#I didn't realise how out of context that joke was until after I drew it

[procrastinating-everything07]

Magnus is such a precious snickerdoodle

[from-now-on-im-switzerland]

>Battle Scars

Jasper Hale x f¡reader

>Jasper finds the courage to show Y/n his scars, and tell her his story, but he wasn't expecting her response.

>Fluff.

>They're not together yet, so tension is at an all time high.

>this is my first xreader on tumblr so be nice? 🫠

°Reader's POV°

I had only been to the Cullen's house a number of times. I mean, Jasper never really wanted me there, just in case. However, Emmett and Alice would invite me over and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to see them.

I knocked on the door and Edward, expecting Bella, swung it open, his face fell before he cheered himself up again.

"Hey Y/n!" he said, an obvious fake smile on his face.

"You know you can just ask me about Bella right? We are friends." I sighed, still standing on the porch.

He laughed under his breath before letting me in. "She's at the Rez, she wanted to go see Jacob but she's coming here later on" I said to him, and with that he raced upstairs.

The way I found out about the Cullens was accidental. Jasper didn't tell me, nor did Bella, I found out in the most stupid way possible. I went round Bella's house, after visiting Seth for the day and Charlie told me to just head up to her room. I got there, opened the door and Edward was trying his best to scramble himself off of the ceiling, but his trouser leg was caught on a hook. The pair of them froze when I opened the door, as did I. That's when they had to let me know. Although now I think about it, they could've found an excuse.

That night Jasper came to my house. He was expecting me to ignore him, to tell him to leave, but I didn't. I don't think there's anything that could make me think any less of him. We sat in my back garden, and talked. I asked about his life as a vampire, he asked about my life as a human. I asked questions, as did he. He showed me his power and we laughed together for hours. At no point did it feel awkward, we just lay together on the grass looking at the stars. Of course, it hadn't rained in the past day so it was lucky we could lay on the grass at all.

I didn't realise just how long we were outside until I saw the smallest slither of the sun begin to peak over the horizon. Jasper rose to his feet as I asked another question, and said he needed to go, he took my hand ever so gently and kissed it so softly that I almost didn't feel it, then he left, in quite litteraly the blink of an eye.

That, even though the context of it is rather stupid, is one of my favourite memories. "Ehem.." Alice pulled me out of my thoughts. "You were daydreaming again" she clarified.

"Thanks Alice...is Jasper out hunting?" I asked, placing my jacket down on a chair.

"No, he's upstairs, c'mon I'll take you." she said, happily. We reached the top of the stairs and there he was, on the sofa reading. He looked up, and met my eyes.

Usually, if I came round, I'd take off my jacket and he'd be down the stairs instantly. He would stay with me, right behind me, he would take a step closer if any of the others looked at me for too long or if I stupidly stumbled over a fancy rug. But today, he was on the other side of the room. He still kept his eyes locked on mine, his beautiful golden eyes, but was meters away from me.

I walked over to him and sat down next to him. "Hey Jasper" I smiled.

He drew his arms closer to himself and sped off. I was confused until he sat back down again, with a hoodie on. "Thought vampires were immune to the cold or something?" I joked, trying to see that devilish smile, I'd grown all too familiar with.

"Something like that.." He smiled slightly, meeting my eyes once more. He seemed worried, something was on his mind.

"What's wrong?" I asked, eyebrows knitting together.

"I thought I was supposed to be the empath?" Jasper asked, smirking slightly, reluctantly drawing his eyes away.

I smiled "Don't change the subject, Cowboy" I playfully shoved his shoulder. "What's bothering you?"

He took a deep breath, not that he needed to, and met my eyes again once more. He stood up, and held out his hand for me to take. I placed my hand in his, and rose to my feet. He began to walk upstairs, and I followed close behind. We got to his room and he shut the door, letting go of my hand and walking towards the window.

"Is this where you show me your glittery skin? because 1: it's not sunny, just cloudy as always, and 2: Edward already showed me, he was way too eager." I said.

Jasper smiled once more as he rolled up the sleeves to his hoodie. "Are those sarcastic remarks constant, Darling? Or are you just in a funny mood?" He asked, turning his head to face me as his smile lingered.

"Jasper you should know by now, I make jokes all the time, even in situations I definitely shouldn't.." I said, subconsciously not paying attention to what jasper was trying to show me. I walked over to him standing next to him, explaining how my humour is subjective depending on who I'm with and the reasons I am the way I am. I turned and stood infront of him, using my hands to emphasise my words, before I was cut off by his hands gently wrapping around my wrists.

"A much as I love your voice, you're rambling, Darling" he said, smiling, and letting go.

I placed my hand over my mouth "I'm so sorry..I do that sometimes.." I mumbled against my hand.

He smiled again, "I know." he said, barely above a whisper.

He stood in the light of his window, his arms on show. "What did you want me to see?" I asked. He nodded down to his arms, so I looked.

His arms and the inside of his wrists were covered in bite marks and scratches. I took ahold of one of his arms and used my free hand to gently trace the scars I could see. He didn't wince or pull away from me, he just watched me as I stay fascinated by his scars. I tried to speak, but my throat wouldn't let me.

"..who did this?" I eventually managed to say, it wasn't very loud, but I knew he heard it anyway.

"Several newborn vampires" he answered. I lifted my head up and looked at him, guilt riddling my body. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

"I was somewhat manipulated by the woman who turned me. I thought...she loved me." I could hear the anguish in his voice. "but she was just using me, because of my gift. She wanted newborn vampire armies, I had the ability to control them. And once she was finished with them, I had to kill them off." his lip was slightly quivering now, and he shut his eyes. "I could feel everything they felt.." He didn't want to continue, I could tell. "She-"

I cut him off. Not with words. I placed my lips on one of his most prominent scars and kissed it gently. I looked back up at him as he opened his eyes in confusion. I turned back to his arms, in search for another bite. Each and every scar I could see received the same loving kiss I gave the first one.

"...what are you doing?" he asked, his voice shaken. I didn't answer, and instead just carried on, turning his arm every which way in order to kiss him.

"why are you-" he cut himself off this time. As I planted the last kiss on his wrist.

I looked up and he stay looking at his arms. I lowerd them back down to his sides, and lifted his chin up. "You're beautiful."

°Jasper's POV°

If my heart was still beating...

Out of every possibility I ran through my head before this, this was not one of them. She lifted up my chin, and my eyes met hers. Her beautiful, beautiful eyes.

"I-" I tired to speak, but the burning sensation flaming down my throat stopped me.

"don't." She said, placing her hands around my waist and taking a small step closer. "just..." She finished her sentence, by placing her head on my chest, and hugging me softly. I breathed inward, Carlisle said it helps, and after trying so hard to ignore the urge, I slowly brang my arms around her and hugged her back, resting my head on hers.

I could feel it radiating from her, but I didn't want to accept it, if I did, it would change everything, put my family in danger, put her in danger..but I felt it too. Is it a crime?

To love someone?

[jezmmart]

#AMaY Commentary

Wanted to give a little commentary on the #AMaY project but needed a couple days breather haha. This mostly focuses on how I created each day with the full hidden final image in mind, but I also talk a bit about like "Why Amy???" on a personal level at the bottom.

So firstly, worth revisiting this old popular music video if you have the time, it was pretty viral back when it came out. This will become relevant shortly - not a huge deal if you don't want to watch it, but the reason I'm bringing it up will spoil said music video a bit so yeah, mentioning it and encouraging a watch now without context.

So yeah, #AMaY! It really came down to the wire on finishing it due to work, and I had to eat into my 2-week comic buffer that I'm now due to rebuild to keep up in the end.

It was basically the result of just REALLY enjoying drawing Amy and joking with friends and such to the point of being like "do I really enjoy drawing her that much that I could do a whole month of it? I think I could". Wasn't wrong!

I didn't have any set prompt list in mind, my idea was just to draw what idea grabbed me on the day. Then, inspired by various things I've seen do this but particularly that aforementioned music video which does the same reveal at the end, I had the idea of "what if I make it so they all make a picture of Amy when connected up". I had already sketched out this idea for the first day:

But started over after having this moment of inspiration.

What I didn't factor in is how this sort of effect is MUCH easier with simpler, larger pictures. I really should have just done her head or something, then most of my backgrounds could just be vague geometric shapes but didn't realise the practicality of it until it was too late, which is why we ended up with so many backgrounds of strange patterns and twisty pipes and such that I would try to mask by putting in additional patterns and pipes and whatnot as red herrings that were lower contrast than the ones making up the Amy picture.

I drew out what the final secret picture was going to be across a grid representing the days in the month, then each day I would start with a canvas of one square and figure out "now what sort of background can I turn this into, and what kind of Amy would belong in that background".

Naturally I had some ideas I was already leaning towards - goth Amy was one of them. When I looked at this portion of the image, the only sort of background thing I could see was some kind of cartooney medieval tower with a rim at the top. From there I realised the skirt could be bushes or walls around some dramatic graveyard hills, the creases in the skirt could be a path as long as Amy is positioned to hide the fact that they aren't actually connecting in the context of the hidden image. In some cases where it wouldn't make sense for a background element to suddenly stop, I instead used foreground scenery, such as the gravestone directly behind Amy here, to turn the element into the shape I wanted. These pipes that are going behind metal panels in the Chemical Plant background in order to turn them into eyelash shapes are another example:

Then when I got the idea to turn the lineart of of hidden Amy's skirt rim and chest into long wispy spirits escaping from the earth or something, it was just a case of adding a bunch more random ones of those to the rest of the background with lower contrast so they don't stand out as much as the important ones do. The one in the foreground also does the job of cutting off the path that makes up the tiny bit of Amy's leg lineart. Within the context of the graveyard background, the path continues, but at the zoomed out view, it can't be distinguished at a glance.

This was the kind of thought process that went into the more elaborate backgrounds. Naturally there were some where the Amy idea COULD come first, because what was required of the background was so simple I was kind of free to turn it into anything - or just take a day off and do simple geometric backgrounds.

(Again though, you can see here that I did all the circles as red herrings to imply that the little blob in the corner is another one - but the corner one is a deeper colour than the others).

And of course there were some days where I just COULD NOT think of anything that wouldn't be completely conspicious, so I just made Amy take up as much space as possible so I only had a few background lines to deal with, trusting that the grand context of the final hidden image would solve it in the end.

The final note is that I didn't JUST draw from these segments - I was steadily building up the full collage as I went, so I'd always have a "bleed" area I'd draw into with the existing surrounding days to make sure that the final result DID all connect up.

So yeah, that's the broad strokes of it!

To end on something more philosophical, I did sort of end thinking to myself as I spent all these hours drawing her - "Hey though, what is it about Amy? WHY do I love drawing her so much? Why is this one my blorbo?"

Humour me as I get all deep about cartoon pink hedgehog but I think it comes down to a few factors.

Let's address the elephant in the room first - unless I'm specifically looking to evoke her canon-self, I draw her with a more anthropomorphic sexy figure compared to the blobby, noodle-limbed body she has in the actual series, don't I. You see, in Sonic Adventure 2 there was this one promotional 3D render of her where they gave her one heck of a rack and also once I was on the internet as a teenager and partaking in the fandom, I saw other fanartists do the same with thighs to match. This was all during a vulnerable time in my development and it all made me a little unwell about Amy permanently, I think. Like, that cute haircut, the knee-high boots, the shiny short-skirted dress, this is all stuff that looks really attractive when you slap it on a human body!

Sonic himself is like... peak character design. There's a reason he's lasted so long and holds such mass appeal as a cartoon character. The only way to improve on that perfection is to make a girl version, and that's pretty much what Amy is. So no wonder she's so fun to draw!

And tailing off that - as an aspiring femme NB person who has not always been so, I do think I've always had a particular interest in the hyper-feminine aesthetic, which Amy has in spades. I think that's also a big part of her allure to me as a character. Much like how I live a lot of my feminine interest vicariously through my pin-up art, dressing up my OCs in cute clothes and such, I think that extends to Amy as well; a kind of obsession with the youthful hyper-feminine aesthetic that I just never got to openly enjoy in any real way earlier in life because I hadn't figured all this NB stuff out yet. I just love cute girly pink stuff!!!

That'll do it I think. I could probably waffle on about each individual day's art if I really wanted to but this is long enough as is. Check out the alt text if you like as I often mention easter eggs and costume details in those to try and make sure those with eyesight issues are getting the same experience as those without.

Thank you again one and all for enjoying or at least putting up with the month!

[More: #AMaY | Art Insight]