with misinterpreted situations and long ago wrongdoings I've comitted, in her mind to intentionally cross her, talking over me when I attempted to correct her or defend myself, accusing me of being a lying, backstabbing bitch who was not an ounce better than the grovelling, attention-starved crybabies that play the victim card at and every opportinity. Then she insulted me and my loved ones up and down.

Then she left.

And I wailed as my shaking fingers blocked her on every site I could think of, terrified of her wrath and scared of more to come.

And then I hated her, for her hypocrisy and the hurt she's inflicted on me, as the realization of her small manipulative tactics to keep me bound to her slowly sunk in (for the sake of maintaining her anonymity I will not go into detail about how specifically she manipulated me, but know that there was what I now understand to have been some gaslighting involved).

Now, over a year after she confronted me, all I have left are the glowing embers of grief replacing my rage, and the understanding that I too have made more mistakes than I can count and had originally realized.

Now it doesn't matter who had ultimately been at fault, or whether or not her behavior was hypocritical or just.

All I know is that now I am lonely and tired.

Tired of being angry and hurt.

Tired of remembering her in all those little, painful ways that have shaped my life over the 16 years I've known her.

I still have him and my online friends and feel more balanced and supported than I've ever been, but in losing her I have also lost my only remaining real life friend and along with it, the kind of companionship my online friends cannot give.

She's written me a letter together with some old art of mine since that last fateful conflict, actually.

It made all of my emotions flare up again.

On the first read it had felt sincere, she was apologizing for not letting me defend myself in our last conversation all those months ago, that she's doing better now, especially in handling her emotions more openly and hasn't had any outbursts since. She also said she'd send me the art pieces and gifts I've given her over the years back if she found more of them.

On the second read it felt like salt in an open wound, an attempt to rub in that she is over me, better off without me while I was still stuck in my grief and hurt. I've written countless drafts of response letters, ranging from long and infuriated, to brief and sorrowful, to sarcastically apologetic until eventually I gave up trying altogether. Too stricken with negative emotions to think clearly.

I'm still unsure which outcome would be pettier of me, trying to get the last word in, or deciding she doesn't deserve an answer? Would sending her a response incite an attempt to mend our lost friendship and rekindle it, or would not answering imply my agreement to have her send back more items in the future?

It made me realize that I don't actually want her back in my life.

That it's not her that I miss, but rather the easy in-person companionship I've had with her, the happiness and comfort that comes with it.

By writing this post I was kind of hoping to find a different kind of closure, by getting my thoughts and feelings out about it all without actually writing her back.

I'm still hurting and lonely, but it's gotten better, continues to get better.

If you've read this far - and really, I don't think there's much of a reason you would, you don't know me after all, so why should you care - thank you for lending a patient ear to a grieving stranger.

If you think that you are who this whole post is centered around:

I genuinely do hope you are doing well. That you will find happiness, comfort, genuine companionship and a warm meal and bed to return to every day.

I just wish for it to be far away from my own.

#vent #bisexuality #relationship #failed relationship #story time #thoughts #heartbreak #prose

[monomonomagines]

DR2 Boys as Monsters with a Human S/o Part 2

Hello everyone, I’m sorry for my inactivity as of late. My bed broke recently so I’ve had to try to get a new one during Quarantine. However, I finally am able to get one and I come back bearing some good news! Mod Kokichi and I have been fleshing out our monster Au to the point that we have some extra content for the lore of the world and details with the characters and whatever we couldn’t fit into these imagines. Coincidentally, we do plan to also open an AO3 account in order to publish fully fleshed out content for the monsters and lore of the world we’ve made for them once we’re all set up. If anyone is interested in any art or lore that we have ready though, feel free to ask us and we’ll gladly share it with you. Speaking of, we have a place already to post art on our discord so you’re free to join us with this link if you’d like. https://discord.gg/M6TGwd

One more thing I’d like to add though is a warning for Nagito’s part in this. We couldn’t include much romance because of some lore we included with how his disease would work in this universe and with the limited space I couldn’t convey much development with him yet (where he isn’t quite as unhealthy or obsessive) so consider this just your first interaction with him. I promise though on AO3 or in further works he won’t be nearly as twisted as he might com across here. Besides that though, I hope that you all enjoy these. I had a lot of fun with them and will be getting back to other requests and matchups as soon as possible.

Part 2 (Part 1 here) (Part 3 here)

Gundham (Vampire)

By the time you got of work, it was late enough to see the last vestiges of the setting sun disappearing over the horizon, leaving behind nothing more than the chill of twilight.

However, there was nothing to do but to walk home as typical of you when it's still brighter.

As you passed by the familiar buildings, the park, and even a few side streets you began to only think of getting home and into your nice warm bed.

Perhaps it was those thoughts that caused you not to notice the man behind you but by the time he put a hand over your mouth and pulled you into an alley with him, you knew you had made a terrible mistake.

There were no words said as he pushed you up against a wall and buried his face into your neck, penetrating you with his fangs.

So that was it, he was a vampire. It'd be over soon you thought trying to reassure yourself as his inhuman strength overpowered you.

You tried with all your might to hold onto consciousness but alas it was too much. Maybe he was going to drink you dry after all, maybe this was the end for you?

When you awoke with a start those thoughts were still lingering in your mind. You felt so weak and this place, this definitely wasn't your room.

"Ah, you've awoken at last!" Announced that same vampire as he appeared by the side of the plush bed you were laid upon.

At least you assumed as you hadn't gotten to hear his voice. You didn't know what to say to him and at the very same time, plenty of accusations and questions flew from your mouth in his direction causing him to lose that gusto he seemed to have from a moment ago.

It appeared as though he hadn't considered for this to happen and unlike how he had last night he silenced you with his own statement.

"Silence, mortal! You should consider yourself lucky! It is not every day that you are a vampire as well known and feared as the legendary Gundham Tanaka's first victim!"

Proudly laughing he rambles on and on about his supposed grandeur before he finally settles down.

"Now what great power you are speaking to I shall inform you of what is to come as you had begged me earlier. You, mortals, tend to misconstrue what it is we full-blood vampires do with our first victim. We do not kill them, no rather we keep them by our side."

Oh brother. You knew for certain you did not want to stay with this guy and yet you still felt so weak. There was no way you could do much else than rely on him so you had to relent.

However, even though you started as an unwanted guess Gundham seemed to know how to take care of you, always making sure to be so careful.

He didn't seem like other vampires and as you began to talk to him you seemed to realize what had happened to you in actuality. Even if he hadn't realized it himself he slipped up by calling you his first victim.

He wasn't some long-lived legendary Vampire, he was a recently turned one that normally didn't drink from a human directly. You noticed with the way that he'd return with blood bags and never a scratch on him that he wasn't as evil as he seemed.

However, even when you questioned him he insisted on his obviously made up "Old Vampire Ritual" that you two were bound together and that he must take care of you as you two are now in a "symbiotic relationship".

A relationship in which he never actually drank from you instead mostly taking care of you because of that one time he could've killed you. Perhaps that's why you had fallen so hard for this creature of the night?

He was gentle and kind in his own right and every day that passed by ended up making you glad to be here. That's when you knew you had to tell him finally.

One night as he was bringing you dinner you had asked for him to stay and as usual, he listened to your desires sitting by you rather obediently as you two conversed.

"It is not like you to ask of my presence during your meals, mortal. Is there something you wished to say?"

What didn't you want to say? As soon as you could open your mouth all of it began to spill out again, like those questions you asked when you first arrived here.

You knew he wasn't a full-blood, you knew he just felt bad that he almost drained you, and you knew he didn't like drinking directly from someone if they were unwilling! You knew it all but most of all you liked him the way he was. You loved him even and before you could finish your ramble of a confession he had already pressed himself against your lips.

"Oh, how is it that a mortal like you can love a beast such as myself?"

Nagito (Zombie)

Though it was quite impulsive, you had felt implored to walk take a walk in the dead of night.

It was a humid summer night and with your clothes sticking to you and the hum of the ceiling fan relentlessly filling your ears you clearly needed to get a small break.

Grabbing a bag with a few small things such as a flashlight, keys, and whatever else you could possibly need during a night stroll you soon departed, forgetting just why it was so risky to leave your home.

As you continued on your stroll to the next block you happened upon the local graveyard which was always stirring with life, at least that's what you had heard.

Perhaps it was the humidity or the lack of sleep making you feel so careless but rather than heading back home you decided to approach the gates of the cemetery when a gloved hand came to press itself over your mouth.

"Don't scream, I just want to talk." A raspy voice whispers lowly into your ear causing panic to shoot through your body.

With your bag still in hand, you easily shake the offender off, swinging your bag at him as your eyes shut in fear. However, instead of any pained sound, all you hear is a sigh and multiple things hitting the ground.

Despite your head screaming at you to disregard that and run though you instead put on a brave face and open your eyes, noticing that he was now missing his arm and head.

"Ah man, this is so embarrassing," he starts only awkwardly scratching the back of his head with his free hand, "you wouldn't be able to uh, hand me my head would you?"

Wait, he's a zombie, isn't he!? He'll just try to bite you!

Even with your protests though he doesn't bat an eye only negotiating with you instead. "I know it sounds like I just want to bite you but I swear I won't. If it makes you feel better you can even grab me by my hair. There's no way I can bite you that way, right?"

Despite the position he was in, he still seemed fully capable of quipping at you so you relented. What harm will come from this guy if you can knock most of his limbs off with one swing?

Dropping your bag to the ground you tentatively grab his head by the hair watching as his expression doesn't change despite the tug on his scalp as you hand it over to his body.

To your surprise, he grabs himself the same way and somehow easily reattaches the head with his one arm intact. This must happen quite a lot for him to be so unfazed even with only one arm.

"Thanks again! You wouldn't mind tossing my hand over here too would you?"

He asks with a relaxed smile on his face. He didn't move towards you at all, seeming to wait for you to answer as you looked over and saw that gloved hand now laying by your bag.

He didn't seem dangerous but before you could find it in yourself to give him back all of his limbs you needed to know why he grabbed you earlier.

"Oh, that? Well, to be honest, I was trying to warn you about the graveyard. Tonights a full moon and it's when a lot of the more violent zombies and other monsters come out. That's why I didn't want you to scream either if you had well, you'd be found and eaten immediately."

But then why wasn't he attacking you or trying to eat you? You wanted to question him more but for the most part, his answer was vague.

"Well, I don't want to eat you. How about instead you toss me my hand and I'll walk you home? That's fair isn't it?"

You couldn't disagree, it did seem fair but you certainly hadn't expected this development in the slightest. It might not have been too uncommon for someone to escort you home but a zombie was surprising.

You braced yourself, grabbing ahold of the purely skeletal hand and glove as you tossed them over to him. Now with another question to ask. Was the glove to cover this?

"That actually has to do with how I got to be a zombie. It's a funny story since I'm pretty lucky but I was born with a disease that causes your brain to deteriorate. I wasn't supposed to live long and no matter what doctor I went to, none of them could do anything."

So why was his hand like this then? Did he already start decaying? Despite just meeting, he seemed intent on sharing his story with you as he gave you an awkward smile and continued.

"No one could cure me so I decided to take a risk. As a human still I sought out a Witch Doctor and ironically the only way to save me so that I could accomplish my goals was to kill me."

Popping his hand on with a satisfied look on his face he smiled at you.

"It's ironic but even with the ritual, I got lucky! She needed something as a sort of sacrifice I guess so she needed my hand or at least the flesh from it. I'll admit it was pretty painful since I was still alive but even then it seemed that it was destined to happen. A rare occurrence happened in which my hand was still intact and strong enough not to snap either! It was a miracle that the witch said must have been because the demons or dark gods had chosen me! Amazing isn't it?"

He puts his glove back on, looking at the hand fondly as you went silent. That was supposed to be amazing? Didn't he still die? What about his family and friends?

Despite your questions, his expression didn't falter as he calmly explained he had none. No friends and no family to come to his funeral. He died alone and seemed unfazed.

"That's enough about me though, we should be getting you home now."

Sure enough, he was right, however, something seemed off. How was it that he knew the way to your house? Even when you questioned him though he seemed so nonchalant.

"I know because you fill me with hope," he says expression growing dark, "I know from the way you walk to the way you talk, to the way you even eat your meals that you are what I need. It was such great luck for you to walk by tonight where I could talk to you where I can finally tell you how I feel."

Pinning you to a nearby wall he smiles as he asks you too frozen by fear to scream, "Did you think that any zombie would be so harmless? My goal is to bring hope to the world and in order to do so, I need you. You awaken the purest hope sleeping inside of me and for that, I can never let you go."

Before you can respond to his delusions he presses his lips to your own and that was the last of what you could remember when you woke up in your bed.

It was just a dream, it had to be you thought, but when you opened that bag and found a note in it you knew immediately that it was all true. You were being stalked by a Zombie of all things.

Kazuichi (Gorgon)

You were going on a jog through the nearby park in the evening when you chanced upon a figure in the distance.

Although you only saw their back, they were dressed in the brightest jumpsuit you'd ever seen. They definitely couldn't be up to anything shady in such an ostentatious outfit, you thought, so you called out to them as you drew closer.

As soon as your words pierced their ears they perked up immediately running over to grab onto you sobbing about how he got "left behind," when suddenly he froze.

"Wa-wait you're not a..." letting go and backing up from you like you had the plague you noticed why he was freaking out. You definitely weren't a monster and he definitely was.

The two of you ended up screaming from the shock as the monster clumsily ran in the opposite direction, tripping over the roots of an overgrown tree and falling with a sickening snap.

You couldn't leave him like this. Even as you approached he seemed scared out of his wits, wincing away as you tried to help lift him up.

"Please don't hurt me! Please don't kill me I...I beg of you! I'll do whatever you say!" He cries out between sobs, not realizing that you are just trying to help him out.

However, he was struggling far too much to help him either so you had no choice but to sit yourself down and reassure him.

"But how can I even know you're telling the truth!? What if you're just going to kill me later?" Despite his sobbing finally melting into mere shaky breathes he looks at you with nothing more than distrust as he tosses accusations around.

He might not believe you but at least he isn't thrashing about like a caged animal. This time promising, not to hurt him, you help him up allowing him to lean on you as he winces in pain.

"Shit, I think...I think I really hurt my ankle. It hurts just to stand!"

Though he had acted so high and mighty a moment ago, he instantly melts into your touch, letting you do most of the work as you walk to your house.

There was no way to transport him anywhere else without some basic medical attention at least. An idea that he wouldn't have taken kindly to if not from being so exhausted from your interactions in the forest.

Struggling to get your key out of your pocket with him leaning on you, you manage to open the door and lead him to your couch so that he could rest.

Turning so that you close the door behind you two, you hear him speak up once again.

"Hey uh...about before and all, I don't normally act so, so lame. I'm normally a lot cooler than that and-" You held back a sigh, cutting off his lame excuses by telling him that you understand.

A heavy silence fell over the two of you, thicker than the uneasy tension in the air as you began to tend to his ankle.

Occasionally shooting an uneasy glance in your direction, he once again opens his mouth trying to say something only to close it again.

You really hadn't expected to encounter such a cowardly and awkward monster and yet here you were with one sat on your couch as you ended to his ankle with an air of uncertainty around the two of you.

This time, you spoke up, trying to get anything to rid you of the heavy feeling in the air as you spoke. Besides, you did have your own questions that you wanted to be answered.

For example, what exactly is he? You knew he wasn't human but with his beanie on all you could tell was that he had greenish skin and snakelike eyes.

"Oh, that? I'm...a Gorgon," he responds, rather awkwardly as he reluctantly pulls off his beanie to reveal bright pink snakes that contrast his green skin.

Cringing as you let out a gasp he prepares for you to laugh but instead is met with the exact opposite. Did you call him cool looking? He, he was cool to you?

Feeling pride swell within him he smiles at you, the awkward air finally for a moment. A moment that certainly did not last long as one of his own snakes bit him.

"Shit! The hat where's my hat!?" He exclaims, patting the arm of the couch for it when you notice how it fell out of his reach as more snakes readied to sink their teeth into his face.

Running over to grab the beanie you hand it to him as he quickly contains his snakes that let out an audible hiss of disapproval. "Argh, they always do this but uh thanks. I must seem pretty lame right now though huh?"  

Seeming down already from the altercation with his snakes you assure him that he's not lame although you do wonder why they dislike him so much.

"Well, they've never got along with me since animals don't really like me at all but they started getting really violent after I learned magic to dye them pink."

He learned magic to make them pink? That was incredible, you mentioned, praising him and causing a small blush to coat his cheeks.

"Yeah, I learned from a friend of mine. She's a lich actually so it isn't really an impressive spell for her but I guess it is kinda cool that I could learn it, huh?"

Agreeing with him that it is indeed pretty cool that he could learn magic, you soon finished with his ankle.

However, even as you finished you both continued to talk throughout the night. Talking about his weird Turned Vampire Rival, and his Alien soul bro, and other fun topics.

You didn't realize it but it must have been so much fun that you eventually fell asleep beside him because you woke up still situated on the couch. However, when you looked over Kazuichi was gone.

It was if it all was a dream or so you thought until that same awkward Gorgon appeared on your doorstep in the middle of the night days later.

Seeming nervous as usual he gave you a small smile. "Hey, S/o, yah mind if I come in?"

Despite your sleepy daze, you nodded as you led him to the same couch that you had fallen asleep on after talking to him for the whole night and took your own place next to him.

Per usual he was fidgety and nervous but you did notice one thing different about him. Unlike the last time, you saw him he had a one snake peeking out from his hat that was happily swaying as you sat next to him.

Following your gaze on the little guy, he began to blush again as he stammered an apology. "Sorry, I guess Lugnut is just really happy to see you again. I don't always tuck him in because he's the only one that can stand me, at least most days. When we met last time he hissed at me in the morning so I kinda just tucked him with the rest."

Scratching his head he waits for a response as you just stare at him in disbelief. Did he just call his snake Lugnut? Did he really name them all like that?

"D-don't look at me like that! I have to call them something to tell the difference between them!" He whines as you let out a laugh now that your initial shock wore off.

"It's not funny! I told ya I needed to be able to tell the difference!" He protests again, only forgiving you once you apologize for all the laughter.

"Great, now that you're done laughing and all I did actually have something I wanted to say." He states as his hat begins to visibly move.

"I...I wanted to thank you for last time. I know I acted like I didn't trust you the whole time and that I disappeared even though I was hurt but I really like you."

He stops to take a deep breath as Lugnut begins to move around excitedly. "I know this is really fast but it's just that no one has ever called me cool the way you do, or listen to me really, or let me go on about what I like and, and I want to keep being able to!" he announces, never faltering as he looked you in the eyes.

"Even if you say no, I want to keep coming over and talking to you like we did the other night so will you let me come over again?"

#danganronpa #danganronpa imagines #dr2 #danganronpa goodbye despair #danganronpa x reader #x reader #gundham tanaka #nagito komeada #kazuichi soda #kazuichi souda #mod toko #monster au

[celstese]

Torchwood Christmas secret santa 2020

for @laylainalaska

Hi this is your secret santa. Happy holidays Both fics are under the cut and on ao3. I haven't figured out how to embed pictures so the pics just on this post. I dont have access to a scanner right now. (Will update the picture when I do soon)There is a bit of swearing in the first fic but its not that much.

ao3 posts-  Ianto and Owen / Gwen and Tosh

It was early in the morning when the messy situation began. Since Lisa was discovered, I hadn’t been back at work. That was a terrible night. It happened so suddenly. I didn't feel happy when I realized what I had overlooked. I noticed we were running out of coffee beans. As soon as I could go, I went to go where I kept the rest of the walk in storage. This was the same floor where she inhabited for several months. It started sometime after I had joined after finding Myfanwy. That night I was exhausted. It was worth it in the end. While I didn't prefer being down there, I had to do something about the problem I had found. As I walked further towards the supply cupboard, the more uneasy I felt, almost like I knew something would go wrong. My fears were not out of the blue, but objectively I knew no one else could have done the same thing as I had. When I got there, the storage door was wide open and I could hear Owen Harper's loud voice. I sighed then spoke up loudly, enough that he could hear me from wherever he was inside. “Are you close to the coffee? We’re almost out upstairs.”. I didn’t wait long. It seemed he was close to where I was. Odd, the room seemed to be much bigger on the inside. That might have just my mind playing tricks on me. Though I wouldn't have been surprised if it was. “Can you repeat that? I don't know why not having galoshes would be a problem. ” Owen sounded confused. “No where almost out of coffee. Is there any in there still?” I replied louder than I had done previously. “I passed it on my way to the office supplies. I think that's all the coffee we have right now” Owens voice was apologetic. I could tell he meant it. It was then and there, for the first time in ages, that I felt scared. Not only for me but everyone on the team. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, I had become dependent on coffee. My team was no different. That didn't mean any would do. Drastic times call for drastic measures. After a short conversion, we decided to go upstairs and find Jack. Getting the bags of coffee to the car would require more than one person. It was a slow day so Owen could come and help for once. We walked together to the large elevator at the end of the hall and, after finding that it wasn't working, we sighed and took the stairs. I guess it was about time for a new elevator anyway. Nothing really lasts forever. When I got out of the stairwell, I was met by a relieved Jack who was happy to see me. “Ianto about the coffee…” “We have none in storage right now so the stuff upstairs is all we have at the moment. Me and Owen were going to go get more right now.” “I'd be happy to help if you asked, but that's fine.” I could tell from Jack's tone of voice that he would like to spend that time with me, but we'd never get anything done if he came with. He is a real trouble magnet on top of that. We walked inside the garage with the keys already in Owen's hands. I got in the driver's side on the right side while he got in the passenger side. The quickest route I knew could be confusing. If I was on the passenger side giving directions wouldn't help at all. It was hard to find a place and the directions were the oddest I have ever followed. As they drove out it was still raining as it had been when they entered in the morning. By the time they had taken a left turn towards a block of warehouses, the rain had vanished, to Owen’s surprise. He thought the weather man said something about the rain lasting until the next day. He shook his head and told himself he must have misremembered what week that was for. The car made a sudden stop parking at the side of the road. Ianto spoke saying “I know it might look weird, but this is really where I get all of the coffee. It's like the opposite of a Slitheen. It's the building on your side. Let's go.” While Ianto stepped out of the car ,Owen took a deep breath and opened the door quickly then closed it just as fast. His face was drawn to the massive eyesore in front of his face. The building that once held a clothing warehouse full of books was now filled with rows and rows of coffee. Owen didn't know what to think. He turned his head and said to Ianto “ You go to a building that's bright orange called Groovy Moods to get coffee that we drink everyday. Something about that sentence just sounds wrong.” “It's better than it sounds. They used to have a different name, but they were inherited by the old owner's hippy son. I miss the old building, but the stuff is still the same. My mouth would know the difference.” Owen Harper then said in response “So it's a rebranding. Lets just go in and get this all over and done with. I heard it was supposed to rain today.” The inside was clean as a whistle and the colors were more muted, though, the wall art wasn't. Owen couldn’t say he was surprised at the abstract art on the wall above displayed bags of various kinds of coffee. He followed Ianto to a window at the back of the store and found something unexpected, visible behind the glass. “Well shit.” I couldn't agree with Owen more. Some kind of face hugger was on the workers face and they were trying to tear it off. That was a poor bloke. “Did we bring anything in the car or did you grab something? I don’t think a gun will help us with that.” Owen was panicking and so was I. “ I always have medical supplies on me, and I also have some food. You?” I leafed through my pockets and groaned. “I grabbed the wrong jacket. This spray might make it worse.” “Why?” “It's novocaine in a can. I don't know what it will do to it. It could do nothing.” “It's worth a shot. At least the guy won't feel anything if something goes wrong.” Owen, with a medical tool, opened the door and I sprayed the face hugger. The weirdest thing happened. “I think I made it horny”. I was embarrassed. Instead of sucking the man's face, it was now humping my foot. Owen laughed while I sighed. “We have a carrying cage in the car right? Get it. I think we might have to retcon this guy when it's taken care of.”

Fic 2 It was a Friday when I finally had some time to myself. I had some great plans including going to this nice curry place and eating what I couldn't while I was at home since Rhys was allergic. My day didn't go as planned after I managed to get that one thing out of the way. As I was walking to my car, out of nowhere I got pulled into an alleyway. I almost kicked them, knocking them out before I saw who it was. It was Toshiko, but she was a mess. Concertedly, I watched as she panted.

“What happened?" I said plainly as she stood wobbling in front of me.

Her eyes wide, she spoke a few words before fainting onto me “Aliens smuggling cocaine into space.”

I had just enough time to catch my weight and Tosh by sheer will alone. A few seconds passed before I could catch my bearings.

My mouth gaped as I was shook by what she had just said. I guess I'm going to hold off on those plans for another day. This, I could feel, wouldn't be easy. She looked at Tosh's wrist and sighed. Maybe she would have a day out. Whatever had happened hadn't happened yet. On Toshiko's right wrist was a vortex manipulator. For all Gwen knew Tosh was going to then say and time if that one wasn't Jacks. It wasn't like he was unique in the cosmos. It was mass produced. From what she had gathered after Jack came back after a year in tandem with the radiation scare they were similar to company cars. While not totally unique, there are a limited amount.

Though for all I know I am already involved in what happened and will have to sit it out to keep out of sight. That might possibly be some good news. I haven't signed up for overtime, but I was due for a break as well. Whatever the case I had to get Tosh to wake up somehow. For all I knew it would come today and we needed to start walking now. So, out of my pocket I grabbed what I always kept on me and what I knew she couldn't stand.

“Peppermint, really Gwen?”

It had worked after all, to my delight.

“We are in an alleyway and I had it on me. Now, do we have to hide somewhere or was I involved in what got you here?”

“I have to stay out of sight, but we need to call Jack so I only knew one thing you did out of the next three days.”

“Well that's short, but what are you getting at?”

“Well what we need to do exactly is this.”

Tosh's game plan was not something I would do if I didn't have to. There were parts she had to repeat since to be perfectly honest was plain odd. I guess I could blame the rift for this.

So, here I was now, with Tosh in a bar in the middle of the day at the start of winter. There was barely anyone inside which was definitely not a good sign. We went to the restroom and waited for a few minutes. Then I heard that noise that had to be what Tosh had told me about earlier. So I kicked down the restroom door and chucked a can of mayo at a sabretooth tiger. While it layed there unconscious, Jack stared at me, dumbfounded for the first time since I had met him.

“Thanks Gwen but how did you time that so well? It's your day off you didn't mention going to a bar” He was scratching his head staring at the jar of mayo on the ground.

“It's kind of you from a few days laters fault. Tosh said she came back to perverse the timeline to ensure I did what I did. You gave Tosh your vortex manipulator 3 days away. I guess i'm going to have more time off than planned. This was the only thing you saw me doing with everyone else while the alien cocaine smugglers were dealt with. I'm having trouble saying their name. It's a mouthful.”

“Can you tell me something about them so I know what i'm dealing with?” Jack responded quickly.

“ She did say that one of the people who took them back to their homeworld used to be mayor Blaine. Tosh said she was cute.”

He started laughing for a second then the image of what I was describing finally got past his processing for how ridiculous it all sounded.

“Even for torchwood this sounds..”

“Insane I know. I'm the one who was dragged into an alley by a chip shop's trash cans by a future Tosh and had to wake her up. She seems fine, even after passing out. I don't think she got a concussion, but it's even more of a reason for me to stay out of this one. I wouldn't want to be home alone if that happened to me.“

“You do that Gwen, you do that.”

Tosh walked up right next to me and said, “We have five minutes until my past self walks by. We need to head out. Nice seeing you Jack.”

We finished saying our goodbyes and Tosh headed out first, initially going left while in the distance I heard a familiar voice talking to him. While I knew I could relax, I wouldn't be able to do everything I could.

“I haven asked yet, but are you okay with sleeping on my couch?”

“Gwen, I’ve slept in worse places before, it's fine.”

Tosh opened up the fridge while I was cleaning dishes. “Gwen, when's the last time you ate something that wasn't takeout? There's only milk in here and I think it's gone off.”

“Well, I guess we'll have to go get food. Rhys usually does it, but he’s at the funeral I was talking about before all of this. You didn't go to a grocery store did you?”

“No, so we can go anywhere.”

I didn't feel the need to change so we went out in both of our pajamas. The sight of her in my pajamas brought a smile to my face.

I hadn't gone here this time of night or this particular place, but Tosh seemed pretty familiar with it. There was some stuff I hadn't seen in person before, but it was pretty clean. I grabbed something called a dragon fruit and put it into the cart as well as some pasta and additional stuff to put on it. Can't forget the wine either. This kind of opportunity doesn’t happen as often for me anymore.

I don't know how, but we ended up at a rec center painting. It was a small place nearby with a blue façade. It felt nice actually, to my surprise. It's not the best representation of a pear, but at least I tried.

I looked at my watch and realized how much time had passed.

“This is the last day we have to stay out of this.” I didn't know how I felt about that just yet.

Tosh pulled down the newspaper and sat in silence for a bit. Then she simply said . “I'll miss this break, but it had to end sometime. It will be all okay.”

“I hope so.” I thought to myself. The last few days had been calm but I don't think I can relax much longer anyways.

#celstese #laylainalaska #torchwood 2020 holiday gift exchange #swearing #Gwen Cooper #toshiko sato #Owen Harper #ianto jones #jack harkness #fanfiction #torchwood #torchwood fanart

[bettsfic]

betts, i'm having trouble with letting myself "write badly" (and with coming up with ideas, but mostly the former). how do you do it, how do you teach yourself?

first of all, major props to you for trying the shitty first draft. this past semester it was the #1 thing i wanted my students to take from the class. for those who do not yet know the power of the SFD, i have made a very helpful visual aid:

let’s say you read anne lamott’s “shitty first drafts” (and you absolutely must read anne lamott’s “shitty first drafts”), and you come out of it believing in the three draft method: 

down draft: get it down

up draft: clean it up

dental draft: check every tooth

but you think, potentially, the better your down draft is, the better your up draft will be, and the easier your dental draft will be. perhaps you think, the shittier your first draft, the shittier your final draft, or maybe, the more you’ll have to revise.

NAY. 

i’d like you to turn your attention to my gorgeous and professional graphic which took me a whole 30 seconds to make. i’ve drawn two spectrums which indicate the quality of writing, from :( (awful) to :) (most excellent) based on your own definitions of good/bad writing.

let’s say the top line represents a writer who has written a very decent first draft. the absolute best they can do. they’ve put their all into it. they revise it once and it’s a little bit better. they revise it again, but at this point it’s mostly fixing a typo here and there. they have checked every tooth. but it’s still not great.

the bottom line represents a writer who projectile vomited onto a piece of paper (metaphorically) and then cried for an hour (literally). their first draft is written partially in wingdings for reasons they don’t know. they forgot the word for “wrist” so they wrote “hand ankle.” objectively speaking in the grand history of the universe, according to god, it is in the top 1% of worst things ever written.

then this writer cleans it up a bit. now, it’s about where it would be if the writer had tried to write a clean first draft. it’s something they might be willing to show an extremely tactful friend, or someone with very low standards.

and now, magic happens. they revise again, and the draft is infinitely better than what they knew they could write. i don’t know why this happens! but it does. it’s happened to me. it’s happened to every student who has had the terrible fortune of stepping into my classroom. i promise you it works. 

writing badly is not just about getting your ideas down in a somewhat messy way. it’s about writing intentionally badly. it’s about aiming for the absolute worst of what you’re capable of. to write badly means to identify and define what you think is good writing, because you’re aiming for the opposite. maybe you hate stories that have run-on sentences, or which seem to lack self-awareness. that means your first draft is going to be FULL of run-ons and have no idea what it’s trying to be. but run-ons can be tidied up to create beautiful prose. and mindless nonsense that relies on tropes and cliches can be organized and added upon to be meaningful. but you need to get it down before you even know what the thing you’re writing is. we write as the process of thought, not the product of it. 

which brings me to my next point: *commentator voice* 

THE UNKNOWN

i’ve written before on the interaction between fear, the unknown, and writer’s block. one day i’ll write a big fancy craft essay on it that i’ll try lamely to publish, but for now i’ll be very blunt: 

all writer’s block is fear. all fear is the unknown. to resolve fear, you must make something known. to make something known, you enact a procedure.

this is true of almost everything in life. everything you hesitate to do, everything you procrastinate or put off. every bad attitude you have. it’s all the unknown. if you open yourself to the process of knowing, everything in life becomes less scary. 

how do surgeons perform life-saving surgeries? how do pilots keep a plane from crashing? how did i go to work as a bank teller in a bad part of town, day after day, knowing i would eventually get robbed? we have procedures. if this happens, you do this, this, and this. 

as mary ruefle puts it in her essay “on fear” -- what is the poet’s procedure?

this is, of course, a rhetorical question, but i’ve taught this essay many times, and read it many more, and i am obsessed with the idea of a writer’s procedure. combined with donald barthleme’s essay “not-knowing” which is also about the making things known, we have a foundation for which to understand the process of knowing.

so what is the process?

i have my own process which might work for you, which i adapt from project to project, but you’ll have to make your own. and when you do, you have to trust it. writing badly is easier when you know, like me, you have at least 8 more drafts to do no matter what. no matter how good i think it is, i will do every step of the procedure, every time. i have faith in my process. there is no point where an element of the story is so unknown to me that i am afraid to continue. i know that by the end of the process, i have done my best work, and there’s not much more i can do without the help of the people who have accepted it to be published.

recently i’ve decided i want to start drawing. it’s a daunting endeavor -- i used to draw a lot when i was a teenager, but like many of us, certain creative interests we had when we were younger get shoved to the side for one reason or another. for me, i never got the hang of shading, and i couldn’t handle ruining my lovely line drawings with my hideous attempts at making things look three-dimensional. 

now, i’ve tasked myself with picking it up again, but i’m afraid. i ask myself why i’m afraid. it’s because i don’t know anything about drawing anymore. i don’t know what to draw. i don’t know where to draw. i don’t know what to use to draw. i don’t know when to draw. 

but now, just by acknowledging what i don’t know, i have a list of things i need to make known, one small thing at a time.

what to draw: i take a picture of a fruit basket. i follow some mandala artists on instagram. i look at art blogs. i make a list in google keep/drive of things i want to draw. i keep my mind open to inspiration as it arrives.

where and what to use to draw: i need tools. i’m interested in watercolors, ink drawings, and calligraphy. i go to amazon and i pick out a couple things -- a watercolor notebook, crayola watercolors, micron and brush pens. it’s about $20. enough to get me started at least.

when to draw: i schedule two hours three nights a week to draw. i download the harry potter audiobooks to encourage me to do it. 

when it comes time to draw, the only unknown thing is where to place the first line. there is no risk in it, no fear -- i do it with pencil. it can be erased. there is no way to be wrong. once the first line is down, i move to the next and the next, making the drawing known one line at a time. 

the first step in the process of knowing is naming what you don’t know.

so my advice to you is this: make a list of questions you have for your narrative. if they’re too broad, break them up. make them tiny. then ask yourself, not what are the answers, but “how do i make these things known to me?” 

the response is usually “i don’t fucking know” followed potentially by “well i’ll have to try doing this thing that i know is wrong.” it might be wrong, but it’s known. and so you have to write it down, then trust that it will eventually be right.

thanks for the great question, anon. more on this at the start of the new year, but soon i’ll be launching a ko-fi gold! if you’re interested in getting one-on-one feedback for your writing or would like to buy me a coffee, feel free to follow me on ko-fi!

and here’s my writing advice tag.

#writing advice #dow19 #the poet's procedure #Anonymous