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hermannsthumb · 4 years ago

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Can i request post-pitfall one of them looking at the clock and being like "oh shit we're late for work get up we need to go" before they realize that they won. Especially if the other person talks them down from the anxiety

didn’t quuuuitttte get “anxiety” bonus but

light M for suggestive 👀 themes, references to alcohol (at the world not ending party), and for pantsless scientists. thanks to @k-sci-janitor for talking over ideas for this w me heehee

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It’s always nice to wake up warm and cozy, in Newt’s opinion, even if he can’t strictly recall why it is he…well, is. It’s less nice to wake up to his alarm clock, but he’s used to that by now. The warm thing he’s not, and it’s really screwing with him; his Shatterdome bunk has been freezing for as long as he can remember, and no amount of fiddling with the A/C controls has managed to make any difference. Did he sleep with some extra blankets last night? He doesn’t remember it, but he doesn’t remember much of last night, period—there’s a bitter, dry taste in his mouth and a slight throbbing in the back of his head which is giving him a hunch as to why. Binge drinking. But why? Was he upset about something?

Someone groans and rolls over in bed behind him. Newt’s suddenly away he isn’t wearing any pants. Oh, god, that explains the coziness. He got drunk and hooked up with a stranger?

“Turn that bloody thing off,” Hermann groans, voice thick with sleep.

Oh, God. Newt got drunk and hooked up with Hermann.

No, that’s probably not right. There are plenty of reasons as to why Newt’s pants could be MIA, coincidentally at the same time Hermann (???) is in bed with him. Newt lost his pants and Hermann was helping him find them, and they both got really tired and called it a night halfway through. They were having a sleepover and Newt spilled booze on them and took them off? Newt swallows down a small yelp of surprise as Hermann’s arm suddenly sneaks over his waist, drawing Newt back flush against him; Hermann isn’t wearing any pants, either. Hermann also isn’t wearing a shirt. Or underwear. Newt remains deathly still as Hermann plants a kiss to the back of his neck. “Good morning, Newton,” Hermann murmurs.

Hermann goes still, too.

“Newton?” Hermann says, sharply.

His arm drops away. Newt rolls over to face him, already planning for some serious damage control, though he’s not even really sure what damage he’s supposed to be controlling. Binge drinking together turned messing around? Newt blinks owlishly at Hermann’s blurry shape, wishing for his glasses. “Hey, dude,” he says.

A whole host of different emotions play out across Hermann’s face, mostly confusion, though he finally settles on mild embarrassment. “Oh,” he says. Just like that, it’s gone—back to business. He sniffs. “Right. I’d nearly forgotten. Well, I’m afraid I can’t offer much productive feedback about your performance, but I’m sure you were grand.” He tests out his limbs with a few tentative stretches, groaning lightly. “For goodness’ sake, I’m sore. Mattress pads do these wretched old cots wonders, you know. You ought to consider investing—”

“Uh-huh,” Newt says.

He finds his jeans on the floor and pulls them on, one leg at a time. They’re filthy, and torn in about five different spots, and for the life of him—in is sleep and hangover-muddled mind—he can’t remember why. Hermann yawns. “What are you doing?” he says through a second yawn. He tugs the comforter (which Newt had knocked askew) back down. “You’re letting all the cold air in. Did you know your bunk is freezing?”

“Gotta get to the lab,” Newt mumbles. He crams his glasses onto his face, and squints and frowns. Shattered. Must’ve stepped on them or dropped them or something last night. Luckily he has a spare pair in his dresser. “Got shit to do.” Did he tell anyone about his clone theory yet? He can’t remember. Or the drifting theory—

“You most certainly do not,” Hermann says.

“Uh, I absolutely do,” Newt says. Where are his shoes? He finds one on his bedside table, laying on its side like it’d been tossed there, but its pair is nowhere to be seen. “And so do you. C’mon, hurry up, find your clothing, we gotta—”

“Will you listen to me for three bloody seconds?” Hermann says.

Newt folds his arms.

“Please recall,” Hermann says, “exactly what happened yesterday.”

Newt presses on through the boozy fog of last night: he remembers drifting with a kaiju brain, he remembers being sent out into the city, he remembers the kaiju bunker, he remembers Otachi’s baby— “Oh, shit,” he says. “Hermann, we totally kissed!”

“That’s not—” Hermann shuts his eyes, and sighs. “We closed the Breach.”

“Oh,” Newt says. He sags onto his bed as an immense feeling of relief courses through him. They did close the Breach! That’s right. The Breach is closed, and the world is saved. “Oh. Yeah, right.” He laughs sheepishly. That would explain the drinking. And the Hermann. Well, it sorta explains the Hermann, but he still hasn’t really managed to figure out why Hermann hasn’t fled yet. “Oops. Habit?”

The Breach is closed, and the world is saved, and Newt is allowed to sleep in now. He doesn’t have to go into their lab today. He probably doesn’t ever have to go into their lab ever again, at least not for anything important. He eases back into the bedsheets (Hermann’s arms spread wide to welcome him, and to re-engage their spooning). “There we are,” Hermann says. He nuzzles against Newt’s neck and kisses his collarbone. Newt’s never seen Hermann this…cuddly, or heard his voice laced with so much sleepy affection. It’s kind of bewildering. And endearing. And hot. “Isn’t this lovely, now?” One of Hermann’s hands begins to creep down Newt’s chest; he kisses Newt’s chin.

“Yeah,” Newt admits, his mouth twitching into a goofy smile.

“I fully intend to keep you here all day for a proper celebration,” Hermann murmurs. His lips are pretty close to Newt’s own now—wow. Maybe Newt will even remember this kiss. A proper celebration, he likes the sound of that. “The Breach is closed, we haven’t got a single damn kaiju left to worry about, and—"

A thought suddenly strikes Newt. “Oh, shit,” he says. “I need to arrange samples.”

“Hmm?” Hermann says. His hand had almost reached Newt’s waistline.

“Samples,” Newt says. The last known kaiju in the fucking universe are laying dead across Hong Kong, and Newt’s in bed. “The kaiju they took down—I need samples.” He wiggles out of Hermann’s grasp (much to Hermann’s groaned displeasure) and scrambles for his shoes again, and this time manages to shove one on. “This shit is about to get rare, dude, I can’t let anyone else beat me to them!”

“I can assure you that absolutely no one wants your kaiju samples,” Hermann says. “Now, come back here.”

“No can do,” Newt says. He pulls on his other boot.

“Newton,” Hermann says. His voice has gone lower—more sultry. Newt can’t help the way his ears his perk up, and he turns back to Hermann sharply, suddenly hyper-aware of Hermann’s naked and very hot bod. Aside from the obvious fact it’s the first time he’s ever seen it naked, it’s the first time he’s ever seen it so…languid, too. Hermann has always been so stiff and proper, but now (hip propped up just so, sheet draped over his pelvis to conceal just enough), he could be on the cover of some porno mag. “Please come back to bed.”

Is Newt really gonna turn down that invitation?

Yes, unfortunately.

“I’ll be half an hour, tops,” Newt sighs. “I just have to call a few people about a stomach. And a skin louse. And maybe some eyeballs.” And, if he’s really lucky, Otachi’s baby, because that’s the most intact kaiju corpse Newt’s ever seen. And also just for sentimental reasons. He can’t help but think of it as his and Hermann’s baby, really, not so much Otachi’s. “Maybe an hour.”

“An hour,” Hermann groans, even as Newt mentally—and guiltily—amends that to two hours. “How am I meant to entertain myself for a whole hour?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Newt says. “I have some DVDs. Culture yourself.”

Hermann blinks twice, his long, dark eyelashes fanning delicately across his cheeks, in a pseudo (and much more effective) pout. Newt’s heart feels kinda funny, like maybe it’s just twisted over a few times. Hermann has a point, really—the odds of anyone snatching up kaiju remains before Newt is pretty slim, especially in the current chaos of basically the whole world. And they do have plenty of celebrating to do.

“But maybe it can wait another ten minutes?” Newt says.

“At least,” Hermann agrees.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #owengrose

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neutral-emerald · 4 years ago

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SILVER THE COSMIC TIME-JANITOR (or: dude, what's with all the alternate futures)

silver the hedgehog has a very simple backstory. he's a kindhearted, sorta-naive but altogether very driven psychic hedgehog here to save the world by time-traveling to the past (also known as present-day) to prevent the apocalyptic future he was born into from coming to pass!

[ID: A screenshot of Silver from Sonic 06. He’s glowing with cyan energy as he flies over a dark, post-apocalyptic city.]

...wait, if he's time traveling 200 years into the past to completely change the shape of the timeline, how do the stars manage to align such that he manages to be born at the exact same point in the new timeline with the exact same genetics? how are his parents born? does silver have parents?? and how does he do this no less than THREE SEPARATE TIMES??!

hey everyone, i'm tumblr user neutral-emerald here to make good on the idea i vaguely gestured at yesterday and point out silver's wildly inconsistent backstory(s) and then explain to you how this isn't just sega playing hopscotch with the concept of time travel, but actually TOTALLY EXPLAINABLE if you don't mind a whole lot of conjecture and "fuck dude i just think it'd be cool."

LET'S GO.

before i get started, a few things to establish.

first, this is about… half serious, tops. it’s less of a theory and more of an observation of something that’s weird and then throwing some possible explanations at it because i am a massive sucker for time-based nonsense. if you wanna take my observations and build your own conclusions, go for it. i’m not your boss.

second, i'm basing my conclusions off of both the games and the idw comics. the conclusions i draw are applicable to either continuity, but the logic does rest a decent amount on the comics, so just a heads-up in case you were expecting pure game canon from this.

and third, i'm working off like half a brain and very intermittent checks of the wiki and cutscene compilations, so there's probably many things i'm missing! if you notice something i said was wildly off-base, go ahead and correct me in the replies and i'll either edit the post or explain to you just how that detail doesn't actually matter, depending on whether it. y'know. matters.

with that out of the way, let's get into the first topic of discussion!

part 1: the future is inconsistent, y'all

now, i'm not sure if you've heard, but in the year 2006 sonic team released this little indie game creatively entitled Sonic the Hedgehog. it was a smash hit, won countless awards, and for some reason went down in history as a messy, incomplete bugfest. but that's not what matters. what matters is that it introduced Silver the Hedgehog.

silver hails from 200 years in the future. the world is a bleak, fiery place, and has been since the monster iblis was unleashed after princess elise's death. silver was born into this world, which we know since it's literally the first thing he says in his story.

[ID: A cropped line from Silver's story in Sonic 06. "This world was devastated before I was born."]

i'm not going to drag you through a beat-by-beat summary of the entire plot of sonic 06, you should know it already. silver meets mephiles, gets lied to about who caused the apocalypse, mephiles yeets him and blaze into the past, he tries to murder Sonic the Hedgehog™, and so on. eventually he helps kill god, and then sonic and elise travel further back in time to kill god even deader so that none of the game ever happened, and the bad future into which silver was born never happened, thus thoroughly scrubbing silver's existence from the timeline!

...until.

sonic rivals.

i'm not going to speak much on sonic rivals, mostly because i'm not super familiar with it. but what matters is that silver is back! he's still from the future, he's still here to change the past, and most importantly he wasn't deleted from existence by the destruction of solaris, unlike everything else from sonic 06 including everyone's memories of it. and obviously, whatever state his future is in, it's not the same as it was in sonic 06.

now, i don't have a single clue what is going on in rivals 2, so do inform me if there's some big information i'm missing from that one. all i know is he's fixing yet another possible apocalyptic future, like always. correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t have the patience to trawl through it myself.

then we've got sonic colors, in which silver is again from the future. notably, he’s definitely not from an apocalypse!

[ID: Some screenshots from the DS version of Sonic Colors, again cropped to just the text. Tails and Silver are talking to each other.

Tails: What's the future you came from like, Silver? Silver: A lot brighter than this. Silver: The sky is blue, and everybody's got a smile.]

sonic generations doesn't add much. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think we learn anything about what kind of future silver is from, and he's definitely not here to fix it this time. that's sonic's job! he's just hanging out like everyone else.

now, up until this point the future has been reasonably consistent, setting aside my somewhat abstract understanding of the rivals games. there's nothing to say that silver's not coming back in time from the same point in a single timeline, which is the one and only version of the future ever since the destruction of sonic 06.

UNTIL.

[ID: Two panels from the comic Sonic Forces: Stress Test. In the first panel, Silver looks worried as he lands in front of Knuckles, who looks skeptical.

Silver: We've got big trouble! Eggman— Knuckles: How can you be here? I thought you returned to the future?

In the second panel, Knuckles looks away with a self-assured grin, while Silver looks more panicked.

Knuckles: Oh wait— I must be dreaming! Silver: What? No! I've come back with a dire warning from the future!]

i have a lot of issues with sonic forces, especially with how its story is written. something i do NOT take issue with is the supplemental comics, mainly because they are WONDERFUL evidence for my crackpot time travel theory.

like i said, up until this point we don't really know whether silver has been experiencing separate instances of the future, or simply traveling back in time to prevent an also-time-traveling eggman nega from messing things up in the past. but here, we get some very juicy information:

[ID: Knuckles and Silver again. Knuckles has his arms crossed and is looking at Silver, who has a nervous look on his face as he slams a fist on the palm of his other hand.

Knuckles: Come again? Silver: Something happens that brings the world to ruin! But the historical records are sparse or make no sense. I came back to hopefully head off whatever's about to happen and save the future.]

silver travels back in time to prevent a terrible apocalypse. this is not the beautiful future silver came from in sonic colors— but this is the same silver. everyone recognizes him. he recognizes everyone. and yet, the future he came from is different.

part 2: silver is a walking paradox

allow me to remind you of what i pointed out when i was talking about sonic 06. silver was born into the iblis-apocalypse. considering no elaborate timeline nonsense happened to him before the events of the game (by his reckoning) i think we can safely assume he was born like a regular person with parents.

in the first post-06 timeline, silver was probably also born. let's be charitable, acknowledge that sonic team doesn't overthink the butterfly effect like i do, and say that silver was born to the same parents, because the universe likes to keep things nice and simple and contrive itself to make this particular character exist in this time period.

so, it's entirely fair that silver comes to exist in a post-06 timeline at the equivalent point in time, aka 200 years in the future. it's also fair that he travels back in time to prevent some kind of apocalypse, because that's his narrative role! it's what he does. when it's time for him to exist in the story, that's what he's there to do.

what isn't fair is the fact that it keeps happening.

[ID: A panel from the IDW comics. Sonic is stretching his legs while looking faintly exasperated at Silver, who is nervously holding his arm.

Silver: Er… No. I came back because defeating Eggman didn't save the future. Sonic: Couldn't even play along. Had to bring the mood down. Sonic: *sigh* Okay, what happened this time?]

[ID: The following panel, cropped to just Silver's text bubbles narrating over a starry sky.

Silver: When I left, my time had been conquered by the Eggman Empire. Everyone lived in fear, choking on polluted air. Silver: When I went back, the Eggman Empire was gone— but so was everyone else. Silver: There was nothing left. No people, no animals, no machinery. Only water and sparse, metallic plant life.]

allow me to summarize my understanding of all this: silver is from the future. normally, the future is good. sometimes it isn't. when it isn't good, he goes back in time and fixes things, then returns to the future to check if that fixed things.

the least conjecture-y interpretation i can come up with is that sometimes silver will go into the past, then go back to the future but end up in a Bad Timeline and thus go into the past again to fix things. there's no weird warping directly between bad timelines, he only gets there by way of the past.

but that's boring, so here's my PREFERRED interpretation.

silver hails from a good future, but sometimes it just changes. he's unstuck from time— if something weird happens in the past, he's the only one to know that the passage of fate was changed, because he went to bed in one timeline and woke up somewhere categorically worse, and the only way he can fix it is by figuring out just what caused this and going back in time to fix it.

or, to say it in a meme:

[ID: A picture of someone lying in a hospital bed with a nurse standing next to them, edited so that Silver is in the bed.

nurse: sir… you've been asleep for 2 hours silver: oh boy i can't wait to wake up in the same timeline i went to sleep in]

part 3: how did this happen?

it's one thing to point out that silver doesn't experience time like a normal hedgehog, and another thing to explain how and why this happens.

fyi, this is the part where i go wildly off the rails and start saying whatever i want. there's a ton of explanations one could come up with, most probably stemming back to sonic 06. i'm just going to go with my own, and probably not come up with a whole lot of concrete evidence because i'm just spitballing. this is me having a fun time. going "heeheehoohoo time traveling hedgehog go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

so. something i haven't touched upon is that in all games after sonic 06, silver can time travel. we never see him do it, it's never explained how he does it. all we know is that he's doing it under his own power.

which is kinda odd, don't you think? should he be able to do that?

in sonic 06, we see three mechanisms for time travel. first is the chaos emeralds. if two people perform Chaos Control with a chaos emerald apiece, they open up a swirling rift in the air which can send them to different points in time and space. silver can't be doing that, for obvious reasons— he's only one hedgehog, and he's not exactly running around with a chaos emerald at all times. that can't be how he does it.

second is a time machine eggman built. that obviously can't be it; the machine doesn't exist at all after the timeline gets wiped, and again, silver is doing this on his own. he's actively antagonistic towards eggman, even. absolutely not this one.

third and finally is mephiles, who can make big purple orbs to take himself and passengers to different points in time. this obviously can't be it either, for similar reasons to number 2, right? after all, mephiles is one half of solaris, who was destroyed before he could be split off. he doesn't exist to be silver's time-traveling uber driver.

...right?

well, obviously. i'm not going to try and tell you that mephiles is secretly alive and shepherding silver back and forth between timelines for no reason. that's ridiculous. no, i'm going to try and tell you that silver is mephiles.

or rather, he's solaris. or RATHER, he's the new solaris, sorta-ascended to the role of Time God after the old one got blown out like a birthday candle.

like i said, i'm going wildly off the rails and as such don't have any concrete evidence to explain why it's this instead of something else, but hear me out. after elise blew out the flame of hope, the universe was left in an interesting situation. someone needs to be in charge of the flow of time, but the previous time-god was just unceremoniously destroyed. but all the power and energy of a time-god has to go somewhere, in some form, in some time.

with nothing else to go off of, the role of time-god starts flipping through every notable being it had interacted with. they're all solidly accounted for in the timeline, except for one. silver the hedgehog was born into a timeline that cannot exist. silver the hedgehog does not, and cannot exist. silver the hedgehog interacted quite a bit with both sides of solaris— he spent a substantial amount of time fighting back iblis, and associated with mephiles, even being one of the few people to directly experience his time travel abilities. silver the hedgehog tried and failed to absorb iblis into himself.

here's my theory: after sonic 06, the universe reasserted itself such that silver was the new Solaris. silver is not consciously aware that this is what he is, but he knows that he can time travel. sometimes the timeline will rearrange itself around silver. he is unaffected by this because he is a higher being unaffected by such petty trifles as "an origin" or "paradoxes".

silver the hedgehog probably doesn't have parents. he sprang into existence one day and everyone just kind of went with it, himself included.

oh also something i thought was neat but couldn't think of where to put:

[ID: More cropped dialogue, this time from Team Sonic Racing.

Silver: I'm fine. It's just, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain it. I just feel it. Blaze: Have your travels through time given you precognition? Silver: I don't know. Maybe they have. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much.]

silver might be becoming psychic in a future-vision kinda way. that, or he’s riddled with anxiety. possibly both.

TL;DR

silver hails from no less than three separate timelines, his existence is a tangled web of who-knows-how-many grandfather paradoxes, and i choose to believe that he's god.

if anyone who cares more about evidence wants to gather up like, little one-off clues that support or conflict with my conclusions, go right ahead. or just throw your own arbitrary headcanons for what's going on with this at me. or incorporate these ideas into an au or something! i just want more people thinking about what the Fuck is up with silver post-06, because by god there is a WHOLE lot of potential packed in there

anyway thanks for reading make sure to like comment and subscribe—

#hey guys check out how hard i can gesture at a corkboard #is it remotely coherent? not a clue! i cannot process my own writing #sonic theory #silver the hedgehog #text #dot txt

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divineluce · 4 years ago

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Let’s Marvin Gaye and Get These Lizards Out || Rosalyn & Luce

Timing: Backdated to April 21st, 2021

Tagging: @truecolorcollector & @divineluce

Location: Rosalyn’s Apartment

Description: Rosalyn needs help evicting some unexpected roommates, Luce offers a hand. Chaos ensues.

Was Luce the most in touch with nature? Not really. Not in the conventional sense, at least. She hiked, she’d lived in the woods, she felt more comfortable out in her cabin surrounded by the sounds of the forest than she did other places. But she wasn’t a tree hugging hippy or deluded enough into thinking that nature was all sunshine and rainbows. She’d been chased down by too many monsters in the woods to think that. Either way, it didn’t really matter if she was some nature girl or not-- she knew fire salamanders. And more importantly, she was still fireproof. Her flames might have left her, but at least she still had that. Grabbing the hamster cage from her passenger seat, Luce made her way to the apartment building and texted the number to let the woman know she was here. As the door swung open, Luce held up the cage and nodded, “Someone looking for lizard removal?”

Rosalyn had been eating lunch at her small dining room table when she saw something skitter across the floor out of the corner of her eye, nearly making her choke on her sandwich. Her first instinct was to grab her glass of water to chuck it at the creature. Luckily for it, it managed to quickly scramble under a large cardboard box and Rosalyn stopped herself before she could dump water all over her stuff. Then the text came in, as if on queue, and Rosalyn rushed downstairs

“Perfect timing!” Rosalyn said slightly frazzled from running to get the door. “And I’m not being hyperbolic. I actually managed to see where one of them went.” With that, she motioned for Luce to follow and made her way up the steps to her apartment.

The apartment was nice, if a bit cluttered, a good portion of the large living area taken up by an L-shaped work desk and large shelves packed with boxes and other containers. Not to mention several moving boxes still strewn about.

“Sorry, that wasn’t really a proper greeting.” Even as Rosalyn spoke she was scanning the room for signs of any other lizards. “Rosalyn Holt. And you’re Luce?”

A blonde woman who Luce didn’t recognize opened the door and ushered her in quickly. “Oh hey, lucky me.” Luce said as she looked around the apartment, taking in the moving boxes and slight disarray of the space. No wonder she didn’t look familiar-- this lady must have just moved into town. And already her place was infested with fire salamanders? Christ, that sucked. Not everyone had fireproof houses like she did. Looking around, Luce could already spot a few places that Iggy would love if he was here. A bunch of crumpled up packing paper, perfect kindling for a nice warm fire. Some flattened cardboard boxes that would be excellent material to chew on. Setting down the cage, Luce held out a hand, “Yep. Luce Vural, unofficial sa-- specialty lizard wrangler.” She said with a nod. “Seems like White Crest is giving you a nice warm welcome with these guys.”

Surveying the area, she asked, “Do you have a fireplace? Lizards. They like warmth-- starting a fire could draw them out.” Yeah, it’d sure as hell draw them out, they’d want to get it on in the coals. _

As Roslyn shook the woman’s hand she tried not to get distracted by the mirage-like purple shimmer rising off of Luce like heat off of blacktop. In her rush upstairs she hadn’t even noticed until, not until they were standing in the living room with Luce looking around. So this woman was a spellcaster? That was promising.

“Go figure the landlord wouldn’t mention the springtime roommates I’d be getting. And I’ve got-” Rosalyn looked towards her kitchen with a sigh. “An oven. And matches. Not sure if that works for whatever you're planning but I’m not exactly eager to set my fire alarms off if we can avoid it.”

As she finished speaking a rustling sound came from near one of the shelves, close to where she saw the lizard duck under the box. She pointed. “Oh right. Lucky me, one of them decided to get into my supplies. Anything else that draws them out? Food? What do those things even eat?” The rustling grew louder and Rosalyn furrowed her brow. They better not have a taste for jewelry supplies and werewolf fur, otherwise this was about to turn into a much more expensive problem.

“If it makes you feel better, this sorta thing doesn’t happen often. It’s like cicadas. Some springs they’re super active and other times no dice. Guess you just happened to move in during a bad year.” Luce said, not entirely sure if what she was saying was true or not. Iggy was being a little more antsy than normal, trying to get free from his terrarium more than he usually did. But, Bea’s house had wards around it that made the bracelet around her wrist ping when people came or left, so she’d always been able to scoop him back up when he’d scuttled off the property line. “Hm. In the interest of not blowing both our ears out, I think I’ll try something different.” She said, rummaging around in the cage for the paper bag she’d shoved in there.

“I’ve got something that might work. It could lure them out.” Luce said. Iggy, like most growing fire salamanders, shed his scales. And Luce didn’t know much about animals, but hey. Maybe the smell of a fire salamander in the prime of his life would lure out some of the lady salamanders? Who the fuck knew. Worst came to worst, she’d just shake the boxes and try to grab them. But, as luck would have it, before she even had a chance to shake some of the scales out into the cage, Rosalyn had pointed out a rustle of movement. Setting the cage down, Luce began to poke around the boxes, eyes focused on any kind of movement. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tell-tale glimmer of scales and she darted forward, hand closing around a squirming, scaly body. “Gotcha! Hey! Knock it off!” She gasped as the fire salamander’s scales glowed the color of coals. If she was a normal human, it would have burnt her skin, but all she felt was a light warmth. The fire salamander stared at her as though it was startled she wasn’t hopping up and down in pain. “I’ve got one. Can you grab the cage for me?”

“So just something that I’ll keep having to deal with every couple of years, that sounds lovely.” Rosalyn's tone was joking but she certainly hoped that one lizard extraction was all she would need. As Luce pulled out a paper bag she quirked up an eyebrow, curious. “What’s in there?”

But before she could find out there was more rustling and Luce was off to search the area. The sight of her grabbing the glowing creature in her hands made Rosalyn flinch before she realized that Luce wasn’t smoking or shouting in pain. “So they really are fiery...” I mean, there were clearly signs that they weren’t some normal pest before this, but seeing the unnatural glow up close made it clear. Rosalyn watched the squirming creature curiously. It was rare that she got to see supernatural animals up close.

“Is that thing not as hot as it seems, or do you just have some tricks up your sleeve?” Rosalyn shot Luce a knowing look as she brought the cage over. Well that was one down. Hopefully just one more to go. She didn’t want to think about the idea of any more than two hidden around her place.

“Only if you’re unlucky. These guys don’t usually hang out in this part of town.” Luce said as she kept her hand clamped around the squirming salamander in her hand. She could tell that they weren’t exactly to have their time interrupted. She couldn’t blame the salamander-- she wouldn’t exactly be thrilled if someone barged into her room when she was trying to get it on. But, this was better than Rosalyn accidentally murdering two horny salamanders with a hose. “Fiery? Nah… Just, uh,” Luce looked again at the angry glow of the salamander’s body, the red and orange pulsing like the coals of a fire. “Trick of the light.” She said before gently sticking the salamander into the cage.

Opening up the bag of shed scales, Luce dumped some into her palm before scattering them on the ground. “Scales, from the same kind of lizard. They release a kind of pheromone when they’re trying to hook up, so I figure this might lure the other one out.” She said before glancing over at the other woman and holding up her hands, arms bare in her tank top. “No sleeves and no tricks either.” She said with a neutral tone. “I’m just good with lizards.”

“Do tricks of the light normally smell like burning?” Rosalyn asked with a quirked eyebrow. At least she could trust it wasn’t that hot, or the cage Luce was holding would be having a much worse time. Then again, she knew little about what this creature was capable of, or Luce for that matter.

“So you’ve had your own infestation before?” Rosalyn asked before grimacing as the scales fell against her hardwood floors. She hoped Luce didn’t expect her to pick that up herself. Then again... “Are these creatures rare? Or their scales at least? Just asking since you seem to know a lot about them.” Right now they seemed just like little black specks, but she wondered how easy it would be to get them to glow like the angry one in Luce’s hand had been. But if they were worth something Rosalyn couldn’t imagine a spellcaster just scattering them around for bait.

Well, Rosalyn had a point there. Luce shrugged, knowing when she was caught in a lie. No point trying to pretend like shit wasn’t magical as hell when this lady didn’t seem all that bothered by it. “Touché.” She said as she looked around the house, waiting to see where the next salamander might pop out from. “Nope, never dealt with an infestation before, I have one myself.” Luce said as she nudged some cardboard boxes aside, looking around for the other salamander. At the question of rarity, Luce cocked an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?” They weren’t rare at all-- the salamanders, or their scales, but it was a weird question all the same. All signs were pointing to the fact that this lady was in the know with the supernatural. Which, cool. Good for her. Luce just couldn’t help but wonder what brand of strange she was. She looked human, but pretty much everyone did under the right circumstances.

Out of the corner of her eye, Luce caught sight of some of the boxes rustling and she grinned. Nice, looked like the scales had worked. “Come here little guy,” She said, shifting the boxes out of the way. As she pulled the last one back, Luce blinked as she was face to face with a spitting, sparking salamander, the frill around its throat puffed out and a deep scarlet color, “Ah shit…” She muttered as the salamander burnt a hole straight through the cardboard boxes and began to skitter across the floor in a trail of sparks and sputtering flames.

“So...as a pet?” Rosalyn didn’t like to judge (okay she did sometimes) but a flaming lizard seemed like a less than ideal pet. She was about to answer Luce’s question to her when nearby rustling distracted both of them. While Luce pushed around the boxes Rosalyn picked up a bit of scale from the floor and looked it over. But she barely had time to inspect it before she heard cursing and smelled smoke.

Rosalyn's first instinct was to rush toward the now on fire boxes. Or try to at least. But before she could even move a streak of black and orange rushed across the floor towards her feet. Rosalyn shrieked as she stumbled back, nearly falling as the creature hissed and charged towards the nearby kitchen.

A slew of curses came out of Rosalyn’s mouth as she watched the thing leave singe marks in its wake. But her attention quickly turned back towards the boxes. In any other moment Rosalyn would have been fully aware of how dumb it was to try to kick out the flames. But the moment she smelt burning hair she knew the fire was spreading to the bottom shelf and panic took over. “Fire extinguisher! Under the sink!” She shouted to Luce. Rosalyn would grab it herself if she wasn’t too busy pulling boxes from the shelf before they could catch and stomping on embers. A few burns were worth not losing her entire stock.

As much as Luce would have liked to correct Rosalyn on the fact that no, it wasn’t like a pet at all, she was a bit preoccupied. The fire salamander was hissing and spitting,hell bent on tearing up the apartment as it ran along the floors. Sparks filled the air as the lizard made a break for the kitchen. Staring at the boxes that had caught on fire, Luce’s eyes widened. Shit. She was pretty fireproof, but with her magic being what it was… she didn’t want to risk trying to smother the flames with her hands. Taking a deep breath in, she tried to pull the fire to her will, tried to focus on the magic within her. But, the magical flames lay dormant, unmoving. Cold. Fuck.

“Fire extinguisher, okay!” Luce called out, following the salamander into the kitchen. The creature had climbed up onto the countertop via a dish towel that had been hanging from the oven. The fabric was already in flames and Luce let out a startled yelp as the fire leaped to a nearby roll of paper towels. Jesus fucking christ, was this what normal people dealt with? Shit just bursting into flames? Running to the sink, Luce grabbed the fire extinguisher from underneath. She pulled the pin from the neck and aimed the nozzle at the ball of flaming paper towels before tossing the dish towel on the ground and stomping it out with her foot. The salamander, seeing the flames going out, let out a frightened shriek and its frills shrank back into its neck. “I’m not trying to hurt you! Get back--” Luce said as the salamander made a bee-line back to the living room, towards Rosalyn. Even from here, Luce could smell the acrid scent of burning hair filling the room. Jesus, why the fuck did this lady have hair in the boxes?

Pulling what she could from the lower levels of the shelf was only going to help Rosalyn so much if the fire kept spreading. She turned to shout at Luce to hurry, but as she looked towards the kitchen she could see the woman shooting the fire extinguisher at even more flames. Not even a few weeks into moving to White Crest and was she already going to have her entire apartment burn down?

It was at this point that the fire alarm started blaring above them. Rosalyn wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or curse that this apartment didn’t have built in sprinklers. She kicked the still burning boxes across the floor, away from where all her creature parts and craft items were being stored. As she did she could hear Luce attempting to reason with the creature, and then moments later Rosalyn was again being charged by the fiery monster.

No way in hell she was grabbing that thing the way that Luce had. In panic Rosalyn grabbed one of the shoebox sized plastic containers she kept jewelry pliers and other small tools in and flipped it over onto the creature. She crouched on the floor, putting her weight on the plastic box as she heard the creature hiss and felt it ram itself against the plastic sides. The plastic was partially opaque, but she could still see the glowing orange of the creature inside. And feel the box start to heat up as whiffs of melting plastic started to hit her nose.

“Can’t you just dump water on it!”

A fire witch using a fucking fire extinguisher, Jesus. And, even as she was putting out the last of the flaming dish rag, Luce could hear the fire alarms begin to blare in her ears. Great, more chaos. Looking around the kitchen, Luce saw a glass pitcher of water resting on counter as Rosalyn shouted at her. “Water kills them! I’m not killing him for wanting to get it on!” Luce shouted back at the woman. But… the pitcher. Hm. Grabbing the pitcher, she dumped the water down the sink and raced back into the other room. It looked even more like a disaster zone, with tools flung over the place and boxes still burning. But, she needed to focus on the source of the fire, where was-- her eyes fell on the woman struggling on top of a rapidly melting plastic tub.

“Here,” Luce set the fire extinguisher next to the woman, “For the boxes. Take the tub off him and back up. Don’t. Spray. The salamander. I’m going to stick him in this.” She said, holding up the glass pitcher. “They have a hard time climbing out of glass and it’s not that easy to melt through it. Just let him out and I’ll grab him.”

“He is burning my apartment down!” Yes, Rosalyn would shame this stupid lizard for being horny if it meant her entire livelihood was set ablaze because of it. Not to mention the danger her and Luce were in if this got more out of hand. Luckily Luce seemed to have a plan. For a moment Rosalyn glanced between the pitcher and the plastic container under her, debating whether she trusted Luce to scoop it up in time before the creature ran off to another part of her home to cause chaos. But with a quick nod to Luce she pulled the tub off of the lizard and grabbed the extinguisher instead.

As soon as she did Rosalyn started spraying the boxes, and the bottom shelf for good measure. Did fire extinguisher foam mess with the magic properties of werewolf and bugbear fur? Who fucking knew but it didn’t matter at this point. As the flames were put out Rosalyn glanced back towards the other woman, praying she wouldn’t see her chasing the thing around again.

Rosalyn had a point there. God, was this what being a normal human in White Crest was like? Having to worry about shit like fires burning down your home? But, Luce didn’t have much time to dwell on that because the tub had been pulled off the salamander and suddenly she was face to face with an angry salamander, frills puffed out and a vibrant red. Before he could run away, Luce grabbed the squirming creature in her hand and shoved it into the bottom of the pitcher. Fingers smoking slightly, Luce shook out her hand as she watched the salamander scrabble against the side of the pitcher. But, just like she’d guessed-- because it really was a fucking guess, she wasn’t an expert-- he was unable to get any traction. Exhausted, the salamander slumped in the bottom of the glass, leftover droplets of water sizzling against his scales as he stared angrily at her with beedy, orange eyes.

Letting out a sigh, Luce held up the pitcher. “Got him! Sorry about,” She glanced around at the smoke filled apartment, the fire alarms still blaring, extinguisher foam coating at least a quarter of this woman’s apartment. “All of that. You’re okay though, right?”

Rosalyn let out a sigh of relief when she heard Luce shout that she got him. Placing the used up extinguisher on the ground (great, now she would need to buy a new one) she ran her hands down her face, giving herself a moment to just breathe and not look at the utter mess in front of her.

“I’m fine. I think I might have burned my hands a little but-” Rosalyn could see a few blisters forming along her palm and fingertips. Nothing that wouldn’t heal with time but something that would make picking up everything and crafting a pain in the ass for a while. “I’m fine. But you wouldn’t happen to have-” Healing magic. She wanted to ask about healing magic but she tried to be careful about outing people’s powers on the spot. Then again, they were both past the point of dealing with anything a normal person should be handling.

“Magic. Do you have anything that can heal? Your hands seemed pretty protected and,” Rosalyn waved vaguely at the shimmering purple around Luce that only she could see. “I can tell. Don’t worry, I’m used to spellcasters.”

The salamander continued to skitter up the side of the pitcher, but the sloping sides were too steep and he eventually gave up and curled into glowing ball of orange and red in the bottom of the glass. Luce lowered the pitcher carefully, watching to see how the female salamander in the cage might react. The creature blinked at her with interest, but didn’t show any of the aggression the male had. Good. Turning to Rosalyn, Luce grimaced at the sight of the woman’s hands. “Ouch. Sorry about that.” She said with a shrug as she picked up the cage in her free hand. “Aloe might help. Burn cream too.” That was what people said, right?

But, at the mention of magic, Luce nearly dropped the cage. “Siktir,” She swore quietly, catching the cage before the salamander could break free. “Uh. No. I don’t. And that’s not me pretending that I’m not a witch.” She said, shrugging. “You saw me pick them up. But, no, I don’t have anything that can heal burns.” All her life, her mother had been the one to patch her up, to fix her scrapes and bruises. But she didn’t have that card in her back pocket anymore. At least… She didn’t. This lady, if she knew about spellcasters, she’d probably be alright. Right? And she’d gotten hurt because Luce hadn’t been careful enough. “I know someone who would be able to help you, though. Her name’s Nisa Vural. You might have seen ads about her acupuncture clinic. She does magical healing stuff too. Tell her a friend in silver sent you. And,” Luce said, her voice taking on a more serious tone, “Don’t, don’t tell her that I sent you.

“Mhhm.” If she wanted to lie to Rosalyn about having magic she certainly could. Maybe people in White Crest were a bit more cagey than she was used to back home. Not that the spellcasters she met in the city weren’t, but most wouldn’t try to hide what they were if they were willing to do magical stuff in the same room as her.

“Nisa Vural, a friend in silver, got it.” Rosalyn smiled. “Don’t worry, I'm good with discretion.” Maybe not the best statement to make after calling out the woman’s aura but it was true. She wasn’t one to go around telling others things they didn’t need to know. Not unless there was a good reason for it. If anyone asked, Luce was a normal person who had definitely not told her about possible healing magic.

Rosalyn glanced around at the destruction but quickly stopped herself. If she took stock now she was going to want to pull her hair out and Luce didn’t need to see her freaking out over the state of the apartment. “Thanks for the help. Do you have a plan for what to do with them?” she asked, motioning toward the cage.

“Appreciate it. A little bit of discretion goes a long way in this town.” Luce said with a firm nod. It was true. As often as weird shit happened here, they all had to just go along pretending like White Crest was just a quirky little town. “But yeah. She’ll be able to get you fixed up no problem.” She repeated, though the words made her ache. It had been over six months since she and her sisters had been excommunicated, banished from their coven and blotted out from their own family. And even though she’d seen her mother, had tested the bond of mother and child over duty and oaths to the coven… Luce didn’t want to push it. The less Nisa knew about what was going on in her life, the better.

Seeing how Rosalyn was looking around the apartment, Luce winced. Her place looked like… well, it looked like shit. Burnt boxes, dissolving foam leaving smears of chalky white against the floor, and the alarms still screeching overhead. “I’m going to release them in the woods, I know a place that should be safe for them.” A gully at the end of a creek that ran through the outskirts, a nice damp spot that would be perfect for the lovebugs.

“I’d offer to stick around and help clean up, but I get the feeling you want these guys outta here right now.” She said and shrugged. “Let me know if you ever need help again. I know a thing or two about stuff here, I can lend a hand if you need it.” With that, Luce headed out the door of the apartment, fire salamanders in tow. She couldn’t help but wonder how the woman had clocked her as a witch, but… it didn’t matter right now. The cage in her hand rattled as the female salamander sent a wave of sparks in the air. “If you light my Jeep on fire, you’ll wish I let that lady dump water on you guys.” She warned before sticking the salamanders in her car and speeding off.

#p: rosalyn holt #chatzy #wickedswriting #//this was a lotta fun to write lolololol

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undercoverwizardfanfiction · 4 years ago

Text

A Winter Night: A ROTTMNT Holiday story

Rating:G

Word Count;2358

for: @snakeeyesdraws

Characters: Donnie, Leo, Kendra

pairings: [takes breath, pulls out sword] LISTEN

update; i accidentally uploaded the draft the first time ^^’ i fixed though this is the finished version

An overtly saturated neon sign of a Santa selling sandals catches him in the corner of his eye. He uses his forearm to protect his aching eyes as he passed the sign. When he passes the blinding neon of Santa, the turtle takes a deep breath, a soft mist escaping his mouth. Honestly, he is grateful the streets aren’t more crowded. But not for his slowly numbing hands. He stuffs his hands into his unlined pockets and moves forward. Grateful more than ever that he had updated Shelldon with a heating unit so he didn’t have to weigh himself down with a heavy coat. It was making the walk to Hueso’s a bit more tolerable. He’d have to remember to update his brothers’ gear to include a heating unit like his. Course knowing them they’d probably use it to heat up marshmallows in their pockets and that was a mess he was NOT going to clean up for-

He is so wrapped up in the nightmarish scenario of having to clean marshmallows out of circuitry when a loud shriek of anger followed by a trash can flying past his line of vision causes him to jump on one foot with a shriek of fear

“Stupid AIDEN!!”

It takes Donnie a moment, and another trash can flying by his vision to realize he is not the source of anger, or in danger. He blinks and peers down the alley before having to duck in time for another trashcan to get stomped in the middle with enough strength to crunch it in half before, in a mixture of amazement he blinks. “Kendra?”

In a feral rage Kendra stomps a trashcan nearly in half before swerving around and glaring at him snarling. Her thick purple hair twisted in half ragged tangles, her beret lay on the ground as though she had thrown it to the ground before deciding that wasn’t enough to help vent her rage. Her half-crazed eyes narrowed at him. “What do YOU want?!” she bites and for a moment Donnie wishes he hadn’t stopped, “Are you here to ruin my day again?! Wreck my plans?!”

“Um,” Don blames his lack of ability to come up with a snappy come back on his even more urgent need to survive the next five seconds, or at least not end up like that trashcan. ”Are you doing something that should be stopped?”

Kendra narrows her eyes at him. “NO.”

“Do you HAVE an evil plan that I should stop? Again?” With a snarl Don worries he might have said the wrong thing.

But then she lets out an angry sigh, “No, not now.”

“Um.” He really didn’t want to end up a Donnie shaped hole in the wall, “Then, no?”

Kendra narrows her eyes at him, Donnie could barely see the little puffs of steam burst out of her nose like a bull trying to figure out if he was a matador worth charging. But then she lets out an angry growl, ”Fine, go away then,” she says, crouching down and yanking the trash can back into a standing position kicking at it a few more times to try and un-dent it. Donnie glances back at the trash cans in the road and sighs. He pulled off his gloves, cursing the fact that he didn’t bring any extra rubber gloves, and pulls one of the trash cans off the street. Kendra glares up at him before eyeing the trashcan in confusion, “What do you want?”

“To not see cars hit trash cans? Is that supposed to be a hard question?” he asks, again berating himself when Kendra narrows her eyes at him, but lets him stand his trash can next to the one she had ‘undented’, she doesn’t thank him when he drags by the other one too. But to be honest he doesn’t really expect it. But he does finally notice that, even though she traded out her leggings for sweatpants, she’s lacking her purple dragons' jacket and is wearing a dark grey sweater and boots. All signs indicated she had not been planning on being outside in December and is using all the anger she had been trying out on the trash cans to not shiver, “Where are you going?”

“What’s it to you?” she demands.

Donnie raises his hands in mock surrender. “Honestly? I was just trying to help but if you’re going to keep acting like a jerk, I’ll-“ he wasn’t sure how he was going to finish that thought. ‘Walk away?’ ‘Blog about it angrily later?’ But it ended with someone shouting ‘heads up’ and something hard slamming into the back of his head, his vision exploding in bright colors and the breaking of a snowball contacting with his head. Off balance he finds his world spinning and himself on his knees, hands holding his head trying to make sense of the pain and his disorientation.

“Hey!” Kendra’s voice was far away, but that could be ‘cause she had stormed over to yell at the kids who had thrown the snow ball. “The hells your problem?! That was basically an ice ball you weebs.” Don could barely make out their mumbled sheepish apology. He pulls off his hat and touched the soaking bandana underneath. Any hope that it had just been snow went out the window when he drew his bloody fingers off his head.

“Holy-“ Sounds like Kendra was back, his vision was spinning so bad that he assumed the spinning purple mass by his side was her. “Hey how many fingers am I holding up?!” she said holding out her hand. He could barely make out her fingers but gave a weak, “Four?” with strength surprising for someone her size, she took his arm and lifted him to his feet, pulling his arm over her neck, “Come on there’s a hospital nearby-“

“NO,” he answers quickly.

“Are you kidding me you’re HEAD is BLEEDING.”

“And I'm a giant talking turtle which do you think will matter more to a hospital staff?!” He often wondered how Yokai managed in the city without access to a hospital. He had been meaning to ask Hueso about-. He blinks, there was no way he could let Kendra take him home. But he was already close to the pizza place “I have a place I can go. But you can’t go with me-“

“Again, your HEAD is BLEEDING,” she snaps. “I’ll take you where you need to go but I won't get any closer got it?” Donnie knew she wouldn’t take no for answer and only answered with a sigh and a nod. She pulls harder on the arm wraps over her neck and took more of his weight. Despite their height difference he barely touches the ground which only added more to the feeling of being disoriented.

“Thanks,” he muttered weakly.

“Don’t thank me til we get there.” Donnie struggles to keep his eyes open but his swirling vision forces him to keep his eyes closed, a hand slaps his face lightly. “Hey stay awake nerd.”

“Pot calling the kettle-“ Donnie bit off the end of his statement as he tried not to dry heave. He could feel Kendras frozen bare arms through his coat and feels even worse for being out in the first place. “H-Hold on,” he says, stiffening his legs up to drag her to a stop. He manages to pry her arm off him long enough to peel his coat off leaving him in his long sleeved dark pink Atomic Lass shirt. “You’re obviously cold.” As callous as he is sometimes, he finds it’s better to be honest than to dance around the subject, “Shelldon has a heating unit that’ll keep me warm.” Though it wouldn’t help his arms, he could handle a few blocks though. Thankfully his vision is returning to some extent, enough that he notices Kendra looking to his pack and for a moment Don struggles not to shift to put the pack out of her sight, “That’s Shelly right? Is he still mad at me for tricking him?”

“Oh definitely. He has a stack of crayon drawings dedicated to his revenge on you.” He feels the shoulders on his back tighten as though Shelldon was reprimanding him for revealing his secret plans.

Kendra lets off a small shrug “Yeah fair enough, I’d probably do the same thing” before smirking directionally at the pack, ”But for the record little buddy, blue prints are a much better way to plot out revenge.”

Don tries to grin before dizziness settles in again. Kendra must have noticed since she ducked under his arm. “Hold on nerd, keep talking to me.”

He manages a nod, mentally keeping track of their location. “Wh-what were you doing out here kicking trash cans?” he asked. “And who’s this Aiden guy who has you so mad? Not that it's any of my business, but I’m kinda hurt there’s someone out there you currently hate more than me,” he says with an added offended tone that makes her glare at him in confusion. ”I mean not to brag, but I sorta consider it a pride and joy to have an enemy worthy of my intelligence.”

Kendra narrows her eyes. “Please, he’s not worthy of my time,” she says through her teeth. “There’s this guy in the robotics club with us, Aiden. A loser who couldn’t tell a snickers from a soldering pen. There was a contest to submit the best blueprints, and who ever won would to be our project for the semester.”

“I’ve seen you build stuff on your own though. “

“That wasn’t the point,” Kendra lets out an angry huff, “I won, like I knew I was going to. But he got second place, I checked the points and he was twelve points away from wining. Twelve! The loser pretty boy who had his private tutor help him.”

“But you still won-“

“-He shouldn’t have gotten that close. I did all my work by myself. Didn’t ask for help, spent nights coding and drafting. I should have left him in the dust a broken swaddled nerd with broken dreams. But no. I made sure he knew how I felt about it, but the creep tattled on me. Freaking snowflake got freaked out because his blue prints ended up on his front porch on fire. Since when is that illegal.”

“I mean,” Don pauses, “I think always.”

“Anyway, I got kicked off the club and that’s why I'm out here.” She shrugs. “If my Dad or step mom saw me getting this mad then they’d make me do the ‘breathing exercises,’” she said with air quotations, “Being all ‘Kendra we’re worried about you’ ‘Kendra we love and support you we just don’t want to see you go down a bad path’ and ‘Kendra where do you keep getting access to all this fire!?’” Her frustrations forced her to kick out at a sign they passed but thankfully not hard enough to knock it over, “So as soon as I’m done helping you, I’m going to see my Mom. She’s the only one who gets me.”

Donnie blames his concussion on being so surprised Kendra had a mom but tried to keep it off his features. But judging by the quiet scoff from Kendra he hadn’t done a very good job, "How about you Greeny? Why did you come out here if you already had a concussion? Don’t pretend like you didn’t have one, I saw the bandages when I was checking your scalp. You already had a head injury before you got hit in the head.”

Figures his hat would blame him, and his own disorientation for forgetting that Kendra had checked his scalp. “It's complicated.”

“More complicated then plotting revenge on a spoiled white boy in a Vanilla Ice t-shirt?” she says in a tone that tells Donnie she’s trying to make a joke. And despite his best efforts not to, he snorts slightly, “No, I'll agree it’s not that complicated.” But it still feels weird to share with a certified enemy who once tried to steal the Spirit of Labour Day (don’t ask can’t explain). Thankfully she doesn’t rush him as he tries to collect his thoughts. “I got into an argument with my brother.” He still doesn’t want to let her in on too much information. “My brothers are all protective of each-other but he's’ protective in a way that makes me nuts. He thought it was too soon for me to go out with this whole situation,” he said gesturing to his head bandage, “And I disagreed. Except I didn’t really do it in the best way.”

“I think I know what that means,” Kendra says. “Did you say something bad?”

For a moment, it takes all of Don’s remaining mental energy to not think about Leo’s face, watching his concerned features fade away to one of hurt. So hurt in fact he hadn’t even called after Donnie when he stormed out. He lets out a sigh. “I did. I wish I had a reasonable excuse for it, but to be honest I don’t like feeling like I'm depending on people. I don’t like feeling like he’s always concerned about me. I especially don’t like him being right about it.”

“Sucks when it feels like you’re under-appreciated huh?”

“Yeah.” He could make out a familiar sandal store that housed Hueso’s alley. “We’re here,” he says.

Kendra looks around, and for a moment Donnie is concerned Kendra is going to insist on taking him ‘inside’ but she ducks from under shoulder. “You sure?” she asks, “I can take you further.”

“I’m good, thanks though.” He tries to give her a confident smile but his lips only twitch in response. She gives a half shrug before she starts pulling off his coat. “Keep it. You have a long way to walk and I still have Shelldon to keep me warm.”

“Thanks,” she says pulling the coat back on. “I’ll catch you later Greeny,” she says. She looks like she's’ about to walk off when she pauses. “But for the record, it still must be nice to have brothers who have your back.”

“It is.” Don nods. “And honestly Aiden sounds like a little bitch.”

For the first time since their strange encounter began Kendra put on a full smile. “Thanks,” she says before walking off.

(#)(#)\/(#)(#)

Leo didn’t snore.

So when his phone went off amongst his makeshift ‘pillow floor’ in the living room he did not ‘snort’ awake. He made a strangled noise before sitting up. Patting his sweatpants and hoody pockets before diving into the mass of pillows. Breaching a moment later like a whale with his phone in his teeth. Hueso’s ID is flashing across his screen. With a scoff he answers. “For the last time BONE man I don’t work today-“

“First of all, that is NOT how you politely answer a phone,” Hueso starts with a snap of his teeth. “Second that’s not why I'm calling. Your brother is here with me.”

Leo blinks, he blames his previous hibernated state on why it took him so long to remember which brother had left the lair. “Donnie? Is he ok?” he said already going to his room and looking for his sword under his bed.

“He is alright, but it looks like he got hit on the head pretty hard-“

That’s all it takes for him to charge out of his room, lingering only long enough to grab the toolbox he used for a first aid kit, and grabbing his portal sword from the kitchen (vaguely remembering he had used it to cut some cheese for his peanut butter and cheese grilled sandwich earlier) and slicing the sword down to activate a portal to Hueso’s office. Without saying bye, he hangs his phone up and jumps through.

The aforementioned skeleton, who had been glaring at his phone as though offended Leo had hung up on him, gave a shriek as the turtle appears by his side. “BAH! Leo, I hate it when you-“

Leo immediately tuned him out when he saw Donnie laying on Hueso’s couch with an ice pack over his forehead, he hurried forward and knelt down. “You ok buddy?” he asks.

Donnie looks up at him from under the ice pack with a weak smile. “I don’t know, are you really uglier than the last time I saw you or is that my head talking?”

Leo couldn’t help but grin. “I thought brain injuries were supposed to make people nicer,” he says. He turns to the toolbox and starts going through the first aid supplies inside. “Thanks for letting him rest. In your office,” he tells Hueso as he sets aside a pen light and some new bandages.

“Why wouldn’t I? Out of your brothers he’s most definitely my favorite.”

“Wait you have a favorite?” Leo looks to him. “Then who's your least favorite?”

After a pause, Hueso gives a wide and strained grin. “I will leave you two to it. If you need me just call me,” he says before ducking out quickly.

It’s only then that Leo turns his barely contained worried energy on Donnie “What happened? Who did this? Do you have their address and sleep schedule-“

“Leo,” Don starts in a pained voice, “Please, my head feels like someone tried to split it with an ax. It was an accident. Some kids hit me in the head with a snow ball.“

Leo was about to start on another tirade of questions when he forced himself to take a deep breath, “Yeah, ok, I'm sorry,” he says. Also trying to ignore Donnie’s missing coat. He looks back to his supplies and pulls out a pen light. “I’m going to check your pupil dilation, but only if you're up for it.” He waits for Donnie to give a slight nod before he lifts the pen and carefully pushes the ice pack away from his eyes. Using his thumb to cover Don’s opposite eye without actually touching him, with a flash the pupil constricts and dilates as it should. He does the same process to the other “Well that’s good at least,” Leo says. “How’s your vision?”

“Spinning, but I think that’s from the pain.”

That would make sense. The red slider turtle rose to sit on the edge of the couch, carefully unwrapping Don’s scalp as gently as he can, checking his facial expression for any signs of increased pain before he lets out a sigh of relief. “It's just a surface bleed. It doesn’t look like the actual injury itself reopened.”

“That’s good,” Donnie says with a soft sigh. “You’re doing a good job.”

“I had a good teacher.” Leo made sure to give Donnie a soft smile that the turtle barely returns. “Let me just change the bandages and we’ll head home when you feel up for it. Maybe we can order some pizza; I've had a monster craving for anchovy and chocolate syrup pizza for days-“

“I was wrong.”

Leo blinks, pausing from unwrapping the new bandages with his hands. It takes him longer than he should to realize what Don’s apologizing for and when he does, he only returns to digging through his kit. “You were a little right,” Leo says quietly putting aside a bottle of alcohol, “I mean it's kinda right, right?? You're usually right-“

“No, Leo.” Donnie tries to sit up but fails to get up more than a few seconds before Leo’s grip on his arm forces him back down. “Leo I was wrong. I was angry, my head was killing me I would have said anything to hurt you. You don’t mess everything up-“

“Except I do?” Leo lets out a soft laugh. “I mean I do. Between the minotaur's pizza and Big Mama I'm surprised I get anything right-“

Don’s hand grabs his shoulders and before Leo can stop him, the soft-shell forces himself into a sitting position with pure grit alone (judging by the pain filled grimace on his face, “Would you listen to me?!” Donnie demands shaking him by the shoulders, “I shouldn’t have even said it but I would have said anything. I was angry at feeling so helpless and dependent. I was angry because you were right for trying to stop me from going out. I did need your help and I shouldn’t have been so difficult. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“ his last sentence is interrupted with a sob that helps him notice the tears running down his face. Donnie lets out an aggravated huff as he presses the heel of his hands against his streaming eyes to help spare his dignity in some way.

He feels the couch shift as Leo shifts closer, wrapping his arms around him. “Ok, ok you were wrong. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing Leo,“ Donnie manages to say from his brother’s shoulder. “I’m the one apologizing not you, idiot.”

“Alright, alright I apologize for apologizing. You were wrong I was right. Is that what you want to hear?” he asks. Don nods into his shoulder. Leo rests his cheek on Dons’ shoulder rubbing his shell for a few moments as Don’s erratic breathing finally starts to calm down.

After a few seconds Don lets out a small sigh, “Damn it, I was doing so good too. I can't even tell anymore if these are meltdowns or panic attacks.”

“As long as you don’t have to deal with them alone when you don’t want to, that’s all I care about.” Leo gives him a final squeeze before reaching up and taking Don’s shoulders, gently guiding him down to lay down again. “Ok buddy. I’m going to rewrap your head, and then I'm going to go order us some food and portal us home. You just relax ok?” He waits for Donnie to nod before Leo starts applying some alcohol to a cotton ball. “I’ll be honest though, I’m sorta surprised you made it here safely.”

Don for the first time since Leo entered Hueso’s office looks him with his tired blood shot eyes. A soft smile forming on his face as he relaxes. “Yeah,” he whispers. ”Me too.”

#rottmnt #rottmnt fanfiction #Rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #leo #donnie #kendra #christmas #gift #what a long year

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banshee1013 · 4 years ago

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Suptober Day 10 - Sweet Rides

OMG I GOT ONE DONE ON TIME (well, sorta, HAHA).

I finally managed to keep myself to a pencil drawing only, still took me 4 hours but I’m pretty pleased with it.

Then I stayed up until 1:30am finishing the fic - which was supposed to be a FICLET - 2k later! Oops.

Anyway, here’s Day Ten! Now to figure out what to do for tomorr... uh, later today, haha.

====================================

Overall Title: The Road Less Traveled

Overall Rating: Mature (may change to Explicit, we’ll see how it goes)

Tags: Castiel/Dean, mention of Sam/Eileen, Post-Season 15, ExAngel!Cas, MostlyRetiredHunter!Dean, Road Trip

(Note: all ficlets are unbeta’d. At the end of the month, I’ll wrap up whatever I manage to get written, clean it up, get it beta’d, and post to AO3. So please pardon any mistakes!)

========================================================

CHAPTER FIVE - SWEET RIDES

Words: 2026

Dean’s fingers drum a one-handed beat on the steering wheel, keeping time with John Bonham coming over the speakers. His other hand, resting on the bench seat next to him, is loosely entwined with Cas’.

After their rainy weekend interlude at Rufus’ cabin, Cas has been extra hands-on; never out of contact with Dean in one way or another for very long - and Dean has zero complaints with this development.

Giving a quick squeeze, he disengages his hand from Cas’ and flips the turn signal, sliding over to the lane for I-5 North.

Cas up to this point has been focused on the passing scenery with half-lidded eyes and soft smile, quiet and seemingly lost in thought. Dean had squeezed his hand a few times during the eight hour drive from the cabin, checking to see if he’d dropped off, but every time Cas had turned to him, returning the squeeze; the look in his eyes full of love and warmth, and Dean will do anything to keep Cas looking at him like that.

This time, Cas turns to him, but his eyes are now full of curiosity.

“I-5 North? I thought you wished to go south after we reached the west coast?”

“Thought we’d make a pit stop first.” Dean smirked to himself, recalling the conversation with Sam yesterday when he’d called to check in and found out they were headed to Seattle.

------------

“Seattle, huh? Helluva drive just to get some Starbucks!” Sam snorted, his voice echoing slightly with the speakerphone on so he can sign the conversation to Eileen.

“Haha, Sammy. No way am I getting Starbucks in Seattle - that’s like going to Italy and getting McDonalds.” Dean paused, glancing over his shoulder toward the bedroom, the Cas-shaped blanket-covered lump in the bed still unmoving, and silently cursed himself for not setting his phone on silent.

He desperately wanted to be back in there with him.

“So, everything alright? I gotta go, things to do.” More like someONE to do…

Sam did not sound convinced but didn’t push the issue. “Nah, all good here. Eileen and I are back at the bunker and just wanted to make sure you didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere.” Sam chuckles at his own joke, then continues, “Hey, I know where you should go… y’know, when you get to Seattle.”

Dean sighs - now that he knows nothing is wrong, he’s tempted feign a bad connection and hang up - but he’s genuinely curious to find out what Sam is going to suggest. “Yeah? Do tell.”

“You should get some Dick’s.”

“Hahaha very funny, “ Dean growls, and moves to hang up when Sam yells, “Wait, WAIT!”

“WHAT?” Dean grimaces at the volume of his voice and glances over at his shoulder again. Cas stirs and rolls over but doesn’t wake. “What?” he says again, quieter.

“I mean, you should go eat a Dick’s.” Sam giggles, and Dean hears Eileen's soft laugh in the background.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m outta here.” Dean pulls the phone back from his ear once again and starts to hang up when he hears Eileen’s voice - “Dean, wait!”

With a mighty sigh, he puts the phone back to his ear and hears a smack in the background; an open palm against muscle and cloth, followed by Eileen’s voice: “Stop BEING a dick and tell him.”

“Okay, okay. You guys are no fun.” Sam speaks into the phone again. “It’s a fast food place out there. ‘Best burgers in America’ according to Esquire Magazine.”

-------------------

Cas’ brow pinches in confusion and it’s still the most adorable thing ever. “Pit stop? Why are we stopping for pits?” His eyes narrow. “Are they peach pits? Do you need to distill cyanide from them?”

Dean can’t help himself - he outright guffaws. “No, no cyanide, why would I… I mean, we’re making a detour, stopping somewhere here in Seattle before heading south.”

“Ah, very well then.” Cas tilts his head. “Is it for coffee? I hear Starbucks is headquartered here, I suppose acquiring some from the original source might be interesting.”

“NO Starbucks… seriously, why does everyone…,” Dean pauses, then carefully schools his face into a serious expression, “We’re going for Dick’s.”

“EXCUSE ME?”

“BURGERS!” Dean manages to gasp out as he gets the laughter under control. “It’s a burger place Sam told me about. ‘The most life-changing burger joint in America’ or so Esquire Magazine would have you believe.” Turning to Cas, he arches an eyebrow. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

~~~ *** ~~~

“What the… Cas, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

No, it wasn’t from the burgers - Dean hadn’t even gotten to those yet. He’s not even sure if they can.

As they pulled into the parking area for Dick’s Drive-In, he had slammed on the brakes, Baby coming to a sudden stop with a squeal of rubber on pavement at the sight before him.

The parking lot was full - of Impalas.

Black 1967 Impalas to be exact. DOZENS of them, all in a row.

Some had their trunks open, the inside of the lids decorated with devil traps and wards. Others had green coolers nearby, identical to the one in his backseat.

The squeal of tires had drawn the attention of the people gathered around, and one in particular waves and makes his way over to them.

“Oh shit, no no no…” Dean mutters, then quickly plasters on a wan smile as the guy approaches his window and leans on the sill.

“Hey there, I”m Davis, President of the Seattle chapter of the Supernatural Haunted Impalas club.” Dean glanced down at the man’s outstretched hand, briefly considers peeling rubber out of the parking lot and reluctantly decides against it - the last thing they need is a APB out on them for decapitating a guy in full view of witnesses - and takes the guy’s hand.

“hi, uh… De.. Daniel. I”m Daniel… uh, Dan, and this is… “ Releasing the guy’s… Davis’... hand, he turns to Cas, eyes wide and imploring.

Thankfully, Cas gets it. “Calvin,” Cas says, taking Davis’ hand and giving it a solemn shake - up and down, twice, and a quick release - “You can call me Cal.”

Davis blinks, then gives them a broad smile. “Nice to meet you boys. We’re all just parked over there, find a spot and come say hi!” He leans back, his smile widening. “Nice cosplay, by the way - Dean, I presume, and you must be Endverse Cas, am I right?” He throws fingerguns and a wink before turning to head back to the group.

“We should leave… yeah, we should definitely get the HELL OUTTA HERE…” Dean looks over his shoulder, trying to figure out the quickest way to bail on the situation; but just then, a loud rumble erupts from Cas’ stomach.

“Dean…” Cas sighs. “I’m very hungry, and you promised me a life-changing burger.” He gestures at the group, many of whom are now actively watching them. “And they’ve already noticed us. We might as well go and order the burgers, and then make an excuse to leave.” He drops puppy-dog eyes to rival Sam’s, and Dean knows he has no recourse but to go through with the charade - at least long enough to get a burger.

“FINE. We’ll order the burgers, make nice with locals while they’re cookin’, and then get the hell outta Dodge.”

Dean pulls into a spot at the end of the long line of Baby Wanna-Be’s. No sooner had they climbed out and closed the doors, a bubbly brunette bounces over to them.

“Hey guys, you look great! And wow, your Baby is GORGEOUS! What’s her name?” She claps a hand over her mouth in dismay. “Oh, of course, I shouldn’t assume gender. What’s your Baby’s name?”

Dean’s lips part but nothing comes out, at a loss for words - then, “Baby.”

The bouncy brunette blinks, then nods, the smile returning. “Uh, great! Awesome!” She extends her hand. “I’m Brittany, and this is my girl, Gertrude,” indicating the Impala parked next to them.

Dean has to admit - Gertrude is in great shape. “Hi, Brittany, I”m De… Dan.” He passes an admiring gaze over the car. “She’s beautiful.”

Brittany blushes fiercely. “Thank you so much! She’s my pride and joy.”

Dean can’t help but grin - he gets it. “I know how you feel.” He starts toward the car, his interest piqued now.

Cas grabs his elbow. “Dean… uh, DAN,” he stammers. “We should order our food first.”

“Oh, right! Of course.” He turns back to Brittany. “Give us a moment? We’re starving.”

Brittany nods like her head is on a swivel. “OH of course! We’re not going anyway, go feed your boyfriend!” She turns back to Gertrude and strikes up a conversation with another couple.

They make their way to the order counter with no further distractions and order their food, both choosing the “Dick’s Deluxe” with fries and milkshakes, then wander over to the group of Impala owners.

By the time their food is ready, Dean is genuinely surprised at how much fun he’s actually having - the Impala owners are friendly and really know their cars, the pride of ownership evident - and Dean can’t help but respect that. However, they of course are also just as fanatical about Chuck’s books, which Dean struggles to hide his discomfort with.

As they head back to the counter to pick up their food, Dean turns to Cas. “I dunno about all this, Cas - they’re really into Chuck’s books and they have no idea what a tool he was.” His head drops with a sigh. “Should we tell them?”

“No, Dean.” Cas looks back over his shoulder at the group, their laughter and happy voices carrying across the parking lot. “They’re happy; the books have brought them together, given them friendship - a family, even.” He shakes his head. ‘Chuck used those words to manipulate you, but they have no power over you - over US - anymore. This way, they serve a good purpose.”

Dean blinks - he hadn’t thought of it that way. Of course Cas is right.

“Yeah... and look at all the sweet rides that came from them!”

~~~ *** ~~~

They gather their food order and head back to say their goodbyes, but the group appear to be packing up anyway - trunks being closed and coolers returned to their backseats.

Davis approaches them. “Hey guys… we’re about to head out, but we’re only going over to Golden Gardens Park to watch the sunset and hang out around the fire pits. You’re welcome to join.” He nudges Dean with his elbow. “The group’s really taken a shine to you,” he says with a bright grin, “and your Baby, of course.”

Dean turns to Cas, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “Whadda ya say, sweetheart? Our first sunset…” he shakes the bag of food in his other hand, “and dinner on the West Coast?”

“I would love to, Dean.” Cas’ eyes are bright, his smile soft and warm and Dean really wants to kiss him right now, but… company.

“Adorable,” Davis says, hands clasped in delight. “I love how you two stay so in character.”

~~~ *** ~~~

The last rays of the sun slip behind the Olympic Mountains, but Dean is watching Cas watch the sunset.

He’ll never get tired of the look of wonder on Cas’ face when he experiences new things.

Or for that matter, the sounds he makes, either. Listening to him moan through that admittedly fantastic burger was downright pornographic.

He places a hand on Cas’ fire-warmed cheek and turns him away from the dimming horizon.

Damn the company. He’s gonna kiss his boyfriend.

He tastes the salt from the fries, the sharp vinegar of the pickles, the rich savory flavor of the burger, the lingering sweetness of the milkshake.

He tastes the unique flavor of Cas and relishes it.

Cas threads his fingers into the hair at the back of Dean’s neck and tilts his head just so and oh, it’s so, so good.

He hears a few giggles and more than a couple “awws” and pays them no mind.

He’s way too busy thinking about a completely different type of sweet ride.

#suptober20 #Day10 #art #fic #destiel #saileen

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 4 years ago

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The Mothman Prophecies

I know nothing about this gem from 2002, but Wes requested I review this, and I am very excited. Here are my initial questions - is it a man that looks like a moth or a moth that looks like a man? Only time will tell, I suppose. This movie is supposedly based on a true story of some weird happenings in West Virginia in the 60s, and the Mothman legend has persisted for decades - they even hold a Mothman festival every year (during non-Covid times of course). So who is this mysterious figure who goes bump in the night? And what exactly is he prophesying? Well...

Let’s just say the movie is playing fast and loose with some kinda sorta weird stuff that maybe possibly happened to a few people one time. Basically, based on some Wikipedia research, this movie is probably about as accurate as a Maury Povich lie detector test. The summary of the movie is that John Klein (Richard Gere) and his wife Mary (Debra Messing) are a normal happy suburban couple when something weird happens to Mary - she sees something strange, gets into a car accident, and subsequently passes away. As John grieves and searches for answers, he finds himself inexplicably in a small town in West Virginia even though he was on his way somewhere completely different - and this town is experiencing the same kind of weird stuff Mary did before she died. John begins investigating, and eventually he starts getting contacted by Mr. Moth, and that’s when things REALLY go off the rails.

Some thoughts:

First clue that this is an early 2000s relic: Richard Gere is a “star reporter” and he and his wife are looking to buy an enormous new house. Second clue: the credits, which feature out of focus streetlights, a time lapse of a clock ticking down the minutes, and music by a musical arrangement called tomandandy.

Side note - I think “Tom an’ Dandy” would be an excellent name for an old timey vaudeville act.

Ohh get it, the shape on Mary’s CAT scan turns into wings with red eyes. LIKE THE MOTHMAN.

Incidentally, I’ve been saying “Moth-mun” in my head instead of Moth Man, and that’s really been adding to the experience for me.

Now they’re trying to make the reflectors at the top of construction barrels seem menacing. We are already stretching the suspension of disbelief that moths can be scary, now construction barrels?

They’re really pulling out all the stops. When Richard Gere gets bad news, the heavy strings kick in alongside the sound of a beating heart that abruptly stops. Do you see - because Mary’s heart stopped. I know, this is groundbreaking stuff. That’s just a subtle filmmaking tip from me to you - it’s free, I won’t charge you for it or anything.

When a movie character flips through a disturbing journal full of angry sketches or words written over and over again, all I can think of is how much fun the art department had making that journal.

This movie does a great job of portraying what it feels like to be a stranger in a small, broke, busted town. The curious looks, the feeling that you’re just not wanted.

These transitions are....a choice. I can’t tell if they’re aping The Ring or if director Mark Pennington cut his teeth on music videos for groups like Trapt or Breaking Benjamin, [ETA: I was close - 76 directing credits on IMDB and at least 60 of them are music videos] but he’s throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. We’ve got full red filter obscuring the screen, just a general focus blur, sometimes the transition looks like that shitty Photo Booth filter on old Macbooks that looks like you’re drawn in pencil. It’s distracting as hell and just so....not the atmosphere this story deserved.

I say that because the story itself is incredibly compelling - I think most horror and thriller films work best when they’re rooted in grief because nothing is more terrifying than the threat of losing that which we love most. And the events are ambiguous enough that you can’t tell how much of it is the trauma John is experiencing, and how much of it is legitimately supernatural. That being said, I wish the scares were more effective? As soon as Mr. Moth starts calling on the phone (under the alias Indrid Cold) things get decidedly weirder but also less...coherent.

This movie feels particularly relevant as we watch John descend further and further into his obsession. He rejects any and all rational explanations for the events taking place and the “prophecies” he’s receiving. Where his obsession is fueled by grief and the need to understand the un-understandable, I see the same fear in him that I see in the QAnon supporters who are fueled by white supremacist rage and fear at losing their position in the world. The difference is, John’s delusion really only destroys himself. Not so much with QAnon, unfortunately.

Laura Linney is absolutely wasted as a small town cop who gets drawn into John’s schemes. She has more of an arc in her 8 minutes of screen time in Love Actually than she does in this. #JusticeForLauraLinney

Did I Cry? I teared up once the wheels of the final prophecy started in motion. For all the other bonkers choices in this movie, this sequence is genuinely terrifying and so drawn out that it feels like you’re actually trapped in the middle of a disaster along with everyone else. It’s absolutely horrifying. This is BY FAR the strongest sequence in the film. It reminded me a lot of the later Final Destination films that really draw out the tension during the initial disaster sequence to an absolutely exquisite, agonizing degree.

This is a weird one. There’s no real resolution or catharsis, no explanation for all of the weird things we’ve just seen. Just a lingering sense of unease. It’s not...unsatisfying, but it’s not really satisfying either. Obviously I went to Wikipedia right after this was done, and that kind of dashed my hopes of the enduring mystery of this legend. It sounds pretty uh...not real. Which is a bummer, because I’m very into reading about weird paranormal things, and if things had happened the way the movie said they did, I would be a Mothman Truther 4 Lyfe. As it stands, this is one cryptid whose legend leaves something to be desired. Looks like nothing can replace Nessie as the cryptid of my heart <3.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#121in2021 #the mothman prophecies #the mothman prophecies review #richard gere #Debra Messing #laura linney #mothman #movie reviews #film reviews

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goodnessmarygrace · 4 years ago

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Hi, my name is Mary Grace and I’m new to Tumblr. I made this blog because nobody I know has Tumblr, so it feels like I can be more open about my struggles without drawing attention to myself. Anyways, here goes nothing. This is my story thus far. It’s a long one, so buckle up!

I was diagnosed with POTS last month after two increasingly difficult and perplexing years. You could think of me as being sorta athletic and very ambitious normally if you like. I’m a perfectionist and I have anxiety. I began really feeling and noticing the POTS symptoms about two years ago. For a year, I just always assumed I was out of shape or everybody felt the same way and I was just being a wimp. I was super tired all the time and would get very dizzy with standing up and running. I would get spotty vision and feel the familiar “hot ice” feeling you get when you might faint. These symptoms were not incredibly severe or anything, so I just always hid them so that people wouldn’t label me as “dramatic” or “lazy.” I played basketball, softball, ran track, did marching band, football cheer-leading, scholar bowl, FCA, and FCCLA at the time of the onset of symptoms. I always assumed that I was just stressed out or had a really bad cold and it was nothing to give a second thought about. If anything, hiding my symptoms made me feel like I was in control or tough.

Another thing you must know about me to understand my story is I am a Christian and Jesus plays a big part in my life each and every day. Come summer 2019, I was a helper/counselor at the 5th and 6th grade week at the local Church Camp. That’s when some things really clicked for me spiritually. I realized that my life had been fairly easy. I have a loving family, live in an awesome community, have been blessed with friends and talents all my life, and for the most part, I’d been healthy and hadn’t had to deal with many terrible things. Most of all, I’m free to live for and worship my LORD and Savior.

It’s a life that many crave and would give anything to have. But that week at Church Camp initiated a thought process in me. I realized I had never really depended on GOD because everything in my life had seemed so... easy I guess. I was incredibly thankful for my life, but there came a time when I realized that I didn’t really live by faith or trust or hope. I didn’t completely even understand what they mean! How can you live for GOD without knowing what it is like to completely trust Him with every aspect of your life? My life story was (yes, comfortable and safe) but also a bit empty. It was shallow where it could be deep. And after lots of prayer and some soul searching, I realized my story was shallow because I had hardly ever struggled. So then I began praying dangerously. I asked (or begged) GOD to break me if He had to.

And oh my, He sure answered that one. The symptoms got worse, but I didn’t think much of them considering I had quit (or retired (; ) from softball. (There’s a whole separate story to why I quit softball that I just can’t possibly fit in this post. It was a big developmental step in my life and something that I still am learning from.) I assumed I was just getting out of shape and I should exercise and live healthier. More water, more sleep, better food, etc. Running was getting harder and harder. I was always exhausted, which I blamed on stress and lack of good sleep. Basketball season is what really did it in for me. The first real “attack” or “episode” happened during conditioning week. I almost fainted. I got a migraine and was so dizzy that I couldn’t walk straight. My vision was seriously messed up and that “hot ice” feeling you get before passing out kept washing over me. (I had passed out/ almost passed out before this but always blamed it on being squeamish or something else unconcerning.) I eventually sucked up my pride and told my coach, “I gotta lie down!” It was humiliating. I used to be able to run like nobody’s business. I mean, some people were jealous of my exercising capabilities. It seemed like my fault since I had quit softball and seemingly was so out of shape that I almost passed out. I felt like a quitter. There was so much shame and guilt. I must have forgotten it was actually an answer to my prayers.

The season progressed and I repeatedly had to lie down when it came to conditioning and running. It didn’t help that I got mono for the second time in my life that winter (no, not from kissing) and was so stubborn that I refused to stay home or go to the doctor. I had mono, pharyngitis, and a double ear infection for months, but I didn’t want to rest because I thought people would think I was lazy. We began trying to figure out why I would get the POTS symptoms as well, because my mom started to think that something really was going on. In the end, we decided to blame it on blood sugar. I told people I was hypoglycemia. I brought juice to basketball practice, and when I would drink it, I would trick myself into thinking that I felt better because I was sick of having no idea what was going on.

Finally, when basketball season was wrapping up and track season was beginning, I began believing that maybe I wasn’t “just out of shape.” I had been running and exercising for months, but I still had my POTS symptoms. I was praying and trying really really hard to get past the shame and be grateful for my struggles. The thing is, I LOVE track (and was pretty good at it too.) Running and racing has always been, dare I say, fun for me. I was really looking forward to the first practice of the season. My dreams were crushed to say the least. After running the first 400 meters of a mile, I nearly fainted again. I finished the mile, but was not doing so hot. I remember all my teammates and coaches staring at me with worry and surprise. I was so embarrassed. The headache from it didn’t go away until I went to bed that night. What made things worse, was I still didn’t know what was wrong with me. Doctors said “blood sugar?”, “asthma?”, “hormones?”, “anxiety?”, “arrhythmia?”, “stress?”. When people asked, I didn’t have a definite answer, so just I listed all of my symptoms and the possible diagnoses. I got tired of that real quick.

Now that my track season was in jeopardy, I decided that we really needed to figure out what was happening to me. My mom said to take it easy at practice, but I didn’t want to look “lazy.” (You can tell that my mind runs in a useless circle around the concepts of weak and lazy.) I told my coaches that I needed to take it easy, but then just continued to go hard as I could. I mentally could not get past the mindset I had adopted. I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t trying and I was making things up, so without really noticing it, I told myself that it was in fact all in my head and I was weak. Then came the pandemic.

This is becoming way too long, so I’m going to continue it in a part 2. It sounds crazy, but I’m actually pretty thankful for the mess I’ve been through. More explanation later, but I know there is some growth happening in me that never would have begun if I hadn’t gotten these struggles. GOD has shown me so much through these experiences and He’s made room in my busy schedule for the things that actually matter in life. I don’t chase people’s opinions or expectations so much anymore and have learned to be kinder to myself. Again, this blog is kind of going to be like a way to figure some things out and hopefully become part of the community of people who’ve gone or are going through similar experiences. Maybe then I’ll even be able to help someone else in return.

-Mary Grace

June 4, 2020

#potsie #postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome #my story #jesus is the answer #christianity #a written testimony #break me #savedbygrace #POTS

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solerwolf21 · 4 years ago

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Soul Eater OC’s Jay & Xion

This is just some OC’s I made. I really just wanted to make powerful characters since I rarely do and focus on them growing as people. But I don’t think I’ll make this into any sorta story but I might write some events that happen to them and post em. I don’t really know yet but hope you enjoy the read never the less.

To be said least, a quiet and normal life was something most people dreamed of living. To have a nice little home of their own, maybe a family and some good friends. Simple living. Well, at least most people but in a world where people can turn into weapons, witches and monsters roam freely it was sometimes hard to have that simple life. At least for those that wanted it.

A small pub easily missable to most and should be highly avoided by tucked itself neatly within the borders of the Aokigahara forest in Japan. And within its confides, vile men and women alike filled it's seats all wearing devilish smiles and faces as they enjoyed the latest haul of their efforts. Fresh and untainted souls. A man plucked out one of the blue spheres his fanged teeth gleaming as saliva dripped down his chin,

“Nothing beats a fresh soul. I can almost hear their screams from earlier.” he said proudly to himself as he devoured his meal. He wasn’t the only one who was enjoying their fill as the other patrons were dining similarly. The dense forest around them was perfect harvesting souls from those who ventured to close or to make people disappear. Plus with who else was lying within the forest they were more than set in this place. No one would ever find them or try to stop them. So when the door to the place opened abruptly it drew the attention of everyone.

They watched as two people entered the building one taller than the other. The obvious male of the two wore a long overcoat and its black design was interrupted by the large white 'X' design on its back that cascaded to the front. But with it being open it showed his grey shirt that had a large number '4' that could be seen peeking from the side and finished with a longer shirttail than normal. His jeans fit his form though the pockets bulged along the legs and more of those white 'X's showed on them all the way down to his grey boots. His face wasn't visible since it was being covered by his hood but the silver of his necklace was noticeable as it hung from his neck with a small crown on the end.

Next to him standing just to his shoulder was a female figure also shrouded by her hood. Her jacket was a similar black as his and even had the same white 'X' that stretched from the back to the zipped up front. The jacket was a bit bigger than her form causing it to double as a dress as it trailed all the way under her waist. Leggings covered the rest of her lower half with their grey design. On her feet were a simple pair of sneakers that had their tongues popping out for flair. Her funnel hood blocked any look at her face.

The bar was silent as the residents all just stared at the two newcomers, both amazed and confused. Without a word did the two walk up to the counter and take seats on the stools. The barkeep eyed them warily as he approached them,

"Is there something I could help you with?" he questioned. At first, the male said nothing but the barkeep being the closest he could see his brown eyes as they analyzed him and it sent a slight chill down him but he didn't know why,

"Yeah I guess you could.' a teenage voice spoke out, "We were out this way and was just looking for some directions actually. We saw this place and figured what better place to get some." he replied. At hearing that everyone else seemed to relax, some of them even chuckling. Well besides the barkeep who's concern was only growing the longer these two were here. A bigger man got up from his booth. With a toothy and sinister smile on his face, he walked up to him and placed a heavy hand on the teenager's shoulder,

"You want directions? You came to the right place then. We'd be more than happy to help both of you out." he answered as he was eyeing both of them. The teen made no movement from the sudden hand on him but the girl seemed to almost flinch out of reflex. The bigger and obviously drunk man didn't notice but the barkeep sure did and he began to back up ever so slowly. The man's grip grew a bit tighter as he got closer to him,

"We got some maps that the two of you could use. If you just-" a quick and solid backhanded strike from the teen set the man toppling into the table and chairs behind them. The sudden strike made the room go silent once again as all eyes were glued onto the teen. Nonchalantly did he stand up and turn to the others,

"All of you have fallen so far that you've become kishin. If that wasn't pathetic enough you hang around a witch to try and thwart off any misters that try and get close. I will admit it, that you were clever enough to snatch people from multiple surrounding areas to keep the academy off your trail. That was pretty smart." The rest of the patrons all got up glaring at the teen murderous intent obviously, but he stood unphased. Sighing, he pulled down his hood to show his brown skin and short black hair. Then he held his hand out and the girl placed her hand in it delicately,

"So let Xion and I take care of your twisted ways. And those twisted souls." they watched as the girl turned to light. Then in his hand, the light bent and formed into the shape of a large sword that he gave one swing before he planted it into the ground. As the form settled in the light faded they gawked at the blade before them. The sword itself was rather thick and looked heavy but the crisp black of the steel gave it a haunting drawing effect that mixed with the white etched into it would make you wonder. But what made it all the more deadly was that from the base and running up half the blade were the teeth of a chain saw. With a twist of the handle did the chains rev up sending a shiver down their spines. With smirk did the teen look to them all with the eyes of a hunter,

"Time to reap." A few minutes later the teen sat on a table sword slung on his shoulder and a bored look on his face as he glanced around at the wrecked pub and several red kishin souls floating around him. He sighed as he flexed his shoulders getting out any last tightness,

“That couldn’t even have been considered a warmup.” he groaned,

"Yeah we did kind of destroy them." a feminine voice spoke. The weapon lit up again and it bounced out of his hand to the ground as it formed back into the girl from earlier. Her hood was down this time showing her fairer skin and her black hair that fell down to her upper back. Her dark eyes gleamed at the teen,

"But at least we got all their souls. Let's divide them up Jay!" she said as she went to go collect them. Jay smiled gently and shook his head,

"Just King will do and I thought you were done with this whole sharing souls thing. You're definitely not afraid to eat them even. Hell, you've even got a few witches souls in ya." he responded. A ting of pink popped up on her cheeks at the mention as she gave him a slight glare,

"I-I have but we've done this for so long it'd feel weird if we didn't. Besides you've consumed just as many souls as I have with no after-effects! I swear I think you were a weapon in a past life." she responded as she continued to gather them. That fact was still something he wondered about. He was able to consume souls and he would always be fine afterward. He even felt stronger with each kishin soul he consumed. And it was a major boost if it were a witches soul,

“But speaking of witches. We still need a direction to find ours don’t we?” he asked standing up. Xion thought on it briefly,

“We still do don’t we?” He nodded as he walked towards the bar,

"Yeah, and I think someone here could help us." in a flash did he yank up the barkeep who had been hiding. King smiled darkly at the sweating man, "You'll going to help us find her aren't ya?" he asked. The barkeep nodded quickly,

"Yes, yes I will just don't kill me!" he cried. Satisfied King eased up on the man,

"Good now out with it so we can be on our way." he demanded as he let the man go. Now free the barkeep did his best to straighten up his appearance,

"Right. The witch. She stays just north of here in the deeper part of the forest. It's at the location of were those suicide cases have happened over the years. You'll know because the energy that the place gives off is horrible. It'll drive you mad." he answered. King looked to Xion who had the souls and just shrugged. He then turned back to the keep,

“Are you saying that she’s been the cause of some of the suicides?” he asked. The barkeep nodded pitifully,

“Yes with how much negative energy she gives off most normal people can’t handle it. And the rumors and stories added on to it her powers have only grown. She’s practically untouchable in this place.” he admitted. King pondered on this for a moment,

"Hmm either way she needs to be taken down one way or another. Suicidal energy or not her soul will be ours tonight. Xion you ready to head out?" his attention went back to his partner and she had been quietly dinning into her share of the souls with a satisfied smile on her face. When she finally finished she patted her stomach and a cute little burp escaped her causing her blush slightly then giggled completely in her own world,

"Thanks for the meal." she quietly said to herself. The moment she was done she was met with Kings flat stare,

“W-What?” she stammered. He rolled his eyes as he moved over to her,

"I asked if you were ready to head out but now I see that you are." he replied. Xion chuckled bashfully,

"Uh yeah, I am. But you still need to eat your share. I know you're probably hungry." she answered back. He was about to reply but a quiet rumble came from his stomach. It easily silenced any argument he might have put up. Sighing he sat down across from her as she slid his share. Without wasting a moment he picked up one and bit down onto much like you would an apple. And unsurprisingly they had little to no taste but the way it felt going down was more than enough to satisfy. As he sat there and ate his fill the barkeep watched him with wide eyes,

'He really does eat souls? But he's a mister? They shouldn't be able to consume them.' it was in this moment he took in the appearance of the two coming to haunting realization. And the moment he did his fear of them grew,

"Y-Your that young witch hunter aren't you?" Both King and Xion looked over to him, "Yeah it's you! A white 'X' on your coat and silver chain with a crown at the end and your weapon is a greatsword with a revving chain. It's definitely you." he exclaimed. King looked back to Xion and again she gave a shrug,

"Yeah, I am a pal. Which is why I'm here to kill that witch now if you don't mind I kinda eating here." he replied and went back to his meal. As Xion watched him eat with a smile did the barkeep pass out from who it was that was in his bar.

***

It was dark out not in the dense forest but the moon's light was keeping a bit of the world a glow. But a flashlight does help as well, for King and Xion trudged through the forest heading to their target. It was early night when they left the bar and it was well into it by how long they've walked. But with each step, King felt they were getting closer. Stepping over another log he shined his light around again to try and keep track of what they've passed. A second light behind him came up next as Xion kept pace while taking in the wilderness. The chirping bugs and the lively animals made her wonder how such a place could have such a horrible rumor over it,

"Hey, Jay why do you think this place has such an intense title as the 'Suicidal Forest' anyway? And I mean besides the witch being here." she asked. King moved over a leaf as he continued,

"I told you to call me King and second I don't know. When people come here to end things constantly then it'll grow a name like that. This place is so big and dense I can see why someone would see it as a place to end it. Besides I'm sure this witch has a bigger hand in those suicides than we think." he replied. Xion nodded as she kept on looking,

"Yeah, you're probably right. Also, why do you still refuse to go by your real name and by that nickname? I think your real name is far cuter." she said a bit giddy,

“Because of what we do. We hunt witches and all they know about me is some vague description and my name, King. If they all knew my full name was Jay Walker then it'd be a lot easier for them to find us.” he responded. She nodded again knowing he was right,

“But still even when it’s just the two of us you still want to go by King.” she whined. King smirked and shook his head,

"It's just a precaution in case anyone is listening. Who knows maybe someday I'll go by my real name. But until then it's King." he joked. Xion gave the cutest pout but he wasn't looking back to notice. They fell back into silence as they pressed on. They seemed to grow around them as they got deeper and deeper into the forest and with the progression did the air seem to change around them. Xion felt a slight chill course through her that wasn't there before. If that wasn't unsettling enough she no longer heard the sounds of nature anymore. The only sounds being their footsteps as they pressed on,

“Hey King do you think we're in the area?” she asked. She didn’t get a response besides King stopping in front of her suddenly. She almost ran into him,

"Why did you stop?" she fumed at him. When she got no response she looked to see he was staring intensely at something. Following his line a sight, her stomach dropped at the site. A noose was hanging from a tree in front of them. He said nothing as he eyed the rope able to see dark stains on it,

“Yeah I think we're getting close.” he responded evenly as he walked away from the tree. Xion gave the noose one last look and quickly followed behind him.

From that point forward the forest felt completely different. Even if you weren't a meister or weapon then you'd feel the force of it pushing down onto you. It felt like it was trying to drag down your thoughts and mindset and was gradually choking out your will. Your will to live. And as they continued it was getting worse with each step and they both could understand how this place had so many deaths attached to it. But this only fueled their desire to take down the witch that's been inhabiting this place. As the two continued on then noticed a large opening ahead of them with the moon's light shining. They turned off their lights as they made it to the clearing. They both gazed up to see that smiling moon looking down on them,

“On a different night that’d moon get a chuckle out of me.” Xion said absentmindedly. King didn’t respond as he was scanning the area. And even though he couldn’t see out into the darkness he could feel the presence of someone or something sinister,

“Xion get ready. We’re not alone.” she tensed up at that and she began to look around them as well. Everything was silent as the two sat and waited. And then out of darkness taking slow and methodical steps did the witch finally show herself,

“Xion!” with a nod did she turn into her weapon form. Landing into his hand did King rest her on his shoulder ready,

"So you must be the witch of this forest?" he questioned. The woman before him wore a simple black partly shredded dress and no shoes. Her brown hair went down in cascades and while he knew that some looked as they would from shows this one, in particular, looked rather young no older than her older thirties he guessed and was rather attractive. Her crimson eyes easily bore down onto him as she seemed to look through him. It was definitely nerve-wracking. A gentle smile graced her lips as she stopped at the edge of the clearing,

“Now... now there’s no need to call me such a name, little meister. I’m sure there are many other things you can call me.” She cooed to him. He didn’t react to the attempt on him and was eyeing her wearily,

"No, I think I'll stick to witch thank you. Tell me are you the one who's been using this forest to draw in people to their deaths?" he questioned. The laugh that rang out from her seemed to echo all throughout the area around. As if the forest itself was laughing with her,

"I'll admit the negative energy this forest gives off because of those stories does benefit me greatly. It draws in those foolish enough to try and find remains of those who have passed and give me more than enough souls to do with as I please. Even toying with a few of them makes it sweeter when I get my prize. As you can see it's done well on my complexion. I make 200 look good." she said as she flaunted her features. Xion gasped,

"See's 200 years old?" she exclaimed as her reflection could be seen in the blade,

"Well if she's using human souls then yeah." he replied as his grip grew just a bit tighter on the handle,

‘Age aside why can't it see it yet? Is she keeping it hidden from me?’ he pondered. The witch looked to him with hunger behind her eyes,

“I hope you both won’t mind if I take both of your souls as well? Claiming the life of the witch hunter would definitely raise my ranking in the council. And put me one step closer to taking what is mine.” King smirked,

“Let me guess you want to become the queen don’t you?” the witch smiled devilishly at that,

"Oh yes, I would. I'd finally have the position I deserve and be able to rule over those other fools. Epically that arrogant snake." King felt Xion's soul vibrate from that last line,

“Easy. We’ll deal with her later. For now-’ he swung the blade so it was pointed to her, “Witch of the forest. We're going to take your soul!” he declared. She smirked at that as he felt her magic rise,

"You're more than welcome to-" she paused as she gave him a sideways glance, "Witch of the Forest? Do-do you not know my name?" she questioned. Everything still as King stood there just staring ahead blankly as a small bead of sweat trailed down his face. Xion sighed from within the blade,

“I told you we should’ve done more research on her before jumping in.” she complained. King chuckled embarrassed,

“Well you know how I can get when it comes to slaying witches.” he replied. The witch just stared blankly at him for a long few moments she ticked with rage,

“My name is Silva! The witch ‘Silva’ is the one whos going to kill you two!” she screamed as she threw her arms forwards. King felt her magic puls through the ground as he jumped up before vines popped up from the ground,

'So she controls the forest around her.' he thought as he slashed away at the nearing vines. Silva held her hand open as a ball of magic formed. She waited until he neared the ground before she launched the attack at high speeds. He saw it coming and instead of blocking with Xion King jumped over and forward to close the gap on her. Revving up the blade he was prepared to slice into her but a set of vines shot up to protect her. He gritted his teeth as he tried to grind through the thin vines but it felt like he was trying to cut through steel. With a flick of her hand did the vine slap him away, but as he was pushed back did they shot out from the ground and wrap around his ankle. Then with ease did it repeatedly slam him into the ground before launching him into a tree knocking the wind out of him. When he hit the ground King grimaced as he got to one knee using Xion as support,

“Damn she’s tough. But why can’t I see her damn soul yet?” he complained. Xion's reflection looked worriedly at him,

“Are you ok?” she asked. With a huff did he get back to his feet breathing a bit heavier,

"Yeah, I'll be good. But I think we might need to turn up the heat to cut through those vines of hers. I get the feeling she's just playing around with us." he replied as he glared at Silva's who's smug face was looking back at him. Xion nodded as she looked to the witch,

"Do you want me to go into my other form?" she asked. King shook his head,

“Nah don’t want to burn down the forest. Heating up your blade should work fine. Now let's get serious.” he plunged Xion into the ground as he began to rev her up again. Then with a smirk did he speak a simple few words,

"Soul-protect off." and with that did Silva see his true souls power and she though she didn't show it she was rather impressed,

“For a child to not only know how to do soul protection but to be hiding such a powerful soul to boot, you really are the witch hunter. But that is a witches technique. Tell me how did you learn to use spells like us?” she questioned. King only smirked as Xion's blade began to heat up,

"Sorry can't let my few secrets out now can I?" he taunted. She merely shrugged,

"It doesn't matter. I'll find out after I take your soul." with a snap of her fingers did a cage of vines enclose around King. Yet he stood confident as she pulled Xion out of the ground. Just as the vines were about to close in on him with a circular swing of the blade did he burn and cut through them with ease. His taunting expression didn't leave as he placed Xion onto his shoulder,

“You were saying?” But he got no response as Silva was hunched over in pain. Both of them looked at her confused,

"Why is she in pain? We didn't even touch her?" Xion questioned. King wanted to say he knew but he was just as confused as her,

'Why did it harm her? It's not like her souls attached to-' he paused as his eyes widened. He looked to the night sky and it was then he finally noticed it. It was a little hard to tell at first but now that he was focusing he could make out the purple lining of a soul. And this one stretched across far beyond what he can see. It gave him a shiver as he finally realized,

"Her soul it encompasses this entire section of the forest." he finally responded. Xion looked shocked,

"This entire section of forest? No wonder those guys from earlier said she's practically untouchable." she commented. Silva breathed in to ease herself as she gave them both a death glare,

“You two are more of a pest than I thought. I guess playing with you is over!” as she shouted they felt the forest react to that given by the literal air vibrating. Not soon after did they hear a loud creaking noise,

"King above you!" Xion's shout drew his attention to behind him were a tree was swinging down its branch to attack him. He dipped out the way of the attack but another tree came to swing down on him forcing him to jump up to dodge. But as he hit the air he got bombarded by small sharp leaves that cut into King. But he slashed Xion's heated blade again to burn them away. The act caused slight pain to Silva again but she wasn't letting up her assault as she rose her hand up at him. The vines shot up at him again as he landed and he wasn't quick enough to cut them so he tried to jump back. But a swinging tree branch hit him from behind sending him back down. Yet the moment he did the vines wrapped around him arms and legs dragging and pinning him to ground. He tried to get out of their grip but it was too tight for him to move as they were pulling him down.

Silva licked her lips in satisfaction and she raised her hand again to form a fist. Behind her, the forest shifted to form a giant fist made out of rocks and dirt while being held together with vines. King watched as the fist raised high behind her and then in one motion did it come crashing down on top of him. She left the rocks full weight on him for a few moments before lifting it up and suspending him up by the vines. She giggled as his body lay limp before her,

“My, my all that bark but no bite. I wonder how some of my sisters had trouble defeating you.” she placed her hand under his chin to move his face for her to see. His eyes were closed and he had blood trailing from the side of his mouth. She only giggled more,

"You are cute when you aren't sprouting nonsense. Now before I finish you off how about I take that weapon from you first." she went to go and retrieve it but when she saw his grip on it was as tight as ever she looked confused,

"You really shouldn't underestimate me." her eyes widened as she looked back to see him slowly raising his head with a confident smirk. With a swing of Xion did he force Silva back in panic as she narrowly avoided the heated blade. When she moved back the vines loosened and he quickly freed himself. Once free King took a moment to ease as he felt the surge of healing,

“I thought you were dead for a second back there.” Xion said through the blade. He smirked and rolled his neck,

“Now you know it takes more than that to take me down. Especially if you're with me.” replied. She blushed a bit from his words but nodded,

"Yeah, we are a team after all."

“Damn right. And as a team how about we finish this fight? She’s becoming annoying.” he replied and gripped the blade with both hands. Xion looked on with determination,

“Yeah let's!” Silva watched in disbelief as their souls were being to resonate with the other,

“No there going to-”

"LET'S GO! SOUL RESONANCE!" King and Xion shouted in unison as they felt the sparking of their souls resonating until they combined. With a unified scream did Xion's blade glow red as the rest of it opened up to show the rest of the teeth of the chain. Then in one rev, it ignited with its clashing teeth and the red glow grew as it extended the length of the blade. Even though Silva was a bit away from them she could feel the hate resonating from the weapon and a sweat droplet rolled down her face. King placed Xion's empowered blade onto his shoulder as he gave Silva a cocky smile. That ticked her off,

"Don't get cocky with me you brat!" she shouted as she sent a barrage of vines towards him. He smirked and gripped Xion with both hands. He held her to the side, the teeth pointed outwards and with a smile, he charged straight at the witch. The vines came at him as fast as before but from his resonance with Xion, he was more than able to keep up with the speed. He dodged the first set that came in for him and sliced the next set with ease. Silva felt the pain and tried to send in the trees to stop him. But even with their massive swings did he dodge them. He was just a last sprint away and once he saw his range he moved in for the kill. With one final swing did he tore through whatever defenses she threw up with ablaze. And with her defenses being burned before her she was left open as he cut clean through her. With an anguished last scream did she dissipate until she compacted into a pulsing red soul.

The moment she died the forest around them seemed to settle back to what it used to be. Well at least it didn’t feel as dense with that despair as before and even the animals seemed to come back. King eased as Xion went out of her weapon form to stand next to him. She smiled at him as she patted his back,

"Great job as usual partner!" she exclaimed. He smirked and nodded,

“Right back at ya partner. Though I might have slacked off a bit back there.” he replied. She shook her head,

"I think you did fine. Now on to the soul! Who's it this time?" she asked as she went to retrieve it. King wiped the blood from his mouth before shrugging,

“I think it’s all yours this time.” Xion held the witches soul in her hands and she felt her mouth water,

“A-Are you sure you don’t want this one?” she politely asked. He chuckled as he walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder,

"I'm sure. Besides I doubt you could hold back and longer so it's all yours." no sooner as she got the confirmation did she dig into the soul with gusto. He was surprised to see it was gone in mere moments as she ended her feast with a satisfied sigh,

“Thanks for the meal.” she silently prayed. Done she looked to him with a smile, “I’m all set! So where to next?” she asked. King motioned for her to him and the two began to make their way back out the forest,

"Well, I've been thinking for a while. I think it's finally time I take you up on your request." he said. It took her a moment to think about what he meant but then her eyes lit up with excitement,

“You mean to enroll at the DWMA! But I thought you didn’t think we'd need to go there since we’ve done fine on our own?” she asked. He sighed,

"Yeah your right I do still think that but going there could have some benefits for us. One being able to do research for witches to hit would be quicker and second I think you'd benefit from going to the place and learning more. It's never a bad thing to learn more on kishin." He responded. Xion giggled,

“I think you mean for both of us to learn more about them. But I think your right. Being at a school-based around hunting witches would make our hunts faster. But I think it'll be a good place for us to finally have a home base. Being on the road constantly is kinda draining." she admitted,

"Yeah, I agree with you there. Having a stable and constant home would be beneficial plus Death City is as secure a place for meisters as any. Plus it's full of meisters and weapons." Xion beamed at the thought of getting to meet other weapons and meisters. It made her giddy,

"Oh, I can't wait to meet so many different students attending there! Well, we'll be students as well when we attend. Do you know how we'll be able to enroll?" she asked. King shrugged,

"I'm sure I can figure something out. Probably talk to Death himself and get something worked out." he responded. That only made Xion more hyped for the future,

“Alright! Let's head straight there Jay!” she exclaimed. He chuckled at her excitement,

“It’s King and sadly we got another place to head to before that.” she pouted at hearing that,

“What? Where do we have to go first?” she asked,

“Venice. I heard some rumors a while back about some demon sword thing. I want to see if it’s true or not and if it needs to be dealt with.” he responded. Xion sighed but nodded,

"Yeah, that does sound more important. Alright then lets head to Venice immediately! We got no time to waste." she replied excitedly as she picked up her pace. King chuckled again as he picked his pace to keep up and leave this forest behind them.

#ocs #mystory #solerwolf21 #soul eater #fanfic #fanfiction #random

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blatherkatt · 5 years ago

Note

I know y'all have a lotta AUs, so I gotta ask: what would the Blumenthal Drei's relationship be like had Caleb never had his breakdown? I know the circumstances have dramatically changed in the fic (re: Astrid may uh, may wanna murder Caleb, which ain't, y'know, conducive to friendship), so I'm curious how the relationship would be at a "base state." We get glimpses of the relationship's natural state through flashbacks, so I'm curious how that would've evolved with time had Shit Not Hit The Fan

The sort of scenario I think you’re describing here is one that we haven’t really talked about much honestly, and on top of that if we did it’d still give some tangential spoilers unfortunately. However, I am instead going to use this as an opportunity to talk instead about what Ed and I have been calling the “Allura Drei AU”, aka The One Where Trent Was Visiting The Area Around Draconia Right When It Fell And Friggin Died And The Blumenkids Got To Grow Up Without His Nonsense

it’s what he deserves.

ANYWAY.

im gonna give a general overview without going into toooo much detail on the kinda things we imagine here because we’ve talked about a lot of stuff, this one’s a happy place favorite, but like, this is the golden timeline, lets put it that way. so. without trent in the picture, the three kids were noticed and mentored by probably someone else at Soltryce, or potentially might’ve just gone through it as normal students and just generally done great there, but they all stick together when they graduate and after hanging around doing stuff in Rexxentrum for a while eventually decide they wanna set up a proper tower somewhere quieter than the city, so they pack up and move out to Felderwin.

Is this confusing and kind of alarming for the people of Felderwin? Yes. yes, it is. ANYWAY the extremely short summary is that the three of them befriend the Brenattos because they need to get components somewhere and it makes sense to be good friends w/ the local apothecary, plus their little family group has a kid about the same age as Luc so it just sorta makes sense, and they’re all very saddened when Veth dies etc etc. but when the Krynn attack Felderwin the three of them chase off the attack and, upon noticing that Yeza’s been apparently caught up in some nasty stuff that has him wanted by both sides, promptly decide the best course of action is to lowkey kidnap him themselves (he’s ok with it actually) and keep him in their tower without telling anyone. and just. let both sides think the other has him while they figure out what’s going on.

and then through a series of shenanigans involving molly (who is still alive because this is the Good Timeline Okay caduceus is still here too its an au let us have this) getting to know the boys and astrid being stuck in some trouble she cant get out of on her own and needing rescue, the three wind up basically serving as an Allura-equivalent for the mighty nein. its very cute and very good.

but to answer more of your actual question now that the stage is set:

when thing were working well between the three of them, and there wasn’t a certain bastard man around to screw things up, the three sort of keep each other in balance ~~especially with sig around too but i still cant talk too much about him and i am dying, i want to so bad ok~~

Astrid and Bren have been fierce rivals since they were kids and that’d likely continue, but Eodwulf functions as an emotional center and a mediator, keeping tensions from boiling over and making sure that it stays just as a playful rivalry. They push each other to do better, and that’s part of why they’re both (Really, all three, honestly) are constantly improving at the rate they have ever since childhood. Bren and Astrid can both get too caught up in things, but Eodwulf is real good at keeping that from ever going too far.

Astrid and Eodwulf, meanwhile, like I’ve said previously, have very different languages, so to speak, but she and Bren have been on an extremely similar wavelength since pretty much the moment they met. But at the same time, Bren’s also good at reading Eodwulf. Astrid and Eodwulf are opposites in a lot of ways, and Bren’s a good happy medium who can help bridge the gap and serve as a translator where it’s needed. The two of them can do alright without him, as you can see in Ghosts, but there’s hiccups. They do best when they have a third party to help bridge the gaps in communication that sorta naturally happen between them. Plus, without Bren, they really never would’ve become friends in the first place, so that’s another reason he’s important to the triad. And then there’s Bren and Eodwulf–they do real well on their own, and would by this point definitely be married in this timeline, since, uh, canon stuff never happened. But. Even if it’s not as bad as it would be with trent’s trauma, Eodwulf is still somewhat conflict averse and struggles with RSD a lot, and Bren can, yknow, get caught in his head, plus he’s always been the natural at everything so wouldn’t really push himself as much on his own. Astrid drags them both out of their comfort zone, pushes Bren to keep improving because of the looming threat of her surpassing him always lingering, and Eodwulf straight up wouldn’t do a lot of the things he’s tried if Astrid weren’t around. She’s constantly pushing herself, seeing how far she can go, and she’s caused both of the boys to do so as well!

She’s also, weirdly enough, the moral center of the three in this scenario, if only because her morals are the least flexible. Like, she’s always up to pull pranks and mess around, but she’ll be the first one to really call someone out on something she thinks is Actually Wrong, even if the person doing it is someone she cares for deeply. Trent unfortunately poisoned her sense of morality and shaped it to suit his own purposes in canon, but since in this AU that didn’t happen, she’s really the one keeping the two of them from crossing certain lines. Her sense of morality doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance, which is, yknow, not great, not to mention the whole reason she’s such a problem in Ghosts, but it’s good to have someone who can draw a line in the sand and say “no, actually” especially when dealing with extremely powerful wizards.

(It’s worth noting too though, that’s a thing I forgot to say about her in the ask about her relationship w/ eodwulf, and i also forgot to say likewise that Eodwulf helps remind her to slow down now and then; stop and smell the flowers, that sort of thing–he’s good at noticing bright spots and at spoiling himself and others, and that’s a thing Astrid wouldn’t be as good at on her own without people to keep her tethered. In this AU eodwulf’s extra good at that because he wouldn’t be such a MASSIVE misanthrope, and bren probably helps slow Astrid down now and then too, albeit to a lesser degree.)

anyway they’re an insanely good team and that highkey freaks out the rest of the wizards of the assembly, since wizards kinda have a well deserved reputation of not getting along w/ other wizards due to being a bunch of intellectuals with Opinions and Complexes and seeing three actually LIKE each other to the degree that they all live together and such is confusing and distressing and so the assembly largely just…..leaves them alone,,,

are parts of this probably very unrealistic? yeah. do i care? no its great feel free to ask more about it theres a lot to talk about

also all four of the adults (including sig who is not a wizard but, yknow, astrid’s here so he’s here) absolutely dote on brand who i cant talk about yet either im still dying whats up

#asks #zemnianghosts

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make-it-mavis · 5 years ago

Text

All Work and No Play

Wreck-it Ralph fic (main timeline, post-Roadblasters, pre-Sugar Rush) Comedy/Romance 6370 words Characters: Make-it Mavis, Turbo Content warnings: dirty humor, brief sensuality, themes of burnout/depression

Premise: Unable to sleep, Mavis stays up practicing drawing objects. Turbo joins her and convinces her to draw something more fun. While they both have a good time, Turbo has a few things left to say on the matter, and, as usual, Mavis is reluctant to listen.

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Mavis never considered herself afraid of the dark, per se.

She had long ago set up curtains around her camp in Fix-it Felix Jr., trying to capture and contain the glow of her stolen lights and hide the vast, dark forest from her mind. On the nights she spent in Turbo's trailer, she was grateful for what little sunlight that managed to intrude through the tiny slits of space between the blackout shutters, just enough to highlight the shapes of furniture and belongings. But it was not the dark she truly feared -- it was the space. It was even just the illusion of space. Wide, open darkness with no visible end just needled toxic flashbacks into her brain, memories of the time she spent trapped in her game's code space. Smaller, enclosed spaces were protection from the fear that she would float away in her sleep, never to find her way back, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, that security was sometimes hard to firmly hold onto during nights in the abandoned wall socket that was Turbo's hideout. The chamber was not unreasonably large, and there was some minuscule illumination from the hole in the socket, but it was not enough to clearly touch all the walls or the far corners.

It was not worthy of a panic attack, but sometimes, it was enough to keep her awake, even just out of the knowledge that she would have a nightmare if she fell asleep.

So, on a night in late spring, Make-it Mavis sat awake, alone in the direct, dim light from the arcade outside. With her sketchbook in hand, and her sleeping attire just a tank top and panties, she figured the mental stimulation and the somewhat chilly air on her bare skin would be enough to keep her from drifting off.

Too tired for extensive creativity, she merely drew miscellaneous objects and weapons, the usual effort to keep in practice so she could accurately produce said items with her brush. If she could not draw it, she could not paint it.

A few pages in, beginning to run out of ideas, she glanced around the room in thought, and had a mini heart attack at the sight of two distant yellow eyes peering through the darkness. In one way or another, Turbo had woken up in the corner where they slept.

"Mav?" she heard him say groggily.

"Hey," she replied. "Did I wake you up?"

"Uh," the glow disappeared for a moment as his eyes closed, "I dunno. Maybe? It's fine."

"'Kay," she said softly, looking down at her blank page again.

After a moment, he asked, "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah," she nodded. "I'm fine. Just can't sleep, so I figure I might as well do something."

From the corner, she heard rustling, grunting, and stumbling footsteps. Turbo approached, a blanket around his shoulders, and two pillows under his arm. His hair was a mess, part of it flattened against the side of his head, part of it trying to fly away to freedom. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Just drawing," she shrugged.

A pillow hit her in the face, thrown by Turbo. After a grumbled thanks, she put it behind her back. Turbo then plopped himself down next to her. Sizing her up, he said, "Ain't ya cold?"

"Don't fuss," she mumbled, drawing a small spiral. "I'm fine."

He threw half of the blanket over her shoulders anyway, scooting right up against her body. Fresh out of bed, he was even warmer than usual. It was more inviting than she cared for at the moment.

"Whatcha drawin'?"

"So full of questions," she observed, glancing at him with a quirked brow.

"I woke up into immediate, crippling boredom, Mav," he exhaled. "Forgive me. Indulge me."

She scoffed. "Okay. But I ain't drawin' anything interesting."

"Why not?"

"'Cause my brain is half asleep, and I need to practice drawing new stuff."

"Huh," he breathed, perplexed. "So, even now, you're working."

Mavis' brow furrowed, and she drew more swirls. "Yeah, so what? I'm just gettin' better at bein' productive. I gotta be if we're ever gonna get you outta here."

Turbo was quiet for a moment.

"Draw something fun," he insisted.

She laid her pencil flat against the page and sighed tiredly. "Like what, T?"

"You really got no ideas?"

"Like I said, I'm real tired."

"Well, a'ight, how about this," he presented his idea to her on his open palm. "I give a prompt, and you draw the first thing that comes into your head."

She rubbed her brow. "Why?"

"'Cause you're bein' boring."

With an irritated glance, she said, "I'm not boring."

"I know."

Partially fueled by spite, and partially genuine interest, she agreed to the game. "Okay, fine," she shrugged. "What's your first prompt? First thing that pops into your head."

"Rumble," he said immediately.

"Wow. That was fast."

"Y'said 'first thing.'"

"Well, alright," she stared at the page, preparing to carve something out of it. "Rumble."

Latching onto her first bizarre idea, she set to work, her pencil moving fast and loud, barely taking time to erase. Mashing together her knowledge of animals and machines, she drew the lovechild of a tiger and a motorcycle. It was essentially a tiger with a bike for a body. As she was paying particular attention to its snarling mouth, Turbo snickered.

"What the hell is that?"

"Tigerbike, obviously," she said, unable to keep from smiling. "A rumbling motorcycle and a rumbling tiger… Y'know, growlin' and junk."

"That really was the first thing y'thought of, huh?"

"Of course. Does this look, in any way, planned?"

"No, no it does not," he said, leaning in to point out one fatal flaw. "If you'd planned it, you'd have realized exhaust smoke should be shooting from its ass."

That made her snort. "Devs above, how did I miss that?"

"You're off your game, Make-it," he chuckled as she drew crude black clouds trailing out of its rear end.

"Cut, print, done--"

"Wait, wait, wait," he delicately lifted a hand in protest, and took up the pencil. On the tigerbike's back, he drew a tiny stick figure wearing a helmet, sporting a grin and a triumphant thumbs up.

"That's me," he pointed, grinning.

Mavis burst into wheezing laughter. "What? The hell?"

"Well, obviously I'm the only sprite alive who could tame Tigerbike, Mav!" he said in mock outrage.

"Why are you so tiny?!"

"I'd like to think Tigerbike is inconceivably huge," he grinned.

Mavis cackled, "That's perfect. I'm gonna frame this."

"Wanna do another?"

"Y'know what? Hell yeah," she flipped to the next page, pencil at the ready. "Hit me with another."

"A'ight," he smacked his tongue. "Meteor shower."

Her brows raised. "Ooh. How pretty."

"Show me what ya got, kiddo," he shrugged with a smile.

Mavis pondered for about two seconds before an idea hit her. It was so stupid that she snickered out loud, but she shook her head and went with it.

"That's a good sign," Turbo observed, a smile in his voice.

"You're gonna love this," she muttered, her wrist working wildly. This one took way less time, a far cartoonier style than Tigerbike. Mavis and Turbo both chuckled as the idea came to life on paper, until she finally leaned back and showed Turbo the full masterpiece.

It was, quite literally, a meteor shower. Three meteorites stood in a group shower, lathering themselves up with their tiny stick arms.

It took Turbo a second, but then he groaned in the way reserved for any of her horrible puns. With a whimpering, perplexed laugh, he mumbled, "Seriously, Mav? Are you really presenting this to me?"

"No, no, look. You don't get it," she insisted with a grin, pointing at vital details with her pencil. "See, this guy in the middle is totally eyeing up the guy on the left. I mean, like, shameless ogling."

Turbo rubbed his face, half-laughing, half-whining. "No," he pleaded softly.

"Listen," she tapped the paper harder, her voice breaking with laughter. "And, like, the guy on the left is actually super into it, but he's actin' all oblivious n' blushy because the guy on the right is there, and he's-- I mean, he's just some regular guy."

"Mav--"

"AND, and, guy on the left isn't into PDA or anythin' 'cause he's just a boring freakin' space rock--"

Turbo cackled.

"And he doesn't wanna make the guy on the right like, an unwilling third party or some crap like that, but after they're all done n' the guy on the right's gone home, you know the other two are gettin' it on in the locker room."

Turbo put out his hand. "Mav, do me a favor. Please illustrate for me just how two spherical rocks get busy."

She sputtered. "Well, let's see, I mean, it'd be hard--"

"Ha."

"There'd be a lot of rolling, and-- hah, hard-- and just, like, tryna smash together like big ol' pool balls--" she drew a short series of pairs of rocks clacking off each other, trying in vain to hold onto the other with their tiny stick arms, getting stuck on their bellies. Turbo wheezed through the whole thing.

"Wait, okay, wait," he interjected, "what if they sorta worked like flint, and they threw off sparks when they really got goin'?"

"Oh, my Devs," she gasped. "What if everyone shot fire outta their junk when they came?"

"WHAT?"

"I mean! Y'better keep a fire extinguisher around and be really good at pullin' out or you'll get yourself some serious property damage and cook your partner from the inside literally every time you smash! There'd be like, safe sex ads in every port, and Surge would be handin' out free fire extinguishers left n' right!"

"Mavis what the hell?!" he wheezed, his eyes glistening from laughter. "Though, I gotta say, as far as horrible deaths go, death from screwin' don't sound like the worst."

"At least you got laid, is what you're sayin'?"

"Yeah. At least the last thing y'knew was the sweet throes of orgasm."

"So you're tellin' me," she poked him, "gettin' burned alive from the inside would be worth it just to get laid?"

"Wh-- I wouldn't go into it with the intent of gettin' fried to death, Mavis! I'm just sayin', theoretically if that unfortunate accident did occur…" he paused. "And, I mean, honestly, if the lay was, honest to the Devs, really to die for--"

"Turbo," she interrupted, her stomach beginning to ache from laughter. "Gimme another prompt, already!"

"Okay, okay, cool your jets!" He licked his lips. "Uh… sunshine."

"Huh. Gettin' sappy on me, here?"

"Just playin' the game, Mav."

Sunshine. She let that word sink in. She loved sunshine. The light, the warmth, the way it brought out the color of everything it touched. She knew Turbo liked it, too. It had to have reminded him of home… It occurred to her then, just how much he must have missed it.

An image suddenly came to mind. But she cheated just a bit and twisted it into something more manageable. They were having fun. She did not want to suddenly drag big ol' emotions into it.

Taking a bit more time with this one, she drew a lovely, grassy hill, speckled with flowers. She then drew herself rolling down that hill… very unceremoniously, as if by accident. She was a bouncing, tangled ball of limbs, throwing up dirt, grass, and flowers beneath her. And close behind, she drew Turbo falling the exact same way.

Watching over her shoulder, Turbo's chuckles had taken on a confused air. "Oookay," he muttered. "What am I lookin' at here, babe?"

"I'unno," she shrugged. "We're having a race. In the sunshine."

"And you're winning? Sounds fake."

"Okay, jackass. What if I told you there were jagged rocks at the bottom of the hill?" She drew crude spikes at the bottom. "Would you still wanna win?"

"Absolutely."

"Wow."

"So what's the real reward for winning, other than broken bones and bragging rights? It's always more fun with a reward."

She considered that. "Uh… I don't know, maybe the loser has to pick the winner a bouquet of flowers. I sure drew enough of 'em."

He paused. "A bouquet of flowers."

"Yeah, I mean…" she shrugged, suddenly wanting to backpedal. "Sprites get flowers for winning sometimes, right? Like, a medal and a big blooming bouquet, or whatever."

"Uh huh… so where's this medal?"

Mavis shoved him just a bit. "Gee, I'unno, T, why don't ya go pick one off the medal tree, ya greedy bastard. Y'said 'sunshine.' Sunshine makes flowers."

"It was a joke," he scoffed. Ruffling her hair, he said, "It's cute ya wanna pick me flowers."

Playfully swatting his hand away, she protested, "Maybe y'didn't hear me right -- I said that pickin' you flowers would be a punishment for losing."

"Sure," he leaned his head a bit closer, "but of course, y'must have known you were gonna lose anyway, ergo…"

Mavis looked at him, silently bearing that strange emotion that she felt only for him, wherein she could be irritated, but still know that Turbo being annoying usually meant he was in a good mood. And it was good to see him in a good mood, with how many reasons he had not to be. After so many nights of seeing him deep in program withdrawal, and literally sharing the pain as his glitching bled into her, but holding him close anyways… She could tolerate annoying teasing if it meant he was happy.

It took her a moment to realize that he had gone silent, too. He was still smiling, leaning his head back against the wall, but looked calmer, more thoughtful. There was something peculiar about the way he looked at her, and it made her antsy.

"What?" she asked softly.

He blinked slowly, and his smile pulled into his cheek a bit. Tweaking her nose, he said, "Nothin'."

Suspicious, but not wanting to question him on it, Mavis cleared her throat and tried to move things along. She turned to a new page in her sketchbook. "Well, what do you think? Got another prompt for me?"

This time, he was quiet. She almost wondered if he did not want to play anymore, but with a glance at him, she determined that he was thinking about it more than he was supposed to. He was gazing straight ahead, right through the socket, into the arcade. His lips were pressed into a hard line, and he was lightly tapping his thumbs together. He seemed reluctant… almost anxious.

"Hey," Mavis said. "You're not supposed to think about it."

"Yeah, yeah." He did not look at her. "I got one for ya. Fun."

She was not expecting that answer. It felt so broad, compared to the other ones. "...Fun, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, rolling his head back and peering down his cheek at her. "Draw what that makes you think of."

She squinted. There was some kind of ulterior motive there that had her suspicious. Still, she shrugged. "Okeydokey, weirdo."

Fun, fun, fun. Images and colors fought for the forefront of her brain, but she could not hear one single, solid idea through the overlapping noises in her head. It did not take long for her to decide that she had been thinking too hard. She was making it way harder than it had to be. Willing to just get it over with, she put pencil to paper, closed her eyes, and let her hand follow the flow of her thoughts.

As she listened to the graphite scratching, she realized that she had been having so much trouble because ‘fun' was manifesting in her head as feelings and not one specific concept. It felt like… a thrill, a rush, a genuine high. It was triumphant victory and motivating failure. It was acrobatics, dizzying aerial maneuvers, falling, flying. Wild, messy rainbows. Loud music and explosions she could feel in her chest. Fireworks. Theatrics. Clever pranks. Stupid pranks. Petty crime. Booze, bad decisions, rough sex, risky business. It was what she lived for. It was in her code just as much as her paintbrush.

She really believed it was the core of her very being.

A minute passed before she opened her eyes and observed her work. It was just about as cluttered, ugly, and near-incomprehensible as she expected. Hard lines criss-crossed with no rhyme or reason. Shapes and figures overlapped until they were nearly unrecognizable, but she could make out a few. There was a guitar, a trumpet, a drum, and music notes. There were glass bottles, many broken. There were bits of confetti and paint splatter that would have been rainbow. Somewhere, there was a suspiciously phallic shape. But more than anything, there were clouds, feathers, and wings.

It was hideous. She liked it.

Turbo’s weight pushed against her a bit as he leaned in to see. “All done?”

“Yep. Whatcha think?"

He was quiet for a moment before making a comment. “Don't see much of that stuff in here, huh.”

She looked at him with slight concern. He just looked thoughtful. She frowned, wondering if confinement was particularly making him depressed that night. There truly were very few ways to have fun the way they used to, being locked up in a box. A pang of sympathy tapped in her chest, and she subconsciously rubbed his leg a bit, comfortingly.

Turbo just looked at her hand with apparent confusion, and then at her with a serious brow. "Uh, no," he said flatly. "I wanna know when you last did any of those things."

She blinked, taken aback. "What?"

"Y'heard me."

After an automatic moment's thought, she realized an upsetting thing. She really could not remember off the top of her head. But there was something about Turbo's tone that felt accusatory, and her guard went up.

"When am I ever not doing these things?"

"Really?" His expression fell flat. "When was the last time you pulled a prank? Or flew around, just for the fun of it? You sure don't fly in here."

"I can't fly in here," she protested. "There's no room."

"Exactly!"

She huffed. "If you have something to say, T, will you just say it?"

He bit back words for a moment, his brow furrowing as he reconsidered, before he sighed and smacked his tongue. "Mav, you've been workin' way too hard."

She withdrew a bit. "Seriously? You're mad at me for working to get you out of here?"

Turbo sighed, briefly rubbing his face. "I ain't mad, I'm… Look, you're workin' too much. It ain't like you."

She scoffed. "I ain't a hard worker?"

He burst into a chuckle. "Are y'serious?"

Face getting hot, she bristled. "Be fair, T. I work real hard when I actually care about something."

He went quiet, and his gaze fell a bit. She could not help but look away, too. It was hard to talk about just how badly she wanted him out, how hard it was to see him in a cage, sick and suffering. And in her day to day life… she was lonely. She missed her other half. There seemed little she would not have done to have him back.

The hard work and sleepless nights, it was almost all for his sake. But it was really for hers, too.

Turbo spoke again, a very real exasperation in his voice. "Look, ya gotta know at least that if y'don't pace yourself, your engine's gonna burn out, n' then you won't be able to work at all. Does that sound good to you?"

"I'm not burning out," she mumbled. "I'm fine. I get enough of a break when I come hang out in here. I mean-- when we're not still working."

He waited again, and she could feel him looking at her. "Mav… take a break."

"I've been takin' too many breaks."

"Obviously, you're not. Take a longer break."

Idly, she drew small bubbles on her already cluttered drawing. "So… what, like a weekend?"

"Try a whole week."

"A week?" Her gaze snapped to him in disbelief. "I-- I-- No, I can't take a week off. That new motorcycle game just got plugged in and I haven't even been inside yet. I feel like we're so close to figuring something out--"

"Can I draw something?"

"...What?"

"Gimme your sketchbook," he beckoned at it.

"Uh, sure, knock yourself out," she said, tossing the book and pencil in his lap. Turbo sure was acting weird that night. She was beginning to just accept it.

As he began to draw, she put her face in her hands and pushed curled fingers through her hair. In a sighing, apologetic voice, she said, "Look, T, it's not like I don't appreciate your, uh… concern. Well-- Not like it ain’t also real annoying, but... It's just that-- I'm-- I don't even think I could relax if I took a week off. I'd just be stressing about all I could be gettin' done, and thinkin' about all the days I was settin' us back…"

Turbo did not reply, or even look at her. His focus remained on the paper against his bent knees. Ever since he ended up in the socket, he had been drawing more and more. She would find his artwork littering the floor almost as much as his notes. It was endearing to see.

Suddenly feeling as sad as she was tired, she scooted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder, watching him work. It was always sort of hypnotic. Turbo had such a unique drawing style, evolved from years of blueprints and mechanic work -- he seemed to think almost entirely in perfectly clean lines and sharp angles. His work was abstract and boxy, rarely illustrating any clear figure, but beautiful in its own right. More often than not, it looked so pristine, one might have thought a machine printed it. And indeed, as she watched, his arm moved so mechanically, as if his skeleton were made of metal. She would not have been surprised if it was.

Letting her eyes follow the motion of his hand made her eyelids heavy. As curious as she was about his drawing, she just could not keep her eyes open.

Mumbling softly, she said, "I can't sit back and do nothing. Not while there's anything I could do. So, just… let me do this. I'll be fine. I know how to--"

The rough scrape of paper against her legs perked her up as Turbo shoved the sketchbook back into her lap and the pencil clattered to the floor. When she opened her eyes, squinting through the sleepy fog, she saw what she expected -- a geometrical contour drawing. However, as her eyes adjusted and she began to decipher the abstract figures, she saw something entirely unexpected.

Flowers.

Confusion was her first response. Why flowers? Turbo was hardly a flowery guy, much less one to give flowers.

Then she remembered their prior conversation. The prize flowers. The ones the loser had to pick.

She looked at him, lips parted, brows squinting, in some attempt to understand. He was not looking at her, but rather, glancing around at nothing in particular, tapping his leg.

"I don't--..." she muttered. "Why?"

He grunted, and then barely opened his mouth to grumble, "...Not that many options for flowers in here."

"Well-- well yeah, but…" she looked at the page. "What did I win?"

He shrugged and shook his head. "I'unno, pick something. You're definitely the best at what you're doing. No one else could help me the way you are. And you've gotten so much done. Like, a crazy amount. So, you won. You've earned a break."

Mavis was so thrown for a loop, she almost felt dizzy. The sweet gesture, the sweet words… they were not a common occurrence for him. Granted, they had been growing in frequency ever since the two were reunited, but still…

"I…" she fumbled. "I wasn't competing. I just wanna win you a way outta here."

Turbo rubbed his face. "I cant believe how much convincing it's taking to get you to go goof off."

"...Things are a bit different now."

"I know."

"You want me to go out there and play around the way I used to? The way we used to, together?" Her words proceeded slowly, quietly, and unsteadily, as if they were fragile. A sort of grief weighed down on her heart. "It just… doesn't… feel the same anymore. Even if I tried, I'd just… be thinkin' of you."

He sighed deeply.

She added sadly, shoulders sinking, "Nothin's been the same since I… thought you were gone."

"But I'm here now," he mumbled. "I'm back."

"I know, but… I need you… back. In my life. Again. For real."

Turbo fell silent, but as Mavis studied the crisp lines of the drawing in her lap and idly scratched her foot, she could practically hear words sitting just behind his lips. He was taking his time with them, and she gave him space to do so, mostly because she was almost afraid of what he would say next. What she was about to feel.

Finally, he spoke in a slow, soft voice, “Mav…”

Reluctantly, she looked at him. He had an elbow propped up on his knee, his hand buried in his hair as he leaned his forehead against his palm. His eyes gazed straight ahead into the dim light from the arcade that washed a blue tone over his skin, making the gold glow of his heavy-lidded eyes burn bright in contrast.

She swallowed. “T…?”

He took in a breath through his lips, sat with it, closed his eyes, and let words flow on the exhale. “You remember what I said… that night… about never wantin’ to make you… miserable?”

Mavis’ heart grew tight and heavy at the memory. That night. The last time they spoke before he…

“Yes,” she breathed, not taking her eyes off him.

“And how I said… I’d actually try to keep that from happening?”

“...Yeah.”

He shrugged, flexing his fingers in his hair. “This is… me doin’ that. I’m just tryin’ to keep my word, Mav.”

“Turbo,” she said, gently but firmly squeezing his shoulder, “you’re not making me miserable.”

He looked her plain in the eye. “Tonight’s the first I’ve heard ya laugh in four days.”

She froze. That fact stunned her. That could not have been true, but she had obviously not been keeping track. Had Turbo been keeping track?

In response to her silence, he nodded a bit. “Yeah… Yeah. Doesn’t sound like Make-it Mavis, does it?”

Mavis did not know what to say. Slowly, her gaze fell. Her emotions were too crowded to move in any one direction, but she felt shame begin to simmer in the pit of her stomach. Somehow, she felt that she had done something wrong -- and not in a fun way. She had been trying so hard to help him… but did she just let him down? Did she let herself down?

Turbo took notice of her conflict. He twisted a bit to place his hand on the side of her neck and coax her jaw to tilt up again. “Hey, Mav,” he almost whispered, “don’t be like that. You’ve done good. Really good. It’s… kinda insane actually. It’s very obvious how dedicated you are to-- to helpin’ me, but… workin’ to the point of this, is just… It ain’t you, Mav. It just ain’t you. And I…”

His words caught, and Mavis could see his face clearly wrestling the words. With a bit of a bonk, he rested his forehead against hers and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I need you in my life, too… for real.”

It seemed to Mavis that all the heat in her body rushed to her face. Her chest quivered, scrambling for any words to push out, and coming up empty.

Turbo continued anyway, “So, y’know, if you really wanna help me… take… care of yourself, and… stay yourself. Okay?”

Hard memories crashed into the back of her head, memories from the darkest time of her life. She heard echoes of a promise she had made to his memory, a promise that was, in all sincerity, one she made to herself.

She caved.

“Okay,” she nodded slightly.

As he opened his eyes, their glow nearly strained her own. Slowly, his cheeks lifted in a smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she sighed hoarsely through her own rueful grin. “You’re right. I need a break. And I’ll take it.”

A truly exhausted sigh of relief washed over her face as he leaned back to give them both some breathing room. “Thank the Devs, finally,” he laughed airily. “Y’stubborn lil’ mule, ya won’t even listen to me when I tell ya to do stuff you wanna do!”

She laughed too, “I’m doin’ it now, jackass!”

“Yeah, just as I started to wonder how much rope I had left ‘til I’d reach the end!”

“Look, I know I’m too good at what I do, so I’ll try my best to get just a little worse,” she smiled, leaning out of his touch. “I’ll play hooky for a week, for starters. And I’ll do…”

“Whatever the hell you want?” he guessed, glancing down his grinning cheek at her.

“I’ll do my damn best, anyway. I would love to at least get some pranks in… I think the sprites out there have had it too easy since I, uh, mysteriously stopped.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, giving a long nod. “That there’s a problem, too. Gotta keep up appearances, Mav. Sprites will know something’s up if you’re suddenly so well behaved that they can leave pies coolin’ on sills.”

“Or balcony doors open.”

“Ah,” he chuckled. “You have not said anythin’ about Gene for ages. When’s the last time ya pranked that guy?”

Unable to remember, she said, “Well, I think I can get him pretty good this weekend. He’s hostin’ someone’s stupid birthday-- I think it’s, uh, Norwood’s, the guy with the cats--”

“PussyMagnet69?”

Mavis’ throat nearly ripped from the size of her surprise cackling.

Turbo joined in, insisting, “That was his name, Mav! How could ya forget?!”

Through tears, she wheezed, “Okay, okay-- But seriously-- I think if I can get in the penthouse early enough-- and I can-- I can switch all his clear alcohol with vinegar--”

Turbo was already keeling into his lap.

She continued, nearly shouting over his laughter, “Then I can make it a party no one will ever forget, and I can make off with a whole buttload of booze!”

Snorting, Turbo threw himself upright again, his hair flying haphazardly. “No, no, you gotta stay at least long enough to see the looks on their faces--” “Well, obviously--”

“And then remember ‘em really well and draw ‘em all out so I can see ‘em too! Damn, why do I gotta miss that?”

“Hey,” she laughed lowly, pushing his shoulder. “I’ll bring ya the drawings, and I’ll bring ya the booze, and then we can get flat out wasted n’ go as wild as this box can-- Well, uh--”

She had forgotten to ask something. Turbo looked at her quizzically.

“I mean, uh,” she said quietly, still managing to hold a smile, “you’ll let me in, right? Am I-- Am I allowed to come back here… on vacation?”

Turbo almost looked stricken, and after a moment’s thought that betrayed a bit of anxiety in his eyes, he said, “Well… obviously. Don’t feel like you gotta or anythin’, though. I’m a grown-ass man, I don’t need a babysitter. But, y’know, if you really wanna come over, you can.”

Mavis’ shoulders dropped and half a scoff slipped out of her. “Of course I wanna hang out with you. Y’kiddin’ me, T?”

For a second, he gave her an uncharacteristically warm half-smile. He chuffed a bit. “Arright,” he said, twisting to open his arms to her and gesture inward. “C’mere. Bring it in.”

Forcing an eye-roll that was ruined by her smiling face, she scooted right up and wrapped her arms around his torso, and he hugged back tightly. The closeness felt so well-needed, as if she were touch-starved without realizing. Surely, they had still been touching over the last little while… but this was the first time she felt present for it in days. She hummed appreciatively, resting her chin over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he sighed, smugness creeping into his voice as he rubbed her back, “should’a known I couldn’t shake ya. After all, I am your lifelong obsession, ain’t I?”

She groaned. “Turbo…”

“It’s kinda creepy, there, Cherry Bomb. Takin’ advantage of the fact that I don’t got a game to get ya banned from.”

“Like I could even get through the barricade here without your help,” she considered. “Or without dynamite, but, y’know. I’d hate to have to build it again.”

Turbo just chuckled. He buried his face against the side of her neck and let out a deep, hot sigh through his nose that sent a tiny wave of goosebumps over her skin. She held him tight, soaking in the exceptional heat from his skin. At times such as this, memories would flood in from the time she believed she had lost him, and her chest would glow with incredulous, almost painful gratitude to have him back.

Mavis chewed her lip for a moment, possessed by the emotion growing in her body. She tucked her head in, the bridge of her nose pressed against his collarbone. Sweetly, sadly, she mumbled, “Y’know I miss you, T. I miss havin’ a friend out there.”

His hand thumped softly against her shoulder blade. “...Yeah. I know, Mav,” he muttered. He then turned his head until his face was in her hair, his mouth angled just behind her ear. She could feel his lips move as he said, “I’m pretty lucky to have a friend in here.”

Heart aching, Mavis pulled back to look him in the face. He just looked thoughtful, meeting her gaze with a bit of a squint. “Seems like whatever luck I’ve had since this mess started has had somethin’ to do with you. How’d that happen? Once upon a time, you were the biggest pain-in-the-ass problem child in my life.”

A small laugh blew from her throat, half warm, half naughty. “Things are different now… and you forget I’m a good-luck-charm Easter Egg.”

Turbo chuckled, and his eyes dropped to her mouth as a hand snaked behind her head. “Whatever you say.”

She drew closer, her eyes closing with an airy, snarky chuckle. “But I’m still a pain in the ass.”

“Don’t I know it,” he breathed, before his lips made contact with hers.

She kissed back gladly, folding her knees and bringing them up close as she let the comforting warmth in her face and chest slowly spread throughout her body. The kiss did not break, only deepened, and after his hands tugged under the crook of her legs, she found herself grabbing his shoulders and gracefully moving to straddle his lap. All she wanted was to be closer, to hold him as flush against her body as she could, and it was a sentiment he clearly returned. His rough hands roamed over her slender curves, clenching fistfuls of her shirt and letting his fingers skirt beneath the fabric. As her head and body began to buzz with all-too-neglected excitement, she broke away from his mouth to kiss a trail down to his neck and happily nip at the salty skin there.

For a few moments, Turbo merely squeezed her hip bones in appreciation and uttered naught but a few shivery sighs, but Mavis soon noticed that he was a bit too still and quiet. No sooner had she noticed than Turbo leaned his head into hers a bit, ducking his face down.

“I will get out of here,” he whispered insistently. “I swear I will.”

Mavis paused before pulling back to look at him. He did not look sad, no -- he just looked determined. There was a fire in his eyes that made him look unstoppable, like nothing could possibly hold him back from taking his place in the world again. She believed it fully.

“I know you will,” she muttered back. “And I’ll be there.”

He scoffed a bit. “And then? Then I’ll get ya some real flowers. Call those ones over there a placeholder.”

Mavis twisted a bit to look at the sketchbook she had tossed to the floor, the graphite lines softly illuminated from the light shining through the socket.

“Hm,” she hummed. “Don’t bother. These ones are better.”

When he laughed briefly, she looked back at him to see a lopsided grin that flashed his pointed teeth. “Okay, princess, how about this? Whatever kingdom I end up ruling--”

“Ruling, huh?”

He ignored her and continued, “I’ll program a room just for you, and then I’ll draw flowers on the walls like a gap-toothed madman, and I’ll make ‘em so Dev-damned bright and colorful and horrendously ugly that no one could spend more than five minutes in there without gettin’ a migraine.”

Mavis laughed, clapping his shoulder a bit. “See, now that sounds perfect. Seriously. Please do that. That’s so much better than flowers.”

Turbo’s eyes narrowed as his grin grew. “Consider it done.”

“Now,” she wrapped her arms behind his neck, leaning her forehead against his. “Will ya please go back to bein’ a jerk for a while? All this sweetness and thoughtfulness, it--” she dropped into her roughest, most unflattering Turbo impression, complete with bad accent, “‘it ain’t like you.’”

Turbo’s brows shot upward, and he sputtered through a wild grin. “Ooh, okay, smart-mouth,” he said, cracking his neck and knuckles. “Ya wanna get reacquainted? Let’s get reacquainted.”

With that, he seized her by the ribs and roughly yanked her in, lunging for her neck like a snake. As his teeth sank in, Mavis’ short yelp of pain and surprise turned into thrilled, dirty, self-satisfied laughter. The mushy stuff was finally over. It was time to have fun again.

Mavis was still unsure of how effective her little vacation would be, but as far as she was concerned, she was off to a pretty good start.

#fanfiction #turbo #make it mavis #wreck it ralph #the shitgoblins #yeah have another story i worked on whenever i couldnt sleep #i just wanted to write something fun and cute for the babies #of course theres bittersweet bc i cant help myself #but i hope yall enjoy this silly mess #rare non-AU content

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absolxguardian · 6 years ago

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Book of Ga-Huel/Age of the Amulet Lore masterpost

Instead of doing multiple posts about cool facts like I normally do with star wars books, I’m doing a masterpost instead. However, this one will only include new lore the two books have revealed, instead of character moments and the like I’ve marked. Anyway these two books are really good and you should read them! I’ll put all my comments under the cut because of length

The angry words popped into Spar the Spiteful’s mind as he charged through the humans’ pathetic excuse for a city. The Trollhunter never much cared for the hornless, helpless creatures Merlin had entrusted him to defend. And this new village of theirs—this “Sumer,” as they called it—paled woefully in comparison to the jeweled majesty of his own underground home, Glastonbury Tor Trollmarket. At least the Sumerians were asleep at this late hour and not around to bother Spar.

So from this, we can infer that Merlin, and the Trollhunters, predate the age of Arthurian legend. Which makes sense timeline wise, since the comic established that Kanjigar was the only trollhunter after Deya. And depending on how many trollhunters in Spar is, it’s possible that Merlin predates the agricultural revolution. Although that leads to the question of how Merlin was able to develop metalworking before the rest of the human species. It’s possible that the Island of Avalon exists in Trollhunter lore, which was home to technologically advanced magical humans like Merlin or Morgana. Although since historically Glastonbury Tor has been considered a location for Avalon, it could also be that the island doesn’t exist in trollhunter lore and the first Trollmarket is a stand-in. Trolls as a species also probably predate humans, which is probably why they ate them for so long. For a long time, they weren’t sentient, so the act wasn’t morally questionable.

The Amulet lit the tunnels like a torch. Spar crept down the passage, sweeping aside thick sheets of webs and keeping his Daylight Club at the ready.

The weapon of the amulet wasn’t always a sword (possibly because they hadn’t been invented yet), although Spar might have just been modifying his weapon with a gemstone.

“You . . . you are copying what these ancient walls show,” said Spar. “But how can they possibly show events that have just happened—events that have not yet come to pass?”

“You’d have to ask their author,” answered the Troll, nodding to the carved likeness of the wizard. “He’s left them in countless caves across the surface world.”

Merlin created more future telling wall murals than just the ones located in his tomb.

“Sorta like A Brief Recapitulation of Gumm-Gumm Lore, huh?” joked Jim.

“Just so, Master Jim,” Blinky confirmed. “The Gumm-Gumm’s former king, Orlagk the Oppressor, commissioned it after learning of the Venerable Bedehilde’s forty-seven volume magnum opus.”

All forty-seven volumes of A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore were written before the rise of Gunmar, although it’s possible Blinky is just misspeaking and not all the volumes were written before the book of Ga-Huel.

Despite himself, Draal could not help but feel sorry for Jim’s mother. He had sworn to protect Barbara to his dying day, much as he swore devout allegiance to the Trollhunter for sparing Draal’s life. The spiked Troll treated this bodyguard duty as the most important job of his very long existence, and intended to keep it just that—a job. But after months of secretly living in their basement, Draal had overheard how much Jim and Barbara truly loved each other. Their special bond often made Draal think about his own mother, Ballustra, and how much he missed her.

Draal has a mother (meaning trolls can have two parents), her name is Ballustra. And she’s dead.

“I’d hazard we’re here circa the year 70 CE on your funny human calendar,” said Boraz. “Actually, I know for a fact it’s 70 CE because that’s when . . . well, you’ll see!”

Moonlight shined down through the Colosseum’s open-air arena. Jim noticed how it reflected off their armor and asked, “Boraz, are . . . are we actually here?”

“HA!” roared Boraz. “Only in spirit, small one. In these Void Visitations, we may observe what has transpired. But none may see, hear, or touch us.

Boraz the Bold held the mantle of Trollhunter from after Spar’s death during the Sumarian age to around 70CE. Lucky guy, he survived for a really long time. Also, the spirits in the void can show living Trollhunters what happened in the past.

“Not where, human Trollhunter, but when!” corrected Unkar, who then paused, appearing momentarily confused. “Actually, I guess it’s where and when. Because we traveled through time and space and—look, kid, we’re in the Yucatán Peninsula around 200 CE, okay?”

Unkar the Unfortunate was the Trollhunter in 200CE. Despite this being before the Migration, troll settlements did exist in South America.

“Correct,” said Kanjigar. “Although Gunmar had been vanquished to the Darklands by this point, the Janus Order still contracted these misguided humans to find and incinerate Bodus’s Last Rites. This, I could not allow.”

The spirit nodded his horns to the side, and Jim saw the living Kanjigar steal into the castle through a tunnel dug by his gyre. The soldiers opened fire on the Trollhunter with their machine guns, but he deflected the hail of bullets with the flat of his Sword of Daylight.

Strickler/The Janus Order contracted Nazis to get them to burn Bodus’ Last Rites. The Sword of Daylight (and presumably the armor) can deflect bullets. Also, go Kanjigar the brutally efficient Nazi slayer!

It featured an old drawing of Jim in his armor, fighting for his life in the middle of an epic Gumm-Gumm war. The date inked below it read 501 CE.

This is just a hook for the next book, but based on Age of the Amulet, we can figure out that the rise of Gunmar and the death of Orlagk was in 501 CE.

The Gumm-Gumm flexed his claw, forcing strands of opaque energy to rise and weave into the jagged shape of a sword. Once it had solidified, Orlagk trained his Decimaar Blade on Tellad-Urr and said, “This one has a point.”

The Decimaar Blade originally belonged to Orlagk before Gunmar.

“England?” Jim marveled. “Blink, how can you be sure?”

“Blinky from here,” AAARRRGGHH!!! said as he appeared over the next hill, carrying Toby and Claire on his back. “Well, under it.”

Blinky is from the Glastonbury Tor Trollmarket and is a young whelp during 501 CE (the past section the team is transported to).

Also, Tellad-Ur got really fed up with being a Trollhunter and became the only (known) evil trollhunter. He took over Trollmarket, imprisioning everyone who wouldn’t fight with him. He provided Gunmar with the metal, raided from human villages, to arm Gunmar’s rebels. He was defeated by a time traveling Jim, although the credit was given to the next trollhunter, Gogun. There’s no one quote for that because that’s the plot of the book.

“And Rundle sadly passed before Deya delivered us to the New World,” said Bagdwella.

Rundle probably died between the Battle of Killahead and the Great Migration

“So be it,” announced Kilfred, accepting the junk staff. “I shall lead you, and, together, we shall restore Trollkind to its former glory!”

The assembled Trolls roared so loudly in approval, Steve and Eli jumped. The sudden movement reminded Kilfred of their presence. He pointed his new staff at the two humans and said, “Now let’s start by eating those two!”

Kilfred was very pro-eating humans.

Blinky had squinted his many eyes as he and his two friends were pressed through the blinding tunnel of light and rock. Once they reached the other side, Blinky’s vision returned, and he beheld the Trollmarket in which he had grown up. It now seemed much smaller to the adult Blinky, although he easily recognized the purple Heartstone growing upside down from the cavern ceiling.

The orginal hearstone was a stalgtite and also stayed around long after Gunmar’s birth. Although, this could be a second heartstone or they just still keep it around.

Impressed by Blinky’s ingenuity, the freed Trolls all dropped to their knees and bowed to their savior. Surprised by the sudden genuflection, Blinky said, “Great Gronka Morka!”

“Great Gronka Morka!” repeated the worshipping Trolls. “Great Gronka Morka!”

Blinky, Toby, and AAARRRGGHH!!! all looked to each other in surprise before the six-eyed Troll said, “I-I thank you for your praise, but please stop. My name is actually Bl—”

“Great Gronka Morka! Great Gronka Morka!” chanted the liberated Trolls. “No, no, no,” Blinky dismissed impatiently. “Great Gronka Morka was a legendary wise Troll. A scholar, much like myself, with six eyes, also much like myself, who appeared out of the blue one day to lead one of the most famous jailbreaks in Troll legend and—��

Blinky is Great Gronka Morka! And the origin of the phrase/name is a paradox. The reason Blinky says it a lot, is probably because that's the troll hero that saved a young Blinky and Dictatious from prison.

AAARRRGGHH!!!’s runes faded as he stared the young Krubera in front of him. It was like looking into a mirror. The young Troll’s horns were stubbier and his shoulders were barely covered in mossy green fur, yet AAARRRGGHH!!! recognized the face, for it was his own.

“You look . . . like me,” said teen AAARRRGGHH!!! before he decked his grown-up self.

Aaarrrgghh was taken during the time when Orglark ruled the Gumm-Gumms. So the whole kidnapping troll whelps isn’t a Gunmar thing. Also he had to fight himself at one point.

“Ah, a trio of Impures in our midst,” said Kilfred from atop the highest bleacher, wearing deflated dodgeballs on his horns like ornamental jewelry. “Bind them with the sacred trusses!”

Kilfred knows what a changeling is, so that means that they also predate Gunmar’s rule.

As they were shooed back to the past, Kilfred—who had been left rather traumatized by his visit to Arcadia—decided two things: One, he was cutting humans from his diet and going full-on vegetarian forthwith. And two, he was retiring from advising Trolls on how to live their lives.

So this would be how leadership of the Trollmarket passed from Kilfred to Rundle.

#trollhunters #tales of arcadia #trollhunters spoilers #blinkous galadrigal #aaarrrgghh #age of the amulet #book of ga-huel #james lake jr #i'll post the non worldbuilding stuff later

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aroworlds · 7 years ago

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Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Signe

Today’s awesome aro-spec creator is Signe, better known to aro-spec Tumblr as @fluffyllamacorn!

Signe is a busy aroace writer, visual and textile artist! She writes for the Young Avengers, The Shadowhunter Chronicles/Shadowhunters, Hawkeye Comics and New X-Men: Academy fandoms in addition to developing diverse original fiction. You can find her growing collection of fanworks on AO3 under the name FluffyLlamacorn and her gorgeous art at @llamacorn-productions.

She also posts and reblogs fashion and accessories at @clothing-inspiration, and some of her cosplays can be seen throughout this post!

With us Signe talks about her passion for textile arts and how they allowed her to reclaim her femininity, the importance of non-romantic relationships in creative media, the difficulty of writing kissing scenes, and the need for works and discussions that celebrate our aromanticism. Her love of making, crafting and designing just shines through this post, so please let’s give her all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

I just sort of … never cared? I’ve never wanted to get married and have children, and I never really had crushes growing up. I partly figured that was because I was surrounded by assholes who weren’t worth crushing on, but even when I graduated and moved to better schools where I actually had friends, I still didn’t care. I’ve always had a lot of confidence, so I’ve never bothered feeling insecure about not dating. I spent a while identifying as a straight person “who doesn’t care about romance” before eventually identifying with the ace and then aroace identifiers after having known them for a while, but there was never any big moments in the journey that really stand out.

Currently, I see my aromanticism as more important to my identity than my asexuality – being aro is what I do, while being ace is what my body does – but I also don’t really see them as separate. It’s hard to put into words because it requires cementing some stuff that I don’t mind leaving fluid, but while my lack of attraction is a package deal, it’s the lack of romantic attraction that defines my lifestyle the most. I know which I would choose if I had to, but I prefer not having to. That’s the only good thing about the ace discourse: It’s made me very protective of my ace identity again after having let somewhat go of it after I came to identify as aro.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I’m the type of person who has a thousand different hobbies and therefore doesn’t have time to actually do any of them. The three I care most about are writing, drawing and textile work.

I’ve always told myself a lot of stories. Walking home from school, I would develop my stories, acting out scenes in my mind and developing huge universes. When I decided to share them with the world, it was initially as comics. I drew a lot, so I had developed the characters’ visual identities along with their personalities. While I’ve switched to planning my stories as books, drawing and writing is still pretty linked in my mind and I can’t imagine creating a character that I don’t know how to draw.

I got into textile work through cosplay, but have spread out into knitting, sewing, embroidery, cross stitch, weaving, crocheting, bobbin lace… Pretty much everything I can get my hands on, which is why I give it such a broad name. (This is part of my too many hobbies deal!) I love everything about textiles, from the look and feel of it, to how many different things can be created out of one simple material. Looking at clothes and knowing not just how it’s been sewn, but also how the fabric was made, is so cool. Creating things from scratch can make me feel like something akin to a god, recreating this corner of the universe as I see fit. A big part of my love for textile work is also reclaiming my femininity in a way that’s so different from the girly girl image I was taught to look down on as a girl. This is a way to enjoy being feminine that doesn’t force me to embrace things I don’t enjoy.

One thing I’ve realized recently is that I love the freedom to design my own work. My cosplays have moved further and further away from canon, from human versions to characters without a firm design or completely redesigning a canon design. On the other hand, I rarely feel the need to sew completely original things, and without the built in deadline of a con, I’m not very likely to get it done. I tend to rarely do the things I can just do whenever, but I’m getting better at that.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

It’s easy to spot in my stories. I have a lot of a-spec characters. The two main characters who were specifically designed to get most of my heart – Shizuka, the shy girl who didn’t know how to make friends, and Diana, the confident girl who’s never cared what anyone thinks of her – both ended up being a-spec even though I created them long before I started identifying as aroace. Shizuka is demi and I don’t know whether it’s sexually and/or romantically or if it even matters. Diana ended up being aroace because I was thinking about her future and my mind nope’d out of the possibility of her ever dating. I also made a conscious choice not to include much romance until I got interested in queer love stories and that sorta fell by the way side. Even then, I try to keep the love stories from being the only defining feature of the stories and the characters involved in them and never to devalue other types of relationship. You will never hear the term “just friends” in my work unless I’m trying to make a point about the person who uses it.

(This is not to pass a value judgement on anyone who uses that expression, but to help normalize language that doesn’t devalue platonic relationships.)

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

The recent anti-a-spec discourse has made me worried about posting about aromantic things too publicly, as aphobic comments and opinions seem way to commonly accepted these days.

Also, writing kissing scenes. What the hell. “And then their mouths squished together for a little while, which apparently made fireworks go off in their brains.” Like. What? Why does society think this is the epitome of every relationship?

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

Building communities about a lack of something is always hard. Once you’ve written the first story about being aro, it can be hard to write the next one, unless you consciously try to write about a different way of being aro-spec. It’s also a hard orientation to include quickly as being single isn’t as clear an indicator as having a romantic partner of the same gender. While I follow a bunch of aro-blogs and I have a bunch of a-spec friends, I wouldn’t say I’m strongly integrated in the a-spec communities on Tumblr.

Part of it is that most content I see is validations that every sort of aro is alright. I see a lot of content aimed at people who feel bad. That’s important, definitely, but I don’t need it. I’ve always known I’m amazing, both independently of and intersecting with my aromantic identity. I’m interested in work that celebrates being aro, work that doesn’t say I’ll be happy “even though” I’m aro, but “while” I’m aro, maybe even “because” I’m aro and don’t need to waste my life on amatonormativity. At the very least, work that spends more than a sentence on reassuring me. I see a lot of content that implies the basic state of an aro-spec person is sad, and I object to that idea.

I have also recently seen a whole lot of posts about QPRs and that’s really cool! I’m happy to see they’re becoming more and more accepted, at least in some circles. I’m less happy to see them become so prominent and so expected that they start feeling like a new shape of amatonormativity. It’s not that bad right now, but I definitely got allo aces saying “at least we can still feel love” vibes from some QPR posts earlier this year. Because here’s the thing: I’m aroace. I won the lottery. I don’t need to define myself by relationships to other people.* I refuse to take another label that sounds like I don’t want friends because of people pushing QPRs to be the new norm. Again, I’m super happy QPRs seem to have become more accepted, just please don’t present them as something every aro-spec person is interested in unless we specifically opt out.

There’s also the question of what kind of aro stories should be told. I mean, as many as possible, obviously, but that’s going to take a while. But the whole deal with being aro-spec is to have less interest in romance, so too many stories that focus on the lack of it become … counterproductive? I think the Jughead comics are pretty perfect in that regard. The main character is aroace and there are several stories that’s hella important to, but mainly it’s just about him going on adventures with his friends.

(P.S. I hate Riverdale. I’ve seen two different Jughead cosplays these last two weekends, but I didn’t dare fangirl, because what if they were based on the wrong version?)

Honestly, my main way of interacting with the a-spec community is befriending people at random and later finding out they’re a-spec. It’s … almost a superpower? It’s pretty great.

* No one needs to define themselves by relationships to other people, but I imagine it’s much easier when you don’t feel the desire to.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I don’t feel very connected to creative communities, but that’s more because I’m not very good at reaching out and promoting myself unless I know I have exactly what’s being asked for. I mainly stick to one or two people I can bounce ideas off of for my different projects before I post it and hope it finds an audience. It might also be because I’m juggling so many things and don’t spend enough time on the social connections needed to connect with a community.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Feedback, feedback, feedback! I love it! I live on it! Telling me you like X or Y part of my work can keep me floating for days and makes me so much more motivated to keep arting! So please, check out my art and leave a comment and/or share it with your friends/followers, if you like it.

(Also, if anyone has good tips on how to reach a larger audience, let me know.)

Can you share with us something about your current project?

I just finished my newest cosplay, which is Lup from The Adventure Zone in her lich form! I had a lot of fun designing her – the podcast doesn’t have very specific descriptions and the creators encourage fans to come up with their own designs – and got a lot of positive reactions at the con last weekend. I went for a very non-human design, including hiding my face, and added a bunch of fire details to reflect her evocation magic. I would have added more, but then my sewing machine broke in the last second, and I had to finish everything by hand, so I just aimed for the basic version. I’ll be updating her for the next con and will have much more fire with me then. I have yet to finish editing the pictures, but they should be up soon.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

My next project, one I’ve alluded to a couple of times in this profile already, in fact combines all three of my passions. I was considering cosplaying Pixie, one of the underrated students from X-Men, relegated to the background since their series ended, but I kept bumping up against the problem that her uniform was just too … generic to be fun. Besides, what’s the point of cosplaying the pink girl, and then not getting to work with pink fabric?

So I just redesigned her and gave her an individual outfit. And then I decided to redesign all of her teammates. I wanted them all to go together, but still keep an individual feeling, and I achieved that by giving them a rainbow theme when they’re together. Obviously, the next stop was figuring out a story for that to take place in, of which I’ve posted the first chapter. The idea is that they get out in their bright colors and visibly help everyday people with everyday problems to stop people from hating and fearing mutants and maybe actually making a positive change, unlike all of the superhero battles that don’t get anyone anywhere.

The project has three parts: Individual drawings for every member where I develop their outfits further, chapters of fic describing their adventures and a cosplay that I aim to finish for Genki in August, the next big con in Denmark.

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kariachi · 6 years ago

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For a moment I wondered why Kevin’s sections are always longer than Argit’s in this au, then I remembered that Argit’s generally have fewer people involved and less going on...

Chapter 6, now with fashion and family time.

They were a few months out from the big day and Argit was done. The constant back and forth that came with trying to plan a wedding he’d love without actually involving him in the planning, he could handle. The feeling like he was arguing with a stranger third-hand and from the other side of the galaxy, he could handle. But when his father had sent someone in to get his measurements so new clothes could be made?

As someone who’d been making his own for what felt like forever he was just not having it.

He’d finally taken control of the situation- dumping the bureaucratic work on his father’s desk with no fanfare, foisting the final stages of wedding planning onto Psyphon, cutting his siblings’ snickers down by assigning them the most menial work he could think of at the time- and given himself a job he actually enjoyed. Ever since he’d hardly left his rooms, locked away with all the fabric, sewing supplies, and inspiring pieces he could dream of. It was relaxing work, the most troubling bit was deciding what pattern to go for in the deep greys and purples he’d settled on, and was mostly working to keep his mind off just how fast time was going.

The more time he spent considering it the more nervous he got, the more he ate, the more grateful he was that he’d already adjusted his patterns to a few sizes larger than normal.

It was becoming more and more clear with time that he had no idea what he was doing or what to expect. Not only that, but that none of the people he’d have felt comfortable discussing this with had any idea either. He was going to be the first one married and the only person he knew who’d had truly serious relationships was his father, who wasn’t an option for obvious, ‘I have five kids by four women who skipped out’-shaped reasons. He didn’t know how to have a relationship, how to get to know someone, what was expected of him in a marriage. As time had gone on he’d found himself spending more and more of his free time looking up everything from Osmosians to humans to marriage advice to housing because apparently setting up a house together was a thing you were supposed to do maybe? Sorta? Kinda?

Anymore if he wasn’t working on his clothes (and his father’s clothes, and his siblings’ clothes, and Psyphon’s clothes-) he was probably on the ethernet going cross-eyed with his researching. Generally accompanied by at least one pie.

Pupating came with a lot of changes, mental and physical, ones that couldn’t be properly predicted for hybrids. There was endless variance there. Which meant not only that they hadn’t been able to do any planning involving Kevin’s looks before he broke free, but that as soon as he’d adjusted enough to the new body to stand and speak his family had converged on him like vultures on a dead buffalo.

“Dress or pants?”

“Whichever’s cool.”

“…we’ll get both made, you can choose on the day.”

Kevin was only really half paying attention to everything. There was a full-length mirror right there and while he wasn’t a vain man between dysphoria and oncoming maturity his adolescent mimicry had felt wrongwrongwrong. Not that things were perfect now by a long shot, but people kept having to drag him back into position as he twisted and turned to admire things like his mane and finally flat chest.

“Straight and relaxed, gyadin,” his gran said with a sharp tug on his mane and he immediately complied, drawing snickers from the rest of his little entourage.

“Yes, memu.” He felt as much as heard the pleased rumble she made as she returned to measuring the base of his tail.

“You know, if we can get this measuring done in time to make you clothes, you’re going to look wonderful. Just like your father.”

“He looks more like you,” his mother countered, fiddling with his hair same as she had been the last fifteen minutes, “Devin was narrower across, pretty much everything really.”

“He’s got Dad’s colors though,” Cody said. He’d been going through a thick pile of fabric swatches for the entire time he’d been there, occasionally whistling for the opinion of Vivi, sat on the floor across from him. Near as Kevin could tell she was trying to figure out some beadwork designs combining the maternal heritages she was part of and the paternal she hardly knew, and Cody was helping her as much as she was him. Finally, he held up swatches of rich blue and golden-yellow that stood in bold contrast to Kevin’s dark adult scales. “What do you think?”

“Gorgeous,” Kevin’s mother said before he could open his mouth. His grandmother got to her feet and smiled brightly down at the selection from over his shoulder.

“And fitting,” she said, turning her smile between him and Cody, “they’re a good enough match for some of your enku’s pack’s traditional colors.”

“So,” Kevin cut in, “I take it I don’t get a say in colors anymore?”

“No.”

“Some advice, little brother,” Cody said, smiling in bemusement, “just roll with it until you’re married, then blame everything on your husband. They can’t pull rank there.” Both older women gave him a critical look.

“Kafan, remind me to talk to Regina about double-checking with Mala?”

“Gladly.” Huffing, the old Osmosian turned Kevin to face her, looking him over. “Do you want some real married advice?” For a split second he wanted to say no, he was fine, but then remembered that he was going to be married in two months and had to lock his knees to stay up straight. Fuck, yeah, he had no idea what he was doing, why had he not got this worrying done sooner?

“That’d be nice, yeah.” Her expression softened back to a smile and she gave him a quick kiss.

“When he’s a dumbass,” she said, “and trust me he will be, all men are-”

“Memu.”

“As your brother proves, giving out his tactics in public.” Again Vivi was snickering. “When he’s a dumbass, give him the benefit of the doubt. There’s plenty of times he’ll do something that upsets you without realizing.”

“Just don’t let him get away with it too much,” Cody added. “He gets three chances for every bullshit thing you correct him on and if he fails you tell us, we’ll bring you and whatever you want right back home.” Kevin chuckled.

“Including the house?” Setting down her designs, Vivi rolled her eyes.

“Kevin, even Sid would dig up a house and move it across the galaxy for you, if just to spite anyone who hurt you. Anyway,” she then said, bringing her attention back to the sketches, “my advice? Don’t be afraid to walk away from a fight and come back later when you’re calmer.”

“Also,” Cody said, “just, be nice. Compliments, gratitude, being respectful.” He gave a bit of a wistful sigh. “The easier and more pleasant you two make things for each other, the happier your home will be and the sooner things will start really working for you.” Kevin nodded along, soaking in the information. Vivi was a wildcard, but Cody was over ten years wed and their grandparents had been married longer than the US had been a country, and he trusted all of them.

“Good advice, all around,” his mother finally said, “but I’ve got more important.” Gently she turned him 180 degrees to face her. “Learn from my mistakes and communicate. Talk about everything, tell him how you feel about everything, any struggles you’re having, any hopes you have, things you want, and encourage him to do the same.” Kevin opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a finger for silence. “I know this is something you have trouble with, because of all the things you had to get from me that was it, but trust me. There’s so much trouble and pain you can avoid if you just talk to your partner. Alright?”

The breath Kevin took was shaky. Everyone knew why, why this was the advice she was giving, and the silence in the room was palpable. With another, steadying breath Kevin nodded.

“Alright. Thanks mom.” You could see the tension wash off his mother’s shoulders as the two of them smiled at each other. Her gaze went soft and nostalgic as she finally took the time to step back and just look at him, before diving forward to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his chest. It was with a watery smile of his own and a surprised delicacy (fuck, he hadn’t realized until that moment how much bigger than his human relatives he was now…) that he returned the gesture.

“Look at this,” she said with a watery laugh, “my baby’s all grown up.”

#fanfic

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alexanderessex3dstoryart · 4 years ago

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Character Design - Silhouette Designs

Since I’m not the most amazing drawer and tend to spend way too much time on the smallest of things, Jon suggested I should look into creating my character designs/sketches in Photoshop through the use of silhouette design. Instead of drawing the character fully out, all that I would be doing is adding props to an already existing mesh and creating character ideas and ketches this way. Having mention before I wasn’t the best at drawing, i was very willing to try this method out and give it a go to see if the process stuck with me.

Firstly, I had to find some pre-made meshes for me to draw and place images on top of. From casually browsing on the internet, I found this really great turnaround online of the same mesh that’s in an ‘A-pose’. I found this to be just what I was looking for as I could cover all aspects of deign with this mesh at different angles. In addition to finding the perfect mesh for the silhouette ‘drawing’, I also made a library of different objects that I could use to build my character up from scratch weather that be using one object as the basis of a design or used as an extra detail. The images i’ve chosen are influenced from the mood boards I’ve previously made in the past for the character design project.

Mesh Turnaround

Images that i placed on top of the pre-existing mesh

Once my image library had been completed and the meshes ready, i then started to combine the props and human mesh together to create my weird and wacky character designs. To achieve a true silhouette image for some of these designs, I applied a black and white filter to them which I decreased the saturation creating a fully model which was very hand for me if i wanted a deign added on very quickly to the mdoel.

But enough of how i got myself ready to do the designs of the characters, the actual drawing and placement of these props was actually really fun to do as it was a very simple but really effective process if i wanted to get ideas out as quick as possible. Looking at the first shilloute sheet I made, it focused on the character Hyde due to him being the character I would love to model for hand in. Using the shilloute technique, his deer skull was an essential piece to his design being made up from natural debris and junk from my story as this posed as the menacing piece of his design. This si why he has items and materials like bottles, signage and general junk scattered across forming a beast like no other.

Through this process I noticed I wanted the skull to be a lot more hidden and cramped into the design of the character giving off the vibe this is a humongous character approaching you. in a lot of these designs I made on the first sheet, I had what each character was comprised of shape wise and how they were used to create a unique-looking character. Taking influence from Doomfist’s gauntlet form ‘Overwatch’ for one of my Hyde designs was a really good idea as it expressed who I might want to model a particular element for the character (like the fist and wires) as well as giving a vague representation of what it should look like. Knowing this fact, I began to be a lot looser in my design process because of it.

To further expand on my Hyde character’s design, I looked up paper scraps online to see a section of them clustered together. I thought because my Hyde character is very janky and uneven in appearance, these ripped up pieces of paper could emulate how the character will look if it was metal plates attached to him instead. Whilst the process was very tedious to do, I was really happy with the entire process as it really did capture what kind of character Hyde would look like if I was to sketch his silhouette out. Details like Jekyll’s arm being still show reminded me a lot of the Charger's character design (Left for Dead - Game) which is what influenced me to retain some of the Jekyll’s character into the design of him. In addition to the paper scrap method it influenced me to have his big mechanical arm separate fro, his body with only wiring connecting it. Although whilst I really liked this idea, I had to make sure it was a conventional design too as my Jekyll character as to fit inside him sorta snug and not detaching his limbs in the process. All these ideas felt like I needed to expand this particular character design.

Charger Character (Left for Dead - Game)

One slight issue I had when making any of the designs as soon as I got into the groove with it all, Photoshop kept on crashing on me or at least be really slow in placing my props onto the mesh meaning the process turned from really enjoyable to really tedious and tiring to make as across all three silhouette sheets I made, it took me quite the couple of days to make due to how badly my laptop runs Photoshop. Never the less, I still had to keep pushing on as the shilloute drawing is slowly starting to grow on me.

First experimentation sheet on the Hyde character

Ripped up pieces of paper to assemble the rough character designing of the Hyde character

Working from the paper based shilloute, I used the pre-made meshes that I found at the beginning and made 5 versions of them each specifically the front, side profile and the 3/4 angle meshes. This was to allow me to have a wide range of different ideas covering different angles of the character as they weren’t made to be consistent to all form one design all together. Because I found placing objects on top of the models to be really slow and tiresome for my computer, I thought I would create sketches using very loose sketches on my graphics tablet.

Starting off with the front facing first row of experimental sketches, one common theme I had here was to establish what the final design was going to be. Whilst this may seem really early tor try and find, it was because I could dedicate the rest of the angles to much more experimental sketches playing around the from and accessories that the Hyde character is attached too. One design aspect that you could probably already see in the sketches in the first row is with the feet as one foot is larger than the other. The way I’ve been able to communicate this I really like as it express the incompleteness that the chracter has in the world as one of my sub-themes for the story is that my Hyde character wants to be apart of human society but can’t due to his looks and always scary the city folk away.

Going back to the character design process, I like how I’ve played around with the different sizes of the leg shapes specifically with the fourth model as I love how beedy the left leg looks in comparison tot he right one which you can definitely also see in the first design I did for the Hyde character. Another aspect of the design I really like was the right arm itself as I already knew that the left arm was going to be Jekyll's own arm. So for contrast, I wanted his arm to be this huge ginormous figure that overshadows the tiny arm to emphaise the deadlier side of him.

With the second and third row of designs as previously mentioned before, these were a lot more experimental sketches to play around with poses or aesthetics that I want to add onto the already final design. I think the only takeaways from the second and third row of designs were the use of signage as I want a combination of pipes and signage to cover the back of the character as he patrols around the world fully expressing the mess he becomes off of Jekyll’s hatred in my story.

Second Shilloute Drawing Sheet

In addition to looking at Hyde, I thought I would look at using the same silhouette process in my Jekyll character working from my turnaround that I made before Christmas. Thinking about how I wanted to exapnd the character, it was mainly looking at how I could make the back look better as that was my only gripe with the turnaround for my Jekyll character due to not being too impressed with it. Through the sketches I made here, I really liked the idea for having either a portable spotlight that can emerge from the back of his back that can be used like a surgeon's light in a operation but for a mechanic. The other idea was to have a leathery school backpack to keep all his tools and spotlights in depending on the work he has to do. I think personally, I’m leaning more into the backpack design as it’s the most simplest and the easiest on the eyes for the turnaround if I was to end up modelling the character fully.

Third Shilloute Drawing sheet - Jekyll Character

Overall despite the process of shillouting these experimental character designs took far longer than expected as Photoshop really couldn't handle the process at all. I think it went rather successfully in terms of developing my ideas and coming up with new ones so quickly. I think if ti wasn’t for my computer acting up the way it has been since the start of January, I would proabley keep working in silhouette deign especially for the final sheets as they would look a lot nicer and prettier to understand.

#CharacterDesignBA2a

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