#I think this was my first ever drawing I did of that frog

[oneofthosenightbees]

Old doodle I did while I was figuring out Gusions design

[dilatorywriting]

Monster Mayhem: Lion's Pride [Part 3]

Gender Neutral Reader x Leona Kingscholar Word Count: 6.2k

Summary: Your new job as a Full Time Royal Therapist does not pay nearly as well as you'd like. Or, Leona is more of a problem child than he would ever admit, but you're surprisingly okay at dealing with that.

[PART 1][PART 2] [PART 3]

Sometimes you felt like you hardly knew what it meant to be a functional person, living a comfortable life on the fringes of society. So in comparison, trying to think of what it meant to be an actual prince, ruling over all of said society was something you literally could not comprehend no matter how hard you tried to wrap your head around it.  

“If you’re a Prince, what were you doing in a hole?” you asked, because you had far too many questions and concerns, and this one at least seemed easy enough to address. And also because you were genuinely pretty curious.  

The newly dubbed ‘Leona’ twitched against your back and you felt the low rumble of his snarl work its way from the depths of his gut all the way up through his chest and out his mouth.

“Holy shit,” Ace wheezed. “Screw this. I’m getting out of here before I wind up implicated as an accessory in your murder.”

And so your trusty friend abandoned you to the wolves lions?—darting away so quickly he always forget his bag, shoes, and everything else in the process.

You waved after him as he departed, knowing full well that he’d wind up stumbling back within the week, maybe two at most. He always did, no matter how much he complained about your Present Company. Plain old ‘murder’ was actually one of his more polite accusations. When he’d run into your Hunter friend the first time, Ace had gone on a wildly incoherent rant about how he was going to find your corpse strung up in a tree like some weird, ritual, sacrifice. And then that had devolved into something-something cannibalism or other. The visiting Hunter had just thrown his head back and laughed, positively enamored with the grisliness of it all. Ace had vanished for almost an entire month after that encounter, but he did come back—glaring up at you with a miserable pout like you were the one who’d gone and fucked off for thirty whole days.

Leona snorted and you felt the puff of breath against the back of your neck.

“Coward,” he grumbled, though he didn’t sound particularly displeased about your friend’s sudden departure.

“Fear lets us be brave,” you responded, wise as a sage. Or maybe an old frog in a puddle.

“Yeah?” he intoned, rolling his eyes. “And when’s that little rat ever been brave?”

“There’s always tomorrow,” you chirped, and that snort turned into something dangerously close to a chuckle. Which—gasp!—how dare such a pleasant sound fall from the lips of someone so obstinately determined to be otherwise! You grinned at the low tones of it, only for the snickering to cut off sharply in his throat once he’d realized what he was doing. And then of course he shoved you forward and out of his lap with a great amount of indignant snarling.

You laid there for a few minutes—face down in the sun-warmed grass and laughing quietly about just how ridiculous this stupid Lion was, before finally sitting up with a pleasant stretch. He could put on airs all he liked, you knew there was kernel of something far less angsty and murderous buried at the heart of him.

“So,” you hummed, lazily making your way back to your feet. “What exactly have I done to draw the realm’s Prince to my doorstep?” You squinted at him suspiciously. “You’re not here about the fairy gate thing, are you? Because that was actually an accident.”

“The what?” he frowned, brow pinched in confusion.

You waved him off. “Ah, nothing, nothing.”

Something in his jaw twitched, like now he was going to push the subject out of principle of you being shifty. But he just sighed and brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“I need your help,” he said finally. Just as crabby as the first time he’d asked, if perhaps just a touch less imperious.

You arched a brow. “I think you’ve mentioned that already, yes.”

Silence.

The Lion stared you down with a slowly deepening scowl, and you stared back with a smile as placid and unmoved as the shallow pond you’d nearly drowned Ace in not an hour before.  

“If I apologize, you’ll help me?” he asked after a long moment, the question turning sharp at the end on a bitten of growl.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” you hummed back and he crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with all the pleasantry of someone undergoing a root canal. And all the sincerity of Ace swearing that this was the last time he’d get caught evading the tax man, promise.

You sighed, feeling a bit cheated. But you hadn’t really stipulated anything beyond those two little words leaving his mouth, so if anything, that was on you.

“Alright,” you huffed. “What is it you need help with?”

The Lion glared at you suspiciously for a long moment—glowing eyes narrowed into slits and tail twitching back and forth like he was swatting flies. Finally, he sighed and lifted his hands out in front of him with a pointed flex.  

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” he frowned sourly, wrists twisting to display the pointed claws tipping his fingers. “I’m not supposed to get stuck in between.”

Your eyes traced the fluffy tufts of his round ears, the black-tipped tail swishing irritably at his hind, and allowed yourself a melancholy sort of huff.

“But you look good like this,” you pointed out sadly. Because he really, truly, did. Leona without his squishy lion ears would just be… grumpy. Miserable, and angular, and angry. Nothing soft worth coddling at all.

“That’s not the point!” he snapped, baring his overlarge canines at you. There was a darker cast along his cheekbones that seemed to be making a valiant effort to crawl all the way up into his fringe. “And don’t fucking say that!”

You frowned. One second this stupid dick wanted to be praised to the Heavens and back! Practically swanning about, demanding you bow down and acknowledge his blatant superiority. But, oh no. Apparently your meager half-sentence masquerading as a compliment was too much for his delicate, princely, sensibilities.

“Fine,” you griped. “You’re ugly.”

He growled—low and rumbling—and if he was anymore of a cat you’d say you could see his hackles raising in indignation. But before he could launch into another vicious, verbal, evisceration of your person, you cleared your throat loudly in an attempt to get him back on track.   

“What do you mean by ‘stuck in between?’”

He sneered down at you testily for a moment before reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose again and letting out a put-upon sort of sigh that was not at all indicative of the fact that he was the one asking you for help.

“The Shift. When you found me in that pit, I should have been able to Shift between that form and this one without issue,” he frowned, brow tugging down tight with something a bit more disquieted than his usual, flat, annoyance. “The iron was a problem, but once I was out of the trap, it should have been fine. I’ve dealt with cursed snares like this before, and the effects have never lingered as long as this one has.”

You blinked owlishly. That did sound… fairly unpleasant. And honestly, if you were in his position you’d also be at least a little concerned that something else was at play. But, still, all that being said—

“I’m sorry,” you frowned, more or less genuine. Perhaps leaning a bit harder into less.“But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with me.”

“You were down there with me,” he argued. “You dismantled the trap.”

Uh, yeah. By messing with bits that looked breakable until they broke. Not exactly a high-level intellectual pursuit.

You didn’t say that, of course. Because after a few days watching you scuttle about your homestead like a particularly vocal lizard in the dirt, you were sure he already thought you were stupid enough without you outright admitting to it. Nevertheless, the Lion observed your zip-lipped silence with an ever-deepening scowl.

“You took it apart,” he tried again, nearly a growl.

“Yes,” you said with a nod.

“You know how you did it,” he continued, firm. At your lack of affirmative, he pushed again. “You know. I watched you do it!”

You raised your hand nervously and made a little so-so tilting motion.

Anyone less refined would no doubt have had their head in their hands at this point, but Leona just curled his lip at you and looked like he was fighting valiantly not to put your own very silly head through a wall.

“It was charmed,” he spat. “Bound up with talismans, and cursed down to its very moldings. That isn’t something any random farmer could walk up and break.”

“Oh,” you blinked, taken aback, and struggled to recall if there had been anything so obviously enchanted about the trap you’d fiddled into bits. “Was it?”

And head had officially met hands. He ground his clawed fingers into his temples like you were a headache that with enough determination and massaging he may somehow be able to will away.

“Couldn’t you go just home if this is such a big problem?” you asked, still genuinely baffled at it all. “Get help from your family? I mean, you’re a Prin—”

“No,” he interrupted, emerald eyes gone glacier cold.

You frowned, as unimpressed by his prickliness as you usually were. But something in you was hesitant to prod at whatever it was that had managed to tug a feral rage so tightly across his face—like drawing a shade over a window until the entire home was cloaked in shadow, or slipping away behind a carved mask too heavy to ever wear comfortably. It was an expression so sharp and so bitter that if you hadn’t only just yesterday watched this stubborn man lounge about in the sun as your chickens hopped all over him like he was the world’s most carnivorous jungle gym, you wouldn’t ever have known that they could be the same person at all. 

“Alright,” you shrugged, and some of that angry, hunched, defensiveness eased into confusion.

“Hah?” he frowned.

“Alright,” you said again. “We’ll figure it out here.” He glared over at you balefully, and you waved off the obvious retort on the tip of his tongue about something-something-you have no idea what you’re doing-something-something-dangerous risks and lifelong consequences-blablabla. “I have a friend who would know a lot more about those kinds of traps and talismans that I do. He could help, probably.”

“Probably?” he scoffed. Though when he rolled his eyes, they weren’t quite so hate filled—lids hooded with a familiar, begrudging sort of irritation rather than outright malice.

“He’s a bit of an enigma,” you explained—wiggling your fingers in a little, sparkly, dance to emphasize the, well, enigmatic part.

Another huff. But amidst that grumpy bellyaching, you watched those fluffy ears of his slowly perk back up atop his head, and his tail swish leisurely behind him. The Lion certainly didn’t look happy (but did he ever? So was that really a fair comparison?), but he definitely seemed like he’d thawed into something less ‘frigid dead of winter’ and more ‘unpleasantly nippy spring morning.’

“Weirder than you, herbivore?” he sniffed, looking down his nose at you and crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “I find that hard to believe.”

Normally you would too. But, well…

“He’s charming,” you chirped pleasantly, and Leona’s face twisted up like you’d served him a bowl of rancid yogurt.

.

.

That night you composed a letter to your dearest Hunter friend. You thanked him for bringing you the White Moor Stag, elaborated a bit on the new marinade you’d been experimenting with, and then ended the whole thing with a polite plea for his aid in deconstructing the mechanisms of a magical trap you’d encountered. You bribed one of your two carrier pigeons with some snacks and watched it fly off into the unknown with a little, cream-colored envelope tied to its foot. Message talismans were much simpler and far more convenient, but the Hunter always seemed to appreciate the personal touch of postal birds.

Leona glared at you from the window, and made some dramatic swipe at your pigeon like he meant to knock it out of the air. The poor bird tottered about like an overfilled water balloon—jiggling and wriggling in its roundness before eventually righting itself and continuing on into the sky with a warbled coo coo.

“Don’t be rude,” you huffed at him.

“I can’t believe you still won’t let me in,” he sneered from beneath the fluff of that blanket you’d gifted him. “I apologized.”

“Yes, but you actually have to mean it,” you explained, not unkindly, as he prowled just beyond the glass. “But we’re making progress!” you beamed. “That’s something! Maybe you’ll make it in here within the next five years, hmm?”

“Or I could just wipe out the entirety of your ridiculous dirt farm now,” he threatened, a bit of that sandy magic swirling sinisterly along his fingers.

“You certainly could, your highness,” you agreed easily. His lip curled unpleasantly, but that glowing, gritty, arcana faded away and he didn’t move from where he’d tucked himself up under the duvet.

After another solid fifteen minutes of his pissy glowering and barbed insults, you pointedly unclipped the ties on your curtains and let them fall shut so that his ridiculous pouting was hidden away behind the thin, cotton, mess of poorly stitched flowers and herbs.

(You did leave a nice dinner plate on the ledge before that, with extra portions of meat and a neatly frosted cookie for dessert. Because as much as your day had been a bit rough, you had a feeling his melancholy extended far beyond being left out in the dark for another evening.)

.

.

The next morning, your doddering pigeon returned with an elegantly bound scroll—all embellished with golden filagree and tied up in a neat, crimson, bow.

“Why does this freak call you ‘mon cher ami,’” Leona sniffed, tongue curling awkwardly over the unfamiliar words.

You sighed and debated snatching the letter back, but all that would probably culminate in was the paper in tatters and a smug beastman lording his superior letter-wrangling skills over your head like a trophy.

“It’s just one of his little ticks,” you explained with a shrug. “I told you—he’s charming.”

“Ah, yes,” Leona drawled, tracing a claw along the parchment’s edge with a soft shhhhhft. A raised, white, line cut across the paper’s surface like the beginnings of a wound. “Waxing poetic nonsense in a foreign language. Rambling on about all kinds of useless fucking garbage. Charming.”

“You,” you snipped, reaching out to smack at his tightening grip before he could rend the poor correspondence to bits, “are not one to talk about ‘charming.’”

“Oh?” he scoffed. He maneuvered around your tutting to hold the letter over your head. Typical. When you leaned forward to try and wrangle it back, Leona leaned in closer—eyes going hooded and lips curling into a smug little smirk that promised all sorts of trouble. “Haven’t had any complaints about that before. Who’d be saying otherwise?”

“The person you left stranded at the bottom of a pit, you inglorious oaf,” you griped. His ears immediately swiveled to pin flat against the top of his head, and you used the distraction of his indignation to finally snatch back your prize. “Besides,” you huffed, straightening out some of the new wrinkles. “Not very Prince-like, is it? A real prince would have swept in to save the idiot in distress. Sword drawn, banners flying,” you sighed, a bit too besotted with your own imaginings. “Why did you have to be such a dick, huh? Ruined my fantasies for the rest of my life.”

“And what?” Leona snapped. “Some rogue bastard sending you cursive garbage does it for you?”

“Better than being left for dead in a hole after saving their life,” you smiled—perfectly, poisonously, pleasant.

Leona rumbled something indiscernible under his breath and turned to glare petulantly off across your garden.

“Besides,” you hummed, looking over the letter. “There’s more important things. Like this—right here. Do you know what a self-bored stone is? He’s thinking maybe there was a process like that with the iron shackles. Or maybe something to do with seeping the components in herbs… Hmm…”

“Whatever,” Leona scoffed. “I’ll try whatever it takes to fix this shit.”

You clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, tête de noeud!”

“The fuck did you just call me?!”

“Poetic nonsense,” you chirped, and Leona looked half ready to drop you back into the hole where he’d found you.

.

.

The first attempt to aid the Lion Prince in his conundrum didn’t go particularly well.

You’d tried to work off of the whole ‘overlap with a self-bored stone’ theory, but all that really amounted to was you gesturing like an over-serious crossing guard for him to walk under every low hanging branch, every arch, beneath the stunted beams of the chicken coop. You dangled rocks from strings and waved around your little creations like slightly more dangerous pompoms.

Penelope clucked irritably when one of the pebbles fell with a plunk into her nest, and Leona frowned up at you from where the wayward chicken had firmly situated herself in his lap.

“How was any of that supposed to help?”

You drew a blank and promised to try something new tomorrow.

The next day you tried herbs. The Hunter had listed off quite a few that were known to cause lingering issues with magical creatures, and you harvested the lot of them from your garden with ease. You held them up to Leona’s face one by one, brow furrowed in concentration, as you waited for… something.

“How is this any better than the rocks?” he complained.

You pushed the bright, butter-yellow, blossoms of some Saint John’s Wort under his nose until he sneezed and shoved you away with a slew of indignant threats to your person.

The following few days were spent perusing your meager library. You carted every book you owned on magic, and binding rituals, and rune smithing out into the yard. Leona looked over at the slowly growing pile of tomes with a truly unimpressed scowl.

“You could have just invited me inside,” he griped, rolling his eyes. He was splayed out in the grass at your side, his head tossed lazily across your lap after he’d complained that he needed at least some leverage to see what you were trying to read.

“Nice try,” you hummed, reaching for your page of hastily scribbled notes. “But you’re not getting off without a genuine apology that easy.”

A week passed in this fashion, with you attempting to string together more and more ludicrous ideas—throwing everything you had at the wall and hoping something, anything, would stick. But Leona’s ears stayed tufted and round. That tail seemed to only grow more twitchy, his claws longer and sharper.

You sent the Hunter another letter and waited anxiously for a reply. When it arrived the next morning, Leona snatched it from your pigeon before you’d even made it out your front door. It was a miserable sort of day—pouring rain and with nothing but the grey cloud cover overhead to color the world.

He read it over once, twice, before dropping it to the ground. You could see the tendons twitching along his jaw, could practically hear his molars grinding in his frustration.

You plucked the note from the grass and looked it over carefully.  

‘Mon ami, while I am loathe to address this, perhaps it is not the make of this trap at all that is causing such a vexation? Is there any chance that rather than this being a lingering malady, that this friend of yours was simply unable to overcome the initial curse in the first place?’

You glanced back up at Leona, who was intermittently clenching his fists at his sides. You could see the harsh indentations from where his claws were digging into the skin of his palms.

‘Sometimes such things just happen, je crains. The flesh may be willing, but often the spirit is weak. You mentioned this Roi du Leon has a powerful family he may turn to for assistance. Certainly one of them may be strong enough to overcome this curse for him, even if he perhaps is not.’

“Of course it’s all because I’m a fuck up,” Leona snarled. Some of that spitting, sandy, magic of his seeped into the air. It bit at the rain like an overeager dog. You could see it dancing along his skin—fighting to pull his features one way or another.

“He didn’t say that,” you pointed out gently. “And even if you were, there’s nothing wrong with needing help sometimes. Your family—"

“—Would rather I keeled over dead and stopped sullying my brother’s perfect fucking reputation!” he snapped. “Heir to the King’s Roar,” he scoffed. “Stupid. I was never going to be a king to begin with. And even if I had been born first, they would have deposed me to put their flawless, favorite, golden boy on the throne anyways.”

That... That was a lot. You stared at the pacing Lion with wide eyes—unsure how to help, unsure if any attempts to do so would only make this worse. This was—this was so above your ‘happy, homey, hermit’ paygrade.

“Of course this is all because of me,” he hissed, that roiling, angry, arcana coiling around him like curdled milk. The pupils in his eyes flickered oddly from round to thin-cut, hard, lines. Beastly. “Of course it was because I wasn’t good enough.”

“Leona,” you tried, as gentle as you could be.

The Prince threw his head back and laughed. And laughed, and laughed.

“I should have known!” he cackled, borderline hysterical. “I should have fucking known!”

“Leona—” you tried again, reaching out a hand.

Only to be immediately knocked on your ass by an explosion of magic.

You’d heard of self-destruction—of implosion. The arcane wonders of the world were a wily and unyielding mistress. While creatures like Leona who were so naturally steeped in ancient magics and sorcery could control that beast more adeptly than some little mortal like you, it didn’t make them any less susceptible to its dangers. If anything, they had it worse. It was like sitting in a shallow stream versus wading out into a roaring ocean. So much more opportunity, such a higher aptitude for greatness, but far too easy to drown beneath the churning tides of it all.

The inky, geometric, swirls along his arms pulsed like a heartbeat. They crawled along his skin and traced black patterns into his veins. Even you could feel the horrible, dark, stickiness of it—as the magic ate him alive. His face twisted back and forth between human and animal, and you watched him contort and snarl under the weight of it before turning on you with a vicious roar.

Uh oh.

The first wave of magic seared the ground, leaving nothing but strange, grey, sand in its wake. The more he snapped and clawed wildly at anything and everything, the more that dusty desert spread. You managed to hop out of the way of most of it—sparing a single, sad, thought for all the poor plants you’d worked so hard to cultivate dying a miserable, grainy, death.

The next arc of magic shot straight from his clawed fingers, and it managed to catch the flesh of your forearm. It was sharper than any dagger or sword that you’d ever had the pleasure of accidentally nicking yourself with, and it tore its way down your arm like a raging beast, leaving an eerie, tacky, bubbling mess in its wake. And ouch did it hurt—like someone was taking a fistful of coarse sand and rubbing it into the open wound. You ground your teeth against the strange, gnawing, sensation and hastily wrapped a bit of torn fabric around the weeping gash to keep it a bit more contained. You waited for the worst of it to pass, for that initial bite to fade into a more manageable throb. But it didn’t. It just got sharper and tighter, hotter and hotter. For a moment it felt like your skin was crackling—like firewood popping and splitting beneath the weight of a blaze. From across the field, Leona made a noise like a hurricane given voice, and you bit back a groan.

‘Oh come on,’ you hissed to yourself. ‘Not now, please.’  

And while you’d been mostly referring to the Lion losing another brick of his sanity fort, your wound seemed to pulse at the command—a sensation not unlike the soft drone of the wards carved deep into the support beams of your dilapidated home, and an impression of words tingling along your nerves without any real shape or form. ‘Alright. Later then.’ Like a breath of wind along your fingertips. That pulsing doubled back, and the wrap you’d hurriedly tied around your forearm hummed low with gentle arcana.   

And then the cracking stopped. Just like that. Like it’d given up on eating you alive and decided to head home early for the day.

Huh, you though a bit dazedly, before hurriedly ducking out of the way of another swipe.

You clutched your still smarting but at least now functional arm to your chest, and Leona turned on you and your ethereal booboo with a raging snarl. But then that glowing glare caught on the blood trailing down towards your wrist in too dark, too thick, rivulets and his eyes went wide. It wasn’t much, but the strange bought of shock rocketing through him gave you a handful of seconds of ceasefire. You reached into your pocket with your uninjured hand and pulled out a thick bit of cardstock. This was supposed to be for emergencies, goddamn it! And you’d spent so much money on this stupid little thing! And—

You shook off the mildly delusional complaints bogging down your brain and unfolded the paper between your fingers. The sigils inked into it hummed against your skin, and the rain sluffed off its face like the cold and the damp were no bother at all.

“Fucking—” you flung the talisman at your ridiculous, rampaging, guest. It fluttered like the beat of a hawk’s wings and dove towards him with just as much vicious precision. “GO TO SLEEP!”

The enchantment smacked into his face with an echoing THUNK and you watched those too-bright eyes of his roll up into his head as he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

With the main source of all the Magical Warfare knocked unconscious, most of the miasma began to disperse—like dust caught up in a gale. The rain washed away the rest. It slid into the mud and seeped back into the earth. The plants and animals seemed to give a collective sigh, and some of your more courageous chickens even started to venture in close to peck at the leftover destruction.

You approached the felled Prince hesitantly. The talisman had been meant for subduing an enemy with a more human constitution, so you doubted it would keep him down for very long.

“Hey,” you grouched, poking his side. He twitched a bit but didn’t move otherwise. “Hey, asshole,” you tried again. Still, nothing. Uh oh.

You reached down to wedge an arm under him and hoist him upright. The singed skin of your forearm brushed along his jaw as you attempted to maneuver his bulk, and his nose twitched sharply at whatever scent was trapped in the dark, cracking, gash there. His brow scrunched up like you’d just doused him in spoiled milk, so naturally you went about waving your wounded flesh beneath his nostrils like the world’s strangest smelling salts.

After a moment he blinked back awake, face twisted up into the most properly disgruntled mien of distaste that you’d ever seen on a person who’d only just barely managed to claw their way back into the world of the living.

“Herbivore,” he rumbled, still looking more than a bit dazed.

Good enough.

You manhandled him back onto his feet as best you could—turning yourself into an impromptu crutch to try and get him mobile again. The sand shifted and sank beneath your heels, making dragging his ridiculous, dramatic, ass even more of a challenge. As you hauled him towards your cottage, you complained to him in earnest. Every little irritation under the sun. Half because you’d probably never have another opportunity to bitch at him so thoroughly without getting your own earful of grievances in return, half to keep him conscious—keep him focused on staying here. With you. And not… Wherever it was he’d gone in those moments of delirium.  

“I still don’t get why you call me that,” you griped, readjusting your grip on him when he’d started to slide down to the point his nose had buried itself against your collarbone. “Herbivore. I’ve cooked so much meat for you since you decided to crash here. Talked about how I prepare it, and the flavors I experiment with—I literally gave you some from my own sandwich when we first met! That I ate the rest of! In front of you!—”

When you finally herded him over the threshold and into your little cottage, the wards and their protection slipped around him like the soft current of a stream. You hardly even noticed the way the old magics ruffled his hair—and that was only because you were actively looking, half convinced the house was still about to toss up an invisible barrier and send him sprawling back into the dirt.

Leona wobbled on his feet, and his eyes were still too far away and grey.

You grabbed him by the ear and maneuvered his too-tall self into one of your rickety kitchen chairs. The wood groaned under the sudden press of his dead weight, but it didn’t collapse beneath him so it wasn’t worth fussing over. Once you were certain he wasn’t about to fold over sideways and crumple to the ground (or at least, that he was angled enough over a rug that he wasn’t going to crack his head on the stone floor), you rushed off to your bookcases and shelves and began hurriedly rumaging through your collection of nonsense.

The charms, the charms. Where were your emergency charms?! You’d thought you left them right there on the—Ah! There we go.

You pulled the raggedy binder from its place on the shelf, blew away the coating of dust that had settled over the top of it, and returned to your patient.

You flipped open the worn leather hooks and began sorting through the dozens upon dozens of sheets of enchanted parchment within. They were unimpressive—just small, rectangular, bits of faded paper inlaid with the softest kinds of magic. Not meant for much more than coaxing warmth into chilly limbs or placing a soft kiss over a scraped knee. But medicines were medicines—whether arcane in origin or otherwise. If you—if you just doused him in the things, that would probably work. Right? Of course it would. That made perfect sense.

So you slapped the first talisman square in the middle of his forehead. Leona swayed at the wet SMACK of the paper gluing itself to his soaked-through skin, but aside from the faintest, startled, widening of his eyes, he didn’t do anything else to complain. So you stuck the next charm to his cheek, and then another on the opposite one too.

“Magic overuse is dangerous,” you chastised as you went about layering a veritable novel’s worth of pasty, paper, enchantments up his arms. The soft spells worked their way into his skin, and you watched those twisting, black, shapes skitter back up towards where they’d once sat peacefully curled around his bicep. “Are you trying to kill yourself, hah?!”

Instead of snapping back at you like normal, he just sort of… sat there. Accepting your angry accusations in frosty silence. He absolutely looked like a cat that you’d fished out of a bag in the river. Pathetic, and sad, and droopy. And… quiet. So, very, quiet. You frowned, because as much as you didn’t particularly enjoy being insulted every minute of the day, the Lion’s biting little remarks had become… familiar, at the very least. Even if they weren’t entirely pleasant. Even if he was far from pleasant.

The dampness on his skin was starting to curl the edges of your talismans, and you reached forward with a huff to at least pull the freezing, soaked-through, vest off his shoulders. The leather jacket landed with a wet plap on the stone floor, a cold puddle already pooling around all its stupidly intricate, embroidered, edges. Something fluttered out of one of the open pockets—small, and off white, and crinkled. You stepped over the whole mess to retrieve a pile of towels and didn’t give it a second thought.

“Make a mess of my home, why don’t you,” you complained, dropping one of the towels over the entirety of his head before reaching forward to start drying him off with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. “Drip all over the floors I just mopped, why don’t you. Be emotionally constipated and almost turn my whole yard into a sand pit, why don’t you—”

A hand reached out to snag your wrist, and you let him pull you away from your attempts to rub all that stupidly thick hair straight off his head.

From beneath the curtain of the cotton towel, you could see Leona glaring at the long, dark, scratch curling along your forearm. It certainly wasn’t… nice to look at. The gymnastics of getting him into your cottage had managed to displace the impromptu bandage, so the whole of it was just there. Bruised, and dark, and odd looking. But ugly or not, it was hardly bleeding or anything anymore! And he was the one who had almost just self-destructed in your front yard!

‘Think of the accusations!’ you wanted to wail. ‘Can you imagine the garbage I would have to deal with if I wound up with a dead royal fertilizing my garden?! No thank you!’

But before you could complain about his fussing, his claws flexed against the soft skin of your palm and you saw the muscles along his forearm tense—like he was fighting to keep still.

“You should be dead,” he muttered, terse.

You huffed. “Look, I know you think humans are all sorts of pathetic, but I’m not that—”

“You should be dead,” he repeated, sounding as if the words had to tear their way out of his throat—scraping like shards of glass all the way up.

You stared at his dark eyes and dripping bangs—the shadows playing across his cheeks and the strange, hollow, wrongness that had settled over all of him. With a heavy sigh you plopped yourself down into the chair across from his and dragged a handful of the leftover charms your way. Pointedly, you took one and slapped it over the wound. And then another.  

“See?” you said, flexing your wrist in his grip to put the creeping, black, cut on display. The talismans glowed softly against your skin and the lingering whisps of darkness licking at the the injury began to fade. “All better. Not something a dead person would say at all.”

Leona frowned, but at least it looked a bit more annoyed than outright bleak. And besides, frowns were better than whatever that stoic, expressionless, numbness had been.

“Though I appreciate your concern,” you grinned, pointedly sharp and prodding. Like a toddler standing by with a stick, hoping to poke out a reaction. “Truly, whatever would I do without the Great Lord Lion there to fret over me?”

But instead of the acidic ‘I wasn’t fucking worried,’ that you were expecting, or even a more muted grumble of dissent, Leona’s brow just pinched in displeasure and your awkward attempts at teasing faded into terse silence.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, almost too quiet to hear—his head low and eyes lower.

You sighed and twisted your wrist around to pat at his hand. There was the faintest tremor in his fingers and you tangled your own between them to give him something to squeeze, something to hide the shiver of lingering malaise that he would no doubt deny with his dying breath. You observed the stern, tight, expression warping his otherwise handsome face—the miserable, puckered, angle of his mouth and the way the emerald of his eyes was cut through with a shadow of genuine remorse. You reached out with your other hand to pet at his soft, round ears. They squished flat beneath your palm and your lips twitched up into a fond, little smile. Leona tipped his chin just enough to glower at you from beneath his bangs with no real heat, and you sighed and gave him one more pat for good measure.

“You’re forgiven.”

.

.

.

TAG LIST [CLOSED]

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[thisapplepielife]

Written for the @steddiemicrofic March challenge.

Five, Nine, Nine, Two

March Prompt: Pin | Word Count: 388 | Rating: G | CW: None | Tags: Established Relationship, Banter, Long-Term Relationship, Older Steddie, Still Together, But Still Pushing Each Other's Buttons

"What do you mean you don't remember your PIN? You created it!" Steve yells, and Eddie just keeps moving in front of the computer. Pacing. Fretting. Worrying his hands. 

"First off, I didn't pick it. They just gave it to me and I'm expected to remember it? It's, like, eight letters. Maybe some numbers. I don't know. I'm too old for this," Eddie rambles, staring at the computer screen. Like he can will it back to the forefront of his memory.

He doesn't remember. Can't. It's just gone, vaporized.

"You didn't write it down?" Steve snaps, digging around the cluttered desk, scattering a handful of crumpled Post-Its across the keyboard. "None of these are it?!"

"You told me to stop doing that, so I did!" Eddie argues back. Because Steve had forced him to stop writing down his passwords and PINs months ago, and now, well, this is what they have to show for it.

Eddie hums under his breath, trying to remember if he made up a little song about it or not. He does that sometimes. It helps.

"Stop singing under your breath and think!" Steve snaps, and Eddie waves his hands around his head, trying to get Steve to be quiet so he can concentrate.

"I am thinking!" Eddie yells, and then starts mumbling, singing under his breath, "Pineapple peach, dog frog, five-"

"Nine, nine, two…" Steve sings along with him, clearly annoyed, drawing out that two like it has seventeen letters instead of three. "You sang that stupid nonsense song all last week. I don't want it stuck in my head again, stop it!"

Eddie stops. Looks at Steve, "That's my password."

He taps the keyboard slowly, one hunt-and-pecked key at a time: PPDF5992.

And sure enough, they're in.

Steve kisses Eddie on the side of the head, then sits down, guiding the mouse cursor to the little applications message box that's lit up in the corner, indicating there's a response waiting.

"It's there," Steve says, mouse still hovering.

"Well, click it!" Eddie demands, putting both his hands on Steve's shoulders, squeezing, urging him on.

Steve clicks it.

Accepted.

Eddie shakes Steve's shoulders in excitement. They passed the home visit. The shelter is giving them a cat. And not just any cat, the most perfect cat Eddie has ever seen in his whole life.

I don't know why this was the first thing that came to mind, but it's definitely inspired by Marshall from How I Met Your Mother and his singing nonsense to remember his bar exam password.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @steddiemicrofic and follow along with the fun! ❤️

[not-magdi]

Face Masks

Summary: Pablo discovering the wonderful world of face masks

Pairing: Pablo Gavi x fem!reader

Warnings: none just pure fluff

Words: 534

Skincare was extremely important to you. You enjoyed having a nightly routine, which helped you stay calm and sane despite your hectic life with your boyfriend, Pablo Gavi.

You have your serums and your creams all nicely lined up on the bathroom shelf. All organized by colours and sizes, it's your little happy place.

Pablo didn't understand it at first, not getting behind the idea of standing an hour in the bathroom, smearing different things on your face. But after you explained their importance to you, he accepted it. He still doesn't understand it but learns to live with it.

You're currently standing in your holy bathroom, applying a face mask to your face, as you feel two hands snake around your waist.

"When are you coming to bed amor.?"

"Soon, I'm almost done."

Dipping his finger in the container, he plays with the mask and draws a disgusted face.

"And you put that on your face because you want to?"

You chuckle and nod your head, finishing applying it to your face. Then, an idea sparked in your mind.

"Hey, can I apply some to your face?"

"Absolutely not!"

"Come on, pleaseeeeee?"

You try to give him your best puppy-dog eyes, and not surprising you at all, it takes exactly one minute for him to budge.

"Fineee, but my face better be as soft as a baby's butt after this"

You celebrate your success for a second before you beckon him to sit on the counter before you. Finding the most stupid headband you own, you put it in his head.

Taking a step back, you admire how your boyfriend looked with his hair all put-back. You started to laugh at the sight before you. He looked like a little kid with his little frog headband.

"You having fun, cariño?"

"Yes, very much."

Composing yourself, you start to apply the mask to his face. Which was harder than you might think because that little shit kept trying to move away all the goddam time.

"Amor, that's cold!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Beauty is pain, baby. Beauty is pain."

After you finished applying the mask to his face, you took a good look at your artwork. It was the cutest thing you have ever seen in your entire life.

Pablo's face, completely covered in a white face mask, with a pout on his lips, was a sight that was now permanently burned in your brain.

Grabbing your phone, you take a photo of this sight to post it afterwards.

"Really, you gonna take a photo of my suffering?"

"Yes, now come here. I wanna take a selfie too."

You take a few selfies and cuddle up on the bed to wait until the masks are dry.

"Amor, are they supposed to burn?"

"Uhh, yeees?"

You let out a sigh of relief as you hear the timer go off. Dragging Pablo to the bathroom, you wash the mask off his face, chuckling at his surprised face, when he feels how soft his skin got.

"Dios mio, it's so soft!"

"I know, face masks are awesome right?"

"Sí, cariño, we need to do this more often OK?!"

Laughing, you nod your head, kissing his cheek, happy how excited he got over face masks.

your_username

Liked by pedrigonzáles, mikkykiemeney and 430.000 others

your_username couldn't convince him to keep the headband 😂

tagged: pablogavi

pablogavi: love you ❤️ and my soft skin

pedrigonzáles: Stylisch hermano 😂

⎮pablogavi: Ey, your skin is gonna thank you afterwards

pablitooogavi: Not Pablo being obsessed with face masks 😂

⎜liked by pablogavi

mikkykiemeney: How did you get him to do that?!

⎜your_username: I bribed him with food

user7325384: Hahah, I love them

fcbarçalover: Couple goaaalllllsss!!

gaviisthebest: If they break up I'm gonna need therapy

⎜liked by your_username

[6rookie-writer0110]

Let's lay by the tall green grass

Male reader x Peter Parker

Request - Male reader x insomniac Peter Parker ( spider man 2 game ) Peter is stressed about everything so his bf decides to take peter out on a date where they go for a walk, go eat at his favorite restaurant then go for ice cream after that they go home to their shared apartment. Reader pulls peter onto his lap and they make out for a bit after making out for a bit reader says they should watch a movie to which peter agrees and says he'll get snacks and drinks while reader gets blankets plus sets up the movie.

You walk into the bedroom and you see your boyfriend, lying in bed and his face is on the pillow.

“Peter?” You asked.

He started to talk but you couldn't understand him.

“I didn't hear one word you just said,” You said.

“Let me stay here forever. I don't want to leave this room ever!” Peter said.

He hides his face on the pillow and you sit next to him. You start to rub his back gently

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

“Everything. Everything is stressing me out, Y/n” Peter said.

Peter sighed heavily and you start to think how to cheer him up.

“Get up and let's go out,” You said.

“And do what?” Peter asked.

“Just trust me, okay? Get up come on” You said.

“Okay, I will get up,” Peter said.

Peter did get up from the bed and he is feeling grumpy. You gave him a peck on the lips

“Today, it will be about you” You smiled.

You and Peter leave the apartment. You and Peter have been dating for a while, and you live with him. You and Peter are madly in love with each other. You were his first kiss and years later then you and Peter became official.

“Where are we going?” Peter asked.

“You will see. All, I want you to do is relax and not think about work, hero stuff, or anything that would stress you out” You said.

“I will try,” Peter said.

“Good to know” You smiled.

You and Peter hold hands while walking around Central Park. There is someone selling ice cream, you and Peter buy ice cream and keep walking around the park. Peter takes a bite of your ice cream and your mouth drops.

“Peter!” You said.

“I wanted to try it” Peter smiled.

“I didn't taste my ice cream,” You said.

He kissed your cheek and you smiled at him. You saw someone doing portraits in the park, you convinced him to do it. You paid the artist, and then you and Peter sat next to each other while the artist started to draw.

———

Later, you and Peter got hungry. You took him to his favorite restaurant and he is smiling at you. He gave you a peck on the lips, and then you and Peter started to talk about what to order. The food arrived, and you and Peter started to eat and talk about movies and shows. Peter lets you try his food and he feeds it to you.

“The cheese does taste so good,” You said.

“See, I told you” Peter smiled.

Peter is enjoying the food and he is smiling more. You and Peter start to share food with each other and he orders more French fries.

Before going home, you and Peter went to buy snacks. You bought Peter a small plush frog and he thought it was cute.

✯ ✬ ✯ ✫

Finally at home, you and Peter have matching shirts on. You are sitting on the couch and you grab Peter’s hand, he sits on your lap. Peter leans in and starts to kiss you and you wrap your arms around him. You and Peter are smiling but he doesn't stop kissing you.

“Thanks to my cute boyfriend, I had a good day today,” Peter said.

“Glad, you had a good time” You smiled

You and Peter start to kiss each other again.

“You are the best, Y/n” Peter smiled.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” You asked.

“Yes,” Peter said.

He kisses you one last time. Then he went to get the snack and drinks while you grabbed the blankets and extra pillows. Now, you start to set up the pillows and blanket on the couch, Peter grabs a lot of snacks. He puts the movie on, while you get comfortable on the couch. Peter sits next to you then you start to eat the snacks with him. During the movie, you lie down then Peter lies his head on your chest. He puts his leg on top of you and you start to play with his hair, he likes it when you do that.

The movie finished and you turned off the TV. You were about to get up but he stopped you.

“Stay, I’m too comfortable right now,” Peter said.

“Are we going to sleep on the couch, because you are too comfortable to move?” You asked.

“Yes, that's the reason, babe” Peter yawned.

“Okay,” You said.

You don't move and you close your eyes. It didn't take long for you and Peter to fall asleep. While sleeping, Peter left a small drool stain on your shirt then he mumbled something in his sleep.

[polarisdelphi]

I don't remember if I have posted this before, if I did, do forgive, we're having double posts (also don't remember if I was using my old signature, which I probably was)

This is one of the first studies I did when starting to look more into fluid posing, gesture drawing, breaking down characters in different poses of the same moment to choose what would be the key illustration aaaand developing a new way of shading digitally (I suck in digital illust, when it comes to traditional I have everything under control and I needed something more traditional looking to be happy back then).

Yennefer accidentally became my character for studies and I drew her SO MUCH for MONTHS, I can almost draw her with my eyes closed xD

I was using Krita back then, before moving to Photoshop, but I still miss the different types of brushes there. Might have to start mixing both softwares.

Some more breakdowns of this study under the cut :)

It was supposed to be a little comic of Geralt coming back home <3

This "concept" was, Yen finding Geralt hurt, grabbing his sword, and then just going full sorcerer of Vengerberg after that (and the little note up there is written "16 meters of legs", 'cause everyone I draw tend to end up with the LONGEST legs EVER)

And this is "Yen, not everyone can cook" and her just "get out of here, witchers, before I turn all of you into bloated frogs". I think there's something sweet of her not being able to cook at ALL and Geralt being a little more gifted regarding that.

These are all sketches - the second ones are a little more polished with clothes and all, but still VERY quick sketches. The ones I'd use as a base to make the final, polished version.

*sighs* I love Yen so much.

[homestuckreplay]

Jade Harley OSHA Violations Tally

(page 801-817)

On page 801, Jade ponders the volcano outside her window, reminiscent of WV’s actively volcanic planet on the left of p.703. Jade’s volcano has ‘been inactive for centuries’ but there is still ‘volcanic energy deep underground’, which I am sure will not be relevant or ever come up again.

The MAGIC CUE BALL ‘mak[ing] predictions with alarming precision and specificity’ but lacking a way to see this is a very good bit, but I’m more interested in the magic 8 ball. Jade has ‘tested it numerous times with certain facts [she] know[s] to be true’ but her knowledge comes from strange places. My working theory is that Skaia’s influence over Earth comes from a power source – the frog statue on Jade’s island – which she draws on just as her grandfather draws on the geothermal energy. So there’s two possibilities for the magic 8 ball – either it’s a genuinely powerful artifact that has been ‘scrambled’ by Skaia’s influence, or, it’s usually just a silly toy but becomes an actual predictive device under Skaia’s power, and it’s Jade’s knowledge that is incomplete.

Today being ‘NOT EXACTLY’ John’s birthday is on face a reference to this page being posted on October 24, not April 13 – Jade later explicitly breaks the fourth wall, so does she know this? Is it possible that John celebrates his birthday on 4/13, but wasn’t technically born then (hospital mistake, adoption, born in a different timezone so it wasn’t 4/13 in PT, etc…). Jade is always so certain she’s right even when she has no hard evidence, and the most interesting thing for her character would be having her deal with being wrong.

I hoped Jade’s fourth wall diversion would be interactive (page 812 even calls it an ‘interactive flash application’), but it’s a lucky player inside the computer who gets to play. I love Jade reacting to each click before the card is revealed, trying to give hints that the player completely ignores. It’s explicitly Jade letting the player do this, while John was completely unaware of the cursor (p.6, 19) although he did react to the wrong name on page 2. I think that in our John → Rose → Dave → Jade progression, as the characters get weirder, they also get more aware of the fourth wall.

It is very cool to see some of Jade’s inventions in practice. You can tell Jade made the cookalizer herself – anything where the settings are ‘Thaw’, ‘Cook’, ‘Irradiate’ and <large explosion> is not going to conform to health and safety guidelines. Clearly this is why Jade thinks Rose is ‘sort of hard [to] shop for’ (p.442), as Rose cares about generator safety and wouldn’t trust a weird gadget, while Jade is all about scientific experimentation at all costs.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Is Jade calling a fursuit a ‘raggedy synthetic tufty piece of crap’ (p.802) the first time she’s really dunked on something?

Very funny that Problem Sleuth and Problem Sooth both exist in this universe. Which one is a parody of the other?

Jade’s crystal ball velvet pillow (p.803) matches Rose’s mom’s thank you note velvet pillow (p.373) in their respective text colors.

What is the DEAL with these fruits. Why won’t they settle down why are they ‘impudent’ like they’re puppets and did Jade get that word from Dave or vice versa??

No but seriously if you are a vegan or vegetarian reading this, would you eat fruits that jumped around and smiled I am genuinely curious

Rotary dials are so sexy but why is there no cheese, the most important chilled food, in Jade’s refrigerator?

‘dial up a thick T-bone steak’ (p.816) is a really good phrase that I’m going to start slipping into everyday speech. Gotta dial myself up some cheese and crackers

> Jade: Use science gadgets to drill hole in MAGIC CUE BALL.

[neptunezines]

you exist to me even when youre not here

i wrote this about one of my friends who has had a couple mental health scares while living states away from me. your friends care about you and worry about you !! <3

image IDs are sorted from top to bottom and left to right, five images (sorry for length):

image 1: A single sheet folded zine. The cover of the zine. It reads "you exist to me even when you're not here". there is a drawing of a sad looking frog and a phone with multiple unanswered texts.

image 2: The first and second pages of the zine. Page one reads "the people you grow up with will eventually move away, or you will. it's just a fact of life. and we have to get used to our friends moving states away with seemingly no warning, or we have to leave our friends behind" The top of the page has drawings of luggage and the bottom has a crying frog being left behind by a car. Page two continues, "but we adapt, learn to live without our best friend and move on in life, and we start to think that maybe they had forgotten about us by now. because who could ever remember us, our old friend is hanging out with people they like more than they ever did us, and are too busy being happy that we are too busy being happy that we are gone to spare a single second missing us. we probably dont even exist to them." Drawings of stick figures cross the page, and one of them has a thought bubble with a crossed out frog in it.

image 3: The second and third pages of the zine. The text spans across both pages, and says "well, you're wrong! we think about you all the time. we wonder... are you okay? ...are you safe? ...are you alive?" Most of the spread is covered in questions about the friend's life and wellbeing in small text.

image 4: The fourth and fifth pages of the zine. Page four says "you might not be near us anymore, but that doesnt mean that we forgot about you! don't ever start thinking that you can let yourself fall apart, because we will always be here for you and we are always worried about your wellbeing. nothing will ever prepare you for a long distance friendship, but miles of land and water will never make us like you any less!" There is a smiling frog in the middle of the page with a thought bubble that says "you". hearts fill the bubble and surround the frog. Page five says "you exist to me even when you're not here" in large font.

image 5: The backpage of the zine. There is a drawing of a frog's face, and underneath it says "hi, my name is max! want to see more? instagram and tumblr: neptunezines April 8th, 2023"

[kohakuriver]

Spirited Away Twitter Q&A Translations

Multiple theories debunked/confirmed and we're given answers on how Haku and Chihiro can meet again! Ghibli finally answered a lot of popular questions!

When the official Ghibli twitter was first active back in 2022, it held a Q&A during a Spirited Away rerun. I don't think anyone's ever posted about it on here so I thought I'd share these translations I found! Most of these answers are completely new information about the movie. Here's a site that archived all the tweets and trivia.

The credit to these translations and notes go to atrociouscheese.

Q: Is it true about the rumors that "Spirited Away" has an subsequent story about a phantom after, and that it was shown only in some movie theaters? Or is it just an urban legend?

A: It's an urban legend. Miyazaki: "At first, I was planning to start from Chihiro's house. Chihiro's room was a path for yokai, and she talked about going to a bathhouse with my mother. But I quit because it felt dull. So it would be interesting if such rumors were circulating!"

Q: Why did you decide on the title "Sen and Chihiro's Spirited Away"? (referring to the Japanese title of Spirited Away which is: Sen to Chihiro Kamikakushi) Were there any other candidates for the title?

A: At the stage of the completed proposal that was drafted on November 2, 1999, it was "Sen's Spirited Away". At some stage, the movie was titled "Sen and Chihiro's Spirited Away" because it was about Chihiro's story.

Q: What is the meaning of the mysterious Daruma-like rock in front of the tunnel?

A: The image board says "Stone person (actually a frog person)"...

Q: Do you have any plans to build that tunnel in Ghibli Park?

A: I asked Goro, who is building the acclaimed Ghibli Park under construction.

Goro said: "I'm making 'that tunnel' in 'that work'~ (laughs)"

Q: The mother feels a little cold to Chihiro. I've always been wondering if there's any reason or if she's a cool person by nature.

A: Animation director, Masashi Ando, said that he wanted to not have the image of father and mother that appear in Miyazaki's work, and he said that he set it with an awareness of "a person who is cool and not in a place where family harmony is disturbed".

Q: How did the main character come to be named Chihiro?

A: Chihiro was modeled on Miyazaki-san's friends who were around 10 years old at the time (including some of their names). After the first preview, Mr. Miyazaki was there before anyone else to hear the children's impressions of the film.

Q: I'd like to know more in detail about the objects and places you used as references in creating this work.

A: There is no specific location "here". Mr. Miyazaki recalls the places he once visited and draws while imagining places he cannot remember. The restaurant district in the mysterious town that appears at the beginning of the film was said to have been drawn with an image of the entertainment districts of Yurakucho and Shinbashi.

Q: Are Kamaji and the working soot sprites (Japanese uses makkuro kurosuke) the same species? Or are they similar but different?

A: The official name of makkuro kurosuke is "Susuwatari". That's what it says on the storyboard, so it's not wrong to say that it's the same species. Initially, there was a plan that rice and sesame were their favorite foods, but now konpeito became their favorite.

Q: Are the characters portrayed in human form like Lin, human? Or are they other creatures?

A: The employees of the bathhouse are frogmen for the men and female slugs for the women. This is symbolic of the fact that to the new employees joining Ghibli, all the uncles look the same. Lin may look human because she is a close senior. Doesn't that happen to you?

Q: I want to know more details about of the chicks who are crammed in the bath!

A: It's a chick god called "Otori-sama." By the way, the one who is also soaking in the hot water is the "Cow Demon." According to Miyazaki, he thought, "Today's Japanese gods must be having a hard time," and that's how the bathhouse was born, where gods and yokai can heal their fatigue. 20 years later, the bathhouse may be even more prosperous now...

Q: Why did Radish spirit (Oshira-sama is used here) follow Chihiro upstairs?

A: The spirit became interested in Chihiro and got on the elevator together with her, but they didn't like Yubaba's room, so they descended immediately (it's written in the storyboard).

Q: How many years ago was the world of the bathhouses set from now?

A: It's modeled on the "pseudo-Western" buildings that were popular from the end of the Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji period, so it can be interpreted as after that.

The actual model is Studio Ghibli. To work for Studio Ghibli, you have to go to Toshio Suzuki on the top floor and say, "Please let me work" (laughs).

Q: I really like the flood-like atmosphere of the flowers in the scene where Chihiro slips through the flowers before eating rice balls. Did you change the expression technique for only that scene?

A: For that scene, the flowers are drawn with paint and are then animated to have depth on the computer.

Q: I felt that the onigiri that Haku gave Chihiro were white rice balls, but did they contain any contents inside?

A: The storyboard says, "3 onigiri (without seaweed)". I'll leave it to your imagination to see whether it contained any ingredients in them (not that there was any wasabi).

Q: How many years has Haku lived approximately?!! He looks like a boy, but...!

A: His appearance is about 12 years old, but his actual age is unknown. He's kind during the daytime when Yubaba is sleeping, but is cold at night. According to Miyazaki, Chihiro is like falling in love with a manager. "What was that about last night?"

Q: Is No Face (Kaonashi is the original Japanese used)'s movement a little cat-like...? I personally think that, but are there any animals that you used as reference?

A: I don't have any "animals" as a reference, but the staff at that time said, "I felt like I was collecting the obsession that everyone had, the parts of people that were sick."

Q: I want to know the rating of the bathhouse bills! I wonder how many kinds there were and what rank of the tag Kasuga-sama was.

A: There are no ratings, but the efficacy of hot water is different for each tag.

Q: Is No Face a god? Is there a reason why they couldn't enter the bathhouse?

A: No Face is not a god, but Miyazaki said at the time that "No Face is inside everyone."

Q: Do many Ghibli staff have special feelings for Chihiro? Were there any celebrations among the staff on the 20th anniversary?

A: The studio does not do so-called "anniversary celebrations". Miyazaki and Suzuki's idea is to do what is in front of them without looking back on the past.

Q: I heard that most of the dishes that appear in the movie are made at least once, but was that big steamed bun (meat bun?) that Chihiro was chewing on also made by hand?

A: We don't cook all the meals that appear in the film. Miyazaki says, "Most of the food that appears in the movies are usually things I made and ate a long time ago."

By the way, the fried egg that appears in Laputa and Howl is said to have been drawn based on his memory of making a fried egg when he was a student, returning home from a long trip without any money and starving.

Q: Why is the name No Face?

A: At the drawing meeting at that time, Miyazaki said that Yubaba, No Face, and Chihiro are all "one aspect of the individual." Everyone has both good and bad points. I think he created a character called No Face as a symbol of human beings that cannot be drawn in a one-sided way (I answered seriously).

Q: When the film was released overseas, I was wondering what kind of responses and impressions people had about the unique concepts of Japan, such as Japanese gods and "spirited away/kamikamushi" had. Also, was it made in consideration of reactions from overseas at the time it was produced?

A: It varies from country to country. In some countries, the appearance of No Face became "silence", and other countries burst into laughter. Miyazaki does not make movies conscious of overseas reactions. Suzuki says, "If Japanese people make something that only Japanese people can do, it will become a global work."

Q: Why is Boh drawn so big?

A: It's a symbol of growing up as a child. It seems that Yubaba can't help but spend money on Bo.

Q: "Spirited Away" is the voice acting debut of Ryunosuke Kamiki, who has done voice acting in numerous anime. I heard that Ryunosuke was called to Ghibli's studio after recording his voice at home and sending in a tape because it was an audition. I would like to ask why you cast Kamiki in the role of Boh.

A: At first, people with big bodies were nominated for the voice of Boh. Miyazaki's face lit up the moment when he heard the voice of Kamiki who was eight years old at the time, he shouted, "This one, Mr. Suzuki!" and he decided.

Q: Please tell me how to distinguish between Yubaba and Zeniba.

A: At the image board stage, there was a clear difference between Zeniba and Yubaba. At the storyboarding stage, they thought it would be better to make them look exactly alike. One staff member said, "Yubaba has one wart on her chest and Zeniba has four warts on her chest." But I can't confirm it (laughs).

Q: Kamaji says that Zeniba is scary, but she is a gentle grandmother in the movie. Why did Kamaji say that Zeniba was scary?

A: People who look kind are the scariest when they get angry.

Q: Why did you make the scene of "I can't forgive you!" Dragon Ball-style? How did Yubaba hit such an orb?

A: The storyboard says "Dragon Ball style" (laughs). It's not clear why she was able to shoot an orb, but Miyazaki said, "Yubaba is an old woman who can swim in the air."

Q: I have a question about trains. Is there a reason why we used to come and return in the old days, but now we can only go one way? I would like to know if there are any settings.

A: During a drawing meeting, Miyazaki remarked, "All the employees of the bathhouse dream of saving money to open a store in the town beyond the bridge. Will they go for leisure? But if you get on the train you’ll never be able to come back and this will be gone.”

Q: Where was the scene that took the most time to draw?

A: If there are a lot of characters, the scene will take a lot of time, though I can't say in general that this cut took the most time. It is unclear what scene took the most time but Miyazaki often fixed Chihiro's small gestures, and in particular, Miyazaki seems to have, with all his effort, corrected the scene where Chihiro received the hair tie from Zeniba and tied her hair.

Q: What was the most difficult dubbing scene?

A: Kamaji, who is played by Bunta Sugawara, speaks a lot slowly, so it was difficult for Sugawara to get it on scale. Rumi Hiiragi was having a hard time with saying "one, OK?" from the line "one, OK? I can't call one flower a bouquet". And Miyu Irino tried many times with "Nigihayamikohakunushi"

(translation note: her line in Japanese, what "one, ok" sounds like is "ippon, ne." Japanese changes numbers when it comes to counting items, so one which is ichi becomes ippon when it comes to counting the bouquet. So instead of saying, "One, okay" she said "one okay") Additionally, I actually know what they're referencing and you can actually see the dubbing behind the scene difficulties they're talking about in this video uploaded on Youtube: video here

Q: How do you write Haku's real name "Nigihayamikohakunushi" in kanji (Chinese characters)? I am wondering if it is the characters for "amber river" (琥珀川) or "small white river" (小白川). I would like to know if there is a meaning to "Nigihayahimi"!

A: Although it is written in katakana in the setting, the name "Nigihayami" is said to be the composite of several gods including Nigihayahi (nigihayami-no-mikoto), the ancestor of the Monobe clan who fought against the Soga clan during the Asuka period, and Hayakitsuhiko, the river god and dragon incarnation.

Q: How did Chihiro find out that her mother and father were not inside the pig pen in the end?

A: I'm not sure of the reason, but please read the children's book called "Krabat", which Miyazaki was greatly influenced by.

Q: Is there any reason why Chihiro's hair tie sparkled brightly at the end?

A: That hair accessory is the only proof that Chihiro worked at the bathhouse. I think it can be said that it is a (choice by) stage direction to give that impression (of the sparkling).

Italics is my inference, but I'm not 100% sure.

Q: How many days did it take for Chihiro to get lost in the mysterious city, work in the bathhouse, and exit the tunnel?

A: Mr. Suzuki advocates the three-day theory. When her father and mother get into the car as if nothing had happened, the inside of the car is covered with dust, so the passage of time may be different here from the tunnel.

Q: Why is going into the tunnel different on the way back?

A: When I asked Noboru Yoshida, an art staff member, he answered, "It depends on the passage of time." Does that means that the "three-day theory" collapses...?

Q: Did Chihiro and Haku meet after that?

A: Haku was the spirit of the river that flows near the house where Chihiro used to live. If Chihiro ever visits the river...

[mykingdomforapen]

more adventures of Frog Guang

(a drabble from the universe of my fic, courage of stars)

-

Lu Guang had proudly named his pet frog Milk Toast. He cultivated a comfortably damp environment for him in his enormous tank and added new leaves almost daily for wont of something to do to spoil his new friend. 

The first day he went to school after his birthday was the most he ever spoken since the beginning of the school year. He told everyone who was willing to listen that he had a new pet frog. The girls shivered until he told them that the frog’s name was Milk Toast, which made them coo. The boys demanded proof of the frog’s existence, and then bombarded him with so many questions that he almost regretted telling them anything. What color was his webbed feet? How long was his tongue? Does he eat flies? Does he ribbit? How high can he jump? Ten centimeters? Fifty? 

He rushed home from school every day to spend time with Milk Toast, which usually took the form of reading books out loud to him. Lu Guang read his frog books out loud, in case Milk Toast was curious what humans liked to say about his kind. He charged Yeye and Maamaa to let him do all the feeding, so that he could choose the best-looking crickets to set into the tank. The crickets were a considerable match for Milk Toast, and Lu Guang stared approvingly as his tiny frog hunted viciously for the insect larger than the size of his head. 

During art class, Lu Guang drew pictures of Milk Toast every time. Whether they used crayons, marker, colored pencils, watercolor, or cut-out pieces of colored paper, Lu Guang created rendition after rendition of Milk Toast. Even when the art teacher asked if Lu Guang would draw flowers, he added Milk Toast on a leaf. When tasked to draw a portrait of little Mei, his desk mate, Lu Guang snuck Milk Toast onto her shoulder, which she did not appreciate as much as he thought she would. 

After school, Lu Guang showed the drawings to Milk Toast through the glass of the tank, as he was fairly certain that at least Milk Toast would appreciate the effort he put into his art pieces. 

“That’s you,” Lu Guang said helpfully as he pointed to the blueish blob with bulging eyes. Milk Toast stared ahead, his little throat puffing rhythmically. 

“This is you too,” Lu Guang said, showing another drawing. “And this is me.”

He pointed to a drawing of himself, who was roughly the same size as the frog and with skinny lines as limbs. Milk Toast shifted in his place, which Lu Guang took as interest. He propped it against the glass so that Milk Toast could continue to admire it.

“This is you with Qi Mei,” said Lu Guang, showing him the portrait of his classmate. “I asked her if she wanted to keep it and she said no, so I think you should have it instead.” 

“Guangguang, it’s dinner!” Maamaa called out. “Hurry and wash your hands.” 

Lu Guang added another new leaf into the tank as a treat before shuffling off to dutifully wash his hands while his grandmother set the table. He toddled to his usual place, next to Yeye, and saw that the table was set for three. 

“What about Ma and Ba?” Lu Guang asked. 

“Ma and Ba are very busy at the library right now,” Maamaa said. “They’ll eat dinner later.” 

“Can I eat dinner with them?” Lu Guang asked. 

Maamaa pursed her lips as she scooped a mound of rice into Lu Guang’s bowl. 

“They won’t be back until you’re getting ready for bed,” she said with a sigh. “Come on, before it gets cold. I worked hard to cook you a good dinner.” 

Lu Guang hid his disappointment by shoveling rice into his mouth. Yeye stroked the back of his head, his hand strong and ticklish. 

“Come on, have some fish,” said Yeye. 

He scooped a large portion of fish onto Lu Guang’s bowl, and a healthy helping of garlic pea sprouts. He tactfully did not offer the frog legs that Maamaa had cooked for the grown-ups, and Lu Guang avoided eye contact with them. He was convinced that Milk Toast would be able to see whatever Lu Guang saw through his eyes, and he would be sorely disappointed if he knew what was going on in the dining room. 

“When will Ma and Ba be done going to the library every day?” Lu Guang asked. 

Maamaa’s eyes flashed with pity. 

“When you go into the fourth grade, little one,” she said.

Lu Guang’s shoulders sank lower. Fourth grade felt like an eternity. The fourth graders towered over him in the playground at school. They were so big and mature and they knew what fractions were. Lu Guang was right now in the first grade. Was he never going to have dinner with Ma and Ba again? 

Maamaa, snapped her chopsticks as she added tomato egg to Lu Guang’s bowl. 

“Eat more, Guangguang,” she ordered. 

He obeyed. After eating more than his fill in dinner, Lu Guang sat at his desk to finish his homework while Yeye walked him through the mathematics. Milk Toast had changed positions during dinner time, which cheered Lu Guang up. He spied on Milk Toast while the frog basked in low light. For the rest of the night, he rested his head in his arms as he watched Milk Toast up close, starry-eyed.

Even when Maamaa ushered him to bed and switched off his lights, Lu Guang crept back to the tank and spied on Milk Toast, watching the frog breathe, sit, and occasionally swim. By the time Ma and Ba came home, and Ma peeped open his bedroom door to spy on him, she found Lu Guang fast asleep at his desk, cheek pressed up against the glass. 

[riderwrites]

questions

Six pages of post-episode Unruhe where Scully tells everyone she's fine and thinks of some questions that no one ever asks her about her experience, that she would want them to anyway.

not rated/ 3,862 words/ expert below, read full on ao3

Scully’s wrists still burned where they had been bound. It had been duct tape this time, something new this time, and the sticky residue was still on her skin. She picked at it as she watched EMS workers and local FBI agents flutter around like a flock of disturbed birds. She should feel shaken, like the first time, when her hands were shackled to a radiator, but if anything, she felt a disturbing amount of normality. Her breathing was heavy, and she felt her shoulders shaking but she knew these things were happening, and that in of itself was a comfort. She was able to respond to the questions asked by EMS and other agents with a steady voice, afterall, she knew them so well.

What day is it? Your name? What about his? Can you look to the left for me? Look to the right now. Good, any pain? You were outside your rental car when he injected you with the chemicals, correct? Do you remember any of the ride to where you were found or were you unconscious? Did he mention anything of his other victims to you? Could you lead me step by step of what happened? Any accomplices? We want to prevent copycats. Do you still feel groggy from the drug? Any other aftereffects you feel?

Yes, he was underneath the car, I didn’t see him. It is the third of February. My full name is Dana Katherine Scully. The man who looks as if he swallowed a frog is Agent Fox Mulder. I woke up in the RV. Yes, I’m sure, I can’t recall anything else. He didn’t mention anything else to me beyond what I have already told you. He talked about the Howlers, he insisted his father was good, he never gave me any details on his sister’s suicide. Yes, I asked him. I already told you that.

With the soft sound of their notebooks closing, the conversation was over and already being replaced with their later than usual lunch. Scully looked back down at her hands, at the red marks the tape left. He must have taken off part of the epidermis. She lightly ran her finger over it as she tried to force herself into a calm demeanor. The epidermis comprises five layers, basal, prickle cell, granular, clear and cornified. She ran over the definitions in her mind, trying to focus on fact over the mimicking voices in her brain.

What did the cotton that covered your mouth taste like? How did it feel looking into the delighted eyes of manic men who had you where they fantasized you? How dirty did you feel when their eyes ran up and down your body? Where did the restraints cut into your wrists? Did they draw blood? Do you still feel the sting, even at night in your own bed? Tell me the locks you use, how the move to an upper-level apartment strained your back, how many times do you look across the street before crossing it?

Her body shot forward suddenly at the sudden warm, solid presence of something on her shoulder. Scully turned her head around to find Mulder’s hand retreating, his eyes widening and his mouth beginning to form a question. Scully focused on drifting her eyes without a care to keep that question down. She was getting tired of having to say that she was fine.

It was the only answer anyone would take without question or follow-up. An honest one would make the room uncomfortable and would have questions regarding her ability to succeed in this type of position raised. Scully didn’t want to be doubted, not any more than she usually was. A great, looking forward to not sleeping the next three days would only be met with her being called a bitch. She was a little tired of that too. So fine, because it was the only one that the police officers and agents around would take without question.

Apart from Mulder who would only take it as an answer so far and become her self-appointed guard dog whenever she said it. He stood suffocatingly close to her the entire time after she had been freed from that RV. Scully could feel his body heat on her back, taste the carbon monoxide he exhaled, and hear the slight grinding of his teeth. It made her skin prickle, her own anxiety she had been trying to push away feeding on Mulder’s. He stood by when the EMTs checked her out. He watched their hands suspiciously as if an ice pick would appear out of them to finish the job from before. He watched Scully give her report on what happened, butting in when he thought details would be too much for her. Scully leaned back when he did. From the back, she couldn’t distinguish him from the rest of the agents around them.

[lancer-the-blue]

Going to finally watch the full Ninjago Dragon's Rising season 1 and 2 since everything's out rn and live blog throughout the experience

1.30 in and man the animation is crazy, Arin is already pretty compelling. Really good vibe so far

*"Jay the Lightning Ninja!" nooooooooo, not this foreshadowing!

Kais voice was weeeeeird there for a sec... ohhh that's Arin my bad

Oooh as someone who is obsessed over the map of ninjago ngl that's a sick map of the Merge, I need a copy as a map nerd

OMG THAT SEAGULL WAS A REFERENCE TO ZANES FALCON

Arin with Lloyd's hood is so cute! *i need to draw that*

I need those rottweiler dogs as fig accessories

"It's called having money, which isn't exactly our situation" moood Sora mooood

"Wannabe ninja go!" Damn the writing this season is snappy af

Just noticed how fucking gorgeous the backgrounds are in this season like damnnnn

"Who doesn't like pie?" Feels like a reference to Cole and cake but that might be me looking waaay to much into it

Kingdom of Imperium smashed up against Ninjago does looks snazzy I agree Arin

"And the perfect chance to meet me" dawwww that's so cute

Ooooh it's called the crossroads, nice

"My bff, my fam" ☠ never did I *ever* expect that from Ninjago

I agree having your own penthouse is pretty cool, damn Sora is so relentlessly shsmeless I fucking adore her

Noticing again how *clean* the animation looks, the inside of the room is so highly rendered wow

"Whennn we win" gods damn it Sora you fucking rock!

"And invite everyone else who lost their parents to live with us" noooo gods noo the feels, jesus these kids are putting me through it

Damn I'm sensing potential arc tension between Arin and Sora after that earthquake exchange

First time actually seeing Lord Ras on screen and not through fanart he's giving me Chima reject /lh

Golden helm horn guy with the autism yeeeees relatable

*Omg gimmie frog faced minifigure it's a whole mood will be my sigfig*

Quick serious question tho, is the frog person and Ras' spieces from Chima tho? Lord Ras is giving me Sir Fanger vibes

I LOVE LABO, will not ask about mom noted tho

OMG THAT SCENE PAYING WITH THE PIE DIDN'T HAVE TO HIT *THAT* HARD

Ngl love seeing the random Hypnobrai walk around is peak

Dawwww baby riyuuuu

"Labu avoids hazards" awwwww

Sora being peak again about money

RIYU AWWWWW

"The things they'll do to him" oh gods what does that say about jay...

"What would the ninja do?" "LET'S SAVE THAT DRAGON"

OH NO NOT LUBO GIVING A RESENTFUL MOTHER SPEECH

The scene with Riyu giving Sora powers is sick. Need to draw that

That grey haired raz goon is pretty, funny top 7 ninjago evil side bitches

Need to draw Arin doing Spinjitzu like that that was also sick

Damnnnn Raz was intense, "hunt down your entire family" I don't think ninjago ever got *that* explicitly threatening

"Runs on dragon power" ngl that's a little bit too goofy for me

Arin hyping up Sora is goals ngl

Uuuuh Sora roasting the ninja that's funny

Lloyd coming in that last second was low key kinda unexpected, was thinking it would happen in part 2 but still cool tho

Annnnnd we're done with Ep 1 S1, on to Ep 2!

Rating solid 8/10, writing and pacing was cleannnn. One of the best season openings

[goldenchocobo]

2023 Art Dump

Not as much as last year, which would be a feat. A lot of Kingdom Hearts art, still, as well as OC things.

In the Keep Reading below, you can learn about each thing, if it interests you;

From Left-to-Right, Up-to-Down:

-Baldr and Bragi's battle stances (specifically from when they were fighting Cerberus in the Underworld). wanted to draw them like this, but never found a reason to post it as-is. I was going to include it in another compilation that sat in my Drafts for half a year (with other art on this dump).

-Character art for a friend's KH D&D character- a 'Nort replica with no memory of who he is, only that he's running from Vexen.

-Art in that compelation. It's from the first time you speak to Demyx. I like how it's the first thing he ever asks Roxas; I was going to do more, but... didn't.

-Interpretation of the Keyblade from Missing Link's promo image. I needed it for my KH D&D, as I was going to give the players a keyblade based on the stats they chose in their DttH. The keyblade didn't end up being used.

-Silly Bragi/Luxu doodle. I think he'd have to try hard not to ace any history exams, or at least know more than what he's currently being taught.

-Aerith and Cid shop 'interface' I drew for my KH D&D. I wanted a visual for my players instead of just vague descriptions, so I drew these, the portraits are the characters currently in the session.

———————————————————

-Young Xehanort headshots. I was going to do more each time I wanted to draw, but didn't know what- but these two were the only two that I did.

-Working out the design for a Minotaur Heartless that appeared in my fic, Working Together, for Ventus and Vanitas to fight.

-His Dark Materials AU Sora with his Daemon Amica. I was going to draw some battle poses with them, but I honestly never felt like it, and didn't want to force myself.

-figuring out a design for Vanitas's glider for my fic.

-Ventus holding an escapee-flood from a WiP fic, (continuation of Working Together) Trial by Light.

-New Unversed Vanitas makes when he and Ventus are on 'kind of okay' terms, that Ventus calls a Mawkeepit from my fic. I wanted to nail out a design for them, so I could describe them better.

-New Unversed Vanitas makes when he felt betrayed. They're currently unnamed- as I'm having trouble coming up with a portmantu or word-association for 'Backstab, Weasel or snake' for the WiP fic. These aren't going to feature as heavily as the Mawkeepit, but I wanted to draw them so readers could get a better idea of how they looked.

-Art of the Mawkeepit crowding an Unconscious Ventus while being surrounded by Heartless for my fic.

———————————————————

-Chocopuffs. Art from a Nyancave stream of Final Fantasy XVI, where the Northern British actors pronounce the 'cho' in chocobo the same way as the 'cho' in 'chocolate'- the result was chocopuffs, a cereal.

-Diabloceratops getting its toe bitten by a territorial turtle. didn't finish the WiP.

-Bi frog I drew for my Bi friend who likes frogs.

-Absolute monster of an art dump for my OCs, Lupin an Iberis. I wanted to give them a more modern take, so I drew them in modern clothing, with only one being of an older time period (bottom right) based on a photo of two men sitting together like that. I have refsheets for them and may post them if I routinely draw and post more are of these two.

-Neovinator in a pond/river based on a photo of a Grebe, and Daurlong sitting based on a photo of an emu.

-depiction of a woman I dreamt of. The dream was very real, and I'm certain I met death, and that is what she looked like. If you're interested in it, let me know and I post the rest, because it's long.

-Warrior cat OCs (and my friends) all from different clans going to a fourth to ask to speak to their medicine cat. the ginger one is mine and his name is Flipleaf.

———————————————————

-Nyancave Sonic OC. I think they were playing Sonic 06 or Shadow the Headgehog when I drew it, I can't remember.

-Drawn when there was a Subathon and the Nyancave were playing Final Fantasy XII. The memberships were a steal!

-Painting of their cats (now older) Dante and Nia, looking at Christmas lights.

[alectricblue]

Saw this tag game on another post and thought I'd do it (idk if I've done it before, maybe something similar, but my answers will be different anyway)

1. Were you named after anyone?

Nope My chosen name (Allister) however, is from a youtuber who has a very cool name and I stole it (Alasdair Beckett-King, very funny videos and he has great hair too). I adapted it a bit so people in Spain would at least have an idea of how to pronounce it at first glance (hopefully) It has nothing to do with any Crowley (which I did not realize was a thing until recently), tho for a bit I named myself AJ like Good Omens Crowley, but I don't like how it sounds in Spanish...

2. When was the last time you cried?

Last month probably

3. Do you have kids?

No. And I don't want any. I don't dislike them, but it's not for me

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

Judo, karate and football (the indoors kind). All as a kid/teen. Now my brother and I walk every week day and go up and down stairs (when we remember...) One day I want to try to go to a gym to get some muscle, but not too much, just a bit of definition. Also, I'd enjoy doing rock climbing, but not competitive climbing or anything like that

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Sometimes

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Irl: the way they move their face and hands when they speak, which then I subconsciously use to recognize people, bc I'm a bit face blind Online: the way they choose to express themselves

7. What's your eye color?

Gray/light blue on the outside and artichoke green/lime on the inside

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

I like both, but I'd rather watch a happy ending. For scary things I prefer to watch Markiplier's scary games videos

9. Any talents?

I'm VERY good at jigsaw puzzles

10. Where were you born?

East of Spain, by some of the best Mediterranean coasts 😁. I enjoy it here, but one day I'd like to live in the UK, at least for a bit, I think I'd like it there

11. What are your hobbies?

Listening to music, singing, making art (crafting, building, drawing, painting, writing, ...), watching media (shows, panel shows, youtube, twitch), video games (rhythm/dancing, platformer, puzzle... Also minecraft, powerwash sim, potion craft...), going for walks, exercise, learning languages (especially English) If I had any good ones close, I'd go to theatres and museums too. And, if I had money, I'd travel. I'm also slowly learning about taking care of plants

12. Do you have any pets?

Not yet. I'd love to have dogs, cats, frogs, snakes... or anything really. I love animals. But I think cats and frogs would be the best fit for me, considering my personality and current lifestyle I've always wanted a dog, but I've only had a turtle and a hamster

13. How tall are you?

1.63m or 5’3”

14. Favorite subject in school?

Biology and technology

15. Dream job?

Anything that pays me enough to be independent and let me do all my hobbies Although, if I ever have the patience, base skill, and required mental fortitude, I'd go for general robotics and/or prop making (for film and/or theatre)

No pressure tags in no particular order (I tried to tag as many people as I could, but apparently there's a tag limit 😅):

@swamp-communism @they-thespian666 @strongsuits @skelesona @shinekittenace @yeetmewithachainsaw @rockium-z @gordonzola-ramen @vampireopossum @libraryfag @frostytheduck @tetostar @xyrnys @normalscientist @dolltwink @anxi0usgh0st05 @piersgender

@mettatonsass @sinfulauthor @flaretheidiot @sneebles-mcgee @pivotallemonade @aroace-genderfluid-snake @monstrousmaws @satanic-leaf @virtualunease @villowrose @handrazedsun @ceiltheoutcast @atroph1k @entropy-sea-system @abby-cat99928 @maroroque @galaxgay

@realyfroggyfrog @angrysheep @llamaflower @ultrabean @sea-salt-sky @queerestqueertoeverqueer @crowleys-queen @foolishlovers @cassieno @crowleys-hips @argylepiratewd @trianglebird4 @sugarplumanderson @underlilithswings21 @crowleys-bentley-and-plants @healingmyinnerteen

and anyone else that sees this, consider yourself tagged!

[grogusmum]

MARCH: In Which, Beans Are Not Beans, Eggs Are Everyplace and I Have To Eat Them (this is doing my part, people!) An Eostre Story as told by Grogu Djarin

WORD COUNT: 1000ish

RATED: G

WARNINGS: excessive fluff and sassafras, oh and food. Lots of food.

A/N: Here is the March installment of The Wheel of the Year, my theme for @yearofcreation2023. Organized by the effervescent @oonajaeadira and @writeforfandoms Ostara or Eostre marks the vernal equinox, the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and one of the two days when the amount of daylight and darkness is equal- and from here on in the days get longer. Ever wonder where all the bunnies and eggs in the Easter celebration come from? It comes from this holiday right here. 

During a milestone celebration, I did a Grogu Character Takeover and got this ask-

Have you ever seen rabbits on the farm or is big ears the only rabbit you’ve met? That reminds me, since you like eggs so much have you heard about Easter which is all about hunting for eggs. I think you’d be amazing at it. Did you know bunnies can be made out of chocolate?

I thought it might be fun to expand on Grogu’s answer for this month's year of creation fic.  This is set in A Galaxy Far Far Away AU. Here is a link to that series (though you don't really have to read it to get what's going on here except that Din and Grogu are on Earth with a pagan f!reader who lives in a house called Juniper Cottage.) This is not a “witchy” one, but I hope you enjoy!

At Jupiter Cottage, Easter is called Éostre, but I was told when it comes to eggs and bunnies they are very the same! This is one of those Special Days on the calendar on the wall. And that means fun and food!

First is The Preparation. 

When I waked up one day the Jupiter Cottage had bunnies everywhere. Wooden ones, and softy ones, plus also ones that might break so please do not force lift them, thank you very much. AAAALLLLL the winter decorations were gone and the little seeds we planted on the windowsill a few weeks ago on that day about guessing when spring comes were peeking out of the dirt! 

But the most important thing is collecting eggs. This is a thing I am very good at. And the hens do not mind one bit!! We have “an Agreement”. That is permission to eat their eggs. I was very shocked by this news cuz my past experience with eating eggs was… well, let’s just say- Not. Great.  ANYWAYS, all the hens love me very a lot and we are best friends. Eva is the only hen in the hen home that gives us white eggs, so we had been saving up her eggs for a little while so we would have plenty of white eggs “for coloring”.

This is what you do: the eggs get boiled up first. This can be a frustrating process. Cuz if they crack, you can not color them. But I do not mind it, cuz I get to eat The Mistakes! Then they go in little cups. The cups all have their own colors- there is blue water, and red water, plus also yellow water, and all the waters smell weird. I am NOT allowed to drink ANY of them! 

I had trouble remembering this rule. 

We dipped the eggs in, and when they came out! They were all the colors of red and purple, yellow and blue, and green (my favorite)! This is cuz of mixing colors together and making other colors! WHAT?! Dad and Me were taught to draw pictures on the eggs before putting them in the color water with this little magic crayon! It was a very big surprise I tell you, cuz you couldn’t see what you drawed at all! Then, after putting them into the waters, WOW, the drawings is RIGHT THERE! We drawed rabbits and suns, plus also mudhorns…. and frogs a-course.

I was so excited at bedtime the night before Éostre! I was thinking about that bunny visiting us and giving me chocolate and things. I got wiggley, plus also very giggling, and stopping wiggling and giggling is hard, I tell you!

Dad sighed his sigh of you are my dear child, who never does anything wrong ever, but I am just a tired father many times.

The sun waked up and waked me up, so it was not my fault at all! So I waked Dad and he said, all super sleepy and gravel, I’m sleeping, lil womp rat.

So I just went out to peek out the door for the surprises the Éostre Bunny left for me. I brought Long Ears with me. (You know who Long Ears is, right? Yeah, we’ve discussed that guy) Cuz she is an expert being a bunny and all. I found a trail of the tiniest color eggs I have ever seen in my entire life. First, I sniffed it, and then I tasted one, cuz that is what I do! And they were so yummy! They did not taste like ANY egg I have EVER had, and I have had many eggs, even some we do not talk about!

(Frogs are friends, not food!)

ANYWAYS I was informed later that they are called “jelly beans”. But they are not beans at all, they are candy, so a Special Treat! Which is code for I can not have them all the time, which is not what I want to hear, Father!

How can they not be beans, it says bean in its very own name!? Like Candy Corns, did you know they are not corns at all? I was shocked by that news. But I do not care so much cuz candy corn is not so much… good. It is sweet. But… blah, crayony. How I know what crayons taste like is another story, that I am not telling at this time.

The jelly not-beans leaded to a basket, oh boy! It had so many good, good things! Chocolate rabbits! Well, rabbit SHAPED chocolate. I got a little concerned. And so did Long Ears! And these guys called Peepses! Have you had them?! Like baby chicks BUT NOT! These peepses are yellow with white fluffy fluff inside and chocolate on their bottoms. Plus also a wooden duck guy that you pull with a string and his big orange feet go whap whap whap on the floor and his bill goes quack quack quack and I walked him around and around! Oh and a little wooden cup on a stick, plus also an egg on a string… it is a game of trying to swing the egg into the cup. This is hard. And the egg is hard. And bonky when it hits you in the face.

Dad likes it and is good at it. He says I will get better, I just need to practice. I just walked that Duck guy around some more.

In New Hampster it is still cold outside even when it is Spring. Sometimes it snows. But not this time… So when it was not “the crack of dawn, for kriff sake” we went outside to do The Egg Hunt. It is a good thing I am a good egg finder! Cuz eggs was every place- under blueberry bushes and the jupiter bushes a-course, and in the garden shed and under Clara, which was funny. She said, Grogu did I lay a purple egg!? And I said, no silly chicken!

Pfft, I love her, but that guy. We also went for a walk in the woods to look for green and had a feast! 

Then a special moment happened! That was the Moment of the Equimox! This is when the sun moves across a line on Earth. And you get to do an eggsparmint. That is standing an egg up on one end, and it will stay! Or so they say, cuz we tried and tried… Dad and me were skepical.

And that is the special day of Eostre at Jupiter Cottage. And it was a good thing I like eggs so much, cuz we had to eat them for DAYS! We ate them hard boil, and devils, plus also salad samich.

this is Long Ears.

THANK YOU FOR READING 💚

You can find more of my writing here, and if you are interested in being tagged for this or any of my other works, here is my taglist form.

And if you want to ask Grogu a question, you can find him @grogu-explains-it-all

[justices-blade]

☆ did someone say anniversary munday

from neffi!! thank you :D

celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.

repost, don't reblog. only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!

happy anniversary, TOA! here's to many more years spent together.

name: leo

pronouns: he/him

birthday: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

where are you from? what is your time zone? the states, but im in europe now and i aint plannin to leave, baybey. CEST!

how long is your roleplay experience? uhhh 13 years of which 11 were on tumblr. the passage of time is horrifying

how were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? deviantart sonic oc self inserts. dont say anything

how were you introduced to TOA? im an avid skimmer of the tellius tag on tumblr and saw toa crop up a few times in the past but the concept of fodlan as a setting fundamentally scared me for a good while because it was the only fe game i wasnt even remotely familiar with. then one winter holiday in 2022 i saw neffis leonardo crop up in the tag and i was like lmfao it would be fucking hilarious if i started writing edward again right and then i blacked out for the next 12 hours and suddenly im here.

do you have any pets? nope. i do want a rat a spider or a snake though. maybe a toad even

what is your favorite time of year and why? autumn... its the cusp of summer and autum weather rn actually and im freaking thriving

what is your IRL occupation? graphic design student (help)

some interests and things you like/enjoy? gaming and writing are the no-brainers, but i also love dnd, drawing and making cosplay. despite being easily scared i also really like horror. also frogs are eternal i love frogs forever and ever

what non-fire emblem games do you play? currently it's mostly warframe, elden ring and arknights with some enstars on the side HAHA maybe xiv'll suck me back in soon < his ass still hasnt played dawntrail

favorite pokemon type & pokemon: favorite type is ghost, but the charcadet line has RICOCHETED to the top of my favorite pokemon list over spiritombs throne LMFAO

tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! i once wrote a poem based off of haurchefant greystone of ffxiv fame for korean school because i could not fucking think of anything else and i won a fucking award (minor) for a competition i didnt even know i was getting myself into????

i also inject frogs into any art assignments that i really dont want to do so i find the motivation to do them lmfao

how did you get into fire emblem? smash bros brawl baybey. i watched my friend play awakening for a bit but i only owned a wii (region locked. american. we were in europe) so i crawled to my dad all sopping wet and pathetic to ask if he could pretty please buy me por while he was on a business trip to i think LA. he brought back rd instead.

what fire emblem games have you played? hilariously exactly the same amount as last time (sorry) (gba, tellius, 3ds, engage)

first & favorite fire emblem games: radiant dawn all the way babyyyy

list your 5 favorite fire emblem characters across the series! chad leonardo edward limstella micaiah. yep

who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? can be any context and reason! leonardo showed his pretty face on the screen when i was 14 and it was over for me

any fire emblem crushes? 😳leonardo showed his pretty face on the screen when i was 14 and it was over for me.

jokes aside im not sure i do crushes but if we're talking about current i think pandreo applies

if you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first s support? who would you s support nowadays? - awakening: stahl or miriel - fates: hinata... or beruka - three houses: jeritza probably i am going to be so real - engage: pandreo.

favorite fire emblem class? are thieves meant to be a gimmick/utility class. yes. do i care? BOY OH BOY. rogue my beloved... (also i inevitably end up doting on at least one archer and anima mage)

if you were a fire emblem character, what would be your class and stats? would you be playable? weirdly magic-heavy thief i think. playable only if he likes your vibes. probably have to recruit him like cath. i'm not even that good i'm best used for meteor/bolting/bersesrk etc bait

if you were a three houses character, what would be your affiliation? golden deer!

if you were an officers academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? boon in faith+axe, bane in riding+heavy armor, hidden talent in authority. no it does not mean i want to be in charge. but alas im reasonably good at it.

if you were an engage character, which nation would you originate from? i thought on elusia for a while but honestly i think its firene for me. i will never say no to citrus.

how do you pronounce TOA? 🤔toe-ah...

current TOA muses: edward, chad, denning

past TOA muses? its just been these three so far baybey

who was your first TOA muse? if you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? [gripping edward really hard as i hold him out towards the camera] this boy has lived in my brain rent fucking free for 11 years he is a vital part of my deciding whether i get fries with my burger order atp

do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? reiterating this from the last time i filled this out: little guys and pensive freaks. i also fundamentally like characters who experience internal conflict of interests between their morality and their loyalty/duty/other social trappings. its tasty!

do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? i love digging deep into lore and piecing it together even if its not immediately evident and a bit fragmented (its the soulsborne enjoyer in me). BUT if i need to do this for a main or major character with a bajillion dialogue and context clues strewn across three playthroughs of a game and i could easily overlook things i would be a little too scared of getting soemthing wrong. "oh x loves orange juice" "WRONG x said as a one off in the middle of this heavy story segment that he hates orange juice and prefers strawberry milk actually" i would fucking die. i would die

what kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? UNRELIABLE NARRATION. shit you look at and go "hm that aint whats going on rn at all". love that shit. i try to not overuse it but i love when it becomes more evident midway through a scene. good stuff. i also love writing impulsive stupid responses and vividly descriptive scenes, but also i love writing affection and devotion in general, even if exceptionally gooey and cavity-inducing, even if ill-advised and misplaced. there's so much more i can add here but i love writing i love writing with people i love writing with y'all. love and peace.

and violence. i used to be scared of fight scenes but now i love thinking in those milliseconds between the violence. flurries and slurries of blood. can i rip more shit apart pretty please

do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man i hope i get to write this one day”? [stuffs my fist in my mouth and screams]

incredibly loosely speaking. i want edward to realise he's been a bit fucked up actually and have to sit in that thought instead of shrugging past it as usual. i want chad to sit with someone and just connect with them so they don't feel as alone (yes this has happened i just love when this happens). i want denning to forcibly feel an emotion, and whether they get better or worse from it might depend entirely on their company.

favorite TOA-related memories? sorry that i keep bringing up edwards 37.5 damage astra during the final fight of apollyon ouranos i just can't stop thinking about it. that's so much fucking damage. that said i loved banding together against the impossible and FUCKING WINNING

present or past tense? uhhh present < just had to go back to check

normal size text, small text, no preference? normal size is a bit easier for me to read, but i have no real preference

got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 either you know my delusions or you don't . at any rate i don't think my rosters going to move anytime soon