#I'm still working on improving my grass painting

[aurantia-ignis]

Picnic in Paldea

[pumpkinbxtch]

Hope you’re having a good day!! I haven’t requested anything in a second…so may I request an apollo x reader :3 ??? fem! I don’t have any other specifics in mind, maybe just daughter of hermes!reader ??

that’s all

tyy you’re the best mwah ❤️❤️

painting date ｡⁠*ﾟ

— apollo x daughter of hermes! reader

warnings: none

a/n: oh gods, I have never done a daughter of Hermes, I feel like I have to improve. I promise to do it but for now, I offer this to you with all my heart.Thanks for always coming, you know I got your back, girl. kisses 💙

You let out a big sigh and tossed the brush onto the grass with resignation. Apollo glanced up from his own canvas resting on his lap and gave you a gentle look.

— Finished?

— It's really bad. Not my thing — you said, puffing out your cheeks as you watched him continue working on his painting. The idea of painting each other's faces wasn't going as well as you had imagined. Half an hour had passed, and you had already given up on Apollo's portrait, while he couldn't tear himself away from the canvas, smiling satisfactorily.

You were curious about how his was going, so you stretched your neck for a glimpse, but he immediately tilted the painting to avoid it.

— I could... steal something for you. I'm good at that.

— No stealing.

— Connor has those cookies you like.

— No — Apollo said firmly, taking another brushstroke.

— A prank on Mr. D?

Apolo rolled his eyes and leaned against the tree trunk, still holding the canvas out of your view.

— As much as I'd love to see my brother covered in something gooey or something like that. No.

You pouted and admired your own painting. A total disaster, the proportions weren't good at all. You decided not to give it to him; it would be an offense to his ego. Apollo coughed, drawing your attention.

— Can I see it, darling?

You abruptly refused. You wouldn't let him see the atrocities you had done to his face for anything in the world.

— Come on — he insisted, smiling slightly.— I've finished mine.

— wasn't very smart to suggest a painting date to the god of arts — you said.

He chuckled. Your heart was racing faster than you could accept; you didn't want to know what would happen once Apollo saw the portrait you had made. He'd probably throw it in your face and stop talking to you for eternity; he could make that possible.

— Dear — he called, still looking at your own work, and with a surge of courage, you revealed it to his eyes.

Apolo smiled eagerly and sincerely. Not a hint of mockery showed on his face, and you felt envious of his self-control. It felt like those times when you showed your mother something you had done in kindergarden, yes, those same times when they praised your clearly null artistic talents.

— It's spectacular! — he exclaimed, and where his eye was supposed to be, the paint began to spill. Now it looked like his mascara had run.

— Liar! — you turned the portrait and smeared the paint to avoid more spillage. Apollo tried to stop you, but you had already spread the paint across the canvas, leaving his face stained with the tone.

— Hey, I still wanted it.

You sighed and put it aside.

— Yeah, sure.

Apollo looked at you over his lashes and reached out to take your hand.

— Do you want to see mine?

You nodded, despite your bad mood, you were curious about his. He turned it around, and as expected, it was beautiful, except it wasn't just you, but a painting of both of you doing exactly what you were doing at that moment: Both sitting face to face, canvases in your laps, and covered by the shade of the tree on a sunny spring day.

Your heart squeezed, and you bit the inside of your cheek.

— It's beautiful.

Apollo smiled and took advantage of your admiring his painting to take yours. Before you could snatch it away, he snapped his fingers, and it disappeared in a golden cloud.

— I hope you sent it to the Manhattan dumpsters.

— Now it's hanging in my palace room.

Your cheeks flushed, and you shook your head. He raised an eyebrow and conjured up a vision on his palm.

Above his bedhead was your painting, not only that. It was the first time you could see that everything you had given him was cherished in that place. The origami frog? That paper with a red lipstick kiss? Your commemorative shirt with the Hermes cabin symbol that you gave him after you won a race? Everything was there.

Your lip quivered; you were about to cry. Apollo already had teary eyes; seeing you like this gave him so much feeling.

— My love —you sobbed, and Apollo made the vision disappear, starting to raise his arms towards you.

— I love you, darling — and he drew you into him.

He was the god of the arts. He could see beauty in everything, especially if it was something you had done.

[magnoliaroad]

4 Seasons Back Yard Remodel + Crystal Yard

My 4 seasons remodels of the Petz 5 Back Yard are now available for download! And because I went on a bit of a side-quest, I’ve also made a bonus version, a fantasy, crystal back yard!

You can read my creator's notes below:

I somewhat wonder if it's fair to criticize the original Petz 5 playscenes too harshly. It's possible that the development team faced tight deadlines or budget constraints, factors that may not have been entirely within their control. However, regardless of the circumstances, the end result was a disappointingly sloppy product, and it's difficult to ignore some of the glaring flaws. While I can understand that the developers were working with dated software, there are certain flaws that can't be attributed to software limitations. Rather, they seem to reflect a clear lack of attention to detail. Here's what I mean.

The more you look at it, the harder it is to decide which flaw is the worst. The blatant MS paint spray paint "touch-up" in the upper left, that there was no effort put into blending in the skybox, or that they neglected to add textures to the roof.

Alright, enough ranting there. None of this is to say my playscenes are perfect either, but they were a labor of love and I hope that this is evident in the final results.

SPRING

I smoothed out the grass texture to give it a more velvety, manicured lawn appearance. I brightened up the dingy looking fence to a more brighter white. The original playscene had a hole in the fence, and while it might add "character", I opted to cover over it for a more polished look. I added bushes behind the fence to cover up the skybox and to conceal the bottom of the houses.

Speaking of houses. Wow these needed a big work-up. The texture work (or lack of) on these is just bad. I'm no expert in house construction, but even mostly-brick houses will have some accents like trims to break up the monotony of a fully-brick façade.

Because of how fuzzy the brick texture is in the original, I drew in the mortar lines of the bricks to enhance the texture. I added roof shingles, siding, and trim boards to the house to make it look more like a typical suburban house. Despite these edits, it's still not a "great" house - the way it looks through the windows, it looks like the house is one room lol. I wish I could put better houses in the backdrop but because Tinker doesn't allow me to edit the animated blinds, I'm constrained to keeping them the shape that they are. Oh well. We can use our imagination.

I added landscaping rocks to make the flower bed look nicer. I also added some landscaping details like bushes, garden lights, and string lights for ambiance.

[ Enlarged picture of the garden light I made ]

I also worked to improve the skyboxes in all 4 seasons of the of the Back Yard playscenes. It would be lengthy to get into the details of all that but here's a before and after of the night skybox. You got to love them high-quality MS paint stars in the original.

SUMMER

I had a hard time with the summer one because it was hard to come up with ways to make it look different from the spring version. I did make the grass, bushes, and tree leaves slightly more vibrant. Originally I had some flowers by the bushes but I just wasn't really happy with them. At the last minute, I made the decision to remove them entirely. This makes the playscene a little more "plain" but I think some people may want a more "plain", undecorated version so that they can dress it up how they want with toyz.

FALL

Fall is my favorite season, so this was a joy to make. I toned down the color of the grass and added fall landscaping motifs. Recoloring the tree's leaves was done by using Photoshop's gradient map feature. If time permits, I may do a tutorial on this in the future.

Gradient mapping is a powerful tool for recoloring almost anything. It can give way better results than methods such as hue/saturation, replace color, etc. And thanks to photoshop actions, applying this recolor to all the animation frames took just a couple of minutes.

Unfortunately, the fall leaves look "bright" in the nighttime version of the playscene. There does not seem to be a way to implement a darker version of these leaves for the nighttime playscene. If you look at the sprites in Tinker, you'll see that there are two sets of animations for Leaves A, B, and C and they're labeled "PropsAd" and "PropsAn", which would lead you to think that the developers originally intended for there to be a set of leaves for the day time, and a darker set for the night time. I guess the developers scrapped this idea because this does not work in the actual gameplay. When I experimented with this, the game appears to randomly display the nighttime sprite even during the day time, effectively ruining the intended affect. I'm not sure why the developers scrapped this. Either they had issues coding this properly or were just didn't want to put in the effort to make two sets of leaves.

WINTER

Instead of doing recolored leaves for this scene, I made all the leaves transparent and added holiday lighting to the tree. I know the lights aren't perfect - it was kind of hard to make out which direction a branch was going, so it has hard to maintain 'perfect' perspective.

CRYSTAL YARD

This is a bonus playscene that I made because I got a little side-tracked as I was working on the 4 seasons back yards. This is inspired by the Suramar zone from World of Warcraft, so it has a bit of that fantasy, night-elf feel and color scheme. It's been years since I've played WoW but I still appreciate the enchanting aesthetic of the elven zones.

I used gradient mapping again to recolor the leaves to give it this lavender, shimmery, iridescent look. I did a little bit of gaussian blurring and layer effects to make them look a little more "glowy" than the originals.

As before, Tinker won't let me edit the blinds, so it limited what edits I could do to the houses. I would love it if I could have done curtains instead or something. I did my best to make these houses look a little less suburban and more elven. It's not perfect but it was rough working with what I had.

KNOWN ISSUES / THINGS I COULDN'T EDIT

As far as I'm aware, there is no way to turn off the snow effect for seasons like summer where it wouldn't make sense. This probably involves some code-editing that is beyond my technical skillset.

The winter playscene still has the green grass footprint when your petz walk. The sprites for these are not housed within the .env itself but in the Petz 5 Rez.dll file. It would probably involve a bit of tweaking in the code to switch the sprites to something else.

The fall leaves are "bright" in the night time version because there is no way to implement a second, darker set of leaves.

I cannot edit the blinds animation. Tinker gives you an error when you try to edit this sprite. This unfortunately limits what edits I can make to the house and the fence because of where the sprite is positioned.

If anyone does know of solutions to these, do let me know as I'd love to enhance these scenes further!

ICONS

Making the icons for these was also a fun little project. For some odd reason though, the game puts a stray pixel over them when I import them through LnzPro. I did my best to disguise them but there does not seem to be a way to fix that.

BEFORE / AFTER

With all that rambling out of the way, visit my main page over at Magnolia Road > Resources > Playscenes to download the goodies!

[akwolfgrl]

Fireworks

Day 1 first meeting/ first kiss Reiju x Okiku

@oprarepairweek

Reiju still couldn't believe what had happened. Her and her brothers were now free. Big mom had killed their father, setting them free. Thire was still working to be done, but she was confdtint between Dr. Trafalgar and Dr. Chopper that her brothers would be fine. They had already shown vast improvements since being here.

The streets were filled with people celebrating and rebuilding after Stawhat Luffy had taken down Kadio. Reiju stepped to the side to avoid being run into as children ran past giggling. She bumped into a warm body.

“Sorry,” Reuji apologized looking behind her and the up twords a gorgeous women with dark hair that hung down her back, dark blue eyes in a yellow kimono with chrysanthemum floral patterns, a pink cream and lavender obi, white tabi, and black-soled. Her face was round and skin smoth a prefect, dhe a gorgeous red lip and a slight brush of blush on beautiful face. Reuji stepped to the side of the women off the busstiling street.

“It's quite all right,” She smiled down at her with prefectly painted red lips. “The streets are rather packed today. It's so wonderful to see everyone so happy,”

“Yes I suppose it must be nice,” Reuji had seen her around but hadn't had the chance to meet the tall women before. “I'm Reuji,”

“Okiku, your Sangorous older sister,”

“Yes, it's quite easy to tell who I'm related to,” Reuji admitted with a small chuckle. “If you don't, would you care to show me around? It's simple, beautiful hear, very different from my own home,” She always did enjoy beautiful and deadly things, and she could tell the women next to was such.

“Oh I would love to, you cuaght me at the perfect time,”

Reuji was looking forward to it, she had always known she preferred the company of women, she had keep that sceart close to her chest, she had a role to play and one she did very well. Even if she was found to screatly break the rules. But now that she was free, it didn't matter anymore. there was no need to hide.

“Then shall we?”

<>

Okiku led the stunning women who had bumped into her around her home. She couldn't stop stealing looks at Reiju from the corner of her eye. With her vibrant pink hair and curly eyebrows, the other women certainly stood out. Even with the soft pink kimono with the different colored roses and lilys on the sleeves and hem, her yellow obi did little to hide to her figure.

Her blue eyes seemed deep and full of mystery, and her smile promised pain and pleasure if only one was bold enough to take it.

“Oh thire shuld be fireworks starting soon, I know a wonderful spot to them from,” Okiku decided to be bold and took the other women's hand in her own and led her up the hill.

She was unsure why she was acting this way. They had only just met and yet. Okiku couldn't stop herself from wanting to know more. She had heard that her and Sangorous brothers were receiving treatment to bring back all of their emotions to undo what had been done to them by their own father. She didn't know the details, but it must be hard to have to learn how to handle and regulate your emotions as an adult. Okiku chased thouse thoughts from her head as they neared the spot.

It was almost completely dark as the sun had dipped below the horizon. Okiku took a seat on the ground and patted the grass next to her. Reuji joined her after a moment. They sat in silence listening to the world around them, the wind ruslting therw the trees, the animals moving around, the fireflies had just come out to play.

“Oh!” Reuji examlies next to her. “What are these?”

“Thire fireflies you've never seen one before?”

“No never, I grew up in a floating castle, never spent time outside after drak that didn't involve training, thire was simple no time to just sit and enjoy the world around me,”

“Well now you do, now you have time,”

Reiju smiled at her, softer this time. She leaned closet, her kimono sleeve brushing against her own. They sat and watched the night sky light up with colors, celebrating their freedom.

[forsakenwitchery]

I think I've been MIA on my public profiles everywhere long enough so ummm just dropping by to say that I'm… alive? And that's as far as it goes, because I'm not particularly well physically or mentally. My cat has been sick for almost a month now and I'm one of those weird people who sees pets as kids, so Rowena is quite literally my furry baby. And there're times she's better for a day and then there're times when her condition isn't improving or gets worse in some ways so it's just… Um… It's been a month. Sometimes I sleep 3 or 4 hours a day 'cause she constantly wakes me up and I'm trying to get her to eat or drink at least something. Sometimes I can't force myself to eat if she's not eating. I had a full on mental breakdown the other day for a handful of reasons. I also freaked out when I actually saw myself in the mirror. The whole things is just… A lot. There are times when I just look at her and I see that she's mostly her usual self but something is still off and I just break down crying and she looks at me like I'm insane. I hope she mproves this week, but if not, I just don't know what else to do or think or whatever. I don't want to take her to the clinic for full days under the IV again, but I might not have a choice. I've had a fair share of bad weeks and months in my life with eating disorders, but this September has sure been… something else entirely. I don't have a great support system either and I'm also fighting my family to not make her condition worse 'cause they think that eating grass and vomiting is somehow better for her as if we're in the 19th century.

I am sometimes working on some creative things just to keep a semblance of sanity but I've got no idea when or if they're coming 'cause… you get the picture I’m not particularly keen on painting.

And if someone could send some good vibes Rowena’s way, please do.

[leo--len]

Hi guys!

After reading a large amount of fanfic, and realizing I have an unhealthy amount of ideas in my brain that can't all be expressed through DnD, i've decided I want to try my hand at writing Fanfic. I'm posting it here just so I can get some feedback from real humans while I'm waiting on an Ao3 invitation.

This fanfic takes place in a Minecraft Origins inspired world. This is my first time, so if you have any criticisms or ways I could improve, PLEASE tell me.

Bright Stars in the black void

By: leolen

All was quiet in the town of Bracken Hearth. The children were already asleep, most of the adults were silent and ready to follow them into darkness. Even the sounds of the surrounding forests and valley seemed muted, like even the valley itself had fallen into a deep slumber. And with the moon having been darkened, the only light provided came from the stars, twinking away with their dim light. With not a cloud in sight, it was perfect conditions for a bit of star gazing.

But in the end, that night only two had their eyes on the stars.

CRACK! Gratin winced as a branch snapped under the weight of body, weighed down as it was from the heavy equipment slung around his back. It must have weighed at least sixty pounds, and they had been hiking for well over an hour up the side of the valley. At the sound, Milo jumped, startled until he realized what it was.

“Stars above Gratin!” Milo exclaimed, “Can you at least try to be a little quieter, you scared the crap out of me!”

Gratin gave him a baleful look and shot back, “I’m only here because you needed help carrying this thing up the trail. Next time, I won’t come, and you can do it yourself.”

At that Milo gave a little huff and continued climbing up the trail. Gratin hoped they were almost there, he was running on an empty stomach, and the nap he took this afternoon wasn’t enough to fully dissuade his exhaustion.

At last, the trees around the two cleared, to reveal a large grassy area. A few minutes of walking later and…

“Whoa…” Gratin whispers. No matter how many times he comes up here, the view from this bluff never fails to impress. This was surprising, as he had been to places much more expansive, and seen the world from angles few ever had. But even still, this bluff managed to take his breath away each and every time he stepped up to that ridge.

“Let's set up over there,” Milo said, pointing to a patch of grass a good distance away from the ledge, “The ground looks stable enough to set up the scope.”

“On it,” Gratin replied. And after a few minutes of Milo and Gratin fiddling around with the heavy equipment, a large brass telescope finally stood in place. With the telescope fully assembled, Milo began his work, mapping the stars and the constellations they formed onto large scrolls of paper. This was Gratin’s favorite part of the routine. Gratin carefully settled himself down into the grass—careful not to pinch his cloak in the wrong way—and looked back up at the sky and the stars that danced across it. As Milo hummed to themself while copying down the patterns he saw in the sky, Gratin felt himself drifting off into a deep, and restful sleep.

— • —

Milo loved the stars.

He loved how they painted the sky with light, even in the darkest part of the day. He loved how they wove together stories through the constellations they formed. And he loved how even though they would shift and change throughout the year, he loved how they would always come back together. And so, for the past year and a half, he'd been coming up to Cedarhead Bluff each week to see how they've shifted across the sky. To witness their beauty up close, and personal.

Hours after Gratin fell asleep, Milo noticed something unusual in the sky. It started as looking like a brand new star in the sky, appearing right between Glatoris and Minos Ursa. But the longer Milo looked at it, the brighter it seemed to get. This continued until the other stars seemed to pale in comparison to its sheer luminosity, and by the time Milo had shaken Gratin out of his slumber, it was brighter than the full moon.

“Gratin! LOOK!” Milo shouted, shaking Gratin back and forth. The light grew brighter and brighter, now revealing the sun in its intensity. Birds began to chirp, the forest startled into wakefulness by the violet light spilling across the entire valley. Even the inhabitants of Brakenhearth, still slumbering away in their beds, began to stir, their bodies still knowing its night, but confused by the seeming presence of the sun. It grew brighter, and brighter until,

It vanished, and the night was dark once more.

“What was that,” Gratin grumbled, still a bit annoyed from being woken up so suddenly, “It almost looked like a shooting star.”

“Not even meteorites are that bright,” Milo excitedly replied, shooting a glance back at a now awake Gratin, “This is something new! Something previously unknown! Something…” He trailed off, now looking in the telescope pointed towards the source of the unknown light. A look of confusion was painted across his face.

“Gratin,” Milo said, with a note of apprehension and fear audible in his voice, “Could you tell me where Dywyll is. I've seen to have misplaced it.

Dywyll? What was Milo talking about? Being in the Ursa cluster, it was one of the easier stars to find, even with Dywyll being one of the dimmer stars of the night. First find Sylaphus, then one down and two to the right…

No

Wait

That's not

Again, first find Alarch, then three up, and one the the left…

No!

Again! Find Rhewlif! Then two down, and one to the right…

Nothing

Gratin stared, a look of utter disbelief on his face, as he finally understood the look of almost terror that was now present on Milo’s face. No matter how many times he looked, no matter how many times he searched the sky using maps that had been long since ingrained into his brain, he would always come to the same conclusion. That in the sky, one of the dancers have misstepped in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Because Dywyll, well…

Dywyll was missing.

And once again, all was quiet in the forest.

[deliciousnightcomputer]

my brothers death, my parents, my friends 2.

3. Httyd, Pitch perfect, the Duff 4. Once my mom went out with my uncle and my aunt and after she came back, she was kind of drunk and just took of her glasses to go to sleep but she set them on the bed so she slept on them that night and it kind of got crooked and now every time we go out we always tell her don't drink too much or you'll sleep on your glasses again. 5. i heard a lot about Tumblr and that u could find almost any ship here so i was curious and came to check it out. 6. the number of notifications is the best and worst cause i like reading the comments and seeing how much i got but it also makes a lot of noise and if your gone for more than 2 days you'll have a million waiting for you and u have to read through them and answer back 7. Insects and the middle of the ocean. i don't really know why I'm scared of insects but i just am like anytime they come remotely close to me i start to freak out. Oceans because you never know what's happening around you when you're on a boat you'll never know if there's a gigantic thing under you or when you're under water you won't be able to see if somethings under you or above you unless you look up and it's not like you can hear them either. 8. not really i rarely have dreams as is. 9. once when i was little my brother, my cousin and i we started our own business selling cherries and lemonade and the business was actually going pretty well (btw we were only 6 and 7 at the time and this is in another country) until i cut the back of my leg on something at school it was this long piece of metal and the cut was long i don't know how my tiny self-did not cry after seeing this, but after that we had to shut down our business. 10. yes i would 11. when you and whoever you're with can stay in the same room together not saying a single word yet you guys can understand each other, when you're in your moment of weakness and you guys don't even have to say anything but you know what they need and when even though you guys are mad at each other you guys would still take care of each other, when the person likes you but doesn't think they're good enough so they improve on themselves for you when something happens to one of you and the other one waits instead of moving on and leaving you behind. 12. never take anything for granted you never know what can happen in the future, especially to the people you love. 13. supposed to be doing homework but am reading, talking and writing on Tumblr instead. 14. I've always wanted to have a sleepover with a friend or go hang out with a friend outside of school but i can't do that because of my parents so that's never happening. 15. my house, family and my best friend 16. my inability to do work early I procrastinate too much. 17. God, My best friend, and My books 18. i don't believe in ghosts but i do believe in Aliens 19. the feeling of the sun of your face, and the trees and grass looking so green under the sunlight, the air blowing and making the trees sway, being able to have natural light. 20. the solitude, not needing to do anything, knowing there isn't anybody else awake in the house, the stars, the way its so dark but it looks like a painting, and the minimum of sounds, it's just so peaceful at night (also being able to sleep in the darkness).

questions I think would be fun to be asked

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

show us a picture of your handwriting?

3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?

what made you start your blog?

what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

what scares you the most and why?

any reacquiring dreams?

tell a story about your childhood

would you say you’re an emotional person?

what do you consider to be romance?

what’s some good advice you want to share?

what are you doing right now?

what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?

what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

name 3 things that make you happy

do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?

favourite thing about the day?

favourite things about the night?

are you a spiritual person?

say 3 things about someone you love

say 3 things about someone you hate

what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?

fave season and why?

fave colour and why?

any nicknames?

do you collect anything?

what do you do when you’re sad?

what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?

are you messy or organised?

how many tabs do you have open right now?

any hobbies?

any pet peeves?

do you trust easily?

are you an open book or do you have walls up?

share a secret

fave song at the moment?

youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?

any bad habits?

(this post was stolen from @teenage-mutant-ninja-freak, since it couldn't be reblogged anymore)

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Real pleased with the progress in the yard so far, and fine-tuning the next steps as I go

Projects I noticed while working on the reseeding today:

Need to build and hang some bee boxes and then scrub down the deck with a citronella seal to hopefully convince the carpenter bees to relocate - also need to redo the deck frankly but that's a long-term thing and I'd really like to have access to a woodlot first and plane our own boards rather than buying them. Even in bulk from a lumbermill that's more money than I'd like to spend for proper hardwoods like oak and cherry

Need to buy a sythe/machete for the tall invasives by the creek - once the ground is cleared, going to turn our old olive oil tins into lizard houses, and reseed with strawberry corn, sunflowers, cardoons, witch hazel, and ground cherries

Need to call the city and find out who is legally allowed to bring down the willow across the creek that got uprooted during Helene and has been threatening to fall onto our fence ever since. Happy to do it myself if I'm allowed, but would rather the other land owner handle it, unfortunately it's not a person, it's a company so I have no idea how to talk to them about this except through the city.

Need to smash a pumpkin and throw some budding sweet potatoes into the compost and really hill up the hay on top so I can have a pumpkin and sweet potato patch for my leetle ladies tasty treat times

I need to sprout the red plum seeds and prep the temporary pots for when they're ready to transplant outdoors, might consider planting them directly in their own loosened hale bales, esp if I can let the chickens have at the bales over winter first.

Speaking of which, we need more hay. I need to call my hay guy and ask how much another 50 bales of clover hay will cost me

Need to bury the logs under hay and compost to start byilding raised beds and improving the topsoil quality, ideally I'll seed the swales with wetland/riparian plants so that as the swales smother the lingering invasives, the plants can sprout up on top with all that yummy organic matter

Need to buy/make root veggie sacks to bury in the compost and new topsoil so I can grow even while I'm still making new topsoil

I need to make sure to include wildflowerd in the spring compost and reseed, because we're starting to get some volunteering which means the soil is recovered enough to play good host and I want to speed that up

Gotta make some starter plots around the chicken run and the dog run to regularly re-establish groundcover in them given how much the chickens and dogs tear up the grass

Need to build a chicken tractor to use in future years to control overgrowth and compost growing beds after harvest

Need to build a water table for lettuces and greens, ideally linked up to the rainbarrel water storage system

Need to keep expanding the chicken run now they're all enjoying it so Elvira is less of an asshole, and reinforce under the coop so no one gets stuck under the foundation

Reinforcing the creek bank (witch hazel and red plum tree and creeping thyme) behind the dog run so we don't lose integrity of the fence.

Paint the house some goddamn colors holy FUCK

Keep making braids for cat and chicken toys

Maybe enclose the upper deck for a four season cat porch

Set up some 7-10 gallon pots on the deck for growing ginger and lemongrass and other culinary/medicinal plants we need to keep out of the topsoil

Make a plant ID booklet for use during harvesting

Make a recipe book to guide cut and come again use

Set out a shaded table at the top of the drive with places to set out eggs, produce, preserves, etc that we're not going to be able to use up for give away - should make sure to put a sign up to officially let folks know they can take what they like.

Start passionflower vines by the creek and back fence

Fill the front yard with flax

Plant a broomsedge, scouring rush, water cress, plaintain, American Trout Lily, alumroot, phlox, chickweed, creeping blueberries,culinary sumac, and primrose propogation bed by the creek to crowd out the last invasive ground covers (apparently the native ground covers have done a GREAT job smothering most of the invasives in the yard, and there are only a few invasive vines and crabgrass left actually. Everything else is native wetland grasses and galax. Just....so much galax lmao

I might look into canebrrak bamboo as well, that would be extremely useful for fiber production holy shit

I definitely want a stand of Indigo for dyes and inks

I still want my pawpaws and wild olive and wild black rum cherry trees so they'll probably go in the front where the crabapples are now. I could probably make a lil lumber out of the bigger crabapple and a nice cat toy out of the smaller one.

It would be great to get a Broom Hickory or a chinquapin, too, but I'm prioritizing the pecans

A sugar berry would be lovely, they're kind of nothing on their own, but if you use them in preserves of other fruits, they come out AMAZING

Coreopsis my beloved <3

I need to flesh out my medicinal garden too, and I'm thinking about waterleaf. It would be AMAZING for my skin condition, particularly for my feet, but I'm not sure I can harvest and use it fast enough given its growth habit the leaves and shoots are ostensibly edible, so maybe if we a consistent about cutting them back for the greens that will keep the rhizomes focused on growing rather than spreading.

Bayberry would be extremely useful for making plant waxes and butters, but I'm in the same position as the waterleaf, esp since they're even less readily edible lol

I think that's everything so far, which is good because it's already a year's worth of work lmao

[artsymeadowblog]

Evaluation

I made this creative artwork of a key. It was tough to work with clay polyester while moulding the shape, and painting it was also tricky. I had to make a digital drawing of my initial idea, but I ended up changing my approach and removing some colours. The final result isn't exactly what I had in mind compared to my drawing, but I still like how it turned out. I was comparing my key to the ones in Locke & Key, and I noticed that his keys only have the design on the head, while mine is way more colourful and unique. I even added dragonfly wings, which his keys don't have.

Making my trading cards was super fun and awesome! I got to create new characters and used sea animals as inspiration for the back covers. Each card has its own special trait or personality, and I even named them after the sea creatures they're based on. So, I made this island stack and plaster sculpture by reverse casting. It wasn't too hard, but I did make a few mistakes. It was still fun to make, and I added a lot of detail and texture to the clay using paint and other materials. The final product came out pretty much how I expected, but the bird stain is a little too dramatic. If I did it again, I'd use less vibrant green so it would look more like grass.

I did some research at the beginning of the project on artists who do realism, shapes, and cute cartoony stuff. Amanda Visell, Norman Saunders, and Junko Mizuno are some of the artists I looked at. Honestly, though, their work didn't really influence me or my ideas when I was creating my own stuff throughout the lessons. For the eight pieces, I decided to do a pirate theme. I thought it would be different to do something with sea creatures since pirates are always out at sea. I also used a different theme for one of the pieces, which was clowns being pirates. 

My best work so far was definitely the trading cards and key. The designs came out sick, and even though the key didn't turn out exactly how I pictured it, it still looked dope in the end. I'm gonna try to be better about managing my time with posts and creating artwork in the future. I'll plan ahead, do some research, and take progress photos to include in the posts. I also want to check out other artists' work to see how I can improve or compare my own stuff. And of course, I'll use the internet to help me make and design things.

[valcuda]

- Jasmin cloud gazing with her little siblings.

This is a scene from a short story I'm working on, "Jasmin: A Little Day Out". In this painting, they're just laying in the grass, enjoying the sun, and the wind, and the sounds of nature.

Anyways, I imagine Jasmin viewing Quinton and Elizabeth as siblings, instead of pets, or just family members, a view which I think Quinton and Elizabeth share, especially since they were shrunken as part of the same test, they have a bit of kinship there.

Oh yeah! You can also see Jasmin's thigh high's in this! Something which I rarely think about. The only reason she has them, is cause I made her in Sims once, and her legs too bare, so I gave her thigh highs, and they looked good, so I stuck with them. She's not showing her thighs in her base artwork tho, so I can't show them! This makes Jasmin the only character to have a detail not included in her base art! Assuming you don't count the seams on Junk-Watt's thighs, legs, ankles, and stomach, as separate details from her other seams.

Anyway, because I suck with perspective, I actually used Blender to pose digital wood drawing mannequins in the right poses, with the right sizes, rendered that, and essentially used that as my pose draft. I feel a bit guilty about doing that, but Jasmin's neck paid the price. An when I say wood drawing mannequins, I mean actually hunted down a 3D model of a typical wooden drawing mannequin, since that's what I base my pose drafts off anyway. Here's a link to it if you want it. It's honestly quite nice, and the stand was easy to remove thankfully!

Now then, something that annoys me is how little resolution I had for Quinton and Elizabeth. I originally planned to do this in Medibang, at 5600x4200 (my usual, just landscape), but it didn't give me enough resolution to do those two in my usual style, so I decided to try digitally painting it, and Penup has an even lower max resolution. Jasmin was drawn on 10 layers (Something I kinda regret), while Quin and Liz were done on 1 layer each. Honestly, if I wasn't so hellbent on making Quinton and Elizabeth their accurate sizes (which I still messed up by making them a tad bit too small) this would've looked far different, as I planned to include a tree stump, and some flowers (Like "Dreams by the Creek"), but I had to zoom in quite close just to make Quin and Elizabeth more than mere specs. This whole drawing was a disaster and a half. I still love it though, and I'm sure I'll end up making an improved version sometime, likely in Medibang. (Which ironically, was what I made "Dreams by the Creek" in, cause I didn't have Penup at the time, or even know it existed!)

Well then, that's all for now!

[yelena-bellova]

Don't Be Afraid: Poe Dameron x Solo!Reader - Epilogue

Epilogue

Series Masterlist

Plot: A look into the lives of the Damerons and their loved ones after the war.

Warnings: fluff overload, mentions of dead parents, reference to sex, this is one of the tamest chapters ever

Word Count: 7.1k (okay so it's basically a full blown chapter, so sue me)

A/N: And here we are at the end of the line...I'm gonna save my talking for the a/n at the end. Too emotional. Enjoy this last ride aboard the Solo x Dameron train.

----

THREE YEARS LATER

Something I didn’t know about peace was that it could last.

We’re about to come out of hyperspace.

“Thanks, buddy,” I addressed R2, flipping a few switches in preparation for coming into the planet’s atmosphere.

I’m going to stay with you the whole time you’re here.

I rolled my eyes lovingly, thankful for having such a protective droid but exhausted from having the same argument every time we made the journey. “R2, how many times have we come out here?” In the last three years, we’ve been out 75 times.

“Mmhmm, and how many times has anything bad ever happened?” If you’re counting the time that you broke your ankle from falling into that ditch-

“Self-inflicted incidents don’t count,” I interrupted.

Oh. Then none.

“Exactly,” I lightened up my tone, “So feel free to roam freely, I’ll be fine.” …Okay. We’re coming out of hyperspace.

I placed my hands on the controls of my starfighter, my body relaxing as the blue and white light of hyperspace faded and our destination came into view.

Chandrila.

Muscle memory took over as I made the familiar flight down to the planet, flying over the city until the buildings changed to fields and the occasional stream. It was a gorgeous planet whether you were in the metropolitan or rural areas. Where I was headed was a perfect combination of both. When the building that lay in the distance as a little dot came into view, I smiled. Not a smile that I put on days when addressing diplomats and donors as a general. Not a smile I gave on bad days when morale still needed to be kept up. This was a smile reserved only for the people and things I loved most in the world, and it only grew as I landed the ship.

I was home.

My childhood house looked the same as it always had, it had aged but with the fresh coat of paint that had just been put on a few weeks before, it looked refreshed. I unhatched the cockpit and stood up in my seat, breathing in the cool air.

“You’re late.” I smiled a little larger as I climbed out of the cockpit, landing firmly on the grass. “And you clearly don’t clean up for guests.” My brother let out a single chuckle and wiped off his hands with the rag he was carrying. His shirt was covered in splotches of some type of sauce, even his cheek had a patch caked onto it. “I was trying to make lunch,” he explained.

“Emphasis on the trying part,” I said, walking towards him and gesturing to the spots, “Definitely not hugging you till you’ve changed.”

“We both know that’s a lie,” Ben replied, extending an arm and giving me the perfect spot to settle into his side. I wrapped an arm around his back and we walked into the Solo family home together. “Have you made any more improvements?” I asked, walking through the front room where the Solos had spent most of their time together. I could still remember Dad teaching Ben and I sabacc but instead of betting with credits, we’d bet with whatever sweets were in the house.

“Just a couple,” Ben answered, removing his arm from my shoulders to point to the baseboards along the hall, “Cleaned those up, ripped out the carpet. Turns out there was some really nice tile underneath it the whole time” I laughed as we crossed into the kitchen, “Mom would be so mad if she knew you took out that carpet.” “You can’t deny it was ugly though” Ben threw the rag over his shoulder and made his way to the stove where there was a boiling pot.

“Oh, it was awful,” I agreed, “It looked like it was made out of Wookiee hair.” Ben returned to working on whatever dish he was making us while I wandered the kitchen. He hadn’t changed a lot from what I could tell. Mom had had the house personally designed which meant aside from her horrible taste in flooring, it was beautiful. I was about to sit down when I looked up to see Ben get hit by another splotch of sauce, he hissed in pain.

“‘Scuse me, chef,” I said, faux politeness filling my voice, “Is there any chance that you might need some help?” My brother glared at me with red sauce dripping down his cheek. “You’re a jerk.” “Yes I am,” I replied with a smug smile as I reached into the pantry for an apron I knew was there, “And you’re a sucky cook so budge over and let me finish whatever this is.”

With Ben setting the table and explaining to me it was some pasta dish that he had been trying to make, I improvised the rest of the recipe and ended up saving what my brother would have destroyed. Within twenty minutes, we were sitting at the table thoroughly enjoying our meal.

“What was the worst injury you got in this house?” Ben asked.

“Oh,” I wiped my mouth with a napkin and swallowed my bite of food, “Definitely when you dared me to jump off the roof of the shed out back and swing from the tree next to it.” “Oh, I forgot that one,” he laughed, “You sprained your tailbone and broke your arm.” “All that and I didn’t even reach that damn tree,” I grumbled, balling up my napkin and throwing it onto the table, “Poe wasn’t even there and he doesn’t let me forget that one.” At the mention of my husband’s name, Ben’s mood visibly changed. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Poe, he couldn’t make a decision as to whether he liked him or not because he’d barely met him. Poe had allowed Ben at our wedding, but he couldn’t find it in him to say more than maybe two words to him. In the three years that we’d been married, not once had he agreed to come visit my brother with me. I never pushed him to accompany me, but I wished each time I mentioned I was leaving base for a couple hours to go to Chandrila that he’d have a change of heart.

“How is your husband?” Ben asked, looking down at the puddle of sauce on his plate. “He’s good, busy,” I answered, trying not to feel awkward about the topic, “He’s a phenomenal general, but it takes up a lot of time.” “But you guys split it with Finn, right?” “Yeah, there’s three of us,” I brightened up a little at the mention of my friend’s name, “We’ve got a good system going. If one of us can’t make something, the other one goes. If there’s some event or ball we’re invited to and someone doesn’t want to go, we send somebody else. It works well.” “You hate those stuffy gatherings,” Ben recalled from past stories I’d told him. While he was away training with Uncle Luke, Mom had taught me about the wonderful world of politics. That meant I’d been to plenty of snobby charity events where you had to wear uncomfortable attire and pretend that certain senator’s jokes were side splitting funny.

“And that’s why we send Finn to those,” I answered with a smile, remembering Finn returning to Ajan Kloss tipsy and full of decadent desserts after his first time representing the Resistance at a gathering on Coruscant. He’d eased up on enjoying himself too much, but I loved hearing his excitement as he told me what crazy buffets they had lined up or what dance he’d learned. “Poe and I prefer the behind the scenes work.” Ben laughed as he took a sip of his spotchka. “You’re married to the poster boy of the Resistance and you’re a galactic legend. Not very behind the scenes, is it? “I said we prefer it, I didn’t say we got it all the time,” I swiped a finger across my plate and sucked the last of the sauce off it. “But whatever we’re doing, we love it. It feels like we’re carrying out Mom’s legacy while carving out our own. I mean, not that either of us care about status or anything but it does feel good to know that we’re doing something that’s going to make an impact.” “I’m glad,” Ben smiled from across the table, “I hope one day…” “What?”

Ben shook his head before looking back up at me, “I hope one day I can meet him and…apologize.” I sighed and looked down at the table, “He needs time. He’s pretty stubborn, but-“ “But he’s justified,” Ben quickly finished my sentence, “I mean, remember the first time you came back here? I thought you were going to rip my head off.” The first time visiting my brother in our childhood home, surrounded by memories that so heavily featured our parents, my emotions got the best of me. Ben and I had done a lot of work on our relationship over the past three years and it had taken me a long time to separate him from Kylo Ren. Just as he had to come to terms with what he had done while under Snoke’s influence, I did too. Forgiveness hadn’t come overnight, it had taken a lot of talks between the two of us before I could look him in the eye and fully accept what had happened.

“Yeah, well, we have a unique history,” I replied, swirling the water in my glass, “But we got past it.” Ben nodded, “We did…” “As much as we can anyways,” I said, melancholy as the unpleasant image of my father falling down the Starkiller Base shaft came to life in my mind.

Ben sensed my shift of mood, he didn’t dare say anything. He knew he needed to let me ride the flashback out.

When I opened my eyes that had been screwed shut, I tearily looked up at him. “I miss him,” I said softly to avoid the lump in my throat catching my words.

It was contagious clearly because Ben matched my sadness, his own dark eyes getting watery. “Me too,” he answered, staring off into the distance and playing the same scene back.

These were moments where our relationship took a punch to the gut. I had stopped reacting with sobs and shouting at him ‘Why?’ or ‘How could you?’ We’d made as much peace as we could with his sins, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt sometimes to remember them.

Ben cleared his throat and sniffed the tears away, trying to shift the mood back to anything but what we were feeling. “So, are you going to keep the same workload or what?” I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion and reached for my glass, “What are you talking about?”

“You just said being a general takes up a lot of your time,” he responded, “You can’t expect to be running around day and night putting out all those fires while taking care of a baby.”

I choked on the water in my throat, coughing the rest up as I tried to deal with what he’d said. “What’d you say?”

“The baby,” he replied simply as if it was so obvious, “You’re pregnant, right?” The lothcat was out of the bag. I tilted and shook my head, staring back at him with a wondrous smile. “How did you know?”

“C’mon, you asked for water instead of spotchka,” Ben said, counting each reason on his long fingers, “You went back for seconds of whatever you want to call what we made and,” he gestured to my stomach, “Your kid is incredibly sensitive to the Force. I can sense them already.” I exhaled, listening to him intently. “My baby’s Force sensitive?” Ben nodded, “Ridiculously. When you got out of your ship was when I felt them, it was like two people were there. It still is.” My hand naturally rubbed my stomach, I wasn’t showing yet but I was acting as if I was. I laughed a little at the revelation, partially out of joy and also because of the bet that Poe and I had made long ago as to whether or not our kids would be Force sensitive.

Poe.

“I just found out. I haven’t even told Poe yet,” I chuckled, “Today’s our anniversary, we’re having dinner tonight. I was planning on telling him then.” “I’m sure he’ll be happy,” Ben said, a little bit of sadness creeping through his tone once again at the mention of Poe.

“Look,” I leaned my arms on the table, “Poe’s a forgiving man, really. He’s all about second chances and redemption. This one’s gonna take him a while, but I know he’ll get there,” I reached out and took Ben’s hand, “I want you to know your nephew or niece and be a part of their life.” Ben smiled at the warmth of the moment. “I want that too.” I squeezed his hand and leaned back into my seat, placing both hands on my belly. “As for your earlier question, I have no idea what I’m going to do when the baby gets here. I don’t know how to be a general and help Rey begin the temple and be a full time mom. I can barely keep track of things right now as it is.” “You’ll figure it out,” Ben reassured me, “You always do.” “Thanks,” I smiled before broaching a topic I knew was still uncomfortable. “Does Rey ever come by to visit?” Ben shifted in his seat, “Occasionally.” “Has she told you about the temple?”

“She has.” I raised my eyebrows, “So?” “I…” Ben shook his head slowly, “I just don’t think I’m ready.” “Ben, whatever you’re afraid of…it’s not going to happen. You’ve never once backslid over the past three years. You could help teach the padawans once we-“ “I’m not ready, Y/n,” Ben interrupted sternly, his tone quickly softening, “I’m not ready to be in the environment again when the last time was…” I sighed, regretting having brought up the topic period. As much as I wanted my brother to fully take hold of his redemption and join Rey and I in training up the next generation of Jedi, I had to remember why he was hesitant. Every time he’d see our temple, he’d only think of the one he destroyed. Each youngling would remind him of each life he took the night he’d committed himself to the dark side.

“You’re right,” I backed down, “I’m sorry. If you ever decide to join us, we’d love to have you. But it’s your choice.” Ben nodded, not in the mood to pay attention to the conversation any more and focusing on grabbing our plates and walking them to the kitchen. I stood and followed him into the kitchen, helping him to wash the dishes we’d used to make the meal. We worked in a comfortable silence, the tension of the last part of our conversation fading slowly.

“I’m surprised R2 hasn’t come in yet to make sure you’re okay,” Ben observed as he dried the last dish. “I told him he didn’t have to be my shadow,” I answered, drying my hands on a rag, “I can’t imagine what he’s going to be like when he finds out I’m pregnant.” Ben chuckled deeply, “I don’t think he’s the one you have to worry about.” I confusedly looked to him before arriving at the same conclusion he had, “Oh my gosh, 3PO…”

“Yep,” Ben continued laughing as I slapped my palm across my forehead. “Can he stay with you for the next seven months?” I whined.

“Um, no,” Ben said firmly, shooting down the idea down faster than lightspeed.

I growled in frustration as my brother laughed at my pain, slinging an arm around my shoulder. “C’mon, I want to show you something.” Ben led me out back to the living room, the two of us sat down and he pulled a box off of the table in the middle of the room. “I was planting a couple things the other day and I hit something while I was digging. Thought it was just a rock or something but turns out…” he placed the box in my lap and waited for me to open it.

I lifted the lid off and peeked in, various papers that didn’t look very important filling the box up about halfway. Upon further examination, I realized I was holding something more valuable than any possession I’d ever own.

“My adoption papers,” I said, awestruck. “Mmhm,” Ben nodded, remembering that time clearer than I could, “Keep looking.” Beneath the papers were birthday cards Ben and I had made our parents over the years, even a few we’d made for Chewie. There were small knickknacks Ben and I had collected over the years. Trinkets Mom had brought us back from other planets, a few spare parts from the Falcon I’d found fascinating as a kid, even a few rocks that Ben had found outside our house that he’d thought were cool enough to keep. Our whole childhood was contained in this box.

“There’s one more thing,” Ben added, pointing towards the very bottom.

I lifted out the contents to get to where he was guiding me, finding something I never thought I’d see again.

A picture of Ben, me and our parents.

Words failed me as I picked up the faded piece of film, Mom had always believed in relying on more than holos for storing memories. I couldn’t remember when we took the picture or how old I was, all I knew was that I was held in my dad’s arms and he was grinning at the camera. He only ever smiled like that when he was with his family. Ben was seated in my mom’s lap, looking slightly more composed than me but still wearing that signature Solo smile as my mom looked down on him proudly. I never thought I’d get to see a picture of our whole family together, now here it was.

“Why was all this stuff buried?” I asked through the tears that were forming.

“I can only assume that Mom did it before you left?” Ben answered, taking the picture from my hands and examining it himself, “It’s the only explanation I could come up with.” “It’s like…” I began, thinking it over in my head, “It’s like she knew one of us would come back for it.” “Maybe,” Ben agreed, looking down at the decades old photo of our mother, “She never lost hope. With anything.” “Even us,” I commented, hugging my body as I let the revelation sink in. My mother was notoriously optimistic even when she was realistic, she couldn’t have known her children would ever come back to their home but she had clearly carried that hope with her throughout her life. It made me think of all the times that I had given up on something, all my thoughts looping back to the biggest one. “I’m sorry I gave up on you,” I finally said after three years of holding it back, “That I didn’t make good on my promise to bring you home. There was always good in you but after Ilum…I wrote you off when I should have looked harder.” Ben furrowed his brow and gestured around the room, “Look around, where do you think we are?”

I chuckled as I turned my gaze to our surroundings. “I’m home, Y/n,” Ben continued, “You kept your promise. After Mom passed…the person that made me want to come back was you,” he paused to take my hand, “I know you think you have to save everyone but you couldn’t have saved me back then, hard as I know you would have tried. What’s important is that we’re here now, we’re both happy and you…” Ben placed a hand over my stomach, “Are going to be the best mom in the galaxy.” I tearily smiled at him, “Second best.” Ben looked down at the photo resting on our knees and smiled as well. “Fine,” he said as we both focused on our mom’s image, “Second best.”

I knew very well by now that I couldn’t save everyone, as much as I had tried over the years. The loss of my parents was proof. And while my mother’s death still caused a pain in my chest, I was grateful to her for bringing me and Ben back together. Her sacrifice had allowed my brother to come back to me, all I could hope for now that somewhere in the afterlife she was looking down on both her kids and smiling.

————

Figuring out how to tell Poe I was pregnant was no small feat. I didn’t want to just tell him casually, but I also hadn’t had the time or mental capacity (thank you, pregnancy hormones) to think up some big grand gesture. I settled on telling him over the dinner that I’d prepared in the base’s kitchen while the cooks were taking their breaks.

Poe was due to be back to our quarters any minute and I was still rushing around putting the finishing touches on the table I’d set up. I’d dressed in a long pale blue day dress, something I’d worn on our honeymoon years ago that had always been one of Poe’s favorite pieces on me.

Our wedding had been small and very soon after the end of the war. Around the time Rey and I had returned from our trip to Tatooine was when the aftermath of the war really started to be felt. The First Order hadn’t entirely disappeared and there was plenty of clean up that needed to be done. One weekend, having just scheduled a week’s worth of meetings and missions, Poe burst into our shared quarters looking determined as ever. “Let’s get married tomorrow.” Not needing any convincing, I’d packed up our overnight bags, we contacted the few people we wanted with us and took the Falcon to Naboo. I still had connections as the daughter of Leia Organa and the Queen was generous enough to give us full access to the palace’s gardens. Finn served as Poe’s best man while Rey was my maid of honor, Lando gave me away and Ben, Rose, Chewie, Kes and the droids watched proudly from their seats. I wore a stunning lace gown loaned to me by the Queen while Poe wore his military uniform, looking as handsome as I’d ever seen him. We exchanged vows to love each other till the day we died, placed simple gold bands on each other’s left hand and after sealing our union with the kiss of a lifetime, we were married. We were able to score one day’s honeymoon in the palace, with a true one being celebrated on our first anniversary. It had been, needless to say, perfect.

When I heard the beeps of our keypad, I ceased any fretting over the table cloth or the placement of the plates. The door opened and in walked my husband, garbed in his military style attire and sporting the beginnings of a very flattering beard. Our eyes met as soon as he entered, his body visibly relaxing as he registered my presence. “Wow.” I smiled and gestured towards the table. “I know I’m not the greatest cook in the world but I thought I should try, today of all days.” “I was talking about you,” Poe said, shutting the door and blindly tossing the data pad in his hands on a nearby table, “You look gorgeous.” Three years of marriage, a year of dating, and so many years before of friendship but he could still make me blush without even trying. “You don’t look so bad yourself, handsome,” I said, both of us crossing the room to each other. I stroked a hand over his cheek, “This is looking exceptional.” Poe laughed, his arms wrapping around my waist. “Sure it doesn’t make me look too old?”

“No,” I shook my head quickly, “Don’t even think about getting rid of it. I think I love it more than I love you.” “Ha ha ha,” Poe shot back sarcastically, though with a smile on his face. He inched his face closer to mine until our lips met in a warm kiss. Afterwards, he let them hover over my mouth. “Happy Anniversary.” “Happy Anniversary,” I smiled, pressing my forehead to his. “Three years ago, I actually tricked you into marrying me,” Poe joked, softly beginning to sway us to an imaginary beat.

“Mm,” I closed my eyes and let him move us, “Or did I use a mind trick on you and trick you into marrying me?” Poe laughed softly, “Either way, I think it worked out.” I pulled back and ran a hand through the curls at the nape of his neck. I analyzed his face, a few more lines decorated it than there were before the war’s end, the beard he was growing made him look a little more dignified, but when I looked at him, all I saw was the young, clean shaven pilot who had burst into the Resistance and my heart all those years ago. Mom had told me when I was a kid that when she looked at Dad it didn’t matter how old he was, she still saw the young man she’d fallen in love with. I hadn’t understood it until now, sometimes love was timeless…

“Yeah,” I nodded, “It worked out.”

Poe pressed a playful kiss to my nose, causing me to scrunch it up and eliciting a chuckle from him. “As much as I want to hold you in my arms all night, I also don’t want to let that meal go to waste.” “You’d better not,” I said, disconnecting my arms from around him, “I worked too damn hard on it.” The two of us sat down at the table, digging into the plates I’d concocted for us. It was one of my better attempts at cooking, the majority of it unburnt. Though even if it had been charred remnants of what used to be food, I knew Poe would have still told me it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. “How were things today?” I asked.

Poe hummed as he wiped his mouth, “Not too bad, you didn’t miss much. Finn and I ran the meetings, couple briefings. Honestly, he could have done it without me. He’s a natural.” “I know,” I agreed, it was like Finn was born to be a general, “I’m glad he’s here with us. He’s kind of killing the game…a Jedi slash general.” “Hey, you’re doing the same thing,” Poe waved his fork at me, “And you’re the one that taught him.” I chuckled, thinking back to Finn’s training days. He’d confessed to me and Rey that he was beginning to think he was Force sensitive the day after the Battle of Exegol, something I’d already suspected. We both began training him but with Rey away often, I took over the majority of it. Watching Finn discover his powers was like giving a little kid a present and watching their eyes light up as they open it. It was some of the most fun I’d ever had with him. “Heard anything from Rey lately?” Poe broke up my thoughts. I excitedly straightened up in my seat, “The temple’s almost done. All that’ll be left is finding padawans to train.” Rey and I finished our training together, nearly having been at the end of it when Mom had passed. We’d made the mutual decision to begin training the next generation of Jedi a year and a half ago, but between still working with the Resistance and wanting to do it right, it had taken time. Together, we’d made the choice to base the temple on Naboo, my one time home. It provided the peace that both Rey and I craved, while also giving the solitude that was needed for training. With the help of Poe and Finn, the four of us had constructed the temple from scratch. Rey had moved to Naboo already and was putting the finish touches on our hard work.

“When are you gonna head out to take a look at it?” Poe asked, finishing the last bite of his dinner.

“I was thinking about next week, if I can get away,” I answered, “I don’t want to take too much time away from work here but at the same time…”

“You can’t take time away from that either.” I nodded and went silent, the balance of being a Jedi and a general was harder than I’d expected. Adding on the upcoming addition to our family that would need all of my time and the result was a woman stretched very thin.

“I can’t be two places at once,” I commented, “I want to be here, doing what we both love. But I also want to be there with Rey. I don’t know how to do both…” Poe listened, reaching out to take my hand after I was done. He stroked the skin with his thumb, “You’ll make the right decision, you always do. I mean,” Poe gestured to himself, “You married me.” “Very true,” I replied with a roll of my eyes, “Though I feel like corralling a bunch of armed children will be a little less stressful than being married to you.” Poe removed his hand from mine and clutched his chest. “I am personally offended by that statement,” he said loudly. “Uh-huh,” I laughed, “Who crashed their X-Wing last week when he was showing off to the new recruits?” “That was an essential piece of education for those pilots,” Poe pointed a finger towards me.

“Yes, it was a great lesson on why barrel rolls are a bad idea,” I replied, folding my hands under my chin. Poe shook his head at me with a smile as I laughed at him, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

After a few seconds of warm silence, Poe tossed his napkin onto his plate and sighed. “So when do I get to give you your present?” “I’m gonna call first slot, actually,” I said, rising from the table and walking over to my nightstand. I pulled the small holoprojecter from the drawer with shaky hands, the reality of what I was about to reveal to him sinking in. I hoped that he would be happy, we’d dreamed about a family for so long, but the timing of it felt all wrong. We were busy beyond reason and now we were going to be parents. I turned to Poe and took slow steps back to the table. “It’s not wrapped and it definitely is going to surprise you, but hopefully you still like it.” “I’ll like it no matter what, promise” Poe said from his seat.

I pulled my chair so I could sit in front of him and held out the holoprojecter in front of us. Drawing a breath, I flicked the switch to reveal the image I’d left it on.

Poe’s eyes scanned over it, not registering what it was. “Okay, um, you’re gonna have to help me out here,” he said with a nervous laugh, “Is it a picture of…the Outer Rim? I’m not sure what cluster of planets this is.” I laughed under my breath, enjoying watching my husband compare my reproductive system to a planetary system. “That,” I dragged his pointed finger to the tiny body, “Is our baby.” His lips parted and his eyes widened slightly, the news washing over him. Poe was rarely ever caught off guard, but he was completely dumbfounded in the moment. “That’s…you’re…we’re…pregnant?” He stammered out. I nodded, grinning as I watched my husband connect the dots. “Yeah,” I whispered.

“That’s our kid,” he confirmed, looking to me with glee, “We’re having a baby?” “We’re having a baby,” I repeated. “We’re having a baby!” Poe cried out.

“We’re having a baby!” I shouted, finally allowing my tears of joy to release.

Poe and I embraced, him pressing endless kisses to my cheeks. My heart felt like it could burst between the love I had for him and for the child growing inside me. Poe broke our hug to look down at my stomach, placing two careful hands on it. “When did you find out?” he asked.

“Just a few days ago,” I answered, placing my hands over his, “I’m six weeks along.”

“We made a baby,” he said, astonished at the concept.

“You sound surprised, but the making process has never been a problem for us…”

Poe smiled at the joke, “No, I mean…I don’t know, sometimes I just remember all that we’ve gone through, all the times I could have lost you and here you are pregnant with my kid. It just…” he looked away from me and down to my belly, “I’m just lucky to have you.” More tears spilled over my eyes as I drew my hand to Poe’s cheek, bringing his gaze up to meet mine. “We’re lucky to have each other,” I whispered, recalling all the times I’d almost lost him as well. Being a general had slowed him down from going out on missions as much, but I still worried every time he went up in an X-Wing and left me. All I could do was trust that after all we’d been through and all the times the galaxy could have tragically split us apart, it would always conspire to bring us back to one another. Poe and I defied all odds.

I brought my lips down to his in a gentle kiss, nudging his nose with mine after. “I love you,” I said lowly, “So much.” “I love you too,” Poe said, pecking the side of my lips before dropping down to my stomach, “I love you both.” Just when I thought I couldn’t fall any more in love with him, I realized I was going to get to watch Poe be a father. And I didn’t think there’d be a better dad alive than him.

“So, it’s safe to say that I win ‘best anniversary gift?'” I remarked, keeping a hand on Poe’s shoulder as he stared in awe at my stomach.

“Well, obviously I can’t top this,” he looked up, “But I think I can come close. Come with me.” Poe draw me up out of my seat and led me to the door. He stopped before we could exit, “As much as I love this dress, you’re gonna need to change.”

Minutes later, Poe had changed out of his general attire and back into his usual leather jacket and fatigues. I changed into a similar outfit, wondering as I did how long it would take until I needed to get new clothes to accommodate my growing belly.

Poe led us through the base, smiling and nodding as people greeted us. He had settled into the role of general so well, despite initial nerves and I was so proud of him.

The two of us ended up in the shipyard, Poe guided me to where his X-Wing was docked. “Where are we going?” I asked as he unlatched the cockpit.

“Somewhere special,” he replied, jumping in and patting his lap, “Hop in.” Suddenly, I felt like the jungle of Ajan Kloss and everyone around us disappeared. All I saw was the two of us four years ago inside the hanger on D’Qar. The night when I couldn’t sleep and Poe took me out on a midnight flight. The night that everything had changed between us.

“You alright?” Poe asked. “I’m great,” I nodded, my eyes misty as I climbed into the ship with him, “Let’s fly, Dameron.” “Your wish is my command, Dameron,” he said as I settled into his lap, pecking the side of my head as he finished the pre-flight check, “Never get tired of saying that.” He took us up into the air and out of Ajan Kloss’ atmosphere, bringing us to light speed soon after. Very few things made me as happy as flying with Poe in his X-Wing, the closeness the small cockpit forced was heaven as far as I was concerned.

We flew for maybe thirty minutes before he took us out of hyperspace, revealing our destination as-

“Naboo? What are we doing here?”

“Just hold your questions,” Poe said as he guided us down into the planet’s atmosphere. We flew past the capital in the direction of where the temple was. He steered us a couple miles away from it before bringing us down for a landing in a large field. We dismounted and landed in the grass, I looked around as we dismounted to spot a large house built smack in the middle of the field.

“Alright, you’ve got me,” I shrugged my shoulders, turning back to where he stood, “Where are we?” “Well,” Poe started, “I know that you and Rey are setting up the temple nearby and I don’t need to be a Jedi to sense that I know that that’s where your heart is. And then I was thinking, well, where’s my heart? Obviously the answer was with you but secondarily, it’s with the Resistance. So I tried to figure out, how could we have the best of both worlds? And this is what I came up with,” he gestured to the house and took a few steps toward me, “Well, it’s part of it.” “Is this…” my head spun between the house and Poe, “Is this ours?” “Not officially,” he held his hands up to me, “I wanted to make sure you liked it but…yeah, this could be our home.” My heart leapt at what he was suggesting. “Wait, how could you stay with the Resistance if we’re on Naboo?” Poe took me by the shoulders and turned me around, pointing a finger out towards the horizon. “About ten miles that way is a perfect location for a second base,” I looked up at him and smiled, “Finn would stay on Ajan Kloss and I’d be here. The Resistance is growing so big, we’re really in need of one, regardless of your decision.” It still surprised me sometimes how well Poe knew me, that he could read what I was struggling to voice and not be afraid to say it. Or in this case, rearrange our lives around it. “Poe,” I took his hands, “I don’t want you to think that I’m abandoning you or the Resistance or Mom’s legacy…I just…I just know deep down that the temple is where I’m supposed to be right now.” “Sweetheart, the last thing I think you’re doing is abandoning me. You’re a Jedi, first and foremost, and I get that. Maybe I didn’t before…” he stopped, making a point to look me in the eyes, “But I do now.” My smile grew as he continued, “And besides, there’s no saying that I can’t run something by you occasionally. I know you, you won’t be able to stop yourself.” I laughed, knowing he was right. I’d never be able to let go of the Resistance entirely, it was a part of me too. But to be able to commit fully to working with Rey at the temple? That sent a thrum of excitement through my body that only came with doing something you were passionate about.

“The Jedi and the General, huh?” I said, peering up at him through my lashes with a smile.

“And the world’s greatest baby in a couple months,” he added, putting one arm around my waist and stretching his other palm over the expanse of my stomach, “And a pretty nice place to call home if Her Royal Jediness agrees?” “Oh, please,” I scrunched up my face, “I don’t even need to see the place to know it’s great.”

I remembered the conversation about our future we’d had three and a half years before, when Poe and I had flown back to the Dameron homestead for his birthday. We’d talked about our future children, the possibility of marriage, a home and what we’d do with our days once we were no longer fighting a war. Now that those days were here, it seemed almost too good to be true.

“So if I’m retiring,” I asked, “When is General Dameron calling it a day?” Still rubbing a thumb over my belly, his face turned a balance of joyful and serious. “When he can provide a safe enough galaxy for his family,” he answered.

“That could take a while,” I chortled, appreciative though of the sentiment. “True,” he tilted his head, “But I’ve still got a few things left to do before I’m comfortable leaving it all to Finn. And then,” Poe wrapped both arms around my waist, “It’s gonna be nothing but sleeping in with you every morning and teaching our kid how to fly-“ “Oh my gosh,” I gripped the lapels of his leather jacket and pulled his face mere inches away from mine, “No flying till they’re old enough. Wait…did you just say that because you knew I’d do this and be forced to kiss you?”

Poe smugly smiled and leaned down, “You have your mind tricks, I have mine…” I shook my head as I poorly contained a grin and pressed my lips to his in a soft kiss, one filled with promises of the everything we'd dreamed of having.

“I love you, Poe Dameron,” I said after we broke apart.

“I love you too,” he replied, pressing his forehead to mine and wrapping me up in his arms, “You and our baby are the best things that have ever happened to me.”

I tucked my face into his neck and breathed him in, no matter how many meetings and briefings filled his days, he still always managed to smell faintly of sweat and oil. Poe was the galaxy’s general, but he’d always be my flyboy.

“To think,” Poe said, “All it took was us getting split up on a mission to make you realize you loved me.” I pulled back and slid my hands down to his chest, “Yeah, well, that's never going to happen again. You’re stuck with me for the rest of your life.” “Sounds like a plan, sweetheart,” Poe smiled.

I hadn’t seen many happy endings in my life, I knew we lived in a galaxy that was more than often unfair. The fact that Poe and I had both survived the war and were free to reach out and take hold of the future we’d wished for was unbelievable. I’d watch couples be torn apart in the war, my own parents included, and with Poe and I being in the roles we were in, I had been sure at times that we’d be one of them. Yet here we were, hand in hand, standing outside the place we’d call home for the years to come. Poe and I had been through our share of troubles, but it was written as plainly as the stars above us, we were unbreakable.

----

A/N: Holy frack, it's over...I'm super emotional right now but I'm gonna keep going lol. THANK YOU TO ANYBODY WHO FOLLOWED THIS SERIES! I've been writing it since May the 4th 2020 and I didn't expect after taking long hiatuses to have many readers left, but here you all are! Thank you for sharing and supporting and commenting and just being amazing in general. You have no idea how much everything meant to me. I'm gonna miss writing Don't Be Afraid soooooo bad, this will probably always be my favorite series I've written. From the bottom of my heart, thank you thank you thank you. Poe Dameron and Y/n Solo-Kenobi, I salute you both!

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[ambivartence]

sorry in advance if you've already answered a question like this but i just wanted to ask, how do you improve on drawing?? i think especially for things like coloring, shading, and lighting , its been difficult for me to be happy with how it looks because compared to the sketch (that i think already looks nice) the colors just seem sort of flat and muddy and i feel like i dont have a good grip on what colors to put where and how to make it look unflatt if that makes sense! just curious on maybe what kinds of practices and studying you do for this(if any))<33 obv you dont have to answer if you dont want to, and thank you for being one of my inspirations, love youu<33333

hihi!! for simply shading/lighting, i would suggest you only work in black and white until you're totally comfortable with developing values. why? marco bucci explains it really nicely in this video but basically if you have good values u can have absolutely garbage nonsense colors and it will still make sense aka when i did this lol:

i'm guessing you're more interested in colored artwork though since black and white drawings can't be "flat and muddy" bc theyre in grayscale lol. for coloring, this is so tough for me too so i thought about this for a day or so and i came up with 3 tips that might help^^ 1) getting colors directly from photo reference or color reference, 2) manually adding filters/color harmony, and 3) studying color theory

i always work from photo reference so it informs a lot of my coloring/shading/lighting and often when i don't understand what color I'm looking at i directly just eye drop it and realize that what i thought was purple was actually just a gray-red. working from an actual picture helps make sure my colors don't look strange and while i used to think eye-dropping felt like "cheating" when i worked digitally honestly i've learned a lot from it and honestly if i stare at a color long enough i can get it pretty accurately now but i'm just too lazy so eye-dropping just speeds up my workflow (plus i hate digital color pickers anyways they r not built for artists and i wrote an entire paper on it in college once lmao) anyways here's an example of a color study i did by directly eye-dropping from a gif with @quokki's incredible coloring (love u ale <3)

if you're not working from a picture directly, you can still use other pictures or artwork as a "color reference" which I used to do a lot. i like to look at art from other ppl with pretty colors and create a color palette to use in my own drawings. for example, the color palette for this felix painting came from a piece (idr which) by Simón Prades on instagram but this palette is really easy to use since it's linear values it's like working in black and white but comes out looking cooler LOL

Recently for my lee know kiki's delivery service drawing i felt that the colors seemed a little flat n muddy to me because it was in an animated flat coloring style (lol) so I added a filter layer (just a flat apricot color set to overlay at 25% on photoshop) that livened up the whole thing and made it feel more cohesive. It's a pretty subtle difference to other people but made a world of difference to me :) it helped take the muddiness out of the shadows of his face and the glass reflection and took the painting from gloomy rainy day with stale bread to warm sunny day with fresh bread :]

and finally if u are interested in actually studying colors and lighting and shading and stuff these r some of the youtube videos and channels that i think do a great job explaining these very cool concepts:

pre-realism vs post-realism is a cool video about the difference between the mentality of how beginners draw vs how experts draw and kinda blew my mind tbh i think the big color takeaway from this video is that something that kids would color (like green grass) might actually be a totally different color to an artist's eye (dark yellow, red gray, even a super desaturated purple) depending on a realistic lighting situation

nathan fowkes did a 3-part guest talk series on understanding color temperature and relationships: (1) (2) (3) also not coloring but i love his video on value massing

this lecture on what charles bernard calls "the mother color principle" takes the "filtering" tip that i mentioned earlier to a much more developed level (it's an hour long so just skip through it.. u get the gist of what he's saying in a few min but the whole demo is also cool too)

i mentioned him earlier but marco bucci has many 10 min digestable videos about color on his channel that i like :) (also this lighting/value video is great too)

sorry i don't really know exactly how basic or advanced i should cater my advice but i hope this helps some anon^^ lmk if u have questions or if u ever want feedback my inbox and dms r always open

[drybrushdriftwood]

This is the result of my first attempt at making a diorama.

I started with a LED tea light in a 11x8cm cardboard base, carved up some glue gun sticks to act as crystals and rinsed them in hot water to get a glossy finish.

After that, I modelled the terrain with air-drying clay and set the stone circle.

Everything was covered in a mixture of mod podge and black paint to make it more stable. I then painted the ground in different shades of green.

The dry brushing of the stone circle did not work out as well as I had hoped. I guess I still had too much paint on the brush, when touching up those stones with a light grey.

I chopped up an old sponge into small pieces, mixed it with pva glue and paint to make small bushes and undergrowth. The grass was made from a mixture of sawdust, paint and pva glue. After gluing in a bit of sand for the path, I secured everything with watered down pva glue.

So—this is it.

A Mystic Crystal Shrine.

I'm pretty happy with the result, though there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Fortunately, these LED candles came in a pack of four.

Let's see what I can do with the others.

—

This build was greatly inspired by a tutorial from tabletop witchcraft.

Tips on home-made flocking can be found over at dioramabox.

[wasteofart]

I feel like the biggest problem today is that nothing is made to be enjoyed anymore. Everything is hyper optimized to gain influence, cater a certain audience and just make money.

I get it, money is important and needed for living since everything has a cost. But that still doesn't justify the need for everything revolving around it. No one enjoys simply having a hobby anymore, you always gotta be the best, broadcast everything for validation and make money from it or otherwise it's not worth the time. What happened to people just enjoying stuff? Because I feel like no one is actually having fun and joyful anymore. I don't remember the last time I saw someone genuinely be happy and content just doing something they enjoy, whether it be painting, gaming, any sort of craftsmenship, reading, dressing up, doing make up or whatever. Why do we let society and capitalizm take away the only good things we have in life? If it isn't for those things, what else is there?

Even spending time with friends is a competition. Who went out with who, what 'cool' things did you do together. It's all plastered over social media for others to see and be jealous of.

And at the end of the day? Everyone is miserable. We're burnt out and depressed from constaintly fighting to stay relevant while trying to one up everyone else. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of spending hours on my phone, looking at 30 second clips of people doing shit to promote themselves in a world where nothing of this matters. I'm sick of having to spend my whole day working a job that I hate that brings me nothing but dread and exhaustion only so I can pay rent. I'm sick of worrying that my whole life will be this joyless and sad, living from one day to the other. But what can I do? I can't quit my job because the next one will be exactly the same. I can't delete all my social media because at this point my brain is demanding to be entertained, I can barely focus on only one thing at a time without getting not just bored but plain under stimulated. This whole life we're living has caused us to spiral down into an endless cycle of wanting to escape the stress but in order to do that we need to work even harder. And that is exhausting. I am tired, I can't change my whole life in a day just to not be tired anymore. I can't work to become not tired. There is literally no way out of this.

There are so many things that I want to change, that I feel need to be changed or otherwise I will not be happy. But then again, I feel like nothing I could do would actually make me happy. It would only change the circumstances under which I am unhappy. And to be honest, I feel like everyone around me has the same issues. My friends struggle with their jobs, with their relationships, with their health. And do I feel like anything is going to get better? No. I honestly feel like we fucked up so badly, let this society become what it is today, in a way where we passed the point of no return. Everything is just getting worse and even the beautiful things seem completely meaningless compared to everything else. I mean, yes, I sat down on the grass and picked flowers today. Was I happy doing that? No. Will that cure my mental illnesses? Also no. Will that improve anything in my life, my job or the overall problems we have in this world? Absolutely no.

Everything is just adding to the weight we're all carrying around with us and I don't know if that is the mental issues speaking out of me or my mid-twenty year old brain that is overwhelmed by the way adulting works. Either way, it seemed like these problems today are so much more severe than the problems people had back in the days. Yes, there were wars and plagues and economic crashes before in the history, but those usually lead to the collapse of a society. If someone asked me what time period we lived in, I would say the already declining high before the total fall. The digital age is coming to an end and we're all going down with it if we don't make rapid changes. I don't want to sound pessimistic or depressing but that is honestly the feeling that I'm having about the times we lived in. There are barely any new technological innovations or groundbreaking discoveries that bring us forward as a society. Everything is only about money. Companies want to make sales by optimizing the shit out of everything even if it only lasts a short amount of time. The best example for that are NFTs. Was there potential? Sure. Did it make any fucking sense? Nope. So there's no wonder that shit is going down as fast as it came to a peak. The cycles in which things go 'out of style' nowadays are alarmingly short. Back then everything lasted longer. The quality and appreciation were so much more valuable characteristics of just anything starting from products over employment to our hobbies. When did we stop appreciating things just for the sake of it, because it is dear to us and not because it involves a lot of money?

I see a lot of great things out there. People trying to live sustainable, trifting, taking care of nature, making art. But nowadays there's always someone trying to make money from it and ruining it for everyone else. Why does everything have to be monetizable do be of worth. Why is a video or a movie only good if it reaches millions of people and makes millions of dollars? Why am I only a real artist if I make sales? Why does my fashion have to be popular and admired by my followers in order for it to be enjoyable?

We're ruining it for ourselves. We're taking the joy out of the things we love. No wonder everyon is depressed nowadays when even the things that are meant to make us happy cause us distress and distress only. And peole give you shit for trying to break the cycle.

[nightroo]

Finally finished painting my bookcase! It ended up looking more... whimsical than I planned (I think it's because of the bright colors), but I quite like it

So the bottom three shelves are the moss and mushroom layer, the middle shelf is grass and flowers, and the top three are branches and flowers. Its split like that because the number of shelves I have does'nt divide neatly into 3's...

I just put the varnish on it so it's still shiny, when it dries out it will be matt like the vines on the sides...

Overall this was way more work than I initially thought it would be, but I'm happy with the result, and I feel like my ability to freehand stuff with a brush really improved, so I'm glad I did this.

Now, for my next project, I'm debating if I should go do the comic chapter first, or rush into emroidery since today I bought supplies for that and I really wanna try them out...

Knowing myself, I'm probably gonna do the emroidery first lol. Well, as long as it's something creative it's gonna be useful to do (from my perspective)

Speaking of the comic, I finished the thumbnails yesterday, and I feel like it's gonna be a good chapter, story-wise and art-wise

[blackleopardgirl]

a little robbie update (if anyone cares) 

therapy: i really do hate going to therapy these days. i haven't been in over a month maybe, and it's because i realized that only talking to someone for an hour and then never having anything change for me isn't helping anything. i don't want to keep telling my therapist that i haven't seen any positive contributions and improvements to my life and i hate that lol. there's NOTHING i can do about it. so id rather not talk about it.

my life: i am incredibly grateful that I've had these opportunities with jobs! and the results from the kids and the parents, so i am happy to work. i don't get sad as much because i bought three books: Palestine, Iran, and Cuba. i don't see him as much anymore, but more on that later. I'm really not on my OWN Instagram anymore, but i am on my private account. which makes me happier.

school: im excited to graduate and still do well in school. it is what it is right now. I've had great grades recently. so that makes me excited to still be on this path. im not focused on making friends in school anymore, i am just going to let life happen the way that it happens. but all my enegry and time will be spent being in the libaray studying, and focusing on all my school work. which excites me! because then it means i wont be sad and depressed at home wondering why people didn't call me back.

him: i just don't feel as into him as i once did, i don't know what happened recently. but I've given up on the *idea* of him, which is good. because he is who he is, and i am who i am. it did take a whole year to fully break my heart and go through the stages, but i am here. and tomorrow will be another day. i really don't tell him about my personal life anymore, because it feels pointless. i do love him, but i know that i have to stay away from him because the love just isn't reciprocated, and that's ok. he doesn't have to love me, or want me the way that i want him does. and he doesn't. and for whatever reason right now, i am ok with that. ive found solise once again in just being myself, and leaving.

grief: i still do have these daydreams and just plain dreams of what my life was like about 10 years ago and I can't do anything but cry, (i still cry writing this). it won't ever be what it once was, and that breaks me every time i start talking about it again, but I'll be here and still move on.

anxious-ness: I am starting to read from my books, and highlighting sentences, and paragraphs that i think are worthy. i play this relaxing sims family that i love. their a couple with 4 small kids and its caotic, but its what i wish my life was. no one grows up or changes, we all just stay the same and the little kids stay loving me as their sim mom. i also want to buy more white paint (like a full thing of it) to maybe start painting random little pictures on the weekends. i also need to get back into poetry, and violent bent backwards over the grass, just ebcause it impacted me on such a deep level 2 years ago. (wow time is flying)

moving forward: hopefully, my parents have talked about me moving out, and that makes me happy but also not really. because this happened last year and we all remember that. regardless, i did remain calm and ok when i didn't receive something BIG that i wanted. the same thing happened when he didn't want anything with me, and my changes over this summer dispute them being negative to my life.