#BEHOLD I am amateur writer too

[dogicrimsonofficial]

Friend joined the Storytellers couple nights ago with their Haurchefant alt. So many things died that night, but we also managed couple good shots (for they also are fully on board with this ship, actively encouraging it, help me I am surrounded by enablers!) Wrote a mini-story for this, it's under the cut.

Finally, a quiet moment between one moment of destruction and heartbreak, and another of rebuilding and healing. The Storytellers had decided to take this one moment of quiet, and enjoy the evening.

That’s how Jason found himself in a little garden, sitting under a tree and next to some thicker, sweet smelling flower bushes - watching over Beans and Lyra from the distance and hoping the two would finally have a very specific discussion. That was, at least, until the grass rustled near him. One ear perking up, he looked over - just in time to see Haurchefant sit right next to him, their legs brushing against each other. 

Smile tugged at his lips, delighted to see the elezen despite how tired he felt. Normally, there’d be chatter by now - but perhaps they both felt the weight of everything from the past moon or so, and had decided to just enjoy the quiet of the night, and the comforting silence.

Or that at least had been the plan, until Haurchefant noticed Jason looking at him. 

“Hm? What is it that you’re looking at?”

Jason couldn’t help but to grin just a little. “You,” he answered, lifting his hand and taking a couple strands of Haurchefants bangs between his fingers. He gave the silvery locks a gentle tug, a gesture fond and familiar between the two already - just little something that usually told Haurchefant to get just a bit closer. 

The moonlight looked good on him - softer shades of blues, light almost making his hair glow, the gentleness of the night seemed to just fit him perfectly. Then again, Jason was rather biased - the night was always more gentle to him and his eyes.

“I’m memorizing the prettiest sight in all of Eorzea before the sunlight robs me of my vision again.”

Haurchefant let out a small laugh, before he felt fingers caressing the side of his face, a palm cupping his cheek. Out of habit, he placed one hand over Jason’s, leaning against the warmth - before he pulled the hand down just enough to plant a ghost of a kiss against the back of Jason’s fingers, his thumb stroking inside the palm. Fully aware just how sensitive Jason's sense of touch was. How important it was for him. “In that case, I should’ve brought a mirror with me.”

Jason chuckled - blush already creeping up his cheeks, something he decided to fight off against for a second. Haurchefant always had a counter to whatever he said - in fact, the man usually started with their little compliment wars. Which Jason lost, more often than not - despite being a bard, he wasn’t exactly talented in the art of romance. Still, he was going to try dammit. Haur deserved to know just how loved and appreciated he was. “What, is mine word not enough? Have to check it for yourself?”

To the surprise of the miqo’te, he was suddenly pulled against Haurchefant - strong arm wrapped around him protectively, one leg over the elezens, and Haurchefants nose in his hair. 

“No, so that you could witness yourself in my arms,” he muttered, nose brushing against the base of Jason’s ear - causing it to quiver just a little. “So you can know the heavenly sight I get to see in you.”

There was a small snort from the smaller of the two, before he settled down - wrapping one of his own arms around Haurchefants back, and giving him a quick nuzzle under the chin. Ah, he had lost this round already. And he found he didn’t mind one bit. “Are you certain you’re not secretly a bard? You certainly have a way with words that would shame most of them!” 

[redemptionva]

                                                          Quin

“I promise you - just look for yourself,” Gref insisted as the squeak of the monitor accompanied his voice, “all there, and it looks pretty big. Plenty of opportunities to find whatever you’re looking for.” Gref’s mouth curled into a grin that showcased his crooked teeth and stressed the creases in his homely sun-burned skin. A crackle came from my helmet - beneath the noise lay my mirthless chuckles.

“Fine, fine” I asked as my voice was tenuously doubled through two channels, “How old is this thing? I don’t really want to dig through a rusted bucket again”  “At least a century, so any fuel-fires or fumes are bound to have gone out by now. If you’re so worried about it, just toss a match down before you go spelunkin’.” I turned my head and mulled over the perpetually decent finds Gref had “found” for me over the past few months or so. “Sure,” I shrugged, gesturing to the antiquated speeder-bike that Gref had been eyeing since I arrived, “you really want that, huh?” With a nearly wordless exchange, I traded the speeder that had surely seen better days for a chance at finding something worthwhile. At least more worthwhile than a Vekog Mk. III Gravbike.

The sight was something to behold if you hadn’t seen the work a scrapper does almost weekly: a massive freighter-ship the size of a tower dug deep into the earth perpendicular to the ground. It awkwardly protruded from the ground laden in a rust and moss. Despite Gref’s description, very little paint survived the century (at least) of storms and meteor-showers. Its nose was lost to the earth, leaving the majority of the vessel beneath the cracked earth. Quin wasn’t a tourist; they knew better than to waste time sight seeing. I didn’t let myself get distracted by such an uncanny scene. After my first few months out here, I pushed the thoughts of the poor souls that perished here. Gref told me not to be too upset about it. They were a bunch of rich people from a “lost civilization of terrible proportions that were slain by the mighty LLF”. He knows that the thought of those bastards makes me itch, but he thinks he’s funny and I won’t take that away from him. 

After getting a lay of the land, I pried my way inside of the beast after taking a torch to this damaged port a story above the ground. Inside was musty as I expected. Stale air couldn’t touch me beneath the helmet. The floor was at an angle, leaving me hanging on door frames like a ladder for a giant. As I slowly made my way deeper into the belly, the glow of my headlamp kept things mostly visible until I encountered a map on the wall. It was one of those maps that had the big “you are here” thing on it, but that didn’t help a whole lot  considering I had no clue where the hell I was to begin with. Seemed I was near the back where the engines died. That’d explain the stains on the wall and floor. Despite the age, I was surprised how untouched everything was. The doors I managed to get open (or the ones that were already open) lead to nothing impressive. I found a few thousand in a currency I’ve never heard of and metal jewelry. A jumpsuit with a label on the breast that was probably a name and number. Despite how much I’ve scrapped through ships like this, I don’t think I’ve ever been this disoriented. Seeing beds flipped and against the wall made my stomach churn. Damned if I knew why. It just did. 

The deeper I went, the harder it was to see. Something lingered in the air. Some sort of gas. It had a color like mud and the density of moderate fog. I descended further and yeah, still plenty of this gas. Paranoid thoughts about the filters on my helmet filled my mind. I couldn’t remember the last time I changed them. Last week? A month? Fuck, I hope it hasn’t been a month. What else had I not ran diagnostics on? My feet. My feet hit the bottom. The side? The side was the bottom in this case. I’m breathing to much. I need to breathe. I can’t breathe. Am I choking? Choking on nothing. Choking like a baby on spit. Fucking mercy. My head hurts. Like someone stuck jumpers to my temples. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. My head is heavy. It’s full of the charge from the jumpers. The jumpers that the baby choked on. I reached the side only to choke on the bottom.

What the fuck happened. One minute I was running diagnostics and the next my mind went from solid to liquid out my ears. Splitting headache. I’m on the floor looking up at the fog that became harder to see through. Not even my lamp helped. I was the last bean in the can and there was only a fart from what was already eaten above me. Never thought I’d feel so small yet so big at the same time. I have all this space to move around yet nowhere to go. I’m not standing up. I’ll just crawl. Yeah, what could go wrong? Crawl on the bottom (side) of a totaled ship that had sharp rock and glass all over the place to grate me like cheese.

Left, right, left, right. My head was pounding. At least I could feel something in my head. The rest of my body tingled with the frigid chill of ice water, but it was something. Something was better than nothing. A box. The thing of my search. A fucking box. I reached for it with my stiffened arms to grab it. Click. It opened. Small tubes with clear liquid. A small container full of sterilized needles. Some other bottle of liquid. Good enough. Meds. Gref will know. Gref. Is he even alive? How long have I been down here? Fuck. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I died after that fall. Come to think of it, I never actually reached the bottom. Did I fall? I need to get the hell out of here.

I fell asleep, but only for a few hours. My blurred vision cleared around the center, leaving me with two inconvenient tunnels of perception. Yeah, I must’ve fallen. Whole body hurts and it hurts to stand. There’s a particularly bad pain in my back, but it isn’t stopping me from trying to climb out. 

The walls down here weren’t like the ones up a ways; they’re rusted and dented down here. Wrapped around the earth like tinfoil. The rest of the ship seemed inaccessible from here. There is far too much in the way for me to ever possibly dig through. Fucking Gref. I guess I can’t blame him for my stupidity. I don’t know why I go on these dangerous dives in the condition I’m in. I guess a greater part of me wants to make sure the old bastard doesn’t worry about me. I don’t know why. I don’t have anything to prove. Hell, maybe I do. I’ll be damned if I tell him about what happened though.

I’m lucky to be alive at this point. I just rested as much as I could before I began to climb with my hook and cables. With all the things that happened here, I wondered why I hadn’t seen a body yet. There’s no way that someone survived this crash. Stop. Stop. Left, right, left, right. I’m not fucking falling again. Left, right, left right. The gas is thinning. It’s easier to see. Left, right, left, right. I can see light. How long was I - No. Left, right, left right. I finally sat myself down near the port I burned through to get in. I threw my helmet off and finally took a drink and had another sawdust protein-bar. Last thing I wanted to do at the bottom was have to inhale all that shit when I was trying to eat this garbage. That’d really make me sick. Just seeing light eased my pain. The pain in the head, I mean. My back still hurt like a sonuvabitch.

As much as I wanted to rest, I didn’t want to stay in this metal tomb for another minute. Even the smallest pebble made a deafening echo as it banged against the metal on the way down. It didn’t bother me at first, but my amateur scrapper was showing. I was honestly disheartened and afraid. Helmet on. Hooks and ropes are ready to go.

I hopped on my bike, looking up at the thing that nearly killed me. I coughed, looking at the box I found before tucking it away again. I had at least two weeks. That was good enough. Despite getting what I was looking for, that wasn’t worth the scare. I drifted with great speed over the craggy landscape. The last thing I wanted was a ship like that to be my over-sized titanium casket. -Note from the Author- Hey there! My name is Redemption (Red for short), and I’m a writer and aspiring voice actor. The kind of things that I’ll be posting here are going to vary. Some stuff may be more silly like outtakes and what have you and others may be like this; short stories or even multi-part stories. Please let me know what you lot would like to see in the future. Thanks! Link to my Fiverr page (I use this as a portfolio since I can’t seem to get any orders anymore): https://www.fiverr.com/share/plxaDZ

[shavri-ffxiv]

My character’s name, if you couldn’t already see, is Shavri Rajah. She’s my plucky, sassy little adventurer OC from the world of Final Fantasy XIV. She’s been a near and dear OC of mine since the ancient days of Final Fantasy XI, but it wasn’t until the advent of virtual photography that I’ve gotten hooked into developing her.

See, I love characterization through both the visual and the written, but I’m not much of an artist and only an amateur writer on a good day. I started up an Instagram account one year ago at the behest of my partner in order to share some of the screenshots I had taken. Lo and behold there was an entire screenshot community of like-minded people sharing their amazing characters!

But Instagram isn’t quite the right avenue for writing or full-sized pictures (don’t box me in, man!), so here I am on Tumblr.

I’ll slowly start posting screenshots, writing, and even some art commissions I’ve gotten made.

I quite like my character and I hope that maybe you’ll like her, too! (Or at least tolerate her enough to enjoy some pretty pictures and cringe-worthy writing!)

[germanfulbrighteta]

Public transport fail

Sometimes German public transport works really well. Other times it doesn’t, like tonight, when I attempted to get from Cologne to Bonn. Normally the trip is around 20 minutes - today it took nearly 2 hours, at night, with multiple missed connections and unrelenting bad luck.

Our saga begins with me naively thinking I can walk into the Cologne train station at 7:50 pm, buy a ticket and catch a train at 7:53 pm. My reasoning is that my connection to my apartment would leave 2 minutes after my arrival - I would just make it. I hesitate too long before deciding to go for it, however, then forget which platform the train is on. I miss it. Strike one.

The next train is at 8:09 - not too bad, except not only will I have to wait nearly a 1/2 hour for my next connection, but I have to get to Bonn on an ICE train as well. ICE trains are meant to be traveled over further distances (this one’s ultimate destination was Nürnberg, way out in the East of Germany), meaning tickets are way more expensive. At this point I don’t care, however - I’ve been up since 6 am, had a full day at school plus a meeting that afternoon in downtown Cologne, and just want to go to bed. I book it, meander over to the (correct) platform, and get on the train. I’d be back in Bonn in 19 minutes, I happily think to myself.

Fate had other ideas in mind, however.

The departure time comes...it goes...and we’re still sitting there. 5 minutes pass, then 10, then 20. A lady’s voice finally announces over the speakers that due to an accident on the tracks the train - get this - will not only be delayed, but will also NO LONGER be going to Bonn. Instead, it’s rerouting to Beuel - apparently a city somewhere near Bonn, and, coincidentally, one I never intended on visiting.

My elation when the train finally begins to move is cut short when it abruptly halts in the middle of nowhere. The lady’s voice makes its appearance again after a few more minutes of waiting (note: trying to sound peppy and cheerful when your passengers are running thin on patience is a recipe for annoyance) to explain this new development, but then the train starts to move again and she utters the German equivalent of “well, we’re on our way now so never mind.” I guess we’ll never know what that was all about.

I finally arrive in Beuel and make my final critical error of the night - I buy a train ticket for a train that will never come. My amateur German train catching skills mislead me into thinking that surely a train will come shortly heading for Bonn, but to my extreme dismay I notice that all whopping 3 platforms at this tiny train station don’t service any trains to Bonn. I’m holding my second worthless train ticket of the evening, wondering how many pretzels I could have bought with those Euros instead.

I determine that I can take a regional tram to Bonn. I check the train times, and lo and behold, I’ll bet no one here would be surprised to learn that I missed it by 2 minutes. I wait 18 minutes for the next one, only to catalyze another unfortunate drama: I climb on, look at the train route map, wait a few stops and get off in Bonn, then realize at the last minute that I’m actually nowhere near Bonn, sprint back on just as the doors are closing, then wait another 10 minutes until I actually arrive in Bonn. I’m wondering whether to contact the writers of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and secure a potential film deal.

The final hardship of the evening is perhaps the most pitiful: my connecting train from Bonn to my apartment, which is only a 10 minute train ride, normally runs every 1/2 hour. However, as I learned tonight, it only runs once every HOUR after 9 pm. I notice the last one had left at 9:14 pm. I check my watch: 9:26 pm. Only 48 more minutes until the next one.

I’m done. I walk outside, find a cab, arrive back at my apartment after a short drive, collapse, break out the Kinder chocolate. The End. And I’m fine if there isn’t a sequel to this story anytime soon.