#> disappear from tumblr for months and stop drawing

[felix-krain]

[Open for better quality]

[mirohlayo]

F1 DRIVERS AND THEIR FIRST KISS

WITH YOU

including boys from mclaren, ferrari, mercedes + verstappen, ricciardo & gasly

warning : none, some fluff

note : looks like i don't like max danny and pierre bc i didn't put any color for them but there's just no matching color on tumblr 😔

!! english not my first language !!

ᦈ OSCAR PIASTRI 81

on a date. he's a simple, romantic kind of guy but still he puts a lot of efforts to make everything perfect and special. he would brings you to the restaurant, offering you an luxurious meal just for you. or maybe an amusement park. whatever you like, as long as you enjoy the date. and then he'll takes you home, making sure he sees you walk inside your apartment and close the door behind you so that he knows you're all safe. but just before that, he would smiles with loving eyes and cups your face gently. maybe a bit hesitant at first, but then he leans in and captures your warm lips, kissing you as if it was the last time he could do it. but fortunately, it is the first and for sure not the last time that he will do it. and then when you disappear behind the wooden door he giggles so hard and can't stop smiling, still feeling the pleasant sensation.

ᦈ LANDO NORRIS 4

after a podium during a race. he jumps out of his car after winning a podium well deserved. he runs towards the engineers and the race team who are congratulating him for his fantastic job. everyone hugs him and pats his shoulder, head. he smiles brightly as he hugs back every single one person. and then your turn. next was you. he literally stop himself right in front of you. of course you congratulate him, saying that you are proud of him and everything. his smile widens , his gaze softens, and the second later his lips are on yours. he would kiss you roughly because of how much he craved to kiss you but still softly, he wants to savor every second of it. then he pulls out, stroking your rosy cheeks as the cameras takes loads of photos of you two, smiling at each other.

ᦈ CHARLES LECLERC 16

playing piano together and quick kiss. you guys would just randomly touch some keys of the piano, sharing the seat and so seating next to each other, shoulders pressed together. charles already loves your touch and closeness as he can also smells your sweet and fruity perfume which tickles his nose. then he starts playing a beautiful, romantic song that was actually meant for you. you just listen carefully to the melody, closing your eyes and feeling the emotion that seizes you. but the music stops suddenly, and you open your eyes confused. he places his thumb and forefinger on your chin to make you look at him, and when your eyes meet, he gets lost in them before suddenly placing a quick kiss on your lips. you blink, trying to process what just happened, and charles would just starts pecking all of your face, but mostly your lips.

ᦈ CARLOS SAINZ 55

like oscar, on a date. but a cooking or baking date. you invite him to your apartment and suggest cooking together and then after watch something on the tv. first, you guys would follow the recipe because of course you wanted to eat a delicious dinner. but gradually it become a mess and a food battle takes place. carlos would just throws you flour, or even draws some lines and patterns on your skin such as your arms, shoulders and of course your face. he also traces hearts on your cheeks with some ketchup on his finger. literally, just painting you with cute stuff. but the moment is just too funny and sweet, that now he's focused on your lips which forms a smile. i think he would go with something like "you have a stain here" and right after leans in and kiss you tenderly. but soon the cooking date would become a kissing and pecking session, almost forgetting about the recipe and dinner.

ᦈ LEWIS HAMILTON 44

waking up next to each other. you are already dating for some months now, but never you really kissed each other. in any case, never on the lips. you guys just going with pecks and kisses on the cheek, neck, forehead or hands. actually, every part of your faces except your lips. because maybe you were too shy but also it is something very important and special for both of you, especially hamilton. but now, you are both sleeping in your shared bed, you in lewis' arms. his grip is tight on your waist because he always wants to keep you close to him during the night. and the morning, he wakes up first. he looks down at you, eyes fluttering slowly as he admires your pretty sleepy face, a lazy smile glues on his lips. and then you wake up, crossing his lovely gaze. he would smiles wider and says "good morning love" before pressing for the first time his lips on yours. and his heart feels lighter, experiencing this new pleasant sensation.

ᦈ GEORGE RUSSEL 63

dancing in the rain. george takes you on a walk, because he just wanted to spend some time with you. just the two of you together. and you both like walking, maybe for some people it is boring but it's an another way to appreciate each other's presence and that was enough for you. he grabs your hand and intertwines your fingers, gently stroking the top of your hand with his thumb. you walk for a while, sometimes stopping in front of store fronts until little water drops starts to fall from the sky. and then more and more water drops falls. now it is raining. a lot. so you decides to secure and stays underneath a bus stop. you waited and hoped the rain would calms down. but no, still raining a lot. and so george has this idea. he would grabs your hand and takes you with him under the rain. first you would be a bit angry, but when he starts dancing with you and laughing at te situation, you follow him and start to enjoy the moment. and the moment is so perfect, he has to kiss you. so he does it. your hot lips warms his person as he delights into the feeling. and no need to say it would be by now his favorite activity.

ᦈ MAX VERSTAPPEN 33

truth or dare game, but it is just true. a sleepover between max and your common friends was organized. and now it's time to go. you greet your friends as you walk inside the house, and smile brightly to max who is waving to you. you go to the bathroom to change into your pajama and then the sleepover starts. you're sitting next to max, mostly talking with him because of course he is your secret crush. one of your friend then suggests to play a truth or dare game, because it is something you all had the habit to do during nights like that. so the game starts, your friends mostly answering truth questions. then the bottle turns, and obviously it stopped right in front of max. he chooses dare. and fuck. the dare is to kiss someone present here. you feel weird, a bit awkward because you didn't want to see him kiss another girl. but max takes your chin between his fingers to make you look at him. and without realizing it, he's already kissing you. you kiss him back, and you can feel he struggles to pull back. and after he would whisper in your ear "the kiss was not a game. just my true feelings"

ᦈ DANIEL RICCIARDO 3

photoshoot kiss. daniel loves taking photos. especially of you, because he always says your his muse and you're super photogenic. so you two were on a trip right now. and of course daniel had to take his camera. to take lot of photos and make good memories. the landscape is just amazing. it is winter and christmas decorations and lights are everywhere in the streets. you stop walking to sit on a bench, taking a little break before going to a random restaurant you would find on your way. as you sit down, daniel takes his camera in his hands. and of course he had to take plenty photos of both of you, together, in this amazing place. he clicks on the button, and just can't stop taking photos. from smiling faces to funny faces, easily a hundred pictures have been taken. but one photo is missing. and daniel don't like when he don't have the perfect photo. so without thinking more, he places the camera in front of you to take a selfie and says "look at me". he clicks on the button and then as the flash lights you his lips captures yours. now you are all shy and he's just giggling, looking by now at his favorite photo for the rest of forever.

ᦈ PIERRE GASLY 10

during your birthday party. it is your birthday day, and a party have been organized by pierre, your best friend and your family. so when you come to the place, all eyes are on you. everyone is saying happy birthday and wishing you the best, but pierre can't take take off his eyes of you. you are just too beautiful. and then the party starts. people are dancing and singing, just enjoying the moment. you're sitting to a table with your closest friends, including pierre. you didn't remark it but he was just stealing glances at you. soon it is the the end of the party and all are playfully asking you to do a speech. you laugh shyly, not really wanting to do it but pierre's smile reassure you, so you just start speaking. you thank everybody of course, and after your speech pierre joins you, standing next to you. he would go with something like "this is my gift for you" and then after quickly kiss you. and kiss you once again but this time more deeply and tenderly, showing all of his love for his favorite birthday person.

[saiyanprincessswanie]

Lovestruck

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Female Reader

Word Count: 1026

Summary: Steve has been holding in his feelings for a while now and finally decides he is ready to express them.

Warnings: Soft smut, unprotected sex, kissing, hand job, oral (fem), Steve with a beard (yes it’s a warning), using “accidental I love you’s during sex & sleepy domestic sex prompts.”

A/N 1: Thank you to my beta readers @lfnr-blog-blog-blog & @pigwidgeonxo 💜 (any mistakes in spelling & grammar are my own. I wrote this on my phone)

A/N 2: divider by @whimsicalrogers & header by me.

A/N 3: This is for @mercurial-chuckles for their Smutty September Fest.

Reblogs & Comments on Tumblr are welcomed and encouraged. 😊💜

I do NOT consent to have my work translated or reposted on any social media platform, apps, or third-party sites. It has been stolen if you see my work anywhere besides my personal Tumblr & AO3 accounts. I will NEVER give written or verbal permission to repost or translate any of my fanfics as they’re MY intellectual property. 🚫🚫

Steve was usually up at the break of dawn to get his morning run done. He decides to stay in bed this morning as he holds your naked form close to his chest. Your soft snores fill his ears as he lightly chuckles to himself. His hand caresses your arm as he takes in your soft scent of vanilla and lilac. The scent soothes him as he relaxes in bed with you, contemplating how to express his new emotion, love. He has known for months that he loves you but has never expressed it because he was afraid it was too soon in your relationship. When was the right time to express it? As you try to cuddle closer he determines that today would be it. 

He moves his head to the side and kisses your forehead gently. You let out a soft whine and start to stir from your sleep. Your hand lightly drags across his stomach causing him to groan from his cock growing hard. Only your gentle touch could make him feel this turned on and needy for more. His lips kiss you again and he feels you start to stretch your limbs. Your right hand disappears under the blankets and softly strokes his length. Your lips kiss his chest as your hand strokes Steve up and down, drawing out his quiet groans. 

“Good morning, Steve,” you sleepily whisper as you slowly stroke his cock the way he likes. 

“Mor-morning love. Fuck, don’t stop.” Steve lets out a deep groan as your hand tightens around him as you work his cock faster. 

Steve’s hand moves to your breasts and lightly rolls your nipple between his fingers. You end up gasping out from the pleasure it brings you. He is trying his best to focus on you and not what that hand of yours is doing. If you keep stroking him the way you are, Steve knows he will cum before he even gets started. He gently rolls you to your back, your hand letting go of him, while he moves down your body kissing his way to where your pussy is. He softly pushes your legs apart and licks a stripe up your pussy then tenderly kisses your clit. You try to close your thighs around his head but his hands keep you wide open. Steve starts to eat you like a man starved. His tongue dives between your pussy, his nose brushing against your clit and all you can do is moan while he takes you apart. 

Your fingers find purchase in his hair as you feel his beard giving you the best burn while he takes you higher and higher. The knot in your stomach starts to form as you moan his name over and over again until finally, you fall off that ledge. Your arousal soaks his beard and all he can do is groan against you. Steve finally slows down as you start to twitch from being overstimulated. He makes his way back up your body, licking your arousal from his face. Steve situates himself between your legs as you stare up at him sleepily. He leans down and kisses your lips, his tongue and yours caressing one another in a dance for dominance. Your legs wrap around his waist as his cock rubs against your wet pussy. Together you grind against one another until finally Steve’s tip catches on your entrance. Pulling slightly back from the kiss Steve smiles down at you.

“God, I love you, sweetheart. With all my heart and everything that I am. There’s no one else I want to spend my life with.”

Your eyes shine bright up at his blue ones. Did you hear him right in your sleepy state? Did he just confess his love? 

“Did you just say you loved me?” You asked.

He smiles down at you. “I did. I know it took some time but I mean it. I’m so in love with you, sweetheart.”

Your lips crashed against his again as tears welled up in your eyes. “I love you too, Stevie. Make love to me.”

With your answer, Steve pushes his cock into your wet pussy. The feel of his long, thick cock stretching you always takes your breath away. As he bottoms out you moan his name. Pulling his hips back to retreat to just the tip he gives you a hard thrust. Together you both make love to one another. Every thrust, every roll of your hips has you both groaning into the heavens above. There was no rush, just two bodies becoming one in the moment. 

Steve kisses your neck and whispers, “I love you,” into your ear.

Your fingers scratch down his back as he finds that special spot inside you. It nearly has you choking on a gasp and Steve knows you are close by your walls clenching around his manhood. 

“I love you too, Stevie,” you gasp out your reply. 

Steve speeds up his thrusts, skin starting to slap against skin, as he pounds into you. You can do nothing but hold on to him, your heels digging into his back as he takes you apart again. The knot forming in your stomach instantly breaks like a dam and you cum hard for him. Thrusting faster into you Steve chases his end and cums deep inside you. 

You both lay all tangled up together in bed and chuckle. 

“I can’t believe you said you loved me finally during sex Steve.”

He blushes at you, trying to hide his face in your neck. “I meant what I said. I love you so much that I want to wake up every morning and go to sleep every night telling you how much I love you.” 

“I want that too Steve. How about we get cleaned up and make breakfast.” 

“I would love that sweetheart. But first I’m going to take you in the shower again. I want to hear how much you love me while I take you apart.”

You squealed in delight as Steve chased you into the shower. It would be an amazing day now that you know how he felt.

taglist 2024

@americasass81

@astheskycries

@awesomerextyphoon

@caffiend-queen

@caplanbuckybarnes

@denisemarieangelina

@fictional-affairs

@georgiapeach30513

@get0verit

@hollybee8917

@joannie95

@jobean12-blog

@jtargaryen18

@jvanilly

@labella420

@lfnr-blog-blog-blog

@madscape

@mdemontespan1667

@missvelvetsstuff

@mrsmischief209

@mycrazyasslikestoread

@nekoannie-chan

@noellez-best-life23

@notyourtypicalrose

@patzammit

@princessofdarkwinter

@rayofdawnworld

@spectre-posts

@sweater-daddiesdumbdork

@talia-rumlow

@thefallenbibliophilequote

@what-is-your-plan-today

@wolfsmom1

@allthosepeopleilovetofangirlover

@felicitylemon

@teenytinybumblebeee

@oceanwaterfall

@josiewinters1999

@mercurial-chuckles

@thezombieprostitute

[purpledemonlilyposting]

Responding to Lily Orchard on Utena

So I already talked about how Lily Orchard never watched Revolutionary Girl Utena and doesn't understand it on my main blog, and now she's trying to invoke the arguments I've had with other morons who have never watched and don't understand Revolutionary Girl Utena. Discussion beneath the cut!

[Lily's Post]

Here Lily and the little zoomers on Twitter who have never engaged with Utena beyond making a tumblr mood board, let me hold your hand through episode 33 The Prince Who Runs Through the Night from my "Let's Watch Utena" livestream from a few months ago. Uploaded unlisted:

Going "um sweaty she's a minor!!!???" instead of engaging with the actual text just stalls any meaningful discussion about the purpose of this episode within the narrative. Utena is a surrealistic piece that operates entirely on hazy dream logic. Trying to bring in real world ethics outside of the text into Akio's seduction Utena is simply irrelevant to what is being communicated. It would be like stalling every discussion about a revenge plot movie with "but murder is illegal!"

As I said on the stream Akio's seduction of Utena is Faustian. He is the devil pulling her further away from her gender role defiant values and her true purpose of saving Anthy from her eternal suffering, as she was spurred to do by the spirit of Dios. He is also using her because he thinks the Sword of Dios he can draw from her will be the key to opening the seal to the "Power of Revolution". But Akio can never regain the power of the Prince again, as he's a corrupt adult now. The ideal of the Prince that exists in both the hearts of Anthy and Utena.

This is a series you have to take within its own symbolic language. It is not interested in being realistic or straight forward. It's heavily influenced by experimental stage theater. Ikuhara purposefully wanted it to be tonally mismatched to put the audience in the mindset of the world.

On the next point:

I've been into Utena for 28 years. I've read lots of essays on it and have listened to many interpretations of it. I have no idea where this idea that Utena "rejects" Dios is suddenly coming from. I'll reiterate from the debate I had about this on Twitter:

Dios, the actual spirit of the ideal of the Prince, whose spirit she calls down during duels, who has only ever spoken to Utena in the space between life and death, appears here to Utena as the duel song chorus swells with "I exist! I'm here!"

Dios kisses her ring

And Utena finds the strength to get back up.

And when Akio is about to drain away the remainder of Utena's life? Dios, his presence completely unnoticed by Akio, quietly disappears behind the glass of pink liquid Akio is drinking. Never to be seen again. Dios has been Utena's ally throughout the entire show. Embodying the ideal of the Prince without having to be a prince is how she frees Anthy.

She puts her fist to the floor to lift herself up with the hand the ring is on. At no point does she "shatter the ring" as this person on Twitter tried to claim:

She has the intact ring still on for the rest of the episode. Because the ring represents her promise to free Anthy. You can watch the damn scenes yourself. The entire show is available on YouTube. I'd recommend watching the entire series first but here's the finale.

Wherever these painfully incorrect surface level readings of Utena are coming from please stop reading them and go to Ohtori.nu I beg.

[arthropodrespecter]

2013 vs 2024

tbh, this is incredibly difficult for me. as a trans woman, there are certain expectations for posts like these. some gruff but sad looking man who was transformed into a happy beautiful girl via hormones. so you might think that nothing has changed. or perhaps i have gone backwards, gotten hairier, bigger, becoming even more of a man than i started off as.

this might be hard to read, so i'll put the rest under a read more. CW for homelessness, starvation, transmisogyny, and probably a few things i'm missing.

my transition has been messy. in some ways, you might say that i spent the first 25 years of my life transitioning. as a child i was efemminate, loved to play dress up and dolls, but my father was so against this that he filed a lawsuit against my mother, getting a court order forbidding her from "forcing me to crossdress." this set the tone for the rest of my childhood, which is a story i will not get into here because it is much worse than the story i'm trying to tell.

growing up in a christian fundamentalist home meant that it wasn't until much later, after my mother gained custody and i had gone on to experience even further ruination of my life, that i even learned that trans people exist. that this was a thing you could do, could be. a brief flash, something hiding behind my eyes, and i had locked it away. of course i wasn't trans. i was an athlete, a martial artist, a musician, why would i need to think about gender?

when i was 16, i joined tumblr. i saw a blooming transgender community, got to see the inner thoughts and conversations that trans people were having, couldn't avoid certain things any longer. i started to identify as nonbinary, eventually even coming out to my mother, who certainly TRIED to be supportive. it was exciting, made my heart race a little, made me scared. i had no idea what i was doing, or how my world was about to turn upside down and inside out.

the summer i turned 18, i was severely injured in a martial arts tournament. my right knee had caved in, the bone at the site of the joint crushed by a man i had thought was my friend. i didn't realize what had happened, and so didn't go to a doctor until two weeks later, at which point the damage was considered irreversible. everything i was disappeared. i lost all will to live. i stopped drawing, stopped playing music. i started drinking heavily. my family knew i was struggling but any efforts to fix the situation just made it worse. my mother and older brother had been putting more and more pressure on me to get a job and get out of the house, even though i could barely walk. my older brother told me that my mother was going to kick me out if i couldn't start contibuting. i still couldn't. i became homeless for the first time at the age of 19.

when you're homeless, it's like every single day is drawn out into countless hours, and you either have nothing to do, or far too much to do, and nothing in between. i had an online partner at the time, someone who turned out to be a chaser targeting suspiciously egg shaped men and nonbinary people, who spent the entire time getting more and more frustrated that i didn't have the time to be a fucktoy. i ended up insitutionalized for a month, after which i was kicked to the curb and left with nothing but a backpack and the clothes on my back. any journey of self discovery i may have been having was on hold until i wasn't fighting for survival.

my rescue came from a nonbinary lesbian who reached out to me. i was offered a room, a place to stay for no cost. they helped me break up with my partner. i found myself in a new sort of situationship, but at a confusing cost. why was this lesbian interested in me? was that even okay? eventually we had a conversation. they revealed to me that they had thought i was a trans woman. the fact that i had been seen as a woman hit me like a truck in a blindzone i didn't know i had.

after a difficult few days of arguing with myself, i couldn't hide from it. i was a woman. maybe i had always been a woman. a thought more terrifying than it had any right to be.

i grew my hair out. i started shaving. after a few months, i was even able to book my first HRT appointment (thank you state of washington trans healthcare laws). i came out to my mother a second time, and her reaction was much different this time. maybe due to the distance that had grown between us, the past hostility that left scars still bleeding, but i suspect it was because telling her that her firstborn son was actually a woman was much scarier to her than telling her that i didn't really care about gender.

this photo is from the day that i had my first HRT appointment. my soft chin, once a weakness, could be bared proudly, the ambiguity in my face becoming something that i cherished.

a year later, i had the longest hair of my life. if i shaved and wore makeup, and dressed right, i could get gendered correctly so long as i didn't speak. in that regard, i was truly getting the full experience of womanhood. my relationship with my partner was going strong. i thought that i had found my forever.

things got messy. you will probably hear me say this again. you won't find many better ways to describe my life, other than messy. my partner had always been polyamorous, but i was not, and had not ever pretended that this was not the case. so when one of my partners friends confessed her love to them, they went into panic mode. suddenly they were pushing everyone away, reverting to old bad habits and anxieties, and our relationship began to fall apart.

the friend, we'll call her A, pretended to move on, started dating someone else. my own friendship with A was strained by the situation, and her new partner, a butch lesbian named rowan, seemed to be suffering for it. i realized that the only way our relationships could survive was if we tried to work out an agreement to polyamory. in the end that wasn't enough, but i was desperate. i was starting to see the cracks, realizing that if this fell apart, i would be homeless again. my leg injury had already been so badly worsened from my first experience with homelessness, i knew that going through it again would be the end of me.

since my partner and A were now seeing each other, i began to get ignored. the only time either of them spent talking to me was talking about each other, either joyous or trying to fix some new problem. at this point, i started getting to know rowan. we had a lot in common, i had never talked to a butch before, let alone known one, and seeing the way that they navigated gender made me jealous. i didn't know why.

more and more, rowan and i were separated from the broader relationship, and as we talked more, something developed. i had already felt it the first time we spoke, on some level, but it had grown and grown, from respect, to admiration, to desire and love. we were in a polyamorous relationship after all, so it made sense to me. but shortly after, when i told my partner what i was feeling, they freaked out. this wasn't the agreement, they had only agreed to them being able to date other people, didn't think that it would need to be specified because i wasn't polyamorous.

the entire relationship falls apart and we go back to being two separate couples, and the end of that came swiftly after. they cheated on me with A, and when i found out, that was it. my now ex partner told me that i could stay at the apartment until the lease ran out, and they would move back in with their parents. they took all the furniture, i was left with an ancient computer, a blanket, some clothes, and two pillows. my depression came back with a vengeance, and i stopped eating. by the time the lease ran out, i had lost a dangerous amount of weight. i became homeless for the second time at age 22.

this time, after only six months, i found a thin sliver of hope. i was given a place to stay. a single-wide trailer that i would share with three other trans women and a hairy nonbinary lesbian. you've probably heard the stories of similar situations. it's impossible to have healthy boundaries in a space the size of a can of sardines. or healthy anything really. i got involved in an incredibly toxic relationship with one of the other trans women, who i found out was dating nearly a dozen other people.

the only thing i could do was try to feel wanted. desired. i began experimenting with my image.

i re-established contact with rowan, but there was so much there that i couldn't bring myself to face yet. as i began to experiment with more masculine presentation, those around me took a greater interest in me. i was an object of desire. it was the most worth i had felt i ever had.

i wasn't eating again. so my weight kept dropping. in the three-odd years since my first encounter with homelessness, i had lost 30% of my entire bodyweight. this only made my physical issues get worse and worse.

i wasn't done with experimentation though. what could i do with this newfound territory?

the time came. i couldn't stay anymore. the relationship had fallen apart, and my connection to the household had been sent away in exile. the irony of this is not lost on me. i was lucky enough to be able to couch surf for a few months this time.

i lost weight again.

and again.

my knee got worse and worse. my iliotibial band tore. my birthday came and went, nobody celebrated except for rowan, now my only friend.

a week after my birthday, a lesbian couple contacted me. told me that they had a spare bedroom, and that if i could cover the costs of my own food, could stay for as long as i liked.

i started HRT again. rowan and i had managed to work through all the shit and scum of our past and started a relationship anew. it felt like this could be real.

i started to look a lot like my mom. kind of uncomfortably like my mom. rowan was butch, so i had thought i should be a femme. i didn't understand what that meant, but whatever it was i attempted, it wavered dramatically.

i began to switch, every month or so, between masculine and feminine presentation. my chest had grown enough that it was visible now, and i experienced an equal amount of joy and fear when i was gendered correctly in public, having learned to fear people finding out that i was a trans woman.

the weight didn't come back. it was like my body had burned itself so far down that it could not regrow. i had no energy, and my physical condition continued to deteriorate. but i was allowed to be myself. and i was in love with a butch. maybe that would be enough.

i began to develop a fashion sense of my own. the butch label was starting to appeal to me. and my roommates seemed to agree, since they both shifted towards butchness and masculinity alongside me. but it wasn't to last. one of my roommates, a TME lesbian i'm gonna call M, suddenly went off on a transmisogynistic rant to me. M's partner was a trans woman, and hearing this caused me to suddenly re-evaluate everything. did this happen because M viewed me as more masculine now, a more acceptable target? would this happen to G, M's partner?

i hardcore shifted gears back to feminine presentation. it felt safer. i stopped eating again. things weren't okay, but they were bearable this way. but then, one day, we got locked out of our apartment. a stupid, played out thing that happens to everyone at least once. while my roommate G went to see if the apartment manager was in with a spare key, i attempted to climb our balcony and get in through the unlocked back door. when i was up on the railing of our balcony, it gave way, and i fell to the asphalt below, breaking my back. following a trend that i set half a decade ago, i didn't realize it had happened. my back hurt, but i thought it would go away. it did, replaced by a vast numbness through the middle of my back. i began to collapse any time i tried to exhert myself physically at all. i would only find out why years later. the fact that i couldn't contribute to chores anymore, and nobody knew why, made the situation with M deteriorate much faster.

at my lowest point in years. my relationship with rowan was the only thing that kept me from giving up, but after the third time M decided to spew vileness at me i just spent months locked away in my room, terrified that any time i saw M was going to be another lecture about how i was disrespectful, loud, obtrusive, intimidating, too quiet, too lazy, whatever incoherent train of thought i would have to face next.

it was too much to handle in combination with the events of 2020, the lockdowns, the illness, the forest fires, things ended up coming to a head. at age 25, i became homeless for the third time, during the pandemic and a wildfire that filled the air with plastic fumes so thick you couldn't see ten feet in front of you.

i got in contact with my mother and had her take my cat, because i knew i couldn't take care of her like this. that was the last time i saw my cat in person before she died. rowan was frantically trying anything and everything possible to help me. i thought that this might be the end.

three and a half years ago today i got the best news of my life. there was a way out. it would be a long and tricky road, involving moving my whole life to a new country. but we could do it. not only could we do it, but we actually did it. in a months time, i was in rowan's arms. for the first time in our years of knowing each other, there was nothing keeping us apart any longer.

i was finally able to rest. able to eat. i started to regain weight for the first time in nearly a decade. i felt my energy come back, slowly at first, and then more and more until i was capable of functioning, even if at a low level. it's around then that i find out the truth of what happened to my back. it still hasn't properly healed.

in my gratefullness for life and love, i briefly forgot my identity crisis. i was happy to just exist without fear and pain. it wasn't until about a year ago, when a miracle occurred, that this changed.

i woke up one morning, feeling more energetic than usual. i think to myself, maybe i can do some light exercise, for old times sake.

my knee doesn't hurt.

my knee doesn't hurt.

MY KNEE DOESN'T HURT.

a wound that i thought would dictate my life forever, given actual time to rest and food to fuel the process, had healed. everything that i had ever given up on came rushing back into my head, ideas about who i could be, what i could become, what other injuries i might be able to recover from if i treat them right and rebuild myself. ten months ago i began to work out consistently. my back is slowly healing. i am stronger than i ever was before.

i have had to rebuild myself so many times. did i ever discover the secret of butchness in the process? no, that's something that i think will take the rest of my life. for now, my butchness is an enduring pillar, the only part of myself that never fully burnt away. standing up for myself, being my own person, loving another butch, refusing to lose the kindness i so desperately clung to my whole life, refusing to limit myself and my dreams, this is who i am. i am friends with other butches. i am not alone anymore. for now, this is butch. this is me.

[p0lksaladannie]

HELLO

Here is a lil drawing I did today of Elvis, slightly too late for August 16th but nevertheless I managed to get it done. I miss him every day.

Now I'm about to get REAL.

It's been a long time since I've posted here. My life has changed so much, my health has really gone down the drain this year. I've spent the past four months in and out of hospital. I'm currently one month into another admission, so I literally drew this drawing today from my hospital room. Suffice it to say, I haven't really been able to keep up with my blog.

But I've never stopped loving Elvis and I never will. It's one of my defining traits when people get to know me. I've been in some really dark places this year due to my health, and Elvis has helped me through. I almost gave up but I'm so glad that I didn't. Listening to Elvis always cheers me up. And one day when I'm better I'm going to go to Graceland. In some ways he's saved my life. I hope somehow he knows the impact he has had on the world -- I wish I could thank him personally.

And though I don't know any of the people I chat to/interact with on this platform personally, I want to thank all of you too. I don't know if anyone will see or read all of this but the Tumblr Elvis girlies have really changed my life lol. I miss all of y'all and for anyone who noticed, I'm sorry I disappeared.

[jo1sstuff]

My first Malevolent fanart!

I haven't done fanart for years, and I have improved so much since then, but I had a drawing idea, so here it is!

I'm not very good at digital art, but I'm crap at taking good photos of my traditional art, so it's not my best work. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though.

Anyways, @potato-lord-but-not, you like Malevolent fanart, right? Well here's mine! I stopped listening to Malevolent after about 20 episodes a few months ago, and then I saw you on Tumblr and I got back into it. So... thanks? Also, I've mentioned this to you before, but you never reacted to it at all so I don't know if you actually saw it, but I just got Going Postal from the library. Wish me luck.

Random little details I want to point out,

1. John is covering Arthur's eyes and hand because, y'know, he has control of them. It's kinda hard to tell he's covering Arthur's hand because the sleeve overlaps, but it's there. Arthur's pulling his collar up to hide his face or something if you can't tell.

2. Optical illusion background! Also, star cloak! Thank you, stock photos!

3. I had some trouble figuring out how to draw John, I liked the horn thing, the mask thing, and the eldritch thing. And so, all three. The eldritch one mostly being the tentacle thingies in his cloak. He also has a crown hanging off his horn, because, King In Yellow. Kings have crowns. The original sketch of John looked absolutely horrible. The only thing he had was the mask, and he was very stiff. He didn't even have a cloak! He was just a blob!

4. Wooden finger. It's hard to see it, but it's there. It's sticking out because wood doesn't really bend.

Sketches below cut:

The original sketch of John. He definitely improved.

See! Look at that improvement!

Idk why Arthur's mouth disappeared in the finished drawing. It just did.

[bellaxgiornata]

Falling For the Devil [Part twenty-eight: "The Early Morning Wake Up"]

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader

Summary: Matt wakes you up early because he can't sleep.

Or

You wake up to a very aroused, very sweet Matthew who has only one thing on his mind.

[Series of one-shots about Reader meeting, falling for, and dating Matt Murdock.]

Warnings: 18+ for this series; contains humor, fluff, romance, angst, smut (like...a lot of it later in the series), language, some violence

Word Count: 3k

a/n: Another smupdate, friends! And let me introduce you to Super Soft Matthew in this one! Here in FFTD, we appreciate ALL sides of Matt (especially in the bedroom). You can find the entire list of installments for this series on tumblr here. Enjoy, and please never be afraid to leave feedback! (Unless it's mean. We do no not do mean in FFTD.)

Stirring faintly in your sleep, you felt something pleasantly warm and soft along the back of your neck. A contented hum vibrated in your throat at the feel of it, your mind and body slowly waking as your eyelids tightened closed a little more. The sensation that had woken you lowered, now pleasantly present in the crook of your neck and eliciting a faint moan from you. 

Matt’s arm tightened around your waist, tugging your bare back into his solid, bare chest behind you. You felt one of his legs slip over the top of yours, the weight of his muscular thigh pressing your legs further into the bed. The heat of his body enveloped you; smiling, you relaxed back into him further. His hand slid up your stomach, palm flat as it dragged slowly up your naked skin, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. His hand eventually stopped, halting its search when he cupped your left breast tenderly. That’s when you realized Matt was softly kissing your neck, his lips moving slow and relaxed, as if he was in no hurry and only wanting to savor the taste of your skin. 

Your eyes finally opened, noticing his bedroom was lit only by the very faint morning light creeping past his curtains, swathing the room in a blanket of faint gray. It had to be fairly early still for the sun not to have risen yet.

“Baby?” your tired voice called out.

“Hmm?” Matt’s returning hum answered, his mouth still focused on sucking the skin along your neck.

“What’re you doing?” you whispered.

You felt the bed shift behind you as Matt moved, and then a moment later you felt him pressing his hips into your ass. It would have been difficult to miss the shape of his hard cock along your backside with just how erect it was. Your bottom lip slipped between your teeth, a need awakening low inside of you. You felt Matt’s mouth disappear from your neck before you felt his plush lips placing a delicate kiss to your earlobe.

“Woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep,” he murmured beside your ear, his hot breath drawing goosebumps along your skin. “You were just so soft and warm. I couldn’t help myself.” He kissed the corner of your jaw, just below your ear, his mouth lingering for a second as he firmly squeezed your breast in his hand. “I can stop if you want me to.”

You shook your head along the pillow, feeling your blood quickly rushing south at the sound of his groggy morning voice. You’d spent many nights together in the past few months that you’d been dating, and while you’d had sex most nights before falling asleep, and occasionally sometimes after you’d woken up, you had never woken up to Matt like this. He was touching and kissing you as if he desperately needed you; as if he was burning for you.

“Don’t stop,” you breathed out, thighs squirming together beneath his silk sheets. 

His hand continued to gently knead your breast as his mouth returned to kissing your neck. Your eyelids lowered, a wet heat forming between your thighs as your arousal grew. Matt’s tongue lightly brushed along your skin and a quiet moan fell out of your lips. You pressed the back of yourself more firmly into Matt’s chest behind you, a faint contented rumble sounding in his throat. You reveled in the feel of his smooth, bare skin beginning to grind against your backside. 

“What do you want, baby?” you asked, eyes half-lidded as your head turned on the pillow towards him.

You watched as his mouth lowered to your shoulder, languorously trailing kisses down the line of it. He was moving so slow, taking his time with each kiss his lips placed against you. His hand released your breast, leisurely snaking its way back down to your stomach, fingertips dancing over your bare skin. The movement tickled lightly, your muscles twitching under his touch.

“I just want to love you,” he whispered into your skin. “That’s all I want, sweetheart. Just let me love you.”

Your heart sped up in your chest, slamming roughly into your rib cage at his words. Fuck, if you’d ever thought you wanted him before, it paled in comparison to how badly you desperately needed Matt right now.

His hand began traveling lower, making its way downwards until two of his fingers slipped between your dampening folds. You allowed his hand space, moving your thighs just a bit apart under his leg as your eyelids fluttered closed. A sigh left you as Matt’s mouth began kissing a line down your shoulder blade, your ass pressing back into him. 

His fingers slid back and forth along you for a few passes, your arousal growing as a whimper escaped you next. Encouraged by the noises you were making, his middle finger dipped inside of you. You gasped out, the breathy sound amplified in his quiet bedroom. His finger began to pump into you with that same delicious, slow pace he’d been setting with his lips on your skin. Your hand made its way downwards between your thighs, only stopping to cover over his and grip it tight as your hips began rutting into it, greedily matching the pace he set with his finger so you could feel him deeper inside of you. 

“I love it when you don’t overthink, sweetheart,” he whispered, his mouth kissing your shoulder tenderly. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

Your head turned over your shoulder again, glancing at Matt’s half-lidded and aroused face hovering just over it. He was still casually grinding his hips slow and sensually against your body, his hard cock an ever present presence against your skin. The sight of him drowsy and looking at you with so much love and affection, mixed with the way he was taking pleasure from your body like he was, was building your need to an almost unbearable degree.

“You make me feel comfortable,” you admitted shyly, voice barely a whisper. “Safe. In a way that no one’s ever made me feel.”

He smiled down at you, his finger still thrusting into you at a relaxed pace. He leaned down towards you and you eagerly rose from off the pillow, meeting him halfway to kiss him. He was in no rush as he kissed you, either. His lips moved along yours carefully and delicately; he was taking his time with every touch this morning, you noted. Even with the way his tongue glided so soft and slow along your bottom lip.

Matt had never kissed you like this before, never touched you like this before. Every touch of his hands or his mouth was adoring and attentive. It had you moaning into his mouth, desperately needing more of him. Despite your neediness, his movements never grew fiercer or faster as you were used to. He kept that steady, comfortable, relaxed pace and it was driving you wild.

You broke away from his mouth, your hips bucking sharply into his hand. But his finger kept its pace. Glancing up at him just above your shoulder, you took in the way he was smiling drowsily down at you. He wasn’t going to be rushed apparently. Swallowing hard, you slowly turned on the bed to face him, Matt’s finger inside of you never leaving its place pumping into your cunt as his leg lowered from yours.  

His head nestled back down on the pillow and you followed his movements, lowering your own head comfortably onto your pillow. His eyes were on your chin, that little drowsy, amused smile still spread along his lips.

“Relax,” he whispered. “We have all morning, sweetheart. It’s Sunday. Nowhere to be.”

Your hand reached up out of the sheets, the tips of your fingers tracing down his stubbled jaw. Matt’s eyes closed, that smile still on his lips as he leaned into your touch, something he always did when you’d touched his face. You spent a moment, your fingers taking their time trailing around him lightly, running over the plane of his forehead, the delicate skin of his closed eyelids, tracing down the slope of his nose before memorizing the expanse of his cheek. His lips had parted, expelling soft sighs as your fingers moved. 

And then he slipped a second finger inside of you and your eyes briefly closed shut in response, a surprised gasp slipping out of your mouth. He was still setting a devastatingly slow pace as your hand trailed its way down his neck, over his bare shoulder and down his side, slipping under the sheets as it moved. You noticed a few goosebumps rising along his own skin in response and you smiled. 

Eventually your hand found what it was looking for, gripping the base of Matt’s hardened cock. You applied the lightest pressure, enjoying the faint groan he emitted. Following his lead, you began stroking his cock in careful, languorous movements. Occasionally you’d pause at the tip, swiping your thumb lightly over it before focusing specifically on that small sensitive space just below the tip, reveling in the noises Matt made in response. 

With your own need growing, impatient for his cock inside of you, you gradually slid your leg over the top of his hip. Your hand firmly gripping him, your eyes shifted up to Matt’s face before you. He was gnawing on his bottom lip, brows drawn together with his eyes closed.

“Baby,” you whispered. “I need you.”

His eyes snapped open instantly, scanning around your face before settling along your collarbone. He nodded once, his fingers slipping out from inside of you as his hand came to rest on your lower back, drawing you in closer to him. Your hand guided the tip of him to your slickened entrance, eyes still focused on Matt’s face resting on the pillow before you. And then you slipped him in, just a little past the tip, and you both exhaled a sharp breath almost simultaneously. 

With the leg you had over Matt’s hip, you carefully pulled yourself further in towards him, taking your time as you adjusted around him. You groaned low as you drew yourself closer to him, his cock sinking just a little deeper inside of you. His palm on your lower back pressed harder into your skin and you obliged his silent request, drawing yourself up to Matt until your hips were touching, his cock fully sheathed inside of you.

For a moment he stayed like that, his cock filling you fully. It felt so so good, your eyelids dropping again. Matt's mouth was abruptly back on yours, kissing you passionately. You kissed him back desperately, focusing on the feel of him pressed so firmly against the front of you. But somehow you just wanted more of him, your hand sliding along his naked body, only stopping to dig your fingers into the solid muscle of his lower back as you whined into his mouth. His hips drew back only a little before they met yours again, once again holding himself there as you moaned into his mouth. 

Fuck he felt good. 

Repeating the motion with careful, deliberate strokes, his hips began to move. The fluid, rhythmic thrusting of his cock back and forth into you somehow felt just as delicious as when he was normally fucking you with a more rapid and almost relentless pace. This entire moment with him felt different than usual, softer and more tender than he often was during sex. Not that Matt wasn't sometimes gentle, but this didn't feel like just sex you quickly realized. 

When Matt’s mouth kissed its way down your jaw and neck, moving adoringly as he traveled lower to focus on your breasts, you knew exactly what this was. As cheesy as it sounded, you realized that this was what people meant when they talked about making love. It wasn't just fucking, it wasn't even sex–it was intimate and vulnerable and every touch felt like it meant something. 

With that abrupt realization, the way his tongue was lapping gently at your nipple somehow felt ten times hotter and your cunt gripped him stronger in response. Your hand on his back readjusted around the leg you still had over his hip, sliding it lower until it landed on his ass. Boldly gripping it tight, you began thrusting your hips forwards to meet his each time he pumped into you. A low, satisfied rumble came from Matt at your eager movements. He continued to suck the stiff peak of your nipple, tongue carefully swirling around it in his mouth. You moaned out, the feel of his warm flesh pressed against yours sending a wave of pleasure rolling over you. 

Nipple slipping from between his lips, Matt's head rose back up until he could rest his forehead against yours. Both of your hips were working in tandem with each other, drawing heavier and heavier panting breaths from the pair of you, the sound filling his bedroom now in the faint light. 

"You feel so good, Matthew," you whispered. 

He moaned softly before his mouth briefly connected to yours for a sweet kiss. "I love you," he breathed out when he pulled back, his face only inches from yours on the same pillow now. 

Your grip tightened on his firm, round ass, anchoring yourself to him as you further ground your hips forward into him. That breathy declaration he had whispered to you in the early morning had you nearing your climax.

"I love you," you murmured back.

You saw his eyes pinch tight in response to your words, a pleased, sharp noise coming from his throat. Curious at his reaction, you said it again. 

"I love you, Matthew," you told him, louder. 

His fingers on your back dug into your flesh as his brows drew together. He moaned out, the sound causing your cunt to squeeze around his cock yet again. You were getting so close, that burning desire in you feeling ready to explode out of you. 

His thrusts gradually picked up their pace, his hand disappearing from your back to only a moment later carefully cradle your face. His sightless gaze was on your cheek, so much warmth reflected back at you in them. Unable to resist, you closed the space between the pair of you, eagerly latching your mouth back to his. His tongue delicately traveled along your bottom lip and you let him slip it inside of your mouth. Without hesitation his tongue carefully and wholly explored your mouth, the attentiveness drawing a throaty note of approval from you as your hips rutted more firmly back into his. 

As your bodies continued to rock into each other on the bed, you felt your release coming on suddenly. It wasn't some big, heavy wave crashing into you like your orgasms had always been with Matt before, but rather a full body release, one still powerful enough to leave your body trembling and quaking against his as you whimpered into his mouth. His own hips began to stutter and slow their pace; you felt that telltale throbbing of his cock inside of you before the warm release of him hit you, a soft groan vibrating its way out of his mouth into yours from where your lips were still connected. 

For a few seconds longer, you both continued to work your hips together, chasing down the last of your respective climaxes as your tongues continued to chase each other. Eventually both of your hips came to a complete stop with Matt still inside of you, but it was still a few moments before your mouths finally drew apart. 

Breath coming in short, you pressed your forehead to Matt's, smiling when his nose nuzzled in against your face affectionately like he often did. His hand moved from your cheek to cradle the back of your head, tenderly smoothing your hair down. Your hand was still boldly on his ass, though you weren't gripping it nearly as hard. Even still partially dazed from sleep and post-orgasm you couldn't believe the shape of his ass–it was unbelievably perfect. 

“Worth waking up for?” his tired voice asked, his nose once again nuzzling into yours.

"No one's ever…touched me like that before," you hesitantly confessed to Matt in a whisper. "Been like that with me before."

You saw the slow, sleepy grin slip onto his face where it rested just beside yours. His hand was still soothingly playing with your hair.

"I've never been with anyone like that before, either," he admitted. "Never wanted to until you."

Biting your lip, you tried to fight back the large smile on your mouth. That had been easily one of the best sexual experiences you’d personally ever had and it was solely because of the feeling behind it–and partly because you were still touching his wonderful ass.

"Told you I just wanted to love you, sweetheart," he murmured, voice sounding tired and groggy. 

“Mmm, you did,” you agreed, eyelids dropping closed as exhaustion washed back over you.

Eventually Matt’s hand lowered from your head and you felt him shifting beside. A moment later, you felt his cock slip out of you. An emptiness hit you at the loss and you instinctively pulled yourself in closer to his chest, searching for more of him.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” he asked gently.

You hummed out a positive response, your face burrowing along his bare skin, just beneath his chin. Body feeling heavy, surrounded by Matt’s warm, naked skin, you were close to drifting back off.

“I was hoping so,” he murmured.

Tugging the sheets up higher over the both of you, you felt Matt shifting along the bed for a minute. Eventually he came to settle more fully on the bed beside you, his arms encircling your waist. His chin carefully tucked onto the top of your head as he drew you in tight to him under the silk sheets. Blissfully content and wrapped around each other’s naked forms, you both fell back asleep.

[saysike-skedoodles]

Well Do Ya? [+update]

[BTW- if you're an account that does NSFW/ Fetish content, I kindly ask for you to not interact with my work. Please don't take this the wrong way, I respect your interests, but I'm uncomfortable with that content and wish to not engage with it :] ] ---

EVEN MORE BEX ART!!!! OK to be fair she has a new outfit in this sooooo it's still fine- hopefully. Eh, she's an adorable cat so I think it's a win I drew her again. I've been getting more and more into Franz Ferdinand's music and while I'm more on the loud/aggressive side of rock with the likes of Green Day, Andrew WK and all that- I still REALLY like how groovy Franz Ferdinand's stuff is. SO I MADE A DRAWING BASED OFF OF ONE OF THEIR SONGS! That being 'Do You Want To', REALLY good song, loads of Bex vibes to me which is why I drew them with this snazzy looking outfit. I also included lyrics from said song in the piece too. That part specifically always gets stuck in my head I'm not gonna lie. I used a mix of colours from the album cover the song came from to make this piece and also some colours I played around with myself. The jacket/blazer thing I gave Bex wasn't based off of anything in particular but was meant to be over the top anyways since the song is just so GROOVY. But to be fair I think I took indirect inspiration from when I made the drawing of Bex as Discord when it came to the flared pants. I had to I just really liked doing the partly see-through half of the pants when I drew Discord Bex.

---

[Update is below this!]

ANYWAYS- UPDATE ABOUT WHY I SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED FOR A MONTH. So a VERY BIG THING happened and it kept me ultra busy for the past month and that waaaaassss- I GOT TO BE A VENDOR AT A LOCAL CONVENTION!!! AAAAA!!!!! It was seriously SUCH an awesome time and while I was completely DRAINED after it I would gladly do it all again. I'm not gonna mention the convention's name since it's a local one and would only doxx myself if I did so. (I know basic internet safety.) But what I will say is that everyone involved from the organisers to the vendors that sold alongside me were all SO NICE and such patient people too. Even the people that stopped by at my stall were also some of the nicest people I've had the pleasure meeting. It was amazing to be sat in a convention selling my artwork and meeting people and seeing them be so interested in my characters it was so- AAAAA!!!! AMAZING!!! BRILLIANT!!! Can you tell I'm missing it?? With it being over though (and with that finally having time again to draw) I still can't guarantee I'll be making more art during this month. I'm just a bit more drained than usual on the creative side with the convention adding to it. Don't worry, there will be an art summary as usual for the end of this year, but there might not be much from me after that. Believe it or not I do in fact have a life outside of DA and other socials that I'm on and I wanna live it.

---

Deviantart

Tumblr

Art Tumblr

Youtube

TMM Official Tumblr

Newgrounds

---

[all content I post is automatically 13+ if not stated in the title or the content itself]

[charbies]

been having a tough time.. stuff about it under the cut

writing a stream of consciousness about the past few months. I've been really depressed. I kept getting burned out from my job almost monthly, but could bounce back when I took a little time off. Then midway through the summer, it's like I just got stuck and couldn't get.. unstuck. by fall I had a full blown depressive episode; in september I could admit I was depressed, in october I went on medication for it, and by the time november came around it felt like there was no end in sight. Fall is my favorite time of year, and I felt like I was in a fugue state and missed it because I barely existed.

the ways this showed up in my body are unlike anything I ever experienced in my life before and that was terrifying. my head and body ached like I was coming home from war every day. I was falling asleep at the wheel, and it was a recurring pattern; my body was shutting itself off when the thought of what I'd have to deal with at work was becoming too much. I burst into tears whenever I saw my friends post pics hanging out and wished I could live closer and see them more. I felt so overwhelmed and empty, I needed everything to stop and I wanted to disappear.

my job is fucking hard. I try not to talk about it on here, but I work with people who are hurting and traumatized. I regularly have to tell them when I believe the choices they're making are going to wind up killing them. I have to tell them the last things they want to hear and still hope they trust me. The average burnout rate at my job is 2 years, I've been there for 16 months. I'm 24 and the youngest one there by a long shot. I know I'm good at what I do, but still feel way in over my head, I feel like I don't get to be my age. I've thought about quitting but I don't think I have it in me to leave and start over somewhere new just yet, not now. I feel trapped because as hard as the work is, I get way better amenities there than at most other places; this place is basically as good as it gets where I live and it's still killing me.

even tho I know how severe things were getting, I feel so guilty for ways I fell off the face of the earth. I stopped talking to friends, family, coworkers, pretty much everyone. I bailed on linktober and a bunch of other art projects I lined up and thought I had the energy to pull off. In general I just feel like a failure even though I know that isn't true.

I broke down hard and took a leave of absence, I get a few weeks off from my job. I've been off for 10 days and as badly as I've wanted to draw the idea also makes me want to jump out of my skin. So I'm taking time and hoping it comes back while I pull myself together.

I could use some advice or wisdom from anyone who has been through this in any capacity. Even silly stuff in my inbox would make my day. Tumblr was my comfort place when I was a kid and I think it will do me good to be able to look back on this post after I've worked through this and I'm doing better. Thanks for reading all of this if you did, it means a lot <3

[yumegf]

squip more like um kiss ;3; - kylie x simon fan fic

summary: a light fluffy fic about simon and kylies first few interactions and love confessions as well as first kisses ^_^ words: 3791 a03 link if u don't wanna read it on tumblr :3 notes: i haven't wrote in awhile...and i just wanted to have fun so that's why there is random emoticons :D

It had only been a few months since Kylie had gotten her SQUIP so far it gave her nothing but headaches, body aches, and more stress than ever about the thought of a supercomputer living in her head. She only got the thing to get better at games and a part of her deep down wanted someone to talk to. The moment she got so swept up, first she heard about it while on a gaming forum as someone was reporting someone for cheating and swore up and down it was a SQUIP-related matter. She couldn't help but ask about it…a SQUIP sounds like a misspelling or some new gaming term she didn't know about. She asked just to get nothing but one reply stating it's a weird computer pill that can help you do whatever which piqued her interest. If it's just a pill then why not probably a 24-hour thing and she couldn't help but try to find sellers to see if this thing was real even if that meant going to sketchy websites and paying a high price. 

Her life was boring. This was the perfect thing to spice it up, it wouldn't hurt. Which she was wrong about. She was already nervous enough to buy a computer pill from the dark web but now the instructions said something about Mountain Dew. All of this was so random and weird. But she did it after a lot of hesitation in her empty dark room, nothing really happened, if anything the taste of Mountain Dew just lingered in her mouth and a wintergreen taste. Yucky :(...She was scared someone ripped her off with a tic tac.

She felt a sharp pain in her nerves, she couldn't help but yell and whine in pain as she fell to the floor, hearing random sounds and weird voices in her head. It went on for a good few minutes before stopping just to start up again and stop. She didn't want to get off her floor and was clinging to the legs of her desk with her life. She couldn't even process the voice but just knew he said something about accessing or something, she heard a robotic and nerdy-sounding voice of someone in her head and almost a blue shadowy figure in front of her which was very visibly glitching horribly.

 “Kylie Mitchells..Welcome to your Super Intel Quantum Processor, your Squip.” said the random figure standing above her, she couldn't help but notice it was in her head. 

She looked up and tried to readjust herself but everything hurt like her body just got hit with a hammer, she used her desk to help her up as she looked around. No one was there, fear struck her face as she said nothing before looking again, it was a bluish-teal figure standing before her. It was slightly taller and had a human silhouette but no facial features like a bad shadow puppet show. Her eyes went wide as she wasn't really informed on any of this..she just thought after the pill she would be magically good at everything.

 “W-What?” She said quickly.

“I am your SQUIP.” It sounded sarcastic but just robotic. 

“Are you real O_O…” She looked around it and debated sticking her hand in him, he looked like a weird hologram. She couldn't help her curiosity. 

“Yes..? I look like nothing right now..because you haven't chosen who you wanted to have instructions from. I can speak and only appear to you in a telepathic way.” She didn't know what to pick, the ideas were endless, her head was still in alot of pain too. 

“Why c-cant you pick!” She said in an annoyed tone but was just curious if he could think out of the box. 

“That's not how that works really, unless you want me to be nothing.” 

He had an angry tone to his voice as he sighed and disappeared once more. She got out a small pen in a little notebook beside her desk and started to draw and scribble. She wanted to humanize this voice, he sounded nerdy and was blue..he already sounded like a boy and he was a computer. She smiled at herself for having such a good idea as she got to work. What was the word again? She was gijinka-ing.. :3!

 She just drew a nerd in the coolest clothes she could think of, he did look like a ghost so she made sure to add that. A total dweeb :B..She happily looked up to show off her creation but he was gone. She was freaked out before speaking out loud to see if he would say anything.

 “I drew you ^_^! Is this good..? How do you turn into this? Should she say it out loud? I am not good at making descriptions..”. She waited for a reply till she heard some buzzing. 

She thought about the design really hard in her head like what he said, she felt like her brain was gonna explode! She turned around in her little spinny chair to try to see if her weird little drawing would come to life already. It's not like this will be long term. She saw her design basically appear from thin air! Exciting :D! 

She was in shock at it all and saw the hologram finally look a bit more noticeable. She was in awe about how spot on it was O_o.. He looked at his appearance and scoffed about how nerdy it was, fitting but it didn't make him feel as suave as usual. Usually, other users would choose something more fun…like a celebrity..or Keanu. He pouted a little but couldn't help but be a bit honored to have a custom appearance. He looked at her with distasteful and rude eyes as she stared back. He tried his best to stay a bit smug and had a small smirk. She giggled at his braces and everything, even if she was freaked out he looked like someone she would see in class or in a fun show. He explained basically everything he could about how he's in her mind, she can only see him blah blah etc. 

Over these months, it has been kind of nice to have a SQUIP. It was someone to keep Kylie company..the shock wasn't nice and he would constantly get frustrated with her at first but he seemed used to her mistakes by now.

 If anything he kept talking about the idea of her getting popular everytime friends were mentioned, now anytime she's at the mall he would point to dresses and makeup while constantly talking about how great everything would be if she gave it a shot and how it perfectly connects with her plans to make more friends. She would just sigh and roll her eyes a little at it. 

She had gotten used to the SQUIP minus the times when he would randomly take control of her. At first she would talk out loud a lot to him and look crazy since she's talking to air basically but she had been getting better, he had been looking less like a hologram too. More human, more of like a ghost that would float over her shoulder all the time or that's how it felt. She was happy to have a friend and to introduce him to the idea of being himself and having friends even if he scoffed. He enjoyed her somewhat. He had gotten used to his appearance, it was..different but it felt like him. Over these months he got a name too, she was always picked at calling him just SQUIP..it felt rude. He came up with the name SIMON as a fun solution..SUPER INTEL MACHINE ONLINE NETWORK..Simon for short. He liked it if he was being honest it made him feel important.

He felt so..real whenever she mentioned his lisp and beauty marks, it made him feel human like he had a real connection and wasn't just there to help her with a goal.

 He had gotten used to her weird nature and enjoyed indulging in her more geeky interests with her as he understood them. He had a small liking towards her but buried it deep down as it was just her trying to trick him, he couldn't help but smile when helping her with things and guiding her hand through it all. He couldn't think about it too much without feeling like he was glitching or overthinking, he bit his tongue when thinking about it for too long.

She was doing the usual of sitting on her bed, doing whatever on her little..console..DS...He always noticed her playing her little puppy game. Her small string lights illuminated the room and gave a warm feeling as the night grew closer. Her room always gave off a comfortable feeling he enjoyed, maybe it helped her after a long day of school. He didn't pay any mind since it was the one game she didn't need help on or didn’t beg him to watch, he would rather her be studying or planning to be more popular but this was okay. 

He didn't do much other than watch her or just put himself on her screen and sit in the corner. She liked it and always poked at him and nudged him with the small stylus :3. She sat it down and got off her bed with a big stretch and yawned as she felt like she had been sitting there for hours. 

“Can we do something different..? Like I don't know…Plan...I have an infinite database just for you to usthe..” He said in an annoyed manner as he pulled himself up from her little DS and sat on her bed impatiently. She sighed and said nothing but it's not like she can hide her thoughts. “I know…I just…I don't know what to ask Si-Si..D; ” She giggled and smiled at her nickname for him. 

Kylie turned around and sat back on her bed as she saw the familiar annoyed face. He scoffed at the nickname and pushed up his glasses. He laid back on her cozy plush-filled bed, she crawled over to him a little and grabbed her DS. She flipped it back open and stuck her tongue out while playing to focus on her little puppies. Her stylus clicked and clacked on the screen as he grew annoyed -_-...

He could make his own DS appear and he does from time to time but he wants something different, something more. He brushed his hair and pushed up his glasses again as he watched over her shoulder. He felt more nervous than usual. He bit his tongue and his glasses and poked the top of her hair. He gently zapped her head with a sheepish grin as he heard her squeal. “Simon!” She turned her head back a little and saw his grin as her cheeks flushed seeing him just smile at her but was pretty annoyed. 

She realized their proximity and leaned a bit more forward and showed off her strange posture. Usually, when she did things like this, he would shock her. Popular girls don't have bad posture. 

He rolled his eyes and got closer to her, following her movements as she felt his sort of computer-whirring-like breath stir next to her face. She noticed how close he was being and this strange behavior, usually she would be fine but it felt different. He couldn’t fully touch her really due to his ghostly appearance but it could still happen, the most he could do was simulate the feelings at the time. He would try his best to simulate some amount of closeness to her as gently went across her nervous system and down to her sides, giving it some kind of gentle squeeze like a hug and even tried squeezing her with his arms. He was proud of himself for doing such a thing. He felt her breath hitch slightly.

 “W-Whats been up with you today..?” She asked as she turned to look at him in his rarely appearing eyes and felt the touch of his almost fake hands disappear. 

“What's been up with..you!..” He deflected and pouted as his eyebrows furrowed. 

“Wha! Ok well...hm..a question..question..:p…I dunno Simon…what's the timeline where you don't act so weird and flip floppy..” She smiled and giggled at her joke as she watched his face get flushed. 

He frowned and rolled his head back. She leaned in close while asking the question as she scooted closer to the bed. He tried leaning back and acting calm as he rolled his eyes. “But um..really...what's up with you Si-Si? Need an update?..Do you guys need those..?” She felt bad if that was the case. 

Kylie looked at him with big eyes and leaned in close to examine his face. He bit the inside of his cheek and blushed immensely as he felt like his glitching got worse, he muttered and stuttered as he felt himself lean in. He was trying his best to think of so many possibilities and times and calculations and just whatever, he felt like he was going short circuit and then he had to think about human error. He didn’t know how this would even work. How would he simulate something like this sort of a..thing? She looked at him and examined his face as she felt herself get closer and crawl between his legs, she tilted her head up to examine him further, wanting to see if really something was wrong with him. 

“Nothing is wrong with me. I just want you to practice and focus on the goal.” He scoffed as he looked down on her and sat up a bit more.

“Later..pretty please..we have been doing stuff all week..!! :(..I just wanna relax with you..” 

“I could always just give you a shot of serotonin, it's really easy.” He said with a proud tone.

“That's not what I mean!” She tugged on his hoodie strings with a whine as he looked up at him. “I like hanging out with you Simon, you know that right? You're not just my thing in my head..” She smiled as she got a bit closer to him. He paused and tried to format what he was going to say. 

He didn't know what to say. The bubbling feeling came back to him as he watched her spill out her feelings rather than him having to search for him. He didn't know what to even say.

He felt her hand gently graze his as a tingle went up his own spine. He tried his best to look away as the words stuck to his throat. 

“I do like you Simon..” She said softly as she buried her face in her hair. He stuttered and kept trying to just make it all make sense.

He had to idea what to say. He's not used to having so much free will with his emotions. This was so sudden and he was so clouded by other goals the SQUIP didn't even notice this crush bubble up in her head. He monitored her closely, watching her heart beat quickly and her mind race, so help him if he looks at her thoughts which would be a jumbled loud mess. His breathing grew quick and hitched as he bit down his tongue. 

“I like you too..” He tried his best not to stutter or make weird movements, the entire point of SQUIPS was to correct mistakes not make them in front of its user. 

He quickly leaned in and took a chance and the feeling of his lips touching hers as he gently pecked them or tried to replicate the feeling of being kissed by messing with her nerves.

 His breathing got quick and he felt the soft hum and whirr like an overworked computer. She was in shock at this sudden affection and kiss as this was all so new but it was nice. She smiled and happily laughed at the kiss. She liked how it felt though it felt real enough, her face grew pink and her mouth was slightly open in shock. 

She smiled happily before pecking his lips again or at least trying to, it was a bit hard due to his form. He nervously smiled and enjoyed the small kisses from her as he simulated the feeling of his fingers detangling through her hair and couldn't help but quiver about how close they were as she was practically against his chest in a way. He was happy this feeling was slowly being embraced really, it felt so new like he was controlled in a new way. She giggled nervously throughout the small kissies, he tasted like the color blue and he was cold. She didn't even care anymore and just let her confidence take control, which usually was...Simon..funny :-). 

He bit the bullet and leaned into her for a more serious kiss as he tried his best to practice these weird humanlike movements and feelings, it was weird to finally do it. It felt even weirder to simulate the feeling on her lips and mouth other than kissing her to just go with it further. He almost had the urge to take control of her to make this process easier but he wouldn’t dare and rather monitored her brain to see if she enjoyed this or not. He could practically feel himself glitch in either enjoyment or nervousness as he smiled and was happy to know she somewhat liked this. She felt the strange passion in his kiss and tried her best to not have such sloppy movements as she tried doing it back, it was her first time doing something like this. She put her hands on his knees so she could sit herself up a bit more and felt strange kissing the little hologram. The more they kept going it started feeling real. He wanted to keep it going forever and enjoyed the warm sensation before she suddenly pulled away to catch her breath, which he forgot she had. 

She caught her breath and pushed up her glasses as she looked down and away, in this very weak moment. She readjusted herself on her bed before looking up at him, waiting for him to explain himself. He stared back and could feel himself buffering at an answer. “I just wanted to see if you were a good kisser..popular girls need to kiss well! It was a test…!” He grinned sheepishly as he grew more quiet at his weak reply and could practically hear the stuttering and glitches in his voice and put on his usual annoyed face.

“I-I..” She tried carefully to pick her words but she looked at him right in the eyes as he pushed up his glasses. “Sureee…Simon” She gently touched his cheek and pecked him on the nose of his glasses. It felt like her lips got a bit of a shock. She liked this new revelation of what the two of them could do. She smiled at him and couldn’t help but just stare at his flustered face. She tugged his hoodie strings as she just laughed and turned back around. Kylie laid her back on him as he tried his best not to just disappear. She opened her little game as she pulled her knees to her chest to finally get back to what she was doing even if she was a bit shaken by what just happened. She just ignored the nervous feeling and was happy Simon might like her. He confirmed it but she still didn't believe it.

 He tried to make himself seem as real and close as possible to her. He leaned down and laid his head in the crook of her neck and nuzzled his face in her hair. He was getting used to just flaring up certain parts of her so he felt close and made sure her sensors could feel him. She felt the feeling of just him stirring close to her neck and ear as she tapped away on her little device, trying not to freak out but he was in her head, he could tell. 

He smiled at her panicking and tried her best to keep her calm, it was just routine sometimes to calm her nervous system. Simon quickly monitored her heartbeat and brain activity for any positive signs of calming down. He couldn’t do much touching and his words were strange but he tried to run his hands through her hair as he detangled it with her fingers. He watched her lean back some more and felt her heartbeat slow down as she calmed herself. He liked it when he was able to do his job for once. 

Even though he could do it without leaving he preferred to at least help her not get freaked out by the sensations. He ran his finger on her back and lightly shocked her to correct her posture and saw her immediately sit up as she murmured something. She flipped over and stretched again her arms and groaned for sitting so long before curling into him again, with her head gently put under his chin.

 “Simon, did you understand what I said...y-you um know..I like you” The words coated her throat as she got choked up in her own words. 

Simon got flushed hearing the words again and nodded. “Of course I understand. I reciprocate the same feelings. ” He said in a more sassy manner. “Also I live in your head…and I just generally know you.” He smirked and flashed his blue braces at her and his attempt at a joke but it was serious.

“Can I pretty please call my squipfriend now? Boyfie? Boyfieee ^_^” She said excitedly with a small laughter afterwards and happily kicked her feet. It was silly to think about.

He couldn't help but groan a little and rolled his eyes. “As Long as you still listen to my instructions…” He sighed but loved the idea of being called a boyfriend in a way or the thought of them being together. It interrupted his plan to make her popular as popular girls have boyfriends and he's not really enrolled in the school but it counted to him. She went back to her game and pulled it up to her face as she blushed thinking about a supercomputer as her boyfriend. She couldn't help but smile at how smart he was and kind and everything all above! She remembered he could hear her thoughts but didn't care, she loved her new boyfriend dearly.

[yononart]

no new art yet, so let me yap a bit about my Tav/D&D rogue Aerin - did the same kind of post on bluesky so I might as well share stuff here!

art improvement journey under the cut! This is gonna be long and I'm also gonna talk about some stuff I went through over the years as an online artist.

Around 2016-2017 I started playing D&D with a group of friends, so of course I chose the rogue class to start. My DM did not allow drow characters for whatever reason, so Aerin at the time was just a random elf lol. I did not care much since I was very new to D&D.

This is what she looked like in 2017, my very first art of her:

big purple anime eyes lmao. what even is that shading...

I grew very attached to her during our campaign, roleplaying a smartass rogue that somehow always landed 19 on Perception checks was definitely fun, so of course I had to draw her again. Her skintone changed to be more tanned, her eyes changed color, but she was pretty much the same.

early 2018 (left) and late 2018 (right) art of her:

definitely looks better with golden-ish eyes

Sadly our campaign ended when the whole group parted ways and the DM kinda disappeared from our lives, yet I still loved my character a lot! I wanted to keep her alive, even without a D&D campaign!

I tried drawing her again in 2020-ish (I think?), but I never finished this:

Looking back, I can really see how much my style changed from anime to whatever it is now. Lmao. The 2020 wip is definitely closer to what I was trying to achieve at the time.

Back in the days I used to be very active on deviantART and Tumblr, but also joined IG for funsies. And oh gods, it was the worst idea I ever had in my entire life. While in 2015-2017 I was extremely productive, I started to slow down a lot, drawing just for the purpose of getting attention. I tried to draw things that were likely to be liked, or DTIYS stuff I didn't even care about. I was extremely uninspired because of how much I tried to please others and not myself.

Unfortunately that is when the big old artblock demon got me - I stopped drawing from 2020 to...2023? Pretty much. Maybe even earlier than that. Just a couple sketches here and there, but many and many months passed with me not even trying to draw anything. The "pressure" of trying to get some likes, being acknowledged etc was what made me stop drawing. I felt extremely unwell about what my art looked like, it was not good enough, I kept trying to change my artstyle to whatever, kept comparing my stuff to other people's works, it really became stressful to even hold a pen. I was pretty sad, cause in my most productive years I drew whatever came to my mind without giving a single f about anything. I completely lost this mentality over the years, so I stopped drawing.

Then Baldur's Gate 3 came out and oh my god. Holy hells.

I kid you not when I say this mf game did wonders to my creativity. Ngl, I already was in the mood for trying to get back to art - I bought a new graphic tablet (smaller, more comfy to use), tried out different brushes, followed some tutorials here and there, sketched a bit whenever I had the time to do it. But Baldur's Gate 3 really dragged me back to that carefree mentality I was yearning for. And after a "trial" run with a random character me and my partner created together, I OF COURSE had to bring back to life my beloved rogue. And finally turned her into a drow, heheh.

In no time I started drawing again, having no idea how to do anything anymore, kinda scared of how the result would look like and boom. Here we go, with Aerin again.

(left) more simple style VS (right) painted kinda style?

I do not think I am especially good at art. I lack many things (I suck at anatomy and proportions, it takes me ages to finish one piece) but...I can still see the improvement, even after years of not doing anything. It really surprised me. I never stopped observing art - I did not draw, but my eyes were still trained - and somehow this reflected in how I draw nowadays.

I am extremely grateful to this game. It fueled me so much with creativity I literally have too many ideas and things I want to draw (but no time lol), and I don't even care too much about what others may think. I am drawing again for myself, not to please others. I draw what I want.

And honestly, all this big post was just to say:

If you feel overwhelmed by socials and art isn't fun anymore, take a break. It doesn't matter if it's long or short - just take a break. Do not ruin things for you because of a couple of likes or whatever. Instead, try to keep the fun alive. It doesn't matter if your artwork doesn't get shared or liked a billion times. Your art is not worth the number of likes it gets. And if you have fun drawing your stuff, just do it! If you don't have fun in the process, the result is gonna suck for sure. At least for you.

And what if the result is not so good? FUCK IT!!! You cannot improve unless you work hard. You cannot improve unless you draw and keep your eyes trained. Consume art, draw, do whatever works best for you. Every artist, even the best you can think about, started from ugly sketches and cringe art. And keep your old art at hand - you may not notice it yet, but after a year or two go back to your old stuff and compare it to the newest you have. You will definitely notice the difference. That, my fellas, is improvement. It's hard to notice if you compare your last week's artwork with the current one you're working on. Go check older stuff. You ARE improving. You just didn't notice.

Take it from me, I'm an old 31 y/o hag and I have experienced things. Never let the fun dry out.

[metaltea]

Talking about stuff

Really contemplating leaving tumblr for another site in the near future... does anyone know a good substitute? Like, on one hand I love this site, but on the other hand man. I've been getting way less notes lately. I can't help but feel like it's my fault, that either I've been posting too much and am annoying people or my art/writing has gotten worse. Same issue with ao3 so leaning on the latter possibility.

I know it's selfish, but it's not like I'm the only one who feels this way. Lots of artists and writers have been complaining about the discrepancy between likes/reblogs. No matter how many followers I've gotten over the years, the success of any piece of art/writing will depend on who reblogs it and when, and how many reblogs it gets in general. If it doesn't get enough it quickly gets swept under the rug like it never existed.

A single piece of art or writing can equate to many hours of work on my part, and if it's barely seen it's like... why bother.

I know it's selfish, I know there are still people who reblog and comment and everything, and truly I appreciate it, more than anyone could ever know.

But I also just feel like an annoying failure who never stops talking and that people would prefer if I was gone. So they can look forward to seeing stuff from the real artists, the real writers, the people who actually have talent.

I want to be someone people see and are able to feel happier as a result... right now I just feel like a burden to not only everyone in my life (hence why I've been distracting myself by drowning myself in art lately) but also you guys.

I know I'm not just a source of entertainment, I know I shouldn't care so damned much about what others think, and again I know I sound really fucking selfish to worry about all this, but it's been eating at me so much lately.

So I see a couple options.

Take time away and let the water run clear so to speak then abuse the fuck out of the queue so I stop mass reblogging (a nasty habit of mine, surely annoying to many)

Move to a different site, if there are any where I won't feel like such a speck. Idk. Maybe I'll feel like that everywhere.

I guess I could rectify that side blog idea I had a while back so asks, headcanons, doodles, non-fnaf posts and whatnot, just keep this up for main art/writing. Kinda leaning toward that rn. Less spam, less annoyance.

Just disappear for good. Delete it all. It's been a thought in the back of my head for a long time anyway. Start new somewhere else. Or just draw/write for myself. I also don't want to make any rash choices atm cause I know the past 3 months have been hell and I'm not thinking clearly. I've been depressed as fuck and I may regret choices I make right now. But what if I don't? Maybe I'll be better for it idk

[usmsgutterson]

Hi !! I’m binge reading all your writing rn and I’m still looking obsessed <3 I’d love to request any of the crows x a reader who’s an identical twin, their twin is very outgoing and knows the crows well as they’ve worked together for heists and such but the reader is basically the opposite, they’re on the quieter side and prefer literature and baking to whatever the crows are getting up to. When they meet the crows they’re mistaken as their twin, maybe because their twin asked them to help on a job without informing the crows? Anyway I don’t really have a preference for what type of writing this is or the crows it’s for ^^ thank you :D 👾

The Librarian-platonic! crows x gn! reader

Hi! I'm so sorry that this took me a while--my tumblr inbox is being glitchy and weird atm and requests have been disappearing and reappearing at random so I caught this in my inbox while I was lucky.

As the title indicates, I added one thing! The reader is a librarian because I was like "they gotta have a job. They like to read, librarian it is" and I hope that you're okay with that!

Generally though, thank you for sending this in, this concept was a lot of fun and definitely a good way to try to get myself used to writing requests frequently again after several months of near-burnout and demotivation.

Fic type- this one is literally just fluff

Warnings- mentions of murder (generally), mentions of murder by thwack of thick book to ones head, and theres an allusion to body parts being cut up and put into a box, then leaving that box to float to the bottom of the ocean (Jesper refers to it as slice and dice, and I promise it's less graphic than it seems)

You didn't know why you'd agreed to help your twin. You were their opposite--they were all about the life of crime that most Barrel residents lived, where you were content to work at the library you'd been working at since you were seventeen and sell your baked goods at the market stalls on the weekends.

You did not like the Barrel at all.

You resented how easy it was to find yourself a victim of pickpocketing whenever you wandered into a gambling den on that side of town or even just while you walked through the streets.

You much preferred your apartment and the smell of fresh cinnamon buns to the vague smell of swamp mingling with gasoline and peoples loud, rowdy ways as they ambled from one gambling den to the next. You hated the idea of all of it--why dress in your finest if you're intending to go gamble, when there's always a chance that you'll lose everything you gave, and lose more than that when your aim had been to win it all back after the initial loss?

But still, agreeing to help your twin was a commitment you'd made. You had the layout of a library with something valuable and had agreed to go to the Slat to draw up a sketch, but the hand on your shoulder stopped you in your tracks.

You proceeded into the Slat--the building your twin had said to meet up in--and sat at a table after grabbing yourself a brandy. Like they were being brought to you by some kind of gravitational pull, a tall Fjerdan and the girl he had on his arm walked up to you.

"Y/T/N?" the girl asked. "You've just left the Slat for breakfast. Did you change your mind?"

You blinked, confusedly. "I'm not--"

Another girl spoke up from behind you, and the sound of her voice startled you just enough to make you flinch.

Where had she come from? Was she the kind of person who could steal peoples secrets from the shadows? Was she a spider who hid in the dark corners where people were too oblivious to look, taking their conversations back to the infamous Kaz Brekker in the aim to turn over a profit?

"Not Y/T/N," she said. "Their twin."

A gray eyed boy with guns on his hips approached next, arm lazily draped over a boy with dark red hair and eyes that made him resemble something of a deer when startled.

"What are you doing in the Barrel?" He asked. "Your twin says that you tend to keep to your routine. Working at the library in the Financial District during the day, spending your friday nights baking so that you can sell your goods at the market stalls. You're not the type to come round here."

"They wanted to meet with me," you said. "There's a library out in the countryside that's become a tourist attraction since the Merchant Council actually put effort into proper marketing for it? I've visited every other weekend since it opened. They said that they need me to sketch the layout in the absence of a blueprint, which I know for a fact was destroyed in case anyone tried to steal it to figure out the best entrance and exit points. Did they not tell you they asked me for help?"

"What's your cut of the final profit?" You didn't have to know that voice to recognize it. It was Kaz Brekker, the most infamous criminal in all of Ketterdam, the only person who'd scared Pekka Rollins away from anything, even if the thing he'd scared Rollins away from had been his own criminal empire.

"Can I ask you what all of your names are first? Despite how much my twin talks about you, I don't know your faces, even if there's a near guaranteed chance that I know your names."

"Inej," said the girl who'd snuck up on you. "Inej Ghafa. The boy with the guns is Jesper, the doe eyed one is Wylan. Matthias is the big, blond, brooding yellow tulip who's glowering at you right now, and the beautiful girl on his arm is Nina. I'm sure you know who Kaz is?"

"Too well," you said. "How's the leg?"

Kaz smirked as the crew began to pull up chairs, where he took the spot to your right.

"It could be better than it is now, but it's not as bad as it is in winter. Your cut of the money?"

"They promised to give me 40 percent of their share if I sketched out the layout," you said. "You're being paid twelve million for this. I get just less than one million after the math is said and done."

"In the interest of paying the reason that we get this heist right as rain with minimal issue fairly, what is twelve million through eight?" Kaz asked the group that'd formed around the table whilst you'd been too focused on taking a sip of your brandy to notice.

"1.5 million," Wylan answered within seconds. "Cuts two million off each of our paychecks."

"Well, if Y/N is decent for a blueprint sketch, I'm sure you be too busy with the knowledge that you still have your lives, the clothes on your backs and the homes to which you'll go to notice the half a million you would've missed out on."

Jesper grinned at you. "He's terrifying," he said. "But, in the end, fairness in terms of these things is important to him. He's greed incarnate but he doesn't take well to enemies, so he's making sure your twin doesn't rip you off."

"A baker-slash-librarian and literature fanatic is hardly an enemy," Nina interjected.

"They've got books as tall as the length from my wrist to the bend in my elbow in some libraries," Jesper said. "They hit Kaz with one of those while he's not expecting it, he goes down quick. His death can be made even quicker, provided they use chocolate chunks--which require chopping on a cutting board--in their baking. Slice and dice, ship him to the bottom of the ocean in a box that's two feet tall and one foot wide, and all evidence of their having murdered the Bastard of the Barrel is gone."

"Killing Kaz Brekker is not in my interest," you said. "Not at all. Matter of fact, just sketching this is, and even then, the money is the only reason I'm here. I mean this respectfully, but I miss home. I miss the comfort of my bed and being able to enjoy a fine Wednesday morning without worrying about losing a twenty kruge bill while I walk back home."

"Y/T/N said you were aloof," Nina commended. "Like Matthias. Do we have a liar in our midst?"

"No," you said. "Though I wouldn't say aloof is the right word. I would say quiet, reserved, and uninterested in crime are the right ones, but you've caught me in a moment of sass. Let me switch the brandy for wine and I'll get angsty instead."

Jesper barked a laugh, Wylan, Inej, and Nina grinned. Kaz smirked, and you saw a glint of horror pass through Matthias' gaze. It made you laugh.

"Relax, Matthias," you said. "Want me happy, I'll take a glass of kvas or some gin."

You saw his expression relax, and just shook your head. You were in for a hell of a time with that crew, and part of you couldn't wait for it to really begin.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Ok before I say anything else BRUH I took the quiz you reposted and guess who I got….also mf sae…..bro??? Wavelengthed too hard but STAY STRONG NO CONVERTING

EVIL YUKI SHSHSHSJ actually know dw all the shit and slander yuki has to go through now is just setting him up to become rough and tumble yuki so he can get the development he deserves it’s all part of the plot!!! STOP ITS SO EMO but ig its better than one of them being left behind by the other shevdhshsh (or you let mc live and then we can be with Karasu instead/j) I’ll never be get over how interesting hollyhock mc is though (the whole belonging/ownership/love dynamic is SO unique I love it sm) on the complete opposite side of the spectrum we have otoya being done TOO MUCH justice LMAOOO it’s ok the story and plot slap so he can have a pass

DADFAILURE LOSERS I LOVE IT HAHAHA esp while yuki has his life (pretty much) together truly the embodiment of tabieitaken shenanigans also KING OF KALOS GOES SO HARD??? Mm yes we love yuki supremacy (also the ref to his emperor of 1-on-1 title ugh so peak)

That’s actually insane I feel you though because I’m also scared shitless of getting mobbed by insane parts of fandoms (partially why I’ve never really used tumblr to do anything before besides lurk and also why I am NOT subjecting myself to being one of those regular translators on twitter or tiktok or whatnot I’m not about to get people attacking me in the comments for wild shit shshshsb) BUT I agree lowk….i mean tullireo isn’t going to be rubbed in our faces in the story anyways (I assume) since we’ll be too busy burying Barou’s corpse (I’m screaminf) but THSTS SO REAL “I make money so my wife can breed pokemon and keep them all for herself instead and I’ll build them a whole pokemon pasture/sanctuary” (that would be me as a pokemon breeder fr) bro it was just meant to be the team vibes…it’s giving elegant but strong

LMAO chigiri and Reo forced platonic close proximity chigiri is just THE bestie whether it’s gossip or wingman duties he’s got it all but I’m crying otoya tweaking because he’s like “NOOOOOOOOOOO MY OTP” and Karasu patting him like “idk what you’re on about but hate to break it to you but I don’t think Tullia doesn’t likes you that way”

Wait I know the exact vibe you’re going for it’s giving “drops random lore/information and disappears for three months” LMAOOO fr that older mentor who comes gives hints and guidance kinda like a walk through tutorial guide in a game where they’re like “oh yeah you should go here” only to never be heard from again LFMOAOAAOAOAO GANDALF REAL but that kinda puts a bit of distance in his dynamic I feel? So yes TULLIREO WE ALL CHANT guess I gotta side with otoya this time tullireo OTP LOWK DO IT it’s just the vibes too yk…they just match….guys…..

LMAO my first thought was fr “that scrawny ass kid with a bug net on route 2” imagine they don’t even battle the boy is so scared of ghost type aeguslash that he just runs (I see that typo but I’m not fixing it because it’ll get autocorrected into something unrecognizable and I’m channeling my inner Nagi and being lazy)

LMFAOO reader fr like “where tf did my genes go…” THE PARENTAL LORE GOES CRAZY LMAOAO imagine their kids going to school and yk how elementary school kids usually get those assignments that’s like “what do my parents do?” Etc? Yeah their daughter has to fill out that and her drawing is reader on top of a pile of dead team z grunts carrying nagi or maybe they’re just holding hands but nagi def has to be shown asleep taking a nap and uncle Barou flying in the sky as an angel and readers giant ass red gyarados in the back looming over it all and like a crying Mr. Mikage on the floor

LMAO Reo exclusively using luxury balls so true lowk the premier balls kinda fit Barou’s aesthetic too maybe he splurges on them generally to keep everything consistent and neat looking LOL bro my luck was ass with quick balls actually I think I’ve only ever caught my donphan (as phanpy) with one LMAOA

Pause I see the abamasnow vision (it’s intimidating but imagine it’s as dumb as him LMAOA openly walking up to fire types) arcanine accidentally burning tf out of it is so funny they would SO bully him for that for the rest of his life

Aiku getting what he deserves!! He has his happy ending though he’s just gotta finish up his community service first LOLL ok but him actively very involved with sae and Barou because he deals with them on a more regular level because they’re on the same team and he’s like “I can’t deal with their bitchlessness anymore PLEASE get a girl I’ll even help you but you need STRESS RELIEF. NOW.” LMFAOO wait I’m very excited to see aiku put in his place LMFAOO

When the familial relationship steals the spotlight from the romantic one>>>> LAMSOA /hj perhaps this can be a character study in the future…I’m crying their relationship is so sweet though ugh

EYES WIDE OPEN OMGOMG NEW GRAPHICS!!! No I lowk love the clean look too it fits the vibe fr!! Guys yk it’s serious when the graphics ready…pokemon au here we come!!!!!!!

- Karasu anon

LMAOOO IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE THE SAME PERSON FR no but i think it’s so funny we’re both NOT itoshi lovers which is pretty rare i feel and yet we’re the ones who ended up getting sae himself 😭 the universe wants to convert us to itoshism but we MUST stay strong

HELP YOU’RE SO RIGHT this is just the development he requires…rough and tumble yuki’s bad past is actually a bad past LIFE where he led to the death and despair of all of his current friends (that’s lowkey a crazy fic premise like the whole hollyhock gang reincarnated but only yukimiya gets his past memories back so he has to live with the knowledge that he once betrayed everyone he now loves 😰) agreed at least it’s not one living/the other dying!! LMAOO no because hollyhock reader x karasu is such a normal dynamic tbh free hollyhock karasu from her he does not have the insanity to match her freak 😭 it really is like i said HAHA with a normal reader and author karasu would be endgame but (un)fortunately for him reader is fucked up and i’m an angst lover so he does not get that privilege 🙂‍↕️ also yeah every time otoya does some dumbass shit in the manga/anime i’m like okay YOU are the one who’s starring in hollyhock?? YOU are the bloodthirsty ninja who dies because he loves someone that much??? he would actually be so hype to know that that’s how he’s viewed though…we’ve talked about bllk otoya meeting hollyhock otoya but imagine PURSUIT otoya meeting hollyhock otoya he probably bursts into tears because at least he’s living his cool ninja life SOMEWHERE

YUKIMIYA SUPREMACY ALWAYSSS i had sm fun coming up with everyone’s little nicknames (barou’s being the “never-champion” because he never actually got to challenge mr mikage vs reader’s being the “reluctant champion” because she never even wanted to be champion in the first place…did somebody say #siblinggoals 😜⁉️) and the king of kalos just rolls off of the tongue sooo well especially because his mentor is chris PRINCE like come on now!! pls pokémon au tabiektaken are basically the epitome of their miraverse dynamic like it’s how i would write them if i were in charge of the manga HAHAHA they’re so funny together

PLSS i respect you sm for that because it’s such a double edged sword like on the one hand i love making my silly posts and having my followers and mutuals react but on the other i’m always afraid a post will break containment and reach the wrong audiences because some people are BRUTAL 😭 but if you do ever decide to become tumblr active trust i will defend you from any hate 🤫🫡 can’t say the same for twitter because i don’t have an account nor tik tok because people on there are a different brand of terrifying but i can tussle w some tumblr trolls if needed!!

yeah i def think tullireo will have that togetullia from pi vibe!! like there’s very obviously something going on and it’s mentioned now and again but reader’s relationship with nagi / search for barou are much more forefront so it’s not at all the main focus!! with such an expansive story though it’s so important imo to have more relationships than just the main pairing otherwise things fall flat and/or the main pairing can almost feel out of place?? like why are y’all falling in love when NO ONE else is 😭⁉️

otoya bawling over the loss of his otp meanwhile karasu’s like “there there buddy it’ll be okay plenty of other girls out there anyways what’s an otp 🙂❔” HAHAH he’s the dad with 0 clue of modern slang or anything also wait this reminds me of a specific exchange nagi and reader have during the aegislash arc where nagi’s like “wait i think we’ve been isekai’d” and reader’s like “how do you know what that is” and nagi’s just like “oh reo loves reading villainess isekai manhwa on his pokétch before bed every night” and reader’s like “huh okay” and it’s never mentioned again LMAOOO

yeahhh that’s exactly isagi’s vibe!! along with aiku’s a bit but isagi’s more mature aiku is like the problematic version of that trope 😭 isagi’s the voice reader hears in her head when she tries to ride her bike inside ykwim…agreed it really does differentiate him from the main cast a bit too much for a romantic relationship between him and tullia to make sense!! especially given he’s meant to be barou’s contemporary and barou’s looked up to as The Big Brother of the story isagi kind of ends up giving off that vibe too 😩 now REO on the other hand…otoya and chigiri cooking fr i lowkey love the juxtaposition too where tullia is super motivated and has a dream she wants to accomplish of her own merits whereas reo has everything handed to him but he’s only doing things because his family expects him to?? idk could lead to some fun interactions…plus the first nagi and reader battle (where her houndour uses pursuit on his growlithe) only even happens because she wants to battle for experience but tullia’s already challenged reo so nagi’s her only option ☝🏻 so if you think about it that kind of foreshadows tullireo…maybe my mind already knew what needed to be done FJSKSKA just like i only noticed the arcanine/houndoom parallels AFTER the fact

that kid is so cocky too imagine he throws out his fucking rattata or metapod and he’s like “beat this 😜” because nobody else on route one has been able to yet and then nagiy/n’s daughter’s just like “ok 👍” and out comes aegislash…wait lowkey ykw would be cute is if the bug catcher just becomes her traveling companion after that because of how strong “her” aegislash is (i bet after their daughter has enough pokémon of her own reader’s like ok give aegislash back now and train your own team up) like he’s like “woah if i stick with you i’ll definitely become more powerful” and ofc nagi’s daughter is as nonchalant as he is so she doesn’t gaf but then they end up falling in love or smth and having that black cat introvert girl x golden retriever extrovert boy dynamic FJDNFJSKJS omg now we’ll have to come up with nagiy/n GRANDCHILDREN lore (unrelated but the thought of nagi as a grandfather is so cursed)

I’M CRYING AT THE IMAGE OF BAROU IN HEAVEN he’s definitely one of those baby angels with the trumpets and little white wings but it’s just barou’s head and massive hair pasted onto it 😭 and gyarados is just drawn with a massive grin on its face meanwhile mr mikage is just face down on the ground LMAOAOAO and nagi is holding hands with y/n who’s like 🙂 meanwhile nagi is just drawn to be 😴 imagine the teacher’s like why is your father asleep and their daughter’s like “he sleeps a lot 😄” so the teacher is concerned for the child’s welfare?? and that afternoon she pulls up to the nagi household and knocks on the door determined to confront “mr and mrs nagi” about how nagi’s always sleeping and if their daughter is being cared for properly but when they open the door the teacher’s like WHAT THE FUCK because it’s y/n l/n and SEISHIRO nagi not just two randoms standing there 😰 safe to say she runs away real quick…i feel like their son being the older of the two is a lot more like barou somehow?? which is crazy because neither nagi nor reader are anything like him but he just takes after his uncle sm…i kinda picture him looking like season 1 kiyora actually in the sense that he has a very barou-esque coloring but more of nagi’s hair texture 🤔 lowkey he probably acts like wicked game kiyora too like always getting into fights (in this case pokémon battles) and whatnot but also pretty chill (he got the reuniclus because it’s a former nagi team member so it’s much calmer and holds him back whereas aegislash would def egg him on HAHAHA)

okay wait now i’m stealing that for reader’s phanpy…it’s her second pokémon/the first she ever catches so imagine she just panics and throws a ball at it and karasu’s like bro that’s not going to work lmao but it was actually a quick ball she took from his stash because she didn’t have any of her own so it DOES work HAHAHA ofc karasu’s like what the hell because he always tries to use quick balls and they never work for him despite being really effective when yayoi and apparently reader use them (maybe he catches gible in one though?? and that’s why he doesn’t even need to battle it and is able to capture it while otoya and reader are arguing)

i def had to think about zantetsu for a second but him having an absolute idiot of an abomasnow just fits him so so well lowkey the aesthetics are matched too?? imagine he can mega evolve it eventually HAHAHAH you just see dumbass zantetsu with this enormous mega abomasnow and you’re like wait am i cooked?? but then one fire type move and it’s out for the count 😭 pls it’s especially funny because reo actually doesn’t have any fire types so he has to actively work to beat abomasnow meanwhile arcanine BREATHES and it’s gone 😩 zantetsu lucky fr that nagi doesn’t gaf abt battling him…wait lowkey yk what would be fun is just a mini arc of like ovas/spinoff chapters?? showing what characters other than reader are up to…maybe one focuses on manshine trio and the reo vs zantetsu rivalry, another shows a day in the life of isagi and gives a bit more characterization to the other elite four candidates (kunigami kaiser bachira) as well as the elite four themselves, another is like aiku’s field journal of him getting bullied by pokémon, another is yukimiya’s contest training, another is hiori like settling a dispute amongst some safari zone pokémon (or even amongst his team to show the dynamics we talked abt earlier), and maybe even a tabieita one to show what they’re up to when the girls aren’t around 🤔

oaeu aiku is lowkey so entertaining to write though i can’t even lie he has some HILARIOUS lines i just started the barou version and there’s sm lorenzo slander i’m crying…people can’t even get mad because they’re not MY thoughts they’re aiku’s!!! that’s why i was able to get away w sae slander hehehe 🤫🤫🤫 anyways we finally had the dream team of aryu sendou niko and aiku show up as well as the aiku + niko duo getting some screen time so it’s been fun 🤩

no because lowkey a character study of noel noa’s rise to fame through the eyes of someone who’s known him from the start could lowkey be insane if only i didn’t have like ten requests, oaeu, pursuit, and my upcoming 1k event to worry about 😩 not to mention peregrine and hollyhock KFJDJSJS rip to them fr

YAYYYY I LOVED THE GRAPHICS the grey matching nagi’s character color…houndoom being the only splash of color and really standing out…the super neat font (serving barou realness tbh) idk i just really like it it’s def not the same vibe as the oaeu one for example but that one def gives “this is a silly cute crack fic” whereas this one you can tell you’ll need to lock in a bit to read if that makes sense

ALSO DID YOU SEE THE NEW TRAILER it’s looking like we’re getting s1 animation again but honestly it’s whatever s1 was liveable plus they always do my man nagi (mostly) right so i’m chilling…they made otoya’s face and chin SUPER pointy in that one screencap i reblogged but otherwise idm it too much!! KARASU LOOKS SO CUTE I’M SO GLAD HE’S FINALLY GOTTEN SCENES i really like his hair actually it looks sm softer and fluid in the anime style vs the manga!! at the end of the day at least we didn’t get yona of the dawn-ed like maybe the anime isn’t perfect but at least it exists ykwim?? although given how well the manga sells i’m surprised they don’t put more effort into the anime…anyways 🤷🏻‍♀️

[anmarifromearth]

Chapter 8: The Plan

Note: You can read the finished version on Quotev, but for Tumblr, I'd like to upload the chapters one by one.

64.media.tumblr.com

WC: 2.0 K -- Masterlist -- featuring art by @amalthiaph

I sat on the couch placed in front of the huge glass window of our shared room. It was a Saturday so assume we are only about half of the student population, still too many to execute our plan. But any day is not a good day to execute the plan; especially when Charlotte is watching my every movement. For now, we only have her to look out for, as Zach and Sara exit the school front doors. I saw the pair descend the first three steps, then the next seven. They were both laughing and smiling, and it's killing me. But I decided to put that feeling on the back burner of my mind. It's not a nice day to be selfish anyway. 

"Zach takes out Sara, Charles and I will enter the passages through the White Room and see what the skeleton is clutching," I whispered. I gasped, wishing I didn't whisper it loud enough. I heard the shower go off. I sighed of relief knowing she didn’t hear it through the sound of the shower.

I watched as Zach and Sara exit the grounds. It still pains me but it’s necessary for the plan, for Christina.

Now that we know Charlotte is a spy, nether Charles nor Zach visit me in my room. A last minute change we did at the café was to not have Charles meet me in my room but rather, I go to the library and he goes to the dining room, then we “run” into each other somewhere near the White Room.

I walked between shelves in the library. There seems to be a number of students who decided to stay for the weekend. This is perfect. Our disappearance would easily be unnoticed. My eyes travelled across the room once more. Or, almost perfect. For some reasons, the librarian, Miss Mansfield, is still here. This makes me wonder if all the teachers and staff live in the manor as well. To be fair, it has enough room to host all of us. I run my hands through spines and check out some books to raise any suspicions. I decided to begin walking to our 'meeting spot'. 

I saw Charles walk in from the other side of the hall. Now the two of us are at the hall along the White Room. Charles was looking at the picture frames that hung along the halls. He doesn’t whistle as he knows it’s usually the thing people do when they’re pretending. There are about three students walking with us. None of them seems to be looking at neither of us so I guess they aren’t spies.

“IRIS?” I heard Charles say as he run towards me. “You stayed for the weekend too?” He was all beaming. Man, he’s good at acting.

“Yeah,” I started to play along. “My home is far from here.”

We kept our little charade as we started for the White Room. “So to save time and money, I just decided to go home once or twice a month,” I added.

“Hmm, makes sense. Hey, do you know where Zach is?”

“Didn’t he go home?”

We stopped in front of the small door. We both looked around to make sure no one is looking. As soon as we saw the coast is thankfully clear, we crawled in as fast as we can and closed the door.

We both let out a breath as we sat on the dusty floor of the passage. It was very thick dust. This thing has existed since the 1800s so that is understandable.

“And the Oscars go to,” I said in a sing-sang voice and Charles chuckled.

“Now back to 9 to 5,” he said as he stood up. He started to prepare his phone camera and set it on video. He turned the flash on and used it as our flashlight as well. I took out a small piece of paper from my pants pocket. It was a drawing of the floor plan of the White Room. Given that Zach isn’t here, we don’t have the map. I protested with having him lend it to me since it’s delicate paper and seeing me carrying its canister around would raise suspicion.

It wasn’t a complex drawing; it’s just boxes and lines with names on them. Charles flashed his phone on the paper. After a few seconds of examining it, I pointed to a passage, “We turn here.”

Charles and I start to walk through the passage. Since he holds the camera, Charles walked before me. I bet the video will be better now since there are no longer cobwebs on the way. The passages are really dark and very dusty. They are all grey due to centuries of dust gathered. They made that particular smell that smells old that seems to block your nose and you are in need of air.

After a few minutes of shortness of breath, we took another turn and saw the figure on the other end. I hear Charles groan at the sight of the skeleton. I did the same. It’s so unnerving knowing that that skeleton used to be a person of flesh and blood. I feel sorry for Christina. That poor girl died in these passages she loved so well. And like that. Lying there clutching something to her heart. All the money in the world and she died alone.

At least we are here now, to give her the justice she has long wanted.

Speaking of Christina, she hasn’t appeared during our journey. Thankfully. Charles and I stopped in front of the dusty skeleton. Charles hovered the camera over it and bowed.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Praying,” he whispered back.

“You’re right,” I agreed and bowed my head too.

“Christina,” he began, eyes closed. “We are sorry for you. We didn’t know who you are, we only ever knew you from your photographs but we know you are a wonderful person. And you deserve to live a long and fruitful life. You did not deserve to die alone, like this. But worry not, for we are here now to give you the justice you deserve so that, you can finally lay in peace. For that,” Charles continued, “We deeply apologize for what we’re going to do next. Please allow us to see whatever you are holding with you so we can use it as our clue to find the truth.”

Charles opened his eyes and looked at me. I can see slight tears in his eyes. I didn’t say a word. He nodded and I kneeled down.

My hands are visibly shaking as I start to reach for her hands. I carefully and slowly reached in between her hands. I cringed as the coldness of the bones hit my skin.

“Ahh,” I half-screamed.

“Shhh,” Charles shushed me. He quickly put his ears on the outer walls to listen if someone heard me.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I felt something cold. Very cold. Metal perhaps.” I grabbed the cold object and very, very carefully pulled it out. I used my other hand to untangle the fingers. I definitely do not want to damage the skeleton. After struggling, I finally managed pull it out.

Charles turned his attention back to me. He shone the flashlight on the object I am holding now. It’s silver. “Do you have any idea what it is?” I asked as I hold it near to the camera. It’s club-shaped. And it seems to be good silver. It’s still shiny and new considering the fact that it has been here idly since the 1800s.

“No,” Charles whispered, “Here, let me take a closer look.”

“Hold on,” I said as I started to sit up. I looked at the skeleton to make sure I don’t hit it when standing up. I wiped the dust off of my knees. “Here.” I held out the silver object to Charles.

BUT HE WAS GONE.

“Charles?” I whispered. My heart started to beat. It gets louder and louder every second as my knees grow weaker and weaker from shaking. “Charles!” tears are now forming in my eyes. I do not care if anyone hears me now, “CHARLES, WHERE ARE YOU!”

I took a step back as I shout. I quickly undid the step remembering the skeleton. I looked at it to see if I had accidentally stepped on it from the sudden movement, BUT IT WAS GONE. Too.

It was only then that I decided to look around me. I was still in the passage. But it was clean. No dust. No “old smell” blocking your nose. No skeleton. No Charles.

Damn, where the hell am I? I started to hear footsteps from the side were we entered. From the White Room, to be exact. “Go, go, go”, and old man said, “This way!”

I saw a light from the other end. I quickly stopped crying and looked for the nearest turn to hide. I stepped further back into the turn I found to make sure I wouldn’t be found. The voices and footsteps drew near.

I held my breath to not make a sound. Then I saw her. Christina. She was wearing a dark long dress and she is clutching something with her. It’s not small, unlike the silver object I found; it’s something a little bigger than a shoe box.

With her, there are four more people. A woman with blonde hair. Wait, I recognize her. That’s Marion Velvet, from the portrait. She’s Christina’s mother. There were two more women. They’re dressed in uniforms. They are maids. And a man. I think he’s the one I heard shout earlier.

“Just go!” he shouted as he made a shooing signal. “All of you exit the passages. I’ll handle him!” He said.

I’ll handle HIM. There’s another one.

“Are you sure?” Marion said.

“YES, madame,” he said in a sad voice. “I had made it my life purpose to protect you and your family.”

Marion nodded, and she, Christina, and the two maids run away. 

The man faced the other side. Loud footsteps draw near. “WHERE ARE THEY?” the man shouted.

“Give me a reason to tell you,” the old man shouted.

“All right, then,” he started to charge towards the old man. I saw him as he went past to the turn leading to me. With him is a large sword. I bet he got it from the displays near the entrance to the school or manor during this time.  “Let us do it the hard way.” I hear a loud thud. I bet he jumped on the old man. “TELL ME OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

“NEVER!”

I knew what’s about to happen next. I cannot hide here knowing he is about to get killed. I just acted. I need to do something. I ran from my hiding place ready to jump in the other man. Just as I was about to leap, the man had stabbed the other right near his chest.

I stepped back, shakily. I saw someone get killed. Tears are now falling from my eyes. My heart started to pound loudly again. I kept taking shaky steps back. Then I tripped. I fell back onto the ground. The object fell from my hand due to my fall.

I kept on crying and crying. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I am so, so sorry.” I continued muttering the same thing over and over.

I felt the cold floor on my back. It was dusty again. I was crying so much I didn’t notice my surroundings. I am back in what I think is the present.

“IRIS!” I hear Charles whispered.

I looked up. He, too, was crying. Out of fear, it seems. “Charles,” I began in between tears, “You were suddenly gone, and the skeleton was gone.” I know I was speaking too fast it’s probably incomprehensible. “And I think I went to the past, I saw Christina, Marion, and three others and I saw him get killed,” I continued, still shakily, and pointed to the skeleton, now here again, lying on the ground.

“IRIS!” he whispered again.

I turned my attention to him. He slowly held his phone in front of me. He got it all on video.