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starvine · 3 years

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first date headcanons

attack on titan (modern au)

summary: some first date headcanons with some of the attack on titan characters.

warnings: none, just fluff :)

eren jaeger: movie

a little basic but it’s all eren could come up with

besides, it was between a movie and dinner and dinner felt too formal so y’all decided on a movie

he’d let you pick the movie tho

he might argue with you if it’s something stupid and claim that it’s horribly written (as if he knows a thing) but that’s it

eren would make sure to get the BEST snacks. spicy food? check. candy? check. popcorn? check. fruits? check.

he just wants to impress you (even if he did have to confide in his friends for some advice)

he just really likes you

during the movie, you guys would start shifting closer to each other, both a little too timid to move all the way all at once

but you guys would make commentary throughout the movie, laughing when things seem too cliché or when a character says something funny

half way throughout the movie, you guys aren’t even really paying attention it it

you’re too busy throwing popcorn at each other and trying to catch it in your mouths, feeding each other candy, and giggling at each other

it’s intimate in its own relaxed way, which makes eren realize how perfect you are

you both could make the most out of a pretty average first date situation and make it into a beyond amazing first date

and that was all he needed to ask you on a second date before he dropped you off at your car, walking with you to make sure you got there safely

and ngl you’d be a bit of a fool to say no to eren

armin arlert: aquarium

sweetheart is so nervous

before he came to your apartment to pick you up for your date, he was a little nervous wreck

he was fidgeting with his fingers, playing with the buttons on his shirt--he probably accidentally opened one by accident

but once he saw you, he felt fine

it was as if he physically melted, you just make everything okay

once you guys got to the aquarium, he would NOT shut up

he was probably pointing things out, telling you fun facts, asking you what is your favorite marine life

“oh, you like pufferfish? that’s cool! i like them too. they’re very... puffy.”

he’s like a child in a candy store

but while he’s rambling about how the digestive system of a sea cucumber basically cleans the ocean, he’s wondering how he should make a move

he doesn’t want to scare you off or anything, but he doesn’t want you to be disappointed

but while you guys are looking at one of those large fish tanks, the ones where you walk through a tunnel, you guys just sort of stand there and watch in awe

or rather armin watches in awe while you look at him, a soft smile gracing his pink lips as his eyes dart across the illustriously blue colored glass

and when he feels your pinky latch onto his, he’s a little shocked that you had made the first move

he didn’t not expect it per say, he just thought that he would be the one to make the first move

but his overthinking got in the way

and when he turns to look down at your intertwined pinkies, he caught you sending him a delicate smile that made his heart squeeze until he felt as if every part of him was on fire

but it was him who finally held your hand fully

he just needed you to give him the extra push

mikasa ackerman: book store

it’s a very calming atmosphere, which is something you’d both need for this first date

mikasa is probably pretty anxious for the first date, and wants to make sure you’re okay and enjoying yourself while also making sure she’s okay and enjoying herself

so the calming scent of the book store and the quietness is perfect for her to multitask between mediating the two

you’d both be tasked with picking each other books and then buying them for each other

so initially mikasa was nervous because she wasn’t sure what to get you but then you asked what she liked to read and so that allowed her to ask the same, making the situation less stressful

and all while you two are walking from isle to isle, eyes scanning the various book titles and covers, she sneaks glances at you and how pretty you look

and the fact that you seem very deep in thought, heavily concentrated on getting her the right book, makes her feel less concerned on whether or not you’d rather be with her or not

the answer is obviously a yes but mikasa has a hard time understanding that sometimes

so when you give her the book you bought for her, making sure to lightly touch her fingers while you hand it to her, she already knows that another date is what she wants you both to have or else she’ll probably explode

and based off of how flushed she looks, the possibility of her exploding is not highly unlikely

you guys will sit at this little table in the corner of the store, reading your books

i can picture mikasa annotating certain lines that remind her of you, making mental notes to show you later

overall, the date is pretty lowkey and very sweet

connie springer: dave + busters/bowling

ok there’s not much of an explanation for this one besides the point that if feels right

like connie is pretty energetic and i feel like you can learn a lot about a person based off of the games they’re drawn to

hence the arcade

i think connie really likes those racing games or the zombie shooting games

he also claims he’s really good at ski ball (he’s not, he’s trash)

so a good portion of the date consists of you just laughing at him the whole time cuz in all honestly he’s not the best at games but he enjoys them for the fun of them

he’d definitely cheer you on when you were playing or try to mess you up if it was you two against each other

but either way he’d give you a hug or a pat on the head after every game

even if u beat him

he’d probably try to sneak a kiss when you guys were in one of those shooting games that requires a booth and the curtains drawn (does that make sense?)

it’s not really romantic like at all, especially since it smells like a million different people in there, but it’s very low stress so in all honesty that’s what makes the kiss nice

and after you guys had used up all your tokens, you’d combine your tickets and pick something together

your prizes would mostly consist of candy and him insisting he get you a plastic gem ring so you can always remember your first date together

it was also his little, strange way of asking you for a second date

levi ackerman: art museum

unlike connie, he’s not super energetic

so a museum is right up his alley

levi’s a bit awkward, he doesn’t really know how to talk to you

and especially since you’re lovely, his words jumble together and he gets all flustered

so a nice, quiet museum exhibit is perfect for him

it’s a nice balance between casual and formal, so you both dress nice but aren’t restricted by the need to be super polite and stuff

he’d probably like it when you try to imitate the poses that are shown in the paintings or sculptures

just imagine the soft chuckle he’d be unable to prevent from escaping his lips which then melts into a soft smirk

beautiful, beautiful lad

he probably wouldn’t join you though, he doesn’t want to embarrass himself

he just smiles at you and stares at the art, reading the background info they give on those little plates near them

but he would notice when you stare at him

he could be looking at some art made during the dutch golden age, but as soon as your head slightly tilted in his direction, his cheeks would HEAT up

you almost asked him if he was feeling alright he was so red

but as the date went on, levi really just thought about how much he enjoyed your presence

and he’s not a wicked talkative guy so being able to feel comfortable with someone even if you aren’t talking or doing much is pretty important to him

as the date concludes, levi finally works up the courage to place his hand on your shoulder, asking if there was anything else you wanted to see before the museum closes for the day

his face might be bright red, but the smile you give him makes him feel a little less embarrassed

what can you say, you’ve got charm 💅

hange: the fucking zoo

ok i won’t lie when i got the idea of hange taking you to the zoo for your first date i thought it was so funny and idk why

like they’d be so excited that they’d nearly forget that they’re on a date with you

they’d drag you around from exhibit to exhibit, pointing out the exact breed of tortoise or some really strange fact about the zebras without looking at the little description panel in front of the exhibit

it’s pretty comical

but then randomly, when you guys are sitting down and eating some fries from one of the concession stands, they start going on a rant about animal cruelty and how a lot of zoos don’t treat the animals properly

and you’re just sitting there like “what 🧍‍♀️” cuz they’re mood changed so quickly LMAO

and as soon as their rant started, it finishes and they’re rushing you to the reptile exhibit

they’d probably try to figure out if they could hold one of the snakes

you’d have to drag them out of there before they start harassing one of the workers into letting them hold a snake

they’d also give all of the animals names only to forget them in 2 seconds

“hey, robert, it’s good to see you again!” “hange, i thought you named them dante?” “oh... did i? 😁”

however there’s probably like one animal they absolutely despise and idk why but i feel like it’s parrots

y’all would be walking through this rainforest exhibit, birds flying from tree to tree and the whole time they’re cursing the birds under their breath for no reason at all

just an angry person walking through a rainforest exhibit, cursing out birds

pretty normal if you ask me

however, the date itself is pretty casual and almost feels like you guys are just hanging out

or it would if they didn’t ask you out on another date before dropping you off at home, kissing your cheek as their farewell

pieck finger: café

very simple and quaint

i feel like pieck has a coffee addiction and always puts her in a better mood

so what better place to go on a date then a café?

she’s definitely an iced coffee drinker, and will occasionally go for a hot drink but usually iced coffee is her go-to

and if you get a coffee or tea that she also happens to like, you’re already practically golden in her eyes

since pieck has a very soothing and lowkey nature, i can see the date being much more just like a conversation with someone you’ve known for forever instead of interview-y which is something i’ve found coffee/lunch/dinner dates to be a bit like

but pieck knows how to keep things interesting and she’s a pretty calming person to be around so all is well

i also can’t see her getting super nervous before the date

she seems pretty calm unless in high-stress situations, but even then, she’s pretty level-headed

but since she’s so calm, it makes you wonder if she really cares for the date

and of COURSE she does, she’s so excited about it

it’s just the way pieck is

but as the date continues, she’d probably start to tease you by playing footsies under the table

you gotta keep the date interesting, you know?

you guys would talk about your interests, family, friends, shows you’re watching

literally just anything and everything that’ll allow you guys to get a feel for each other

and if all goes well she’ll definitely suggest another date ;)

also don’t expect to leave without her either writing something cute on your cup, pressing a lip-stick stained kiss to your cheek that matches the one surrounding the rim of her cup, or a promise that your game of footsies will continue next time you see each other

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f1nalboys · 3 years

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Hi, I have been reading your blogs and love it! It's so nice to find someone who loves slashers too haha. If it's not a bother, I'd like to make a request. With The Lost Boys where the reader ends up stopping in the TLB movie universe. She gets confused at first but quickly recognizes everything, especially the boys. That being the case, she tries to help them by warning about the frog brothers. How would they react? Sorry if it got confusing lol.

hi there!! so sorry for the long wait but i really enjoyed writing this request!! I hope you enjoy it :)

WARNINGS: none

WORD COUNT: Approx. 1460

You had never been more confused before in your life. One minute you were in bed, half asleep, scrolling for a video to watch on your phone and the next you’re laying on the beach. You were sitting in the sand now, looking around trying to figure out 1. Where the hell you were and 2. Why the hell you were here.

There was a boardwalk just behind you and it was absolutely bustling with people. Most were dressed… differently than you were used to, but that’s not what made you freak out. It was turning to your left and seeing the Santa Carla welcome sign. Santa Carla. There’s no way you were here, right? It had to be a dream.

The sound of yelling caught your attention and you nearly shit yourself at the sight in front of you: four men in familiar clothing arguing with a beefy motorcycle man. One had platinum blonde hair, bordering on white, and he was smoking a cigarette with a smug look on his sharp features. Directly to his right was a taller, long-haired man with no shirt but a leather jacket on.

Holy shit. You blink your eyes hard, pinching yourself hard on the arm until the skin began to throb. You weren’t waking up. This wasn’t a dream, or, at least, wasn’t one you were waking up from. You stand, extremely aware of how differently you were dressed compared to the people around you, and you make your way towards the men. They had finished arguing with the man and were now standing around talking to one another.

“Hey!” You call, instantly slapping yourself in your mind. ‘Hey?’ Why would you try and get their attention anyways? The four turn towards you and you watch as David, because the closer you get the more you realize this was real, cocks an eyebrow at you. Paul and Marko were whispering to each other, large grins plastered onto their faces, while Dwayne watched you walk towards them silently.

“Do we know you?” David asks, his voice having an edge to it. You gulp, your heartbeat picking up speed and David grins at you. He could hear it. He takes a step towards you, closing the gap, and the others follow suit. They walk circles around you like a lion waiting to pounce on the injured gazelle. “I don’t think we do. I’m D-”

“David, I know. You’re Marko, Paul, and Dwayne.” You say, your voice much more confident than you actually were. David's grin drops instantly, his eyebrows scrunching together. He takes another drag from his cigarette, dropping it and stamping it out with his foot as he glances you up and down.

“How the hell do you know that?” Marko asks though it seems he’s more curious than angry. You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to figure out the best way to tell them that wouldn’t make you sound crazy, but nothing came up.

David’s hand outstretches and grabs ahold of your chin, gripping it tightly and forcing you to look at him. His eyes darken. “He asked you a question.”

“It’s a long story and it won’t make sense to you, honestly. I’ll tell you if you let me go.” You bargain and thankfully David obliges. He drops his hand to his side and raises an eyebrow, waiting for you to talk. You take a look at the other three men who were all waiting with various levels of annoyance and intrigue. You sigh.

Almost three hours of talking and answering questions later, you were finally finished telling them what you knew. You were now at a random restaurant, sitting on one of the outdoor tables, picking at fries. They had oh so graciously bought them for you halfway through your story which seemed to be draining their energy.

“So, let me see if I’m understanding you correctly. You’re telling us that you’re not from here and are instead from a place where we are… in a movie? And that it talks about us being… ya’ know?” You nod. David was on his fifth cigarette now and looked genuinely confused. “None of this makes sense.”

“Yeah, but I’m just telling you what I know,” You say, popping a fry into your mouth. Marko was absolutely riveted by your story and he had continued to interject, asking questions or correcting small details of what you said. Paul looked confused but you came to learn that was just his resting face.

“So… what now?” Dwayne asks, leaning over and grabbing a fry from your tray. He had been quiet this entire time, only speaking to tell Marko and Paul to shut up so he could hear you. You shrug. It’s not an everyday thing for you to get transported into one of your favorite movies and have to talk to the four people you had a crush on since the first time you ever watched the film.

“Maybe you got put here to tell us something… maybe warn us? This is awesome! It’s like that ‘Back to the Future’ movie or something,” Paul says and Marko nods excitedly. Dwayne seems to consider this and shrugs. David is the only one who doesn’t seem fully convinced.

“Who’s the head vampire?”

“Max.”

“... You’re right,” David says, displeased. He takes a swig of his now-warm beer and grimaces slightly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He kept staring at you, trying to figure you out and it was really starting to get to you. Sure you had always day-dreamt about staring into those icy-blue and green eyes but it was a completely different story now that he was doing so in a not-so-friendly way.

Marko throws an arm over David's shoulder and shakes him a bit, trying to get him to smile. “Come on, Dave! This is cool!” He turns to you once again and leans in close. You catch a whiff of his scent which was practically intoxicating; sea salt, hair gel, and nail polish. “So, how does the movie end?”

“Uhh… not that great, at least for you guys.” You say, grimacing at their expressions. You did not think this through. “You guys and Max kinda get killed…”

“Killed? By who?” Dwayne asks, his eyes narrowing slightly. Even though he didn’t believe you fully, you knew far too much about them for him to completely blow you off.

“Michael. Well, Michael, his brother, the frog brothers, and Star.” Their faces contort at the names and you realize that you may have gotten here before any of them had met the others. “You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?”

“Star, yeah, but we just met her yesterday. Haven’t gotten her back to our place. Who the hell are the frog brothers?” Paul asks and, right on time, two boys sprint past your table, comics in hand, cursing at whoever they were running after. One was in a camo shirt and a red bandana tied around his forehead while the other wore a grey sleeveless shirt.

“That’s the frog brothers.” The four men pause before erupting into laughter. Those two losers had a part in their deaths? Yeah, right. “Seriously; they know about vampires and they’re the reason you four get caught. Just… try and steer clear of those people, alright? And if you haven’t turned Laddie yet, don’t.”

You scrunch your eyes in pain as your head begins to throb. You can hear the four men in front of you talking but you can’t make any of it out. A buzzing sound fills your head and your hands find a place over your ears, trying to stop the pain that has erupted in your brain. Right as you think your head is about to explode the noise stops.

Your eyes opened and you’re no longer on the boardwalk. You were in bed, a random video playing on your phone. It was considerably darker outside now and if you really concentrated you could almost smell the cigarette smoke that had been wafting around you for the last few hours. Smiling, you turn your phone off and curl into bed. That was the most realistic dream you’ve had yet.

Back in Santa Carla, the boys were still seated at the boardwalk, gaping at your now empty chair. One second you were there and the next you were gone. David hadn’t taken his eyes off of you and yet you had vanished.

“Huh. I think we should go talk to Max,” Marko says, standing up. Paul and Dwayne nod, standing as well, but David stays sitting. His eyes were still on your chair. Dwayne places a hand on his friend's shoulder, pulling him from his thoughts.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

#s1mping4slashers masterlist #s1mping4slashers answers #s1mping4slashers works #s1mping4slashers writing #anon req #the lost boys #paul the lost boys #dwayne the lost boys #david the lost boys #marko the lost boys #david tlb #marko tlb #dwayne tlb #paul tlb #slasher oneshot

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thegodshavehorns · 3 years

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Dave Strider and the Hollowed Heart (4/5)

Chapter 4: Roguish Heart, Maiden Time

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are fifteen years old.

You don’t see Aradia anymore. Maybe the goddess mentioned something to Nepeta, because she never brought you to the hospital again after what happened to your Bro.

But, at night, you dream of her. Weird dreams that make you shiver. Dreams of dark curls and painted lips and slender fingers caressing your chest, dreams of a low, musical voice like the tinkling of bells, dreams of eyes the color of dried blood. You wake in a sweat and forget them, only to have them creep back into consciousness during the day, slipping through the deep canals of your brain like slick black oil.

You stopped going to school almost immediately, but the truancy bot never broke down your door. Didn’t have a job for a long time, either, but they didn’t kick you out of your apartment. Nepeta keeps your kitchen stocked with apple juice and sugar cereals and a thousand kinds of tea and she was about to bring in another cabinet before you told her to cut it out.

Sometimes weeks go by and you barely see her at all. You can understand that. It isn’t her fault. She has galaxies and galaxies to maintain, and she isn’t like Aradia, she can’t be in two places at once. But you miss her so much, and sometimes you think that she’s the only one who understands. And the other gods... they do scare you.

John is too wrapped up in his own problems. Rose isn't close to anyone, really. You'd have thought Jade would be able to empathize, but maybe she's just too Zen to question the gods, never mind about her grandpa and why they didn’t save him, and maybe she knows something you don’t. But it hurts too much, and if understanding means you don't care anymore then you don’t want to understand.

You don’t know what you would do without Nepeta. Maybe the other gods can be scary, but she’s your oldest friend.

The apartment still gets managed by SkaiaNet, a front company that handles work for the Mage and some of the other gods. For obvious reasons, the gods have more than a passing interest in you and your upcoming apotheosis, and they make sure to keep your head above the water. You wouldn’t have to pay for food either, but your shitty comics and shittier raps are enough to make you a little money and you want to feel at least a bit like you can manage on your own.

It’s 2:00 AM and the television has been running forever now and your eyes are starting to glaze over— you should really think about getting to bed— when you hear somebody move in the apartment. You don’t know how they got in or why you didn’t hear them playing with the locks but your hand goes to your sword all the same. Those are questions you can figure out later.

When you turn around the sword drops from your hands. All your questions too.

“Bro!”

Aradia is there too, and you try to ignore her. You can force answers out of her some other time, even if you have to stand next to every dying body in the city until she deigns to talk with you. Right now, Bro’s here. He's wearing the same clothes he did the day he was hit, but he hasn't been hit, so he will be hit, so he’s still going to die. But for just a moment, that truth is lost in the painful joy that he’s here, he’s actually here.

Ignoring his protestations that he's fine, he's not hurt, you lead your Bro to the couch so that he can sit down and get some distance from the goddess. But still she follows you, a silent red shadow. She doesn't matter.

How much time do you have?

“G-goodbye,” you say, stumbling over the words. “In advance. In case she doesn’t give us any warning.”

Your Bro seems tired, distant, but he wants to see what you’ve been up to, so you bring over your comics and talk about your music. You try to shoot the shit, like you used to, but it's like a heavy, bloody cloud is hovering between you, two years thick. Two years, he's been in the grave.

Meanwhile, Aradia is there, too. She's there, she doesn't matter, but she's there, burning just out of sight like a hot black scar across what should be a moment between just you and Bro. You feel so tense, painfully aware of every sound she makes. She shifts her weight, takes a few steps, and runs her hand along your turntables, and you want to grab her wrist to shove her away from your records, want to know what her fingers would feel like against yours.

Gods, Dave. Focus. Bro's here.

You brew him up a pot of tea, this new kind that Nepeta introduced you to the other month, but you don’t mention her specifically. Neither of you bring up the gods, or anybody else for that matter. You try not to think about how this is only a brief reprieve. You try not to glance too obviously in Aradia's direction. Thank the gods for your shades, nice mirrored ones, a gift from John.

Aradia is moving, and the sound of her approaching footfalls makes you shiver. When she lays a hand on your shoulder, you freeze. Her touch is warm. For a moment, you can't see, you can't think.

Too soon, her hand leaves, and she hasn't said a word but you know what she means. It’s time. It’s fucking time and no, you’re not having this. He’s going to stay, even if it breaks time itself, and— You turn around to face her, to tell her that, but she's gone. Bro is gone. The apartment is as empty as a gutted Jack-Noir-o-lantern.

She just killed him. She could have saved him so easily, let him stay here in the future with you, but instead she brought him back in time to the accident and left him there, for the car to hit him a second or a minute later and he’s dead and she did it to him. You’ve been so angry, so long, at the driver, at the car, at the fucking manufacturer, but it’s her, it’s her fault.

When Nepeta comes over the next morning she finds you on your knees like a good little disciple, repeating Aradia Megido’s name every minute to make sure that she hears every foul word that spills from your lips. And even though you won’t take a second from issuing curses to acknowledge her presence, she takes you in her arms anyway.

She waits there like that until you finally run out of words, your throat almost too raw for you to speak anymore.

“Nepeta… Am I a bad person?” you croak. “Is it normal… to hate somebody this much?”

“Shoosh…” she whispers. “Shoosh…”

“I just… hate her and I just hate her…” You are shaking. “Like I…”

“Like you want to kill her?”

“No. I want to hurt her. Over and over and… make her feel like I do.” You aren’t even sure what you’re trying to say. You can’t say what you want. You can’t say you want to grab her, tear her apart, squeeze her neck, make her beg—

The expression on Nepeta’s face is unreadable, and the only thing that you can think about is how disappointed she must be in you right now. You bury your face in her shirt. To hide from her. To hide from the world and especially your own heart.

“Shoosh… Dave, shoosh…”

It’s hard hating somebody this much. It’s hard, and nobody understands. Least of all yourself.

#dave strider #bro strider #Aradia Megido #nepeta leijon #dave strider and the hollowed heart #godstuck fic #homestuck fanfiction #homestuck #godstuck #revision

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

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HS^2 bloggin’ upd8 2020-01-17

Alright, morningblogging yesterday’s 2020-01-17 upd8 to Homestuck^2 let’s go! Spoiler-free again. I kinda don’t want even the next chapter names image-spoiled above the cut anymore so I’m going to have to figure out WHAT to put above the cut in these liveblog posts for visual reinforcement... a unique silly icon? Going back once I’m done with the upd8 and posting something non-spoilery but weird-looking out of context?

Eh, can’t be assed. Just know that after this I’m going to pony up for the Patreon commentary and skim it for anything plot-useful to y’all (in a separate post). Let’s get started.

Okay, what’s next: Any bonuses? Oh, none! Phew. Unless those are coming faster too and just staggered differently, which would mean I gotta overcome my irrational pre-Homestuck-reading anxiety even MORE often. :T

No Homestuck you don’t GET to ask how my-- ah, right. :P

(FYI, HS^2 has been good to my emotions so far, quite a balm for the epilogues, so once I START reading I’m usually fine; but after being hurt so badly how could I possibly convince my lizard brain to trust it until it’s right in front of me? Seriously, just hearing that the upd8 has landed messes me up a bit until I come fix it by reading w/ y’all here.)

Okay, so whose feelings? As much as I’ve been waiting for Jade, I hope this isn’t about Jade.

> ==>

Ah fuck, we’re finally with the Pursuit Crew. Bracing myself. That means we get to see probably sleeping Jade ( :C ), full-swing DaveKat (approving nod), the first canon onscreen look at masculine-mode Roxy (<3), a probably pretty pissed off Kanaya (possibly either the feelings target, the one Saying How Are Your Feelings, or both), and uh... did they drag Callie along? Or leave her back there with her meta freakout? Probably left her back there, but... hm.

Let me turn up the brightness on this screen to sear these next pages into my retinas. (Also, it feels odd to still be using a four-person “==>” for these, although if Jade is still asleep the numbers might fit on both ends... :c )

> ==>

I don’t think Dad is in the spacefaring business, so this is probably one of Jake’s shittier spaceship designs.

> ==>

...well that’s a touch disturbing. Is that a Jade-occupied bed or are those just pillows?

Oh what the fresh fanfic’y heck is this command.

> i enter.

Okay that’s great. I got a kick out of that.

JADE [in calliope red]: the prince’s power grows.

--but that’s not. That explains the narrative command text, it’s alt!callie talking through a still conked-out Jade. Please let her wake up between speak-throughs, please tell me you’ve learned that trick?? I already know you’re gonna pull an “oh she was asleep pretty much all of those THREE YEARS OF TRAVEL” thing on me and that’s hard fucking enough to deal with.

KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST!

He’s actually using the full curse correctly, huh?

...These commands. Guess part of the puzzle is how much alt!Callie is being typically morbid and how much she might actually be wising up enough to get a kick out of this.

> the knight of blood falls.

DAVE: dude can you chill for like even a single fucking second DAVE: also are you ok

Has CallieJade chilled for even a single second this entire trip?? Is he asking just if Karkat’s okay or Jade too???

--yeah I’m overblowing things out of nervousness. Just wait and see a bit, boots.

Alt!Callie has at least learned to be more of a smartass:

> karkat is characteristically appreciative of the alarm call.

Shirt trade Karkat, nice. And uh, Jade’s dress sure is a... dress. Hm.

(Did alt!Callie alchemize adjustments to did she just luck out to have a red-symbol’d Bec belt and accent leggings? I’d prefer the former, because as much as it would be acceptable within Homestuck proper, using the transition between the epilogues and this new-author’d work to just HAPPEN to give her a fitting outfit without an excuse via providence is kind of lazy.)

KARKAT: OH, PARDON THE FUCK OUT OF ME FOR OVERREACTING A LITTLE WHEN MY GOOD FRIEND "POSSESSED JADE" BUSTS INTO MY RESPITEBLOCK AT 5 AM! KARKAT: NEXT TIME I’LL JUST PULL THE COVERS BACK AND LET HER CLIMB IN! JADE: i am uninterested in that scenario. KARKAT: GREAT! POSSESSED JADE ISN’T EVEN HORNY! HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

...please let that mean he’s not used to her being possessed all the time and she wakes up sometimes. PLEASE.

DAVE: but im pretty sure i locked that door JADE: i unlocked it with my mind. DAVE: fuck KARKAT: FANTASTIC. JADE: the prince’s powers are growing, but so are mine.

Dave, I’m pretty sure regular-ass no-Green-Sun Space powers can flip a few lock tumblers too. (--though, I guess from context this was a Jakeship technolock. Confirmation on the ship’s bad taste in design. --I think I’m foggily remembering it said in the Epilogues that they took one of Jake’s ships just like Dirk did, too... man, being depressed so much by the Epilogues sure took a lot out of my ability to recall them decently.)

KARKAT: LIKE YOU DON’T FLOAT AROUND LIKE A CREEPY PIECE OF SHIT ALL DAY AS IT IS?

God DAMN IT she’s been asleep and possessed the whole fucking time.

> sleep is abandoned, coffee sought.

More obligatory DaveKat being cute, somehow only emphasized by the embarrassing glowing-with-power observer who doesn’t really get any of it.

Ah, here we go:

> the rogue is also awake.

Oh huh. Cool!

Hero outfit, understated... her his choice of heart-shades color-coded to stand out from Dave more to avoid further mistaken identity cases. Works well! (Holy shit I only JUST remembered at the end to go back and correctly gender Roxy as him, that was close. I blame the epilogues for a lack of visual reinforcement; I shouldn’t have as much trouble soon enough. Seriously, I don’t remember ANYTHING without visual reinforcement, I think that’s why I remember so much of Homestuck proper so clearly.)

KARKAT: OH SHIT, THERE SHE IS! I DIDN’T EVEN HEAR HER FOLLOW US! ROXY: sometimes a girls just got to get her drift on i guess ROXY: it be like that

ilu roxy.

I missed Roxy so much, you guys. I need more of him remarking on all this crazy shit if I’m gonna stay sane though all this. (And I need more of him and AWAKE JADE kicking ass independently or together if I’m going to continue to believe there’s justice in the world.)

> ==>

We rarely saw Rose drinking anything but the rare coffee in canon, but I think Kanaya would have gotten her plenty into tea, yes. Or at the very least, wanting the aesthetic of drinking tea with Kanaya would have gotten Rose into tea even if it never crossed Kanaya’s mind to try the stuff.

ROXY: well i mean who knows what she drinks now ROXY: dirk probs tossed the coffee machine out the space window right away ROXY: dude doesnt "believe" in "substances" > the prince is contemplated for a moment in silence.

FUCK, Dirk can see the narrative all the way out here??? No wonder alt!Callie’s forced to have possession turned on 24/7. That’s fucking disappointing. How the hell are we going to get any proper Jade time with THAT hanging over our heads? She’d only be able to do anything when Dirk’s knocked out, and maybe not even THEN!

I was virtually promised more of actual non-asleep Jade getting shit done in HS^2. Now there’s an even longer wait on it than I expected. This sucks.

(EDIT: BOY did I misread that link line. Thinking “is contemplated” meant is sitting contemplating, when it meant "is being contemplated by everyone here". That was dumb of me.)

*clicks that next link*

Oh my goodness, Roxy joined the Bird Hair Crew. It makes him look like a fucking asshole but I kind of love it.

KARKAT: IS THERE MILK?

I can’t believe Karkat is okay with drinking milk. --yes, culturally Trolls are more comfortable with animal excretions than we are, but you would’ve thought years of railing against Equius would have purged any tolerance the idea of milk from his psyche.

I guess Dave introduced him to cereal, and it was all over from there.

DAVE: this is more like a castle DAVE: a castle of idk DAVE: twenty something ennui

Sounds like a relatable mood. Especially considering Dirk probably decided to conquer reality out of almost nothing but twenty-something ennui.

Alright. You aren’t going to turn Kanaya into an alcoholic or anything on us are you?

> the knight of time seeks a sylph...

--this is the shittiest shipboard starship aesthetic.

> ...and finds her, momentarily.

WOW that looks fucking depressed. :(

> ==>

...okay you know what? Never mind. That outfit has wrapped straight back around into Trying Too Hard and is now hilarious.

DAVE: you ever feel like our whole lives are eventually gonna end up like this DAVE: just blasting through space on a sweeps long journey to ""somewhere"" chasing after or running from some vague enemy thats sometimes a god modded pet dog and sometimes your dad DAVE: without the faintest fucking idea of whats going to happen when we get there DAVE: thats a little specific but you know what i mean

Why do you think the epilogues upset us so much? We thought we’d won free of that bullshit.

> ==>

Oh jesus christ that’s the most depressingly sad I’ve ever seen Kanaya drawn. :C

--Karkat got you to watch Serendipity? That’s amazing, Dave.

KANAYA: You Arent Reminding Me Of Her As I Rarely Think Of Anything Else KANAYA: I Close My Eyes And I See Her KANAYA: I Keep Them Open And I See Her

Fuck.

Y’know how little showing these two in love and actually HAPPY together we’ve seen in this entire comic and its subworks? Despite them having spent at least a few happy years together we only saw in tiny screenclips? And how Candy alluded super hard that they most likely couldn’t get that in this real timeline where shit’s going down?

Seriously, FUCK. You could at least pretend to give us some hope, here.

Oh no, don’t ask for the nursery story, Dave. Unless it turns out to be a funny one or a Rose twist on an old story or something. Which it probably is, I should stop worrying.

> ==>

KANAYA: Oh Its A Wriggler Story About A Young Prince And The Beloved Flower He Loved And Lost DAVE: flower DAVE: like a plant KANAYA: Its A Fairytale Dave DAVE: right KANAYA: A Singular Wild Rose He Failed To Cherish When He Had Her KANAYA: And His Journey Of Discovering What She Meant To Him All Along KANAYA: Culminating In A New Quest To Find Her And Win Her Back

Dirk you PIECE OF SHIT did you rewrite the narrative of the fucking STORIES SHE TOLD CHILDREN?!?? Does the fact that alt!Callie is only in the present mean he can rewrite ANY past event we didn’t literally SEE??? FUCK you. Seriously fuck all of this.

Please tell me she was kidding just then, or realizes there’s fucking something wrong with what she’s saying and getting angry or.

(EDIT: shoutyourporpoise replied: "Hey, idk If you picked up on this, but the 'nursery story' Rose told to the wigglers is just The Little Prince, which is maybe a BIT early for them to read, but I don't think that's a case of Dirk changing the narrative; its just Rose being Too Adult as usual." Oh, damn, I didn't even CATCH that it was that story. That makes all of this a lot more forgivable, even if pretty unforgivably leaning into the fiction that Dirk used to brainwash and kidnap her. Maybe that's exactly why it worked -- fiction, a story so blazed into the public consciousness? Hm. Thanks, shoutyourporpoise.)

KANAYA: But In A Way I Feel As If It Is the Greater Universe Trying To Tell Me Something

Mother fuck I’m even going to have to see our protagonists warped by Dirk when they’re ostensibly FULLY SHIELDED aren’t I. There’s only so much of that I would be able to take, you know.

KANAYA: It May Simply Stem From My Longing To See Her Again And How Much Is Indicative Of Something More Sinister KANAYA: She Is A Goddess Of Light And The Only Of Her Kind We Know Is Alive After All KANAYA: Maybe Shes Wrested Dominion Of The Entire Concept In All Its Appearances Within This Frame Of Reference

Hm. Well, it being a product of Rose’s ascension instead of Dirk’s is possibly a more charitable take, with Ultimate Rose projecting the delusion enforced on her backward, visible to past Rose’s Sight when she isn’t paying attention and thus paving the way for Dirk to paradoxically exploit that “ideal” as something Lighty and Important and “Perfect”. I still don’t fucking like it though.

> ==>

DAVE: sorry i know you say you got your badass monster powers but kanaya you look tired as hell DAVE: not that im tryna psyche you or whatever but youre waxing poetic in the dark which i guess is maybe on brand but still

Yyyep.

DAVE: unless terezi is lurking in the vents somewhere and now that i bring that up its actually not out of the question so im kind of gonna be thinking about that one for a while

Pffff.

DAVE: youre the only person i know whos still basically the same as when i met you

--Which is kind of going to have to change, right? She’s got some other cosmic purpose ready to change her a little more than she changed pre-human-troll-meetup, you’d think.

> ==>

Cute as hell.

> ==>

KANAYA: How Are Your Feelings

There’s the title drop. I’d think Dave’s doing pretty well, considering? Still fucked over by Dirk betraying and tricking Rose away who he’s been close with all his life, but.

> ==>

DAVE: except sometimes your best friend disappears and your other best friend goes into a ghost coma and your third best friend fucks off to space with your dad DAVE: the dude youve spent the last 7 years convincing yourself isnt an egomaniacal anime villain DAVE: and who isnt actually lying in wait to completely decimate your life and your emotions and shit

Ah... yeah. A little worse than my casual list, huh? Forgot that Jade vanishing into a possession-coma for THREE FUCKING YEARS is going to be hard on people inside the comic too, fuck.

DAVE: maybe it was naive to think that a bunch of twenty something trauma victims could run a society

I was honestly surprised they TRIED to run society at all. Jasp even just highlighted a big reason why not in the bonuses.

DAVE: cool how earth c existed for centuries then we show up and manage to ruin society in seven fucking years

Well, the trolls got THEIR lesson on why they didn’t deserve to rule over their new universe like gods; I guess some of y’all needed that lesson too?

DAVE: every serious conversation i have inevitably falls apart into riffing on a casual acquaintances ass

True.

Dammit, Dave didn’t feel like he could just be Some Guy even on Earth C. :(

> ==>

...don’t think I’ve forgotten that nursery story, though. I don’t want to think that it was something that ACTUALLY past happened, especially not without manipulation. Like maybe past Rose was foreseeing the false purpose that Dirk wrote for her or the like, a cooperative misunderstanding between the two instead of Dirk or Rose literally reaching back in time.

> meanwhile...

KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK AM I EVEN ASKING? HE’S OBVIOUSLY NOT FINE. KARKAT: ARE ANY OF US? ARE YOU? ROXY: not rly KARKAT: EXACTLY.

--Oh right. I remember that Callie and Roxy were going reasonably steady in Meat even though it was only alluded to, she didn’t freak out and stay awol or what have you. That’s good to remember. But it means Roxy deliberately left her behind to go on this dangerous quest, for years. :C

KARKAT: KANAYA BARELY EVEN TALKS, CALLIOPE WON’T LEAVE THEIR CABIN, JADE JUST FLOATS AROUND LIKE A CREEPY BALLOON THAT’S MOSTLY MADE OF HAIR.

Oh, SHIT. I should have read one line further. They DID bring her. Alt!Callie being here too must really FUCK with her. ...maybe she can actually learn to accept that alternate way her life might’ve played out, though?

KARKAT: THE REALLY FUCKED UP THING IS I MIGHT BE THE MOST OKAY OUT OF ALL OF US, WHICH IS HOW YOU KNOW SHIT HAS REALLY GONE GLOBES UP.

Quite true.

ROXY: ur kinda an intense dude anybody ever tell u that KARKAT: NO.

Pff.

> ==>

KARKAT: AGAINST PRETTY MUCH ALL ODDS, AND DESPITE ME NOT DESERVING ANY OF IT, I ENDED UP GETTING PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING I WANTED. KARKAT: OVER AND OVER AGAIN. KARKAT: SOMETIMES IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE WHATEVER SLATHERING MONSTROSITY OF A COSMIC HELLBEAST THAT PUT ALL THIS SHIT INTO MOTION...ACTUALLY LIKES ME?

Well, if you want to blame Lord English for instance... we never saw Caliborn and Karkat interact much, but the parallels between the two were drawn so severely that Caliborn was basically the idealized, multiverse-threatening Ultimate Kismesis that he’d always dreamed of. And operated against him without him even ever quite realizing it.

If a level of “respect” went from Caliborn to Karkat, too, from his Lord-Englishy vision nigh-omnipresent, then this outcome isn’t very surprising at all.

> ==>

(I don’t quite feel I get why Roxy shifted to this exasperated-Dave expression, but I get logically that he’d been waiting for Karkat to make a breakfast choice... Homestuck proper rarely pulled a “last line said corresponds to next-panel’s expression” without either leaving the conversation blank or having the NEXT lines of the conversation reinforce it, to prevent this inelegant misunderstanding. Andrew was really damned talented in getting his point across visually, in that regard. Just like, that careful visual intent delivery.)

Alright, I guess that’s it for this short upd8! Meeting the pursuit crew was both more and less difficult than I expected. Hopefully I get desensitized a bit as the characters continue to feel semi-almost-sorta-fine.

I have NO idea how this group is gonna work as a proper crew when we get to whatever weird other-players’ session this shit is going down in, though.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots #spoiler #spoilers #shoutyourporpoise

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runs-in-the-family · 6 years

Text

Look Up

There are things that he remembers and things that he doesn’t. The latter makes the former harder to understand sometimes.

He doesn’t know when it’d become his signature. One curl. Open shirt. His mother’s pendant clinging to his chest. But when he looks at himself, he feels strong. Feels safe.

He can’t recall much of his sixth birthday except for two things. The first is his mom baking him a cake that looks like his teddy bear, Frank. He thinks it’s awesome. The kids at his birthday party, all of whom are just those few months older than he is, think it’s lame. He can tell, when they sing “Happy Birthday”, that they don’t mean it.

It’s minute but it’s the first time that the damaging concept of ‘being liked’ enters his mind.

The other thing he can remember from that day is the gift he receives from his uncle. Tony, his mother’s brother, is a lot of fun. He turns his music up high so that Billy can shout the wrong lyrics as loud as he wants. He always smells like cigarettes and Billy’s too young to understand sensory associations and why the foul odor that clings to his uncle’s clothes always makes him so happy.

Tony’s gift is a comic book. Billy has a good grip on reading, for his age anyway, but some of the words are tricky. Tony stays after the party and helps him read it. There’s a guy in red and blue with a big ‘S’ printed on his chest. He flies around and beats up bad guys. He’s strong. He’s awesome.

A few days later, Billy starts getting picked on because of the awesome cake his mom made. When he goes home, knees and elbows skinned from meeting the ground so many times, he tearfully leaves Frank next to the garbage can.

He looks at the comic book that Uncle Tony gave him, still unsure of some of the words, but entranced by the pictures.

The next three birthdays kind of blur into one another. He knows that one year his mom made a cake that looked like a basketball. He also knows that less and less kids arrived at his parties each year.

By the time he’s nine, he’s got a small library of Superman comic books going in his room. All of them are from Uncle Tony. His dad won’t buy them so Tony comes up with any excuse he can to give Billy a present. When he’s sick, when he does well in school.

One day, he finally admits to his uncle that some guys in his class give him a hard time. He does so with a bloody nose and Tony pretends to be surprised by the revelation. He’s told that some people are just assholes and hearing a grown up curse in front of him makes Billy feel a bit cooler. Tony buys him another Superman comic.

The other kids start growing faster than he does and it makes things worse. Suddenly, pushing him onto the ground and stealing his stuff isn’t enough. He gets punched, he gets kicked, they even try choking him once. The name calling really gets to him. It ranges in severity from ‘whimp’ to ‘shithead’ but when someone calls him ‘faggot’ for the first time, he’s a little confused. He knows that it’s bad because they’re calling him one but he doesn’t know what the word means.

He makes the mistake of asking his mom when he gets home.

She calls the school. Then she calls Tony.

Billy’s uncle drives him a long way to reach a store that only sells comic books. He’s never seen anything like it. It’s the first time he finds out that some of the people who show up in Superman’s books have their own comics. Tony tells him that he can get four comic books if he wants. A guy at the store convinces him to get at least one that isn’t about Superman.

Tony drives slowly on their way back. He reminds Billy that some people are just assholes but he also says that that doesn’t mean he has to put up with it. He tells him about all the different ways a person can be strong and how just because he’s not as big as some of the guys at school doesn’t mean he isn’t tough. Billy half listens. More attention is focused on the cover of one of his new books. Classic Superman pose, pulling his shirt open to show off that bright ‘S’. Billy imagines that it works as a sign, to show how strong Superman is, and as a shield. It helps protect him.

When they get back home, Billy’s dad starts arguing with Tony. Billy’s mom sends him to his room and then follows a moment later. She shuts the door to muffle the yelling. She tells him that she loves him and that she’s sorry that he’s been having problems at school. She gives him a small medal. It has a picture on it that Billy can barely make out and the name “Christopher” is almost legible. She explains that “Christopher” will help to look after him but he doesn’t totally understand how.

He doesn’t see Tony anymore. His parents won’t mention him. He doesn’t get any new comics. “Christopher” doesn’t stop him from getting beaten up and called names.

Nobody shows up to his tenth birthday.

When he turns eleven, his mom is too sick to bake. He doesn’t have a party but, at his mother’s request, his dad buys a small cake from the grocery store. It doesn’t taste like hers.

A few months later, she passes away. It’s the first time in nearly two years that he sees Uncle Tony. His dad eventually agrees to let Billy go to the movies with his uncle.

Billy doesn’t get to go to the movies a lot. He has no idea what they are going to see. When he sees the poster, he smiles for the first time since his mom collapsed in the living room.

It’s been so long since he’s read his comics but seeing that bright ‘S’ shooting across the big screen is like a religious experience. The pictures in the books were one thing but he can’t describe what he feels watching that red cape billowing through the air. Billy doesn’t know anything about actors. When the credits start rolling and he sees the name “Christopher”, his chest feels like it’s about to collapse.

Tony tells him that they can stay sitting in the theatre as long as he wants, until he stops crying.

When his dad doesn’t want him around, Tony lets Billy stay at his place. He learns about lifting weights from Tony’s room mate, Dave, who says he’s still too young to lift but that he can watch and learn and do it when he’s older. Dave asks Billy to spot him and it makes Billy feel important.

During these visits, Tony lets Billy sleep in his bed and he says he’ll sleep on Dave’s floor. Deep down, Billy knows that the room he’s lying in is the spare of the two. He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t dwell on it.

Dave helps him with his homework and, one day, teaches him how to throw a punch. Tony gives Billy his first sip of beer but refuses to let him try a cigarette, warning him never to start.

One night, as he eats pizza with Tony and Dave, his dad shows up. He yells at Billy to get in the car and Billy complies without hesitation. He can hear yelling right up until he shuts the car door behind him. It’s a ten minute wait before his dad shows up in the car, red faced and out of breathe.

Billy is told he’s not allowed to visit his uncle again. His comics are dumped in the trash that night.

A few days later, he comes home from school with a busted lip and a blackening eye. He’s reprimanded for not fighting back and it’s the first time his father calls him ‘faggot’.

Puberty hits Billy like a bitch when he’s fourteen. He grows up and bulks out. He gets two summer jobs and buys a basic set of weights.

When he shows up first day of freshman year, it takes a while for some kids to recognise him. When they do, a lot of them seem to have new memories of what good friends they were. No one hits him. No one calls him ‘faggot’.

He can feel the pendant hanging hidden under his shirt.

There are things that he remembers and things that he doesn’t. The latter makes the former harder to understand sometimes.

Billy doesn’t know why loud music and the smell of cigarettes make him feel safe. He doesn’t know why he always wants his hair to have that one curl hanging down onto his forehead. He doesn’t know why he never takes his pendant off. Not the real reasons.

It’s part of his skin now. Always there, like a bright ‘S’ blasted on his chest. It makes him feel strong. It makes him feel tough. It makes him feel safe.

If he’d let himself remember, he’d understand why.

#billy hargrove #my fics #i don't know either lads #it's 4 a.m. that's my excuse #tagging as harringrove would be false advertising but i feel like that's the audience for whatever this is so #harringrove #i'm pretty sure lemon lovely was the one who posted the st. christopher medal info awhile back so #credit where credits due

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loiterer87 · 3 years

Text

So, the other year I got challenged to do some creative writing/flash-ficcy thing by a mate. I sent it to her and another mate who does writing sometimes for their opinions and they seemed to like it. Then I sat on it for ages because I do that sort of thing a lot...

Anyway, I decided sod it, let’s stick it up here and see what happens. Here’s a short, Urban Fantasy thing I wrote up t’other year featuring my character Dave from the Loiterers comic doing something his mates don’t know about...

A DECK OF MANY THINGS

Heidi texted me.

'Dave, you in town?”

It was winter and I was out with my studio mates, all of us had a different reason to celebrate. Mostly it was Christmas revelry, but each of us had our own reasons to be cheerful. I had just posted out the last three commissions of the year and was happy whiling away the rest of the day drinking. After replying, she sent me back another almost instantly.

“Ring me.”

I sighed, excused myself and slipped outside the pub.

“What?” I said. It wasn't exactly a winter wonderland outside, but it was cold enough. I wanted to get through this quickly and go back to my pint.

“Someone's got a Deck of Many Things.”

It's basically a pack of magic cards. Doesn't matter if it's your standard lucky pack of Fifty Two, a cursed Tarot set or someone just faffing about with an enchanted deck of Magic the Gathering, some of us of a certain generation of magic-users started calling them a Deck of Many Things. Yes, Gary Gygax has a lot to probably answer for.

“And this is important... how?”

“This someone's not supposed to have it.”

“Isn't stuff like that your job?”

Heidi is part of what can be described as a cross between a Neighbourhood Watch Association and a mystical security force. She'd say 'she walks the city, night and day, protecting us from threats, unseen and unheard... blah blah blah, prose of the purplest hues, etc.' It boils down to her and her group keeping everyone safe from dickheads with magic. Usually armed with a big stick.

“Normally, yes, but not right now.”

I could vaguely hear some singing in the background. It took slightly longer than I care to admit but eventually I realised what she meant. She was celebrating with her family. All of them.

“Oh.”

“Yeah...”

“...I'm at the point of merry right now.” I sighed.

“You're also the only person who's in town who answered.”

“...So, Deck of Many Things then...”

She told me that a seer had phoned her about it and that it was happening live. At the Cuthbert Broderick Wetherspoons.

I swore. Heidi noticed. I was about two minutes walk from there, if that, at another pub down the road.

There's a book, in a library somewhere called 'Like Attracts Like: A Study on Luck, Magic and Probabilty' by a guy called J. Ohljson. It's about how magic-users and magically-inclined folks essentially find themselves becoming weirdness magnets. I hate it. I was thinking about it and how much I hate it as I made my way across Millennium Square and up the stairs into 'Spoons.

It was busy. I couldn't immediately tell who the pillock with the Deck was so I headed up to the bar and ordered a drink.

“Don't tell me Heidi sent you!”

I looked up at the bartender. It was Lee. Lee doesn't like me.

“Evenin', Lee...”

“Of all the people she could've asked...”

“I was the only one who answered. We both have to deal with it. Now, what's going on?”

He looked at me distastefully. Probably trying to work out whether or not it was worth me helping the Watch.

“Look, while you're mentally wording your letter of complaint to Heidi and her lot, can you get us a pint please? I'm supposed to be celebrating tonight.”

His grimace increased, my smile became shit-eating. He responded by putting a pint glass full of water in front of me.

“My right, far end of the bar. Five of them.”

I downed my glass while stealing a glance in the direction Lee mentioned. I could see a small trio at the far end but...

“Three lads, two girls. One lad's nipped out for a smoke, not sure where the girl went.”

“You're definitely sure it's them?”

“Guy who got the first round went for all the really expensive shit. Paid contactless with a Queen of Diamonds under his actual card. Our till had a brief glitchy flicker and miraculously his bill was paid.”

“Is that it?!”

“Also, the guy outside is busy performing fire-breathing tricks right now.”

He nodded behind me. Looking round, he was correct. There was a drunken, braying idiot belching a jet of fire that'd impress a dragon. You know, if it had really low expectations. The crowd were amazed though. Very drunk, thankfully, but impressed.

The guy was clearly a student. Another glance at his friends inside confirmed it, all modern clobber and all pissed. It was coming up to Christmas after all. They were also watching their mate outside and one of them, the money man Lee mentioned, was idly thumbing through a half opened pack of playing cards.

“Definitely a Queen of Diamonds?”

Lee nodded, “Please don't wreck the place.”

I tried thinking of something clever to say but he had a point. Try as I might, and honestly, while my magic's not really that strong or destructive, sometimes things break. And the Cuthbert Broderick's facade is mostly glass.

Getting up, I left my bag on the seat and asked Lee to keep an eye on it.

“What you doing?”

“Piss. I need to think. Get us a proper pint while I'm gone.”

I left him before he could answer back and headed downstairs.

The toilets were probably the old cellar of the place. As you go further down, the nice smooth walls suddenly become old red brick. And the ceiling is really low. In the past I've bashed my head on it even with my head bent. I passed the communal sink area and into the gents.

As I went about my business, something was bothering me. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I felt as if there was a camera or something on me. Most unusual for the gents, normally everyone keeps to themselves. Snatching a quick glance around there was me and another guy. He had his eyes down. That wasn't it.

Then I heard a giggle. Not loud, like a little snicker that slips out. Again, there was no one else in the room. I carried on. Again, the giggle. Another look around and I thought I saw something for a second on my left. I pretended not to notice and sniffed. And there it was, a sickly sweet perfume in the air. It was almost as if it was peering over my shoulder. The smell was godawful and got up my nose in the worst way. I sneezed.

As I jerked my head left, force from the reaction driving it forward, it connected with solid air. I also distinctly heard a girl go “Ow, shit!”. I finished up, headed out and back upstairs.

“Yeah, they're proper magic cards.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young blonde walking past, tissue hiding a bloodied and broken nose, shooting a very dirty look in my direction. She headed straight for her friends with the cards.

Lee's face and shoulders dropped and he groaned. “We need to clear out the place, don't we?”

“Now now, not necessarily...”

“How's your thieving skills?”

I said nothing, then, “Let's not pull the fire alarm just yet! That's all I'm saying.”

I looked through my bag. There was very little actually useful in there. I grabbed my A6 sketch book and shoved it in my jacket pocket. Rifling through the pencil case I carry led me to grabbing a pencil, old wood and blunt lead job (probably HB), and the Magnum. A permanent marker so chunky, it has little practical purpose in my day job. This stuff however? Conjuring magic symbols and creating works which alter a tiny bit of reality is so much easier with a bit of kit which actually leaves a decent-sized indelible mark.

I chucked the rest at Lee, “Keep an eye on that, will you? Maybe also hang around the fire alarm.”

“...You're not going to make me regret calling this in, are you?”

I shrugged. Downed the beer I'd ordered for liquid courage and decided to do something stupid.

On the way outside I grabbed a glass of something clear off an empty table. In hindsight, I should probably have sniffed it before taking it but I was kind of drunk. It might've avoided how bad things got.

The fire-breather was still showing off when I got out the door. I shouted to the prick just as he was about to give it another round. He turned, flames flicking the corners of his mouth.

“Does that leave you with bad breath or does it just make everything taste like burnt toast?” I asked to him and the incredulous audience. He snorted derisively.

“No really,” I continued, “I would also resort to circus skills if I was that desperate for a shag at a fucking 'Spoons!”

That got his attention. He sneered, took a deep breath and as soon as I saw a flash of orange I threw the drink in my hand.

Turns out it was vodka.

There was a short flash in the guy's face as the vodka met the flame and then a lot of screaming. The crowd panicked and scattered while the fire-breather was on the floor frantically trying to put his face out.

As he slapped at his face and shirt, I sauntered over and picked up the card off the floor. The three of hearts. Turning back and there was a little commotion inside, no doubt my antics had got their attention in there too.

Amongst the people who'd just seen the fireworks were his friends. I tapped the window to properly get their attention. They looked, I showed them the card. Then tore it in half. I took a step back, tilted my chin up and thumped my chest in that unspoken way which translates to “Come on then.” I also saw Lee staring agog at that display of completely immature bravado. At him, I just shrugged. Then he went and pulled the fire alarm.

All the doors suddenly burst open, patrons and staff trying to get out of the building, I waited for the initial rush to subside before slipping in and heading up a nearby staircase to the mezzanine. Soon as I made it to the centre I got on my knees and pulled out the Magnum. The strong smell of the ink did not help with my beer-addled state and made it harder to concentrate of the magic as I drew.

I could hear angry voices below me as I neared completion. Peering down through the glass bannister, I could see the remaining card-wielders arguing. A second later, one spotted me. Shit. I took the marker to the glass and drew a seven pointed asterisk which looked like a shatter pattern. I capped the Magnum and held my drawing hand over it for about three seconds before smacking it as hard as I could.

Upon impact, the glass blew outwards like a bullet had gone through it. The fragments spiralled and contorted in the air like a flock of razor-sharp birds in flight before piling down at the four. The girl with the bloody nose screamed as the shards rained down. After they'd finished I saw her heading towards the exit screaming “That is it I am so done with this magic shit!” The ring leader tried to calm her down but she was having none of it.

“I don't care! It was funny when you nicked 'em but now I've got guys throwing glass at us! I'm going home!”

And that was the last I saw of her that night. Unfortunately, me listening in had also alerted them to my presence and one of the remaining two guys was beginning to head upstairs with a handful of cards. I turned to face him, only to hear the sound of a card deck being flipped through. He was gone.

Then he was behind me and all over my back. Fucking. Teleportation. I fell to the floor as he shouted something tough at me, I wasn't listening. All I was concentrating on was working the pencil out of my pocket. It was a lot harder than expected, what with his weight pressing down on top of me and what I was sure was another pair of arms trying to keep me pinned.

After retrieving it, I drove it point down, straight into the first hand I saw which wasn't mine. He screamed, the hand vanished back into nothingness and I managed to roll the guy off while he was dealing with the temporary phantom pain. I snatched the pencil up off the floor and headed behind one of the pub's decorative bookcases. The pencil's end was covered in blood. That was good, I whipped out the sketchbook and started some rudimentary Voo-doodling.

I stole a quick look at the guy; daft blond cow-lick, neck tattoo, white rugby shirt, before putting pencil to paper and sketching a quick headshot in blood and lead. He might have seen me, because just as I finished the last lines a bolt of lighting struck the case I was hiding behind and caught fire. I wiped the pencil on my jeans and ducked behind a table as another bolt arced overhead. And another striking the table leg. Clearly, his aim was off.

“God, this one's shit...” He said, throwing the card aside. I took the moment to finish off the ritual. I stood up, held the sketchbook image out and declared: “By book, blood and lead, I bind you!” He hurled a pint glass at me in response.

I was back behind the table when I remembered there was more to say. I held the book up again, “And in binding, your will is mine!” Bloody beer brain! Knowing my luck, it probably messed the spell's effects about.

He threw another. Yep, definitely not working properly, I thought. The teleport card made its presence again, this time startling me by having the guy appear in front of me. I swung both arms in panic as I saw him materialise in front of me. The spell did work though. Sort of. I saw him appear, then suddenly jump to the right, colliding hard with the railing. Okay. So, I couldn't control his complete will, just his direction.

I tested this by pulling the book back left, leading my new puppet back the other way into another bookcase. He charged at me, every direction the book pulled him merely annoying him. We ended up doing some strange violent dance, him throwing punches at me, me leading by book and dodging the odd fist. A jab came towards my kidney which was flung back towards a chair. Which smashed. This continued for a while, punches, dodges, the odd furniture being struck. Which I noted didn't always end in destruction. At some point, I also noticed that he had two cards left in his back pocket.

I snatched the pair when his back was turned and when he turned back, pulled the book straight up, this time the effect was different. Blondie staggered back like he'd been chinned with an uppercut. Even better, he staggered back and stood right over the thing I'd drawn earlier. A trapdoor. The floor beneath his right foot suddenly gave way and he fell through, only getting stuck fast as his crotch slammed into it, leaving him and his one free leg jutting awkwardly out of the hole.

At this point I should probably mention I have a habit of drawing undersized trapdoors. Don't know why, I just do. Maybe it's a time thing. Either way, what with the combination of dizziness and understandable pain on his face, I think he was done for this round.

Then everything around me was filled with broken glass. A lot of broken glass. Most of it smelling like some booze or another. After several cuts to my face and yet more holes in my jacket, I'd had enough. I was the floor when I started shouting, it was full on childish tantrum shouting, I'll admit it. I don't remember exactly what it was other than something along the lines of “Oh, will you just fuck off?” All of a sudden, the glass stopped. It fell to the floor like whatever had been holding it up had just dropped everything and left. Peering over the edge to the ground floor confirmed it.

Leading pillock was shouting at the only other remaining member of his little crew. She had another card in her hand and was heading for the door.

“What the fuck, Nat!?”

“I don't know, Bobby! He just shouted at me and I just want to go!”

“What!?”

“Don't you start! You got us into this shit! You-- Forget it, I'm off home!

And with that, she threw the card on the floor and stormed out. I laughed.

And then Bobby saw me. “Don't move!” I shouted. He didn't. I looked over at my hand. Still had Blondie's two remaining cards gripped tightly in it. I figured one must've been some sort of compelling voice thing. Looking back down, Bobby was still stood frozen. After some standing and stretching, I made my way back down to the ground floor.

“Alright then, tell us, “ I said, still holding the pair I had, “where'd you get these?”

“...”

I sighed, he still couldn't move. Whoever enchanted these things clearly didn't do a decent enough job, the do-what-I-say card took my words too literally.

“Uuugggh, alright! You can move, but tell me who you got the cards from!”

“I took them from this weirdo who lives in the same cluster as me at Beckett. He's into all that weird shit. Told me he made them himself. I thought it'd be a bit of a laugh to take 'em out.”

“Was he one of the lads here tonight?”

“Fuck off! He was on acid or something, I took 'em from his shelf and he didn't notice a thing. I even tripped on his coat on the way out and he didn't even flinch!”

I was about to ask him to hand over the rest of the deck, but I'd forgotten that 'You can move' has multiple meanings. By the time I'd started my next sentence, I had to quickly swap the back end of it for simply the word:

“MISS!”

And that was just seconds before I dodged out of the way of a chuffing great black battle axe burying itself into the staircase behind me. Thankfully, it was embedded deep enough into the wood that Bobby had to really work to unstick it. This gave me enough time to put some distance between us. I couldn't get another command out before he came swinging at me again! This time smashing a table. Then another. And one of the windows.

The wind blew a sharp cold draft through both of us and sadly, one of the two cards I had left in my hand. Bobby noticed this, grinned and raised the axe. I saw the card flit in the breeze before I saw the axe coming up and thought quickly.

I ducked, cringed and either shouted another command or screamed as the axe came down. It was not the most dignified way to die in this game, but really, I've yet to hear of one that is.

Then I noticed I wasn't dead. Bobby noticed too. He pulled the axe back and tried again. Swinging for my midsection. Again, nothing. Around this time, I'd stood up and flinched when he tried yet again to no avail. We both stared at each other confused. I felt myself confirming, yes I was still whole and intact while Bobby tested the axe on another table. Which smashed. I still had one card left and checked to see which it was. Then I grinned as I worked out what was going on.

It was the Joker. I turned it face down and quietly picked a piece of broken table leg off the floor and a half spilled glass of something. Bobby was trying to dislodge the axe from the floor. As I crept up, he must've realised something about the magic and dropped the card he was holding. The axe vanished, he picked it up again and the axe appeared in his other hand. He turned and thrust the blade towards my neck! Nothing. He still hadn't figured it out.

Not missing the moment I threw the mixture of broken glass and alcohol in his face! When he dropped the card again while shrieking was when I broke his nose with the table leg. As he laid writhing in a pool of many varying fluids, including some bodily ones, I stepped over him and retrieved the rest of the deck. Out of the fifty-four in the pack there was still about thirty plus. I flipped through them before pocketing them and digging out my phone.

There were three missed calls from Heidi and maybe three times as many texts.

“What the hell did you do!?!” Her voice was harsh and shrill with a mixture of concern and outrage. “Lee called and said you'd gotten into a full on war with the gang who had the deck!?”

“They were a bunch of drunk students...”

“Why didn't you just steal it!?”

“How?...”

She was silent for a good thirty seconds before asking, “Is it over, at least?” I looked around, even if I couldn't see the fire on the mezzanine, I could smell it. “I got the deck, yeah.” I stepped behind the bar and pulled my bag up onto it. Still talking to Heidi.

“Heidi, it's mostly cosmetic is the damage. Also, I had no idea what I was walking into and some of these cards have destructive properties!”

More silence. I dug out a compact mirror marked with stray correction fluid and a small pot of black corpse paint I borrowed from a band I'd done some work for in the past. Eventually she said, “When you say 'cosmetic'...”

“One of the guys tried electrocuting me and another had a big fuck-off axe! What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“...Alright, go home, Dave. At least the building's still standing. Can we talk later?”

I was applying the black paint around my eyes in the style of an old-school bank robber, “That'll be fine. Got to go now, need to paint my fingers.” I hung up and put my phone away before smearing the remainder of the paint on my fingertips.

The emergency services showed up just as I'd grabbed all my belongings from all the floors and walked out one of the broken ground floor windows. No one stopped me or even noticed. I've used the Burglar Mask trick so often I don't even try to sneak away from people anymore. With the mask over my eyes and fingers. No one can see me, not unless they try very hard. I surveyed the damage, several of the ground floor windows were broken as was one of the glass doors. There was the small glow of fire coming from the mezzanine and the whole ground floor was a mess of glass, liquid and splinters. I could even see Lee talking with one of the police on site all the while looking around for me.

I took a deep breath and decided to head home to sleep off the inevitable hangover.

It was about a week later when the whole thing about the Deck came up again. Heidi had rang to tell me that it had been destroyed. She was just calling to let me know and if any of the missing cards had been destroyed. Outside of the fire-breathing one and one or two others I'd ripped up I'd assumed the rest were taken by the fire. This seemed to satisfy her. After she hung up I went back to clearing out my messenger bag, there'd been a bit of debris inside since and it was starting to muck up some of the pages in one of my sketchbooks. Digging around led to me discovering what turned out to be the Queen of Diamonds.

It took another minute or two to remember, this was the magic money card. I put it to one side and grabbed the jeans I was wearing that night from the laundry bin. In the back pocket, beside a used tissue and forty three pence was another one. I must have put it in there and forgotten about it after the blonde guy smashed his balls on the floor. I considered ripping them up there and then, but...

I remembered I'm also a starving artist and a mage. Neither career was especially rewarding. So I decided to keep hold of the Queen for a rainy day. The other card was the Nine of Spades and I never did see what that one did. I still don't, come to think of it, but it may come in useful somewhere along the line.

#writing #original writing #short stories #urban fantasy #loiterers #magic

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lazyfartbouquet-blog · 6 years

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Read It For The Pictures 24: Dry Country by Rich Tomasso

NK: Welcome to Read It for the Pictures, the comic book Blog where we read it for the pictures! I’m Neil Kapit, and with me as always is the man who taught me how to properly eat a meat pie, Dave Clarke! How you doin’ Dave?

DC: Doing good Neil, enjoying a bright sunny early March day, riding my kangaroo around town, eating a vegemite sandwich, fosters, shrimp on the barbie, etc.

NK: So this week we're taking a break from DC's air quotes "new" hero line and doing something you picked, want to give some background on this?

DC: Yes, this time it was my pic and I wanted to get away from DC superheroes as much as possible so I picked Dry County #1 by Rich Tommaso. Initially just cos it was an image #1 but it seemed to be the perfect pic for what I was going for.

NK: And what you were going for was?

DC: The opposite of a DC superhero book. This is an autobiographical(??) slice of life story that seems to approach storytelling completely differently than Damage (tm) did. At least that was my read on it, how did you find the book?

NK: Let's hope we can discuss this book's merits on its own terms and not damn it with the faint praise of being a better story than the Terrifics, because I thought it was an exceptional piece of cartooning. It made me want to read other Rich Tommaso books like Spy Seal, which was described to me as "Tintin Noir".

DC: That is a very Tintin cover, but his art reminds me most of newspaper cartoons (which this protagonist of this story makes. That’s why I think it may be autobiographical not cos I did research or anything).

NK: The protagonist Lou Rossi lives in late 1980s miami, and while the time period isn't explicitly stated, the art leaves a lot of subtle cues to indicate the period. They include rotary phones, T-shirts for Nine Inch Nails and Social Distortion, and the fact that Lou is paying his bills as a newspaper cartoonist.

DC: A dip into the past where America was doing the bop and print wasn’t dead.

NK: Ahh the 1990s, a golden age when a little more than 1% of the population was contented and innocent, but I digress....

DC: One thing that’s going to limit our discussion is being unable to read this as a broad analogy of global politics. And also our limited experience with women. (Don’t act surprised folks were writing about comics on the internet).

NK: The plot is pretty simple, boy meets girl, boy wants to get with girl, girl is stuck in abusive relationship, boy keeps pursuing girl, and not sure where it goes next issue. The storytelling and page layouts really sell this as a unique work.

DC: Yeah, have you ever read ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud?

NK: Well, duh. Everyone who hasn't should seriously read it, if only to understand the kind of image juxtaposition that is used so effectively here in Dry Country.

DC: Hehe, of course, well for our readers who haven’t in that book he outlines the different types of transitions that can exist between panels. Most superhero comics focus on action to action shots, which makes sense if you’re story is about super people punching each other. This book most does scene to scene transitions, which allow the writing to do most of the heavy lifting for conveying meaning

NK: I thought most superhero comics were now about gaudily dressed men having long maudlin talking heads sequences with the occasional two-page spread of violence. Anyway, Worth noting that Tomasso focuses on single objects a lot to reinforce the mood, like the fan in the foreground of the miserably hot apartment. Inanimate objects go a long way towards creating a sense of place and mood.

DC: Yeah, while simplified they are nicely composed panels. In a way the illustration style echos the storytelling style, there’s just enough there to convey the idea without getting bogged down in details. The same way you don’t need every sentence of his conversation with the woman (sorry I forgot her name I will try to be better) you also don’t need to get obsessive about the shadows cast from the bars in the above panel to get the feelings of the scene

NK: (Ironically, a book called Dry Country has a protagonist who's getting drunk most every time he has a moment free). Which gives everything in the book that's there in the panels a sense of deliberation and importance. And also serves to illustrate how effective those choices are, particularly with setting and character design. Within one panel of seeing, say, Lou's loudmouth friend, I got a great sense of who he was without feeling like he was a one-dimensional trope.

DC: Also there’s something to the heavy use of scene to scene transitions that makes it more personal, maybe with the sketch pad background to all the captions makes you feel the hand of the creator more. Kinda like an hourly comic. I wonder if the same technique could be used to, say, make Hal Jordan seem more like a real person or would that just be nakedly artificial.

NK: The yellow legal paper captions do help us get deeper and deeper into Lou's head, but they'd pierce right through Hal's skull because his broke-ass ring can't do shit against yellow. It’d be interesting to compare this with Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis’ Green Lantern: Secret Origin, based on that criteria. But this is a noir story, not a superhero one. A bright, mostly sunny noir story

DC: Is it a noir? Like, the packaging suggests that it’s going to have a crime thriller twist in future issues but this issue is just a slice of life story

NK: The creeping sense of fatalism, the hero's far-less-than-pure motives, and the extralegal confrontation with the abusive asshole boyfriend suggest that it's getting into that genre. Which works in its favor, because it looks no more like a crime story than an average Batman comic, except there are thousands of Batman stories and only a few Rich Tomasso stories.

DC: Yeah, this is more Harvey Pekar than Maltese Falcon, but it’s possible that the juxtaposition could work to make the comic more unique and memorable. (Please forgive my weird references, I need to make a certain number each week or my family will starve).

NK: Those are appropriate references. This is a simple, inviting art style that would fit a Harvey Pekar story, but will be extremely disarming and unsettling if it gets into Dashiell Hammet territory. The virgin Phillip Marlowe and the chad Lou Rossi, now that's an inappropriate reference.

DC: That being said, while there’s a lot of craft on display here it’s not my cup of tea. Can’t relate to people who don’t solve their problems with violence

NK: Don't you think violence will occur in future issues? Lou is sexually frustrated, borderline alcoholic, and has the perfect complete bastard to take out all his aggression on.

DC: Possibly, but it could just as easily happen off-panel and we could be treated to an, admittedly effective, few paragraphs of our protagonist talking about how it made him feel. If you’re interested in making comics this is worth seeking out cos it shows an approach to doing talk-y scenes interestingly that goes deeper than the wally woods 22 panels that always work.

NK: If you're turned off by us giving you some culture this week then you can tune back in on April 4 when we have Curse of the Brimstone by Phillip Tan and Justin Jordan from DC's New Age of Heroes.

DC: Neil thinks he can just announce this stuff in the chat without consulting me, and it works every time!

NK: Consider me Jigsaw and this your torture chamber.

#comic books #image #dry country #comics #graphic novel #read it for the pictures #neil kapit #dave clarke #spy seal #rich tommasso #art #cartooning #illustration #how to draw

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theonyxpath · 7 years

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As Gen Con looms ever closer and most of us at Onyx Path and a really big chunk of our tremendous freelancers look at spending a week getting to talk face to face with each other and all of you attending in Indianapolis, we’re also looking at a bunch of things that are happenin’ here at Onyx Path central.

As you might have guessed from the photo, Pugmire has started shipping to backers of its Kickstarter. The photo is especially nice because it shows pretty much all of the physical rewards in one shot!

Besides being great for the Pugmire backers, this is also pretty big news for Onyx Path publishing as a whole. This is our first totally new game line we’ve taken from idea to the published work. To have it turn out so well, and to have so much of a Pugmire community already playing and reading…well, that’s immensely gratifying and bodes well for our future projects.

And if we are doing well in general, that means that the chance of us producing more projects for your favorite game lines goes up, too.

Additionally, as I mentioned last week, Pugmire will be something folks will start seeing in their Friendly Local Game Stores before the end of the year, and that is an experiment that could open up a lot of possibilities.

You might note below in the project progress report section of the BLURBS!, that Deviant: The Renegades is now officially in the First Draft stage of writing. (That’s the logo and CofD-style skull above here).

Deviant has been a long time getting to this stage, and someday perhaps Dapper Dave Brookshaw will talk more about the ups and downs of getting it here, but suffice to say that the Dapper One busted his hump to pin down as many parts of the setting and rules as he could and really prep this game to be something special.

As a refresher, here’s the gist: you’re a human being who was remade by a shadowy organization (could be one madman, could be a vast international cabal), with all manner of powers … which are linked to mutations and curses. The bad stuff.

Deviants range from wild and uncontrollable psychics to savage human-animal hybrids to abominable mixes of man and machine to creations of surgical horror. You’re out for revenge against the powers that created you… and they’ve got no idea how hard you’re gonna hit them.

Here’s the text we’ve used before:

You woke up…different. Someone changed you; on a slab, an operating table, an altar. By luck or by fate, you escaped. Hunted by the ones who made you, they hold all the cards. Except one thing, what they don’t know is that a fire burns within you because what they did wasn’t right. What they don’t know is that YOU’RE hunting THEM.

Deviant presents a game where the victims of experiments band together to bring down the monolithic organizations that twisted and warped them.

Wraith20 art by Samuel Araya

We are in the last week of the Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2 Kickstarter, and we’d love to get the next Dark Era added to the book before the fabled 48 hour warning! With the Eras we have, that will be expanded by another line, and the ones we expect to add from backer Reward Tiers, this is already set to be a sweet book.

But getting some Eras in after the 48 hour scramble would mean a sweet book and a Dark Eras 2 Companion book, and that would really add to the fun. So tell your friends, tell perfect strangers, just let folks know that the more backers we get the better the chance is for more Dark Eras!

Brian LeBlanc illustration from the Changeling 20th Jumpstart

You also might have noticed, if you’re the noticin’ type, that pretty much all of our Exalted 3rd projects have started moving forward these last few months. Some of that is certainly the very hard and dedicated work of our new developers, Eric Minton and Robert Vance, and some is due to the same sort of changes to our infrastructure I’ve remarked on all this year.

We just had a great Skype conference with our EX3 devs, and they had many ideas they pitched for further ways to develop the line. Some totally new projects and some ideas for projects requested by our always exciting Exalted community.

The trick for us is to balance what experienced Exalted players need/want, what we need to do to bring newcomers into Exalted, and what kind of a schedule we can put together that does both of those things while not letting the “big books” take too long to see the light of day.

Yes, we have always had a lot on our plates, and those plates are not only full, but we are juggling them as fast as we can! And by juggling, I really mean trying to deliver the very best quality projects while still respecting the situations our creators go through in their lives as they are trying to create that high quality.

Like I mentioned last week; there’s also another balancing act of getting our projects into the best venues for not only all of you to buy them, but also so that our community will grow, while not letting Onyx get caught in a bad deal. The making of art and entertainment is integral to what we do, but nothing will get published if we make too many bad and unprofitable deals.

Lots of those spinning plates.

You’ll hear more about that, and new projects, and all sort of stuff at and during Gen Con as we announce things, reveal this year’s brochure, and generally make pests of ourselves all over social media.

Here again art for Beckett’s Jyhad Diary by Michael Gaydos

Finally, a plug here for our long, long, time friend, artist Michael Gaydos, who wants you to know that he is offering a lot of his RPG art for sale here: http://ift.tt/2uSBJRs

Not only are you sure to recognize some of the art Michael has for sale there, at really nice prices, I must say, but you might also recognize his name since he has had some well-deserved success recently with his comic work on Jessica Jones (and I hear he’s also doing some Defenders art?).

He’s a wonderful artist, I’ve been blessed to work with him for just so many years on Vampire in particular, and it’s a perfect time to buy a piece of his art.

As a suggestion.

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER!

Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras 2 is now in its last week! Last week we added the Golden Age of Pirates Dark Era, featuring the Mage: The Awakening and Geist: The Sin-Eaters game lines!

Now, help us decide on which Dark Eras and which game-lines should fill up this Prestige Edition book! We’re starting with The French Revolution for Vampire: The Requiem and Demon: The Descent, The Great War – Western Front for Geist: The Sin-Eaters and Werewolf: The Forsaken, Light of the Sun – Europe 1600s for Deviant: The Renegades and Mage: The Awakening, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for Changeling: The Lost and Promethean: The Created, Rise of the Last Imperials – China for Mummy: The Curse and Hunter: The Vigil, and One Thousand and One Nights – Islamic Golden Age for Beast: The Primordial and Vampire: The Requiem.

We’re voting on which of these three Dark Eras to add into the book after our next Stretch Goal is met: King Arthur’s Britannia, the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Jazz Age/Roaring 20s. Come back the Kickstarter and vote on your favorite!

ON SALE!

ON AMAZON:

We’re delighted to announce the opening of our ebook store on Amazon! You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle. Our initial selection includes these fiction anthologies: Vampire: the Masquerade‘s Endless Ages, Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition‘s Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage 2, Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition‘s Truth Beyond Paradox, Chronicles of Darkness‘ God Machine Chronicle, Mummy: The Curse‘s Curse of the Blue Nile, and Beast: The Primordial‘s The Primordial Feast!

And now you can get these books in the Barnes and Noble Nook store too!

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology

And here are six more fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology

Andand six more more:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://ift.tt/1ZlTT6z

You can now order wave 2 of our Deluxe and Prestige print overrun books, including Deluxe Mage 20th Anniversary, and Deluxe V20 Dark Ages! And Screens…so many Screens!

ON DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

This Wednesday we will be adding new Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras shirts to our RedBubble store! Now you can support your favorite game lines in their historical versions!

Satyr Phil Brucato beckons you once more into the Annex of Mage: The Ascension with this 300 page follow-up to M20. The M20 Book of Secrets is NOW on sale in PDF and PoD versions at DTRPG.com! http://ift.tt/2tKyJtb

More Than Magick

For mages who think they have everything, this trove of treasures expands upon the wealth of material presented throughout Mage: The Ascension’s 20th Anniversary Edition. New Traits, new rules, essays, answers, information… the Secrets are revealed within.

Enter the Annex

Building upon the M20 core rulebook, this Book of Secrets features updated rules and setting material, such as…

An M20 FAQ Genres & Resources

Matters of Focus Justice & Influence

New Abilities, Archetypes, Merits & Flaws

Expanded Rules for Combat, Resonance, Wonders, Computer Systems, and More

This Ascension Continues…

Chomping it’s way to you comes the Dagger of Spiragos adventure PDF for Scarred Lands! This second in the Spiragos trilogy for levels 4-6 is now in both 5e and Pathfinder PDF versions on DriveThruRPG.com!

PF: http://ift.tt/2uvy38a

5e: http://ift.tt/2uS6FDT

The Titans’ Relics Must Be Destroyed!

Artifacts from the fallen titan Spiragos have been recovered, and forces are at work that would see them used for ill. The Dagger of Spiragos and the Ring of Spiragos are now in the player characters’ hands — and they must do what they can to rid Scarn of the foul relics of the titans, whatever the cost!

What Came Before

Dagger of Spiragos is a sequel to the 2014 Gen Con Scarred Lands Special Preview adventure, Gauntlet of Spiragos (available as a free download on DriveThruRPG. com and RPGnow.com). It is also the second adventure in the Spiragos Saga, with Ring of Spiragos, the dramatic finale, as the third and culminating title.

In Gauntlet of Spiragos, the PCs traveled to the legendary Chasm of Flies, where they discovered a tribe of spider-eye goblins who possessed relics of their fallen master, Spiragos. Now, with those items in hand, the PCs travel to the city of Fangsfall, where they must seek aid in destroying the foul objects.

But others wish to possess these items, too,

Sailing out of the dark, the V20 Dark Ages Companion PDF and physical book PoD versions are going on sale Wednesday on DriveThruRPG.com! http://ift.tt/2pX42dq

Travel the long roads and deep seas in search of power and experience danger, or tackle the wilderness to hunt monsters and face death. Settlements large and small dot the black expanse with the promise of sanctuary, life, and community. These bastions of civilization present cold comfort, when playing host to vampire warlords and sadistic Cainite faiths. Whether led by a Prince, a coordinated belief, or hounded by monsters from without and within — no domain is truly the same as another.

Dark Ages Companion includes:

• Domains scattered across the world, from small fiefdoms to massive cities. Bath, Bjarkarey, Constantinople, Rome, Mogadishu, and Mangaluru each receive coverage.

• Apocrypha including plot hooks, new Paths, and mysteries to explore in your games.

• A how-to guide on building a domain within your chronicle, including events and servants necessary to make a domain as functional or dysfunctional as you wish.

• A study on warfare in the Dark Ages period, so combat in your chronicles can gain authenticity and lethality.

From the Primordial to your Chronicles, Beast‘s Building a Legend has risen in PDF and PoD formats on DTRPG.com!

http://ift.tt/2u1BBkU

CREATING A CHRONICLE IS REWARDING…

…so why should the Storyteller have all the fun?

The whole troupe should get in on the action, making for a chronicle that reflects the preferences and predilections of all the players.

Building a Legend is a guide for doing exactly that — making a cohesive chronicle, starting with character creation, for Beast: The Primordial. It includes advice on creating Storyteller characters, folding in real world history, and populating the Primordial Dream.

From the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Requiem for Regina (Vampire: The Requiem Elizabethan London 1593). We have shared the world with monsters for millennia. In Elizabeth’s London, vampires built their own empire brick by bloody brick while Elizabeth I cemented her grip on newly Protestant England. Carefully balancing demands from those with Catholic and Lutheran sympathies, she forged a police state. Yet London emerged as a thriving cultural center, and from the crucible emerged a Kindred society forever changed.

http://ift.tt/2sl0Zh4

On sale in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG!

What dark secrets do the eldest vampires hold? Find out in Thousand Years of Night for Vampire: The Requiem! Advance PDF version available now on DriveThruRPG.com. http://ift.tt/2sV8lZR

You may think that with a multitude of people coming, going, dying and running away, we’d be tired, done, or ready to give up. Instead, I find myself restless, looking for the next thing. There’s always a next thing, and I for one am not yet ready to die.

– Elder Kincaid, Daeva Crone

This book includes:

• Detailed instructions on creating elder vampires, including how to base chronicles around them

• A look into the lives of elders, how they spend their nights, who they work with, and why including their roles in both their clans and covenants

• New Devotions, Merits, and Rituals for elder vampires

• The kinds of creatures that pose a threat to elder vampires, including Inamorata, Lamia, Sons of Phobos, a new elder conspiracy, and more

From the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: To The Strongest (Mage Death of Alexander 330-320 BCE). In the rise and fall of Alexander the Great’s Empire, armies marched and cultures clashed. In the birth pangs of Hellenistic civilization, Awakened sorcerers all over the ancient world met, fought, and joined together. In the chaos of Alexander’s assassination and the wars that followed, Cults became Orders amid conflicts still burning in the present day.

http://ift.tt/2tmTVl6

On sale in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG!

From the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Three Kingdoms of Darkness (Changeling and Geist China 220-280). Famine weakens the empire, and war splits it apart. It is an age of ambition and strife, where the hungry dead walk the earth in great numbers, and the Lost must rely on their own kingdoms. Warlords and commoners, ghost-speakers and orphans — who truly serves the Mandate of Heaven?

On sale in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG! http://ift.tt/2rp8hPL

From the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: The Wolf and the Raven (Werewolf and Geist Vikings 700-1100). The Viking expansion across Europe comes at a pivotal time in history, as new faiths rose to challenge the old and new ways threatened to sweep ancient tradition aside. The Forsaken sail with raiders and explorers, seeking new lands to claim and new spirits to conquer, while Sin-Eaters walk the battlefields bringing the honored dead to their final rewards. The world grows larger and more dangerous by the day, but there are great rewards for those brave enough to fight for them.

On sale in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG! http://ift.tt/2rUjKtX

Curated by Matthew McFarland, developer of Changeling: the Dreaming Twentieth Anniversary Edition and featuring authors such as Myranda Kalis, Wren Handman, and Peter Woodworth, this C20 Anthology of Dreams is on sale in electronic/PDF and physical copy PoD formats on DTRPG.com! http://ift.tt/2snBT0X

We dream, and we tell stories. We dream of love and the sort of person who might complete us. We dream of horror and wake breathless. We dream of magic, of flying through the air, or breathing underwater. We dream of fantastic vistas and amazing monsters.

We dream, and then we wake, and we tell stories. Our dreams create the Kithain, the changelings. Our stories are sustenance.

CONVENTIONS!

GenCon IS IN TWO WEEKS. August 17th – 20th, Indianapolis. Our booth will actually be 20′ x 30′ this year that we’ll be sharing with Nocturnal Media and White Wolf. We’re looking at new displays this year, like a back drop and magazine racks for the brochure(s). FYI, 4-Day passes have sold out! First time ever! Here’s the map again of where we’ll be:

In November, we’ll be at Game Hole Con in Madison, WI. More news as we have it, and here’s their website: http://ift.tt/RIm6qP

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Monarchies of Mau (Monarchies of Mau)

Night Horrors: The Tormented (Promethean: The Created 2nd Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Redlines

Kithbook Boggans (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

DtD Night Horrors: Enemy Action (Demon: the Descent)

Dragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

SL Ring of Spiragos (Pathfinder – Scarred Lands 2nd Edition)

Ring of Spiragos (5e – Scarred Lands 2nd Edition)

Pugmire Pan’s Guide for New Pioneers (Pugmire)

Scion: Origins (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Hero (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

GtS Geist 2e core (Geist: the Sin-Eaters Second Edition)

WW Manuscript Approval:

M20 Cookbook (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Ready Made Characters (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Editing:

Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development:

Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition

VtR Half-Damned (Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition)

W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)

V20 Dark Ages Jumpstart (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)

Indexing:

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook – Ellis is working on painting everything up.

Cavaliers of Mars

Wraith 20

W20 Changing Ways – AD’d and Contracted.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

VDA Jumpstart

Scion Origins

Ring of Spiragos

Ex 3 Arms of the Chosen – Finals coming in.

Beast PG – Finals rolling in for most of the stuff.

VtR Half Damned – AD’d and Contracted.

Book of Freeholds

Marketing Stuff

In Layout

Prince’s Gambit – New Cards out for playtesting.

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary – Working up a test chapter this week.

Proofing

M20 Art Book – In progress…

At Press

Beckett Screen – Shipped to shipper.

Pugmire – SHIPPING!

Pugmire Screen – SHIPPING!

Pugmire Cards & Dice, Pins – SHIPPING!

Scarred Land PGs & Wise and the Wicked PF & 5e – Printing.

Monarchies of Mau Early Access – PoD proofs coming.

Dark Eras: Lily Sabre and Thorn – Waiting for PoD proofs.

Dark Eras: A Grimm Dark Era – Waiting for PoD proofs.

VTR: Thousand Years of Night – PoD proofs coming.

Gen Con 2017 Brochure – Signed off on proof on Thursday.

Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition) – PoD uploaded and processing…

C20 Jumpstart PDF – Out to backers soon.

CtL Huntsmen Chronicle Anthology PDF – prepping for going live.

TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: It’s J. K. Rowling‘s birthday! Harry Potter can be argued as the “setting” that opened the door to what has become a much more fantasy-genre, geek-aware, world, and we owe her big thanks for that!

#Onyx Path Publishing

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technologicalgambler · 7 years

Text

((Well, that whole December/January shtick went so well. Hope ya caught my sarcasm, because I’m mad at myself. The inability to complete plot threads was mostly due to end of year depression/anxiety, school being a bitch, and the fact that neither of us (Technomun who is simultaneously Grimmun, and Cathartimun) can get our shit together.

((This post is just playing catch up with all of the shit that happened out of tumblr over the course of the last two months. So a lot of stuff has happened, that’ll be under the cut.))

((Alright, let’s get this started.

-The Birthday Weekend

That went. Fairly alright, all things considered since it involved several parties that hate each other. Eridan was an ass the entire time (no big surprise here), and harassed the shit out of Vriska. Terezi was an obnoxious brat through and through, Karkat cried a lot, Vriska got drunk to avoid her feelings...so nothing new among the trolls. Well, other than the fact the Destiny Islands crew and the Radiant Garden crew got to meet up again. Eridan, an ass as usual, tormented Vriska whilst invisible until he got caught. This is why she drinks.

Dave had to be mostly tipsy through the whole thing, and practically leashed to Karkat to avoid him killing Dirk, and later got REALLY drunk...Dirk got horribly drunk on only a few drinks, and kept going between sober and smashed through the weekend. Those two still aren’t on good terms, but on...better? Dave can at least (slightly) stand being in the same room with him. Roxy’s tired. Grim got drunk...Terezi was hitting on everybody (except the trolls). Jade was one of the two people who remained totally sober (the other being Eridan), and declared the couch the Sane Zone, for anyone who was sober or could handle being drunk (translates to her, Eridan, Roxy, and Grim). Anyone who succumbed to intoxication was promptly, and literally kicked off of the couch and onto their ass. This happened to Karkat at some point. This allowed her to be on...eh, better terms with Eridan. They got to talk shit over, and now they’re not at each others throats most of the time and can agree on a few things. Not great friends, but not openly shit talking each other.

It was the last day of the weekend - Roxy and Grim’s birthday - that they actually distributed presents. Here’s the list that we made to keep shit straight because there’s so fucking much.

To Dave

Sword from Jade

MIDI fighter from Roxy

Crow from Karkat (Dave named it Fido)

A knife named The Ace from Karkat’s boss (story about that later on)

A suit from Dirk

Ice troll skull from Vriska (as in Skyrim)

“Oh my god, it’s R2-D2! I loved him in Star Trek!” (Dalek) shirt from Grim

Red and white Scalemate with shades sewn onto it from Terezi (Red with a white belly)

To Jade

CD case/shelf from Dave

RHCP album from Karkat

New bass from Vriska

Soldering kit from Dirk

Danger Days Union jacket from Roxy

Badlands/Halsey sweater from Grim

Black and green Scalemate from Terezi (Black with a green belly)

To Roxy

MCRX Black Parade jacket from Jade

Pokemon Sun from Dirk

Pokemon Moon from Eridan

Super Mystery Dungeon from Terezi (and her 3DS)

MCRX flag and album from Grim

A poster that Dave drew of one of Roxy’s favorite scenes from the Complacency of the Learned – the scene where Calmasis cruelly curses Frigglish

Pink and violet Scalemate from Terezi (pink with a violet belly)

To Dirk

Last minute gift from Jade of Genji’s sword

Entire series of the Free! sub from Roxy

Iwatobi jacket from Eridan

Orange and black Scalemate with shades sewn onto it from Terezi (orange with a black belly)

“I’m BATMAN” shirt with the words in the logo, and a nice Batman cape from Grim

To Grim

Galaxy aesthetic assault rifle from Jade

Black and pink Scalemate with white eyes from Terezi (black with a pink belly)

Authentic Atom Cats jacket from Dave

Exorcism book from Vriska

Tickets to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them from Dirk and Roxy

Harry Potter movie collection from Karkat

Glowing pink nautilus necklace from Eridan

This is why we needed a list.

Suffice to say, the birthday weekend was...eventful, hectic, and fun.

-Christmas Weekend

This time, they spent Christmas weekend at the Radiant Garden castle. Which was an adventure, since they not only had to leave Jackie behind (like they were bringing a Deathclaw to a place like that), but also had to deal with Eridan’s dogs, Pronauma and Terancor (note: they’re massive, not adults yet, and will be about the size of Polar Bear Dogs from ATLOK), and the looming threat of being thrown into the dungeon with Dragon Mom.

More drinking, more antics...Dirk had to be dragged out of his room more often than not. Nothing MAJOR happened (other than Jade embarrassingly mentioning something about her and Karkat, causing Roxy and Grim to scream), but it was certainly something.

The loot pile this time is as follows (WARNING: LONG)

To Roxy

VR set up from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A cat plushy from Vriska

A plasma rifle from Jade

A robotic cat tail from Dave

Super Mario Maker for the 3DS from Terezi (along with Roxy’s copy of Fire Emblem: Conquest)

Pink cat cloak made of fleece from Terezi

A blue LED constellation scarf from Eridan

To Dirk

A Cintiq from Roxy

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A Kamina body pillow from Jade

A Genji butt mousepad packaged in a condom box from Dave

Fleece Batman hooded cape (similar to the dragon cape) from Terezi

A tank top like this from Eridan

To Dave

Final Fantasy XV + Season Pass from Roxy

Bleach: the Diamond Dust Rebellion from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A new DSLR camera from Karkat

A Princess Peach 3DS carrying case from Vriska

A new skateboard with a crow deck from Jade

A black, fleece cloak based around a crow from Terezi

To Jade

Seasons 1-3 of Sherlock from Roxy

A Fionna hat (Adventure Time) from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

A GIANT husky plushie from Karkat

Glow-in-the-dark space-themed guitar/bass picks that come with stickers from Vriska

A Tunnel Snake’s jacket from Dave

A white wolf cloak made of fleece from Terezi

A set of camo bandana collars for Becca from Eridan

To Grim

Black and gray leopard print weighted blanket from Roxy

Resident Evil VII from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Terezi

A devilishly sultry Alternian romance novel from Karkat

The Bible from Vriska

A pink beanie with cat ears attached to it from Jade

A Lucid Plasma Caster that has a slag element from Dave (picked it up from a job in Pandora)

Black cat cloak made of fleece from Terezi

This tank top from Eridan

To Terezi

Super Smash Bros for 3DS from Roxy

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright; Ace Attorney from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Super long red dragon plushie from Karkat

Replica of Falchion from Fire Emblem: Awakening from Jade

Red dragon shoulder puppet from Dave

A D&D starter kit from Eridan

To Eridan

A book heavily detailing battles from WWII from Roxy

A coffee mug with skull and crossbones on it from Dirk

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

An Alternian wartime romance/tragedy movie that the two would always watch back on Alternia from Karkat

Some more of that Death’s Brew coffee from Jade

A violet sea horse cloak made of fleece from Terezi

To Karkat

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Condoms from Vriska (JOKE PRESENT)

Yurio’s leopard print hoodie from Vriska

A red sickle that looks a lot like this from Jade (custom made! <3)

A Krabby plushy from Dave

A silver fleece dragon cloak trimmed with red from Terezi

A copy of the sketch of the Signless and his group from inside of Dualscar’s journal, copied meticulously by hand by Eridan, and framed (gift from Eridan)

To Vriska

Ugly Christmas sweater from Grim

Hardcover collection of the Spider-Gwen comics from Karkat

A red, electric guitar (Charvel Desolation DS-3) from Jade

A Spider-Gwen sweater from Dave

A tiny poop emoji phone charm from Terezi

Too many people. Eridan got his girlfriend, Aradia, a new necklace he made, but he gave that to her later on to avoid Vriska’s prying eye.

-New Years

I can skip a lot of shit with this one because we wrapped that up recently. New Years was just a few people getting drunk, Jade and Dirk getting into it and resolving shit, and then setting out on a quest to find her siblings, Jake and Jane.

What’s more interesting is the month that followed, as they proceeded to search worlds she had coordinates to to see if his soul string ability reacted, via her workshop door. They nearly got killed a few times by some of the worlds’ fauna, nearly lost Dirk to some of the worlds, and Jade managed to scoop Dirk’s fake eyes out from his skull, and replace them with better prosthetics. Roxy caught them because Dirk’s medical bot, HAL, showed up to the workshop when he felt Dirk go under, and have some nerves severed. Roxy knows about the eyes now (and got a ton of new prosthetic arms, and a better anchor for them), but doesn’t know about their project.

Like I said, a lot of shit went down. This is just a summary of all we talked about when I was dealing with finals, and we were both dealing with the weird funk of the holidays, and coming of the end (of the year). Finally able to write again, so here ya go.

Let’s see if they can actually get shit moving again.))

#original #ooc #out of tumblr rps #summary of rp events #long post #technogunblade #catharticgrievance #caliginousadvocate #tipsygrimdrunk #apocalypsearcylakey

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elizaslegacy · 7 years

Text

life is around you and in you (chapter 2)

Period: modern

Pairings: Lin x reader

Warnings: cursing, stripping, alcohol, mention of drugs

Summary: Main character is a stripper who’s trying to raise enough money for medical school. Lin keeps showing up in her life and she can’t avoid him.

Word Count: 1,304

A/N: Here you go, anon! Fun fluffy stuff :)

"Um, is everything alright?” a taller man with large curly hair asked, a puzzled expression on his face. “I feel like I missed something.” Your eyes flitted to the man and then back to Lin, who was still gaping at you. “Um, guys, this is my neighbor. (Y/N),” he choked out, obviously very baffled by the situation at hand. You nodded politely. Your confident exterior that you had built up had been immediately shattered. “Daveed,” the man who had just spoke greeted. “Okeriete. Call me Oak,” a huge guy with a sweet smile called. You glanced around, attempting to hold onto any shred of professionalism you had left.

“So you must be Chris?” you asked coyly, pointing at a lighter bald man with dark features. He nodded and you swung a chair around. “C’mon then,” you beckoned with your finger, adding a flirty wink in. When he was seated you began your standard routine. You straddled him, danced on him, and moved up and down his body. As you were dancing all over Chris, Anthony gasped loudly as though he had just realized something. “Lin,” he attempted to whisper. Mind you, Anthony was pretty wasted, so his whisper was more of a call across the room that everyone could hear. “I just realized - that’s the cute neighbor you were telling us about before!” You stopped your motions and straightened out, beckoning Chris out of the chair. When you turned around, Lin was bright red and was averting his eyes from you.

“Aw, is someone getting a little shy now?” you cooed, earning a whoop from Daveed and Oak. You grabbed his tie gently and pulled him forward. Lin’s body moved easily at your command, as though he molded at your every touch. You pushed him into the chair and stepped back. You turned to the rest of the guys. “Now, I’m gonna need some help picking which fun toy I should use!” you exclaimed. You retrieved your bag and dumped out it’s contents. Lin’s eyes widened comically when he saw the handcuffs, the ties, and the gags. Daveed howled in laughter. “I’m gonna have to go with the fuzzy pink handcuffs,” he cheered as Oak and Anthony nodded in agreement. Chris burst into laughter and nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to see that.” You bent over slowly to retrieve the handcuffs, making sure to stick your rear up in the air. Before you fastened them, though, you pressed your lips to Lin’s ear discreetly. “Everything else aside, does this make you uncomfortable?” Your tone was genuine and laced with concern.

He shook his head quickly, then paused to whisper in your ear. “The only thing that’s uncomfortable for me right now is how hard I am,” he blurted out before his lips receded. You froze for a second, taken aback by his straightforward remark. Guys were usually not keen to the idea of seeing you strip for other guys - they were never really fond of the profession as a whole. Lin had continued to flirt, even taking it to that next level. You felt yourself get moist as you considered it. Thank god your hair had been covering that whole ordeal from the view of the guys. You began to take advantage of your new found information of his hard on and straddled him. You placed your hands on his shoulders and began slowly grinding your hips against him in a steady motion. Your hands slid down to his chest and you began to grope everywhere, wanting to touch as much of him as you could without it getting weird in front of the guys.

After you finished with Lin, you released him from his handcuffs before performing on Anthony and Daveed as well. Oak politely declined. You couldn’t keep a straight face while performing on either of them. Anthony would repeatedly grab your ass even though touching was against the rules, and every time you removed his hands he would just put them back. You didn’t see how Lin’s eyes narrowed when he saw that. Daveed was cheering you on the entire time, shouting things like, “Yes babygirl!” or “Work it mami!” After everything was done, Chris slid money in your garter and thanked you. You smiled warmly and told him it was no problem. “This is kinda weird, but could I possibly get changed into normal clothes in here? I’m not really looking forward to going out in this,” you laughed as you gestured to the lingerie. Chris nodded quickly. “Of course, sweetheart. Bathroom’s the last door on the right,” he directed, pointing to the hallway. You grabbed your clothes and quickly changed, trading your bustier and garters for a big t shirt and slippers that were doubling as shoes for now.

You began to shuffle to the door, quickly waving goodbye to everyone. It looked as though everyone else was leaving as well. Well, except for Anthony. He was out cold on the couch and you figured he’d be staying in that exact spot for a while. “(Y/N), wait!” You heard Lin’s voice coming down the hallway, so you held the elevator door open. “Do you mind sharing a cab? We are going the same place, after all,” he asked quietly, looking up at you in earnest. You nodded, staying silent. “Look, I’m sorry if what I said before was weird, I mean, it was true because you’re really fucking sexy and I was painfully turned on but looking back it’s really really odd that I said it and I hope-” You cut off his rambling with a short kiss to his lips. Lin melted into your touch and immediately reciprocated. The kiss didn’t last long, which left you wanting more, but it was slow and sweet. There were no desperate motives behind it. “You really don’t know when to shut up,” you laughed. He looked down at you as if you were the most bright and beautiful thing he had ever had the blessing of seeing. You knew that feelings were no good for someone like you, but in that moment, you didn’t care at all.

The two of you spent the cab ride home in heavy silence, only breaking it when Lin would look at you with that dopey smile and you would burst into a fit of giggles. You were about to enter your apartment without saying goodnight, but you paused. “Hey Lin?” you called without turning away from your door. You hoped you weren’t calling out to an empty hallway. If you had looked, you would've seen that he had frozen on his doorstep as well. “Yeah, (Y/N)?” You heard the soft reply and a wave of relief washed over you. You couldn't figure out why you were so damn pleased by him responding, but you went with it. “Do...do you think you’d like to accompany me on my coffee run tomorrow morning?” you inquired meekly. That’s when it dawned on you. You were actually scared that he’d say no. You were terrified that he’d turn away and shun you like all of the other guys you’d tried to have a thing with. They all started avoiding you when they figured out what you did for a living. And it was freaking you the fuck out that Lin, cute, puppy-like Lin, might turn you down because of the notion that you’d been passed around. You could hear your heartbeat pounding in your ears as you diligently waited for a response. “Yes. Absolutely.”

All of the tension washed out of your body and you went lax. An ear splitting smile erupted onto your face; you felt hope rise up and fill your chest. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to process that,” Lin added quietly. “I guess...I guess I just didn’t believe it.” He let out a self deprecating chuckle and wished you goodnight before retreating to his apartment. You did the same and prepared for a sleepless night. You paid no mind to the fact that feelings were dangerous in your line of work. You simply called your best friend, Maria, before switching on some gross rom-com movie.

#life is around you and in you #hamilton fic #hamilton #hamilton fanfic #chapter 2 #new chapter

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riftp · 6 years

Text

Read It For The Pictures 25: Curse of the Brimstone #1 by Philip Tan and Justin Jordan

NK: Hello and welcome to Read It For The Pictures, The Comic Book Blog where we read it for the pictures! I'm Neil Kapit, and with me as always is the actor who played Kangaroo Jack in the background of Ready Player one, Dave Clarke! How you doin' Dave?

DC: I’m doing good. Oddly enough ready player one is an interesting counterpoint to today’s comic: the Curse of Brimstone #1.

NK: The Curse of Brimstone #1, illustrated by Phillip Tan and written by Justin Jordan with colors by Rain Beredo, is likely a better story, right?

DC: It is better written that’s for sure, at no point does the protagonist call his step dad “a n00b” before being punched in the face. As much as I just want to talk about Ready Player One more than this comic (seriously that is a weird movie) I did have a point to make in the comparison

NK: We should probably establish what this comic is about first, and sound the POLITICS WARNING alarm.

NK: That still looks nicer than the book’s town of York Hills. Props to the artist for giving us a convincingly bleak atmosphere for this rural ghetto.

DC: The comic is less political than you’re expecting, it’s us who’re about to get political.

The basic concept is that the hero Joe Chamberlain, a boy from the kind of dirt-poor economically-stagnant Midwestern town that unchained capitalism gets us. He encounters a man in a fine suit who gives him a vague offer to save the town, and in return turns him into the monster known as Brimstone.

DC: Yeah, most of this issue is spent setting up that “poverty exists and it sucks”. Without the magic powers at the end it’s just a slice of life comic

NK: I credit the art for making that slice of life convincing, and I'm almost disappointed it becomes a super-power book. Props to the artist for giving us a convincingly bleak atmosphere for this rural ghetto. The designs for the characters themselves may come from stock tropes, but they're convincing and don't fall into stereotype

DC: ahhh yes... Philip Tan…I will say I think this book is better written than it is drawn

NK: I know Phillip Tan didn’t exactly start when he was “ready for Prime Time” given the work he did on 2003 Uncanny X-Men, but he's developed enough skill over his many years in the industry that the face above can be chalked up to stylistic exaggeration and not sloppy facial construction.

DC: There’s not much in the way of establishing shots, but what we do see of the town is evocative enough. I think he was more brought in to do expressionist fire monsters than arguments over kitchen tables though.

DC: For those of you readers wondering “is Dave gonna deduct points from every artist who doesn’t draw like frank quietly?” The answer is yes. More seriously though, I feel like Tan’s interests and strengths lie more in subject matter that will be more in future issues.

NK: Phillip Tan gave us the uniquely American hero Larfleeze the Orange Lantern, who is fueled by the emotion of Greed. For that alone he deserves some respect.

NK: I really love the spot black effects in this comic, especially on the establishing shots; gives the decaying town a convincing texture. The splatter effects don’t at all resemble realistic lighting and values but they create a visually interesting effect. And I like how the tiles on the floor aren't an even, orderly grid.

DC: I feel the coloring is doing a lot to make a pretty ropey panel passable here.

NK: Colorist is Rain Beredo, who's done a lot of work with Mike Deodato Jr. (another superhero artist who's way into spot blacks). As odd as it sounds, this reminds me of Sam Kieth’s work on Sandman, everything through a jagged, blotchy, uncomfortable lens. Perfectly suited to a horror title, even if a superheroic one. Can you imagine Tony Daniel drawing this?

DC: Odd comparison but I see it. I imagine he’d be even more bored with this issue. There’s this weird blurring effect going on with some foreground elements throughout this. Not a big fan of that.

NK: You don't think it helps give a sense of depth by making the stuff in the extreme foreground out of focus?

DC: It’s true that objects closer to the eye/camera that the distance being focused on are blurry, but it only draws attention to some of the conventions of comics we overlook the absurdity off. Like, a pitch black shirt is not a thing you see. They don’t make shirts out of material that absorbs light that strongly, black shirts always appear as some kind of grey. And the crosshatching. But maybe I’m being a pedant.

NK: You're condemning the use of spot blacks into a comic where the titular character literally turns into a man of brimstone. Albeit at the end, because this one of those comics that gives us the premise exactly at the end of the first chapter

DC: I’m condemning the use of digital blurring in a comic with heavy ink work. Stylization isn’t bad (in fact you could say, it’s good) but if it’s not consistent it can be jarring

NK: OK, That’s Fair. Still, there are some impressive shots in this, like introducing Joe's disabled, strung-out father.

DC: This is a good shot, I’m surprised the colorist thought to go that dark with the shadow. Usually colorists try to maintain the separation in tones done by the ink but this was a bold move that really worked.

NK: So what’s your conclusion about this comic?

DC: It’s refreshing to have a superhero comic actually engage with real world problems, but don’t get too excited just yet. This comic only points out that poverty exists, depending on the readers inclinations they could read that poverty as being caused by capitalism, environmentalists (it was a coal town) or ELITES. This aside muddies the waters. Also, it is a bummer to read about poverty even if it’s done well.

NK: The point of this, as the writer explains in an interview, is that Joe turning into Brimstone represents the kind of desperate grab for anything that led people to vote for Trump, despite him being an obvious conman and Orange Lantern.

DC: Somehow viewing politics through the lens of Green Lantern feels even sadder than seeing it through the lens of Harry Potter. But maybe Philip Tan does have a deeper connection to the material now that you mention it.

NK: The Orange Lantern Corps is just one psychopathic man-child with an army of subservient orange puppets. That is the perfect metaphor for the kind of cabinet Donald's trying to build. And the fact that Joe's transformation to Brimstone literally involves blowing up his home town seems uncomfortably close to the kind of disaster capitalism that such poor places are given as "relief".

DC: We all know that the only work of fiction that explains the state of the world is Metal Gear Solid.

NK: Must. Not. Reference. Must. Not. Reference.

DC: Before you readers complain, we did open with a warning

NK: And next week we have the crown jewel of whatever kind of crown this New Age of Heroes is: The Immortal Men #1, by Jim Lee and James Tynion III! I'll be going back to Curse of Brimstone, and I'm cautiously optimistic about The Immortal Men.

DC: Ahh yes, I can see the light at the end of this new DC properties tunnel! Catch ya then readers.

priority49

#neil kapit #dave clarke #dc comics #Justin jordan #Philip tan #rain beredo #new age of heroes #curse of the brimstone #art #illustration #manga #how to draw #sandman #larfleeze #politics warning

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thecomedybureau · 7 years

Photo

For several years, JC Coccoli has been dutifully holding down her 10PM Monday stand-up show at 1739 Public House. It’s actually one of the longest running bar comedy shows in LA at this point.

She’s now franchising her show across LA county all the way to Venice starting next Wednesday at the art boutique known as In Heroes We Trust. The first line-up for the Venice Fringe will be stacked with Brooke Van Poppelen, Byron Bowers, James Davis, and, of course, JC.

The Monday Fringe show at 1739 Public House will still happen as it always has every Monday at 10PM, but will now be hosted by the awesome duo of Dave Stone and Lisa Best with a line-up, as seen in flyer with the baby, that’s also pretty stellar.

Now, for a bit of a local LA comedy history lesson that is part of the reason why JC is branching out the show throughout LA.

Long time, die hard comedy fans will now that the once popular show, What’s Up Tiger Lily? started by Maria Bamford and Melinda Hill long, long ago in the very same space when the establishment was a restaurant called Tiger Lily. Once the owners transformed that restaurant into two separate bars, Cuba Libre and 1739 Public House, Tiger Lily moved to the Western themed strip mall called Gower Gulch at a now defunct restaurant, Hollywood Studio Bar & Grill.

From there, JC kept the show going at 1739 Public House, then called Keep It Clean, that always had great comics, but had to dealt with some rowdy bar patrons not expecting a show every now and again. It was actually one of the first shows in LA that we regularly attended even before we got The Comedy Bureau off the ground.

One evening in 2011, we saw an audience member going from high fiving a comedian during a set to dry humping him to getting kicked out. Immediately after, the same comedian, Sean Green, had to deal with another drunk heckler to which he challenged to a fight. After that, two other great comedians that just happened to be hanging there, Davey Johnson and Kyle Kinane, inspired by the events that just transpired, played “brothers” of the hecklers that were ejected and it was one of the best, most insane nights of comedy we’ve ever been to.

In fact, we wrote about it in full here.

After a few years, 1739 Public House got shifted to the space next door, previously occupied by Cuba Libre, making for a very spacious bar that housed several TVs, pool tables, patio, dozens of booths, and a nice little alcove-ish space for JC’s show, which got a re-brand with it’s current name, Fringe. As there is plenty of space for bar patrons to not be part of the show, watch sports highlights, enjoy a couple rounds of pool, or maybe even have a very private conversation upstairs, the show could breathe a little better and not have to worry as much about disturbing the ecosystem of this public house.

Still, there would be the occasional crazy thing that would go down just because it’s 10PM on a Monday we suppose. Such a crazy thing happened last week that is another crazy milestone in the show’s history.

Here’s JC’s account from a FB post:

Last night - witnesses can verify ( Jake Kroeger Lisa Best Laura House and Adam Newman ) at Fringe on Mondays a couple was talking loudly and a very sweet, but def tipsy/ drunk, and very tall model-like white woman about my age attempted to regulate them. I was on stage and all I heard was "You two are so rude. Out. You get out." She stood up to let them out of their seats and though they were confused they were listening to her. Like, she jedi mind tricked them and the white model woman stood up and the man stood up willingly accepting his fate of being asked to leave and his girlfriend followed... I am at the mic, just watching. Waiting. But then this is where things got sticky, the girls were in each other's faces, one holding a beer, and the "citizen's arrest" white woman who I understand was doing what she believed was right, kept repeating "no, you leave. You are so rude. This is a show. She is talking." (referring to me! ) And, I'm just on stage, watching it happen because they are adults, and I think in this political climate people want to emote. Who am I to stop them? Then all of a sudden, "citizen's arrest white model woman" went to shove them calmly, but still, both out. NEVER put your hands on another drunk woman (comedy 101). "Don't fucking touch me." (the infamous words of warfare) and then boom, a beer goes flying onto "citizen's arrest white woman" and one side of our audience. I was impressed no one got splashed because they all moved so quickly. It was skill. The couple exits- the man apologizing - the woman cursing bloody murder. And the room is in shock. Stunned. Quiet. Tipsy "citizen's arrest drunk woman, with her shirt drenched sits back down and says "No violence. No. They were loud and they were rude." And that was that. Another undeniably punk rock moment in comedy.

We indeed were there and that did all happen. In fact, JC was talking to us about branching out the show right before this edition of Fringe kicked off, making this “audience member showdown” serendipitous.

So, 1739 N. Vermont will continue to be one of the reliable last stops in comedy on Monday here in LA, but it will now also have companion shows that you should also go to in this gigantic city of ours.

#stand up #comedy history #los feliz #los angeles #1739 public house #in heroes we trust

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