#It's hard to draw transparent things in paint.. for me at least. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ask-carmenpondiego · 11 months ago

Text

Chapter 12: When the past comes back to haunt

The child, no more than 14, watches Carmen from behind the topiary, still cloaked in a pseudo invisibility. This ability made it look like he was part of the background, not just transparent, as if someone painted him. The effect moved with his body, so he stayed rather successfully undetected by normal folks who were not paying attention. Carmen kept her gaze on him and reached out her hand, “Hey, its ok, I won’t hurt you..” As soon as her hand got too close, the child darted off, easily lost in the crowd with his camouflage. “Blendin! Wait!” She cries out, reaching for him. “I just wanted to see you..”

Tears welled up in her eyes as she sat back down at her cafe table, the letter blowing off the book and onto the cobblestone. She picked up the letter and wiped her eyes, opening the wrinkled envelope. She sat and read the letter, written in teenage chicken-scratch handwriting. It read that he read all her letters that she had sent, and that he still keeps in touch with his sister at Warehouse 13. He does not understand why it is taking so long for her to come get them, and that Adora is having a hard time accepting that Carmen loves her at all. He goes on to write about how he got a job as a junior Librarian and he will be training for his own missions in a few short years. He looks forward to all her letters. He even wrote about Adora’s 16th birthday. She keeps the small obsidian dragon statue Carmen had sent still in the box, half opened and left in a corner in her closet.

Carmen frowned slightly, dismayed at how much her daughter sounds like she hates her. Blendin however still has hope to see his mom again, he writes. And maybe she will be able to answer all their questions. He hopes they can be a family again. Carmen smiles at the letter and folds the letter carefully, keeping it in her book as she closes it and makes her way to the alley with the portal. M met her on the other side with crossed arms, “You went over your time, you’re lucky I fuckin kept it open fer ya.” Carmen looked up at him and had a wide smile he hasn’t seen in years. “I saw Blendin. He came and visited me. He knew where I was and met up with me..” she handed him the letter. “Well, not officially, he was hiding from me but he was bold enough to give me this letter and I saw his eyes! He got his special talent I think!” M looked at the letter with mild interest, “Oh yeah? Horse powers or changeling powers?” She punches his arm, “He was invisible but.. not. He used camouflage like a cuttlefish! I barely saw him in the first place! It was amazing! Oh I don’t know anything about him but I’m so proud!” She swoons over the letter, and goes to one of the storage rooms to find a picture frame for the letter. “I need to save this! Ooh I wish I still had some of their baby drawings!”

Over the course of the next month, she kept with her letter sending schedule, but have not been able to spot her son since. One night, as she lays in bed, she starts venting, “He’s getting older, I’m getting older.. Did he think I was too old to be his mom?! What do you think? Did I screw up my only chance to see him?” The covers rustled and down from below her hips, Lekir’s head popped up, licking her muzzle, “Maybe you’re reading too much into it. Relax, babe, let me take your mind off of things.” Her head disappeared under the covers again, Carmen blushing and squirming a little with soft moans. She lifted her head, “What if he’s in trouble? What if I get so old that I can’t protect him?!” A disgruntled sigh came from the covers and a thin ring of ice grew around Carmen’s muzzle to get her to stop talking, Lekir’s head popped back up, the sheet falling over her shoulders. She placed a finger on Carmen’s hard clit, rolling it around idly. “Carm, if you really are that paranoid about aging, I have a solution that won’t make you younger but it will extend your current youth for at least a few more centuries. That and it could make you stronger and possibly give you elemental abilities if lucky.” She gives the little nub a flick, before slipping two fingers in deep, curling upward to her g-spot, grinning as she hears the thief moan and writhe. “So there you go, problem solved and now… I need you to cum.”

The next day, after some well needed rest… and clean-up, Carmen sits in her office, going over the recent mishaps and redirections from the previous heists with M, since he was the expert in such accidents. “It don’t make sense Red, we went over these top to bottom and fuckin sideways. How are these changes happening as soon as we get there? We don’t give any hints of where we will hit.” Carmen rubs her temples and tries to look at any consistencies. “I doubt we have a mole, we’ve had the same team for years now and I’ve given no reason for anyone to double cross.” M shakes his head, “It aint a mole, everyone is clear from day one. I say it may be something bigger, but what I don’t know. There doesnt seem to have any connections, its all individual targets from what I could tell.”

Ninoga knocked on the doorframe and peeked his head in, “Hey, is it cool if I have a friend crash with me on the couch for the afternoon? He just wanted to rest while he was on this long trip finding his family.” Carmen sighed and shut the book she was looking in. “Yeah, thats fine. Let me start up the oven for whatever snack you two may want. I think a well needed break is in order anyway.” Carmen makes her way to the kitchen and starts preparing a rather large snack tray, knowing Ninoga’s appetite, they may need refills in just under an hour despite the tray size. She was just on the stepladder in the dry pantry, reaching for a dried slab of meat to slice for the meat board, when a voice from behind her made her freeze in her tracks, “Hello? Ninoga said someone was preparing food.. Is there anything I can help out with?”

The mare turned to look over her shoulder, unable to believe her ears… or her eyes. “Are.. you.. Wally?!” She turned too quickly on the ladder and stumbled to the floor. The pale blue stallion had caught her before she had fallen too far. “Its ok, I gotcha!” He looked in her green eyes and grinned, his own blue eyes admiring her from behind his glasses. She gripped his striped sweater and looked back at him, blushing. “Hi, my light. I made it home..” Carmen immediately started sobbing and clutching him tightly, sinking to the floor. They both knelt in the dry pantry what felt like hours, Wally stroking her hair as she held him as if never to let him go ever again. She lifted her head and put her hands by his face, cupping it and caressing out of disbelief. “It really is you… you’re alive! And you’re home! Oh Wally, don’t ever leave me like that again! I was told you were dead!! They took the kids and threw me in this asylum just to get rid of me!!” Wally’s eyes went wide, “Who did that?!” Carmen shook her head, “I don’t know but the kids are at the Warehouse and Library like we planned if something happened to us. After the fire, the police arrested me for it and my past warrants and took the kids away.. and-“ before she could finish, tentacles had grabbed Wally from every limb and thrown against the wall outside the pantry. Wally winced and was immediately punched in the face bare knuckles by M. “You fuckin dirty lying cunt! You were alive all this time and you just now fuckin show yer face?! You fuckin had 15 goddamn years to even call!” M gave a couple more punches before letting him go. Wally staggered and chuckled, wiping some blood from his mouth. “Yeah.. I deserve that. My bad.. I didn’t mean to be away this long. I just need some help and I’ll leave after that if you want me to.”

Carmen rushed past M to Wally’s side, “Here, lets clean you up, and you can tell us everything.” She showed him to the bathroom, giving a glare to M. Ninoga poked his head in, “Heeey so, is everything ok? I didn’t know he knew you guys.” Carmen and M just look at Ninoga, then to the family photos that have been hanging up in the hall that show Wally and the kids, and then look back at Ninoga. “This is a neat place, you have a lot of art replicas here, doncha? I remember you always liked the arts…and Marehem! I didn’t know you knew Carmen! Thats a neat surprise!” Wally chimed in, trying to be cheerful. M groaned and rubbed his face, “Fuck.. theres two of them now.. Moron, you specifically told me to watch over her if something happened to you. And I did, thinking you were fuckin dead!”

Wally laughed and shook his head, “I wasnt dead, silly! I got knocked out in the fire and had amnesia for a little while!” Carmen frowned, “How long is a little while??” Wally thought a moment, “That depends��What year is it?” M growled, “You’ve been gone for 15 fuckin years! Where the hell were you?!” Wally blinked, “Wow, thats a long time.. I was at this cute little commune in the woods with this sheep leader, it was a little weird but they treated me well. They kicked me out when I got infected by something… which is why I need your help.” Wally took of his striped sweater and small clusters of sores littered his back and chest, from the sores, looking like dark green crystals growing out from beneath the flesh. Some looked like they were broken off and others grew around it.

Carmen tapped her glasses frame to magnify what she was looking at. She took some tweezers and plucked a shard out, with slight yelp from Waldo. “This is Vivianite.. it’s the only crystal known to grow on corpses. Wally, did you see what infected you?” He shook his head, “It’s just been growing non stop, and it’s from deep inside too, I can feel it in my muscles. It still lets me move, but it does hurt after a while. I think it’s called Vivian’s Burden or something. I’ve had it for about a year, I think I may have maybe three years until it’s too late to cure.” Carmen sighs and cleans each sore and takes out as much crystal as she could, “M, have you seen anything like this in the changeling cultures?” M just stood on the doorframe, cross-armed, “The fuck I look like? The village medicine man? I ain’t seen shit like that. Not everything black and green fuckin associates with me. I just like this fuckin color scheme.”

Carmen deadpan looks at him, “I wasn’t going by color, dumbass. I was going by the crystal’s natural matrix and place in geology. This crystal pretty much originates near a bunch of ancient changeling hives, does it not? Changelings used to hunt and gather food, sucking the life and emotions from its victims, leaving a nice environment for the crystals to grow.” Ninoga peeks in again, “You know your pretty rocks.. but if they grow on corpses, are you sure he’s not a zombie?” Wally pats himself over and feels for a pulse, “I don’t think I’m a zombie. Should I test it out when we go to the grocery store? Maybe I need to eat a brain?” There was a resounding “NO!” From the three of them towards Wally.

#mlp oc pony #carmen pondiego #ask blog #story update #ao3 fanfic #ask me anything #chapter 12

7 notes · View notes

cherrypikkins · 1 year ago

Note

hello! I found you through one of your art tutorials and absolutely loved it, it's really inspired me to try it. I was just wondering, not being familiar with digital art, what set up/ app/ tools do you use (or recommend)? do I need a fancy tablet? thank you :)

I'm so glad to hear it! I hope wherever your drawing journey takes you, that you will keep having fun along the way :)

I am always glad to show my setup!

Let's start with the hardware!

Nowadays, I use a Wacom Cintiq 16, which I purchased this year for around $800 CAD.

This device very much on the fancy side but as someone who has done digital art for 20+ years, it has helped me complete my works in a much shorter amount of time. The Cintiq surface allows me to draw directly on the screen.

Before that, I used a tablet - the Wacom Intuos v4 S, which I received as a gift from my Dad. It held up for 10+ years and was still working excellently when I gave it away for my Mom to use. :) In 2009 I believe it was priced around $250 CAD.

The surface was a lot more matte when I purchased it and has since gotten shinier from all the abrasion and usage and skin contact. I remember it had a protective transparent sheet which I tore off on the first day of use. LOL

My desktop PC is i7 processor @ 3.20 GHz with Windows 10 64bit, 16gb, with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 video card. Monitor is 24". Notably I use my PC for other activities such as gaming.

Now let's talk about drawing programs!

My software of choice is PaintToolSai v2! It is very lightweight and has a smaller toolset compared to Photoshop or Clip Studio.

I favor it because I feel that it has a better response to pen input, which helps create higher quality lines. It is very stable and performs very well - I don't think I've ever had any crashes while using v2, which is still in development. The smaller price point helps. The current price is 5500JPY, which should be around $50 CAD these days? The price was lower when I purchased it years and years back, and I was able to upgrade to v2 without any additional cost.

As for what I recommend for a beginner? I admit, it's a little hard for me to say - the landscape of digital painting has changed so much over the past ten years that so many new tools and software have come out while I was still using Sai and my Intuos!

But if you start shopping around, there are some things that may factor into your decision. Please note that I will be speaking as someone who uses mainly desktop systems and tablets for digital art.

Price: The price of a good-quality drawing tablet can range from the $100s to the $1000s. If you are a beginner, you may not experience the benefits of a professional-standard tablet right away, so it's ok to start small! For software, there are quite a few free options to get you started, such as Medibang or Krita. If you have an iPad, Procreate is available on the store for $9.99, though you may need to invest in a stylus.

System Specs: If you have a laptop or a PC, be sure to double check your specs to make sure it can support the hardware and software of your choice! The requirements are less stringent than gaming, so at least i3 with 8gb RAM will work! You will also need to make sure you have enough storage space to hold large files. I've read that the sweet spot for storage is 128GB. If you are a beginner, you probably won't hit the limit in a short amount of time - just be aware that file sizes for digital art can reach 100s of MB depending on size and complexity.

Pressure Sensitivity: This is a measure of how sensitive your tablet is to pressure changes so that you can vary between solid/translucent and thin/thick lines as you are drawing. The recommendation for newcomers is 1,024 levels. Any less, and the experience may be lacking and the results less than satisfying.

Display Size: Tablet size can vary! Wacom Tablets in particular come in Small, Medium and Large. Make sure it can fit on your working space! I've had no problems creating art work using the smallest size, though it has caused a bit of wrist strain.

A monitor/display screen of at least HD quality with a resolution of at least 300dp is recommended! Screen size will also affect your experience. So, similar with gaming, consider what might be most comfortable for you!

Learning Curve: If you are drawing on a screenless tablet for the first time, then it may take some time to get used to the feeling of drawing the tablet surface while keeping your eyes on the monitor. Don't be discouraged if you're not getting the same results as you would using pen and paper! It will definitely feel different, but with time and practice you will gradually get accustomed to it.

Each software comes with its own toolset - some larger than others! For complex programs like Clip Studio and Photoshop, the number of features and the level of customization available can be overwhelming! That said, most software programs for digital art come with a standard set of basic tools, such as Brush, Select, Straight Line, Erase, Zoom, Copy + Paste, Undo etc. So it is perfectly feasible to get started using a complex program, familiarize yourself with the basics, and try some of the more advanced features once you get confident.

(Meanwhile, I am terrified of Clip Studio's seemingly endless features whenever I open it and usually find myself running back to Sai for safety lolol)

Public Opinion: Take caution when watching Youtube reviews, as artists (especially popular ones) are known to accept company sponsorships. Ask around if you can, take a look at the best, worst, and average customer reviews, and check out a public discussion like Reddit where opinions may differ! Take note of the good and bad experiences. And, where invited, ask artists like or not-like me. :)

I should note this far that I'm not sponsored by anyone or anything. ;;;; I swear on my Mom I'm not a Wacom plant. (That said I will gladly continue to sing my praises of PaintToolSai for free. It is an excellent program and please consider supporting the smaller devs!)

That's it! ...I think? I'm almost certain that there are at least one or two things that I've neglected to mention, but so far, those are the points I can think of, so I hope you find it useful. :)

Each digital art journey is different, and so your mileage may vary with the factors above! I do hope that as you get started with creating stuff digitally, that you have a fun and enjoyable experience.

I also invite other people to share their opinions, agreements, and disagreements to the points above! Especially if there is anything important that I may have missed. I hope this is helpful and thank you again everyone for your positive comments on my tutorials. :')

#tutorial #art #digital art

12 notes · View notes

tepperz · 1 year ago

Note

I hope its okay if i respond below a read more!

I just dont want people to get too dogpiled with text if they're not prepared for it xD That said I love how much you wrote!! Thank you for humoring me!! dont mind the old post stalking lol -- I was looking on your blog to see all your nice recent art and saw one of those "recommended post" things haha :3

OH YEAH THE SORTING IS SUPER PAINFUL LMAOVHDJSHVJDS but im taking my time with it. i figure if i at least have some references in each folder then it's a start. That said, I think I have so many because I get really excited about "appeals" of each drawing even if other people wouldnt consider them "good." Like, like! For example this drawing vv (and please dont mind my personal rant incoming, you can skip this paragraph if its like, too much)

Like I think a lot of people wouldn't exactly save this picture because it's not exactly finessed. But I actually find the textures to be unlike anything else I've seen! The particular way that the hair defies usual lighting might seem amateur to some, but if the technique is used in a different way then it could make for a beautiful silk texture! The thick eyelashes are also a virtue because I think they're really interesting. And the way that the bandana is colored warm while everything else is cool makes just a spice. The hilights also look like abraisions adding to an almost creepy vibe of the picture even though thats probably not what the artist is going for! It's hard to describe but I really like analyzing all types of different art!! I really appreciate the charm and how a certain drawing makes me think differently. So I use these types of things as inspirations even if I can't/dont copy the things I like perfectly.

anyway!! "There’s thousands of artists out there who helped me make my art, just thanks to studying their works…" I very much feel that!

Do you have a category/folder that you find the most useful? ^^

hmmmmm.... yanno, thats a good question!! I think the one Ive found most useful so far is my folder titled "portraits - no background" which has in it some pictures of characters with white/transparent/single color backgrounds. It seems kinda whatever until you look at those works and try to figure out what really works with the picture, that its so attention grabbing without adding any background or effects! It really makes me appreciate what is striking and effective in the most minimalist way possible. So if I find my character or pose boring I try to look at this folder in particular to try and think about how to make the character feel more interesting and dynamic. Gets me thinking about shapes and prioritizing a better quality sketch.

"Color, Lighting, Face, Hair, Clothing, Poses (split into number of people and whether it’s a hug, kiss, or everything else), and Tutorials!" Ohhh I never thought about having a seperate one for clothing. I should do that, thats such a good idea!! OHHH and you also seperate them into paint types! Thats so interesting. At a glance can you usually tell what medium was used? I feel like that's such a cool skill! You categorize things in such an exceptional way! So organized! Did you start out that organized or did you start to sort things as time went on?

I also have a folder thats sort of like your fav folder, but it's just one folder and it's titled "inspirational". It's not exactly for fav works but rather for works that really speak to me and get my brain going with ideas. I don't use it a lot, so I think your individual fav folders are more useful!

Id love to trade tutorials sometime ^^

"I have some temporary folders that come and go." oooooh I have trouble deleting things like references!! if they're saved they stay forever LMAOOOOO. I think thats why I tend to put my references right on my canvas and then just shrink it when I'm done to hide my references. It's kind of a fun way to do it though because sometimes I accidentally make moodboards for whatever im drawing lol!! heres an example

ohhh "Now improving composition is my main goal so I’ve reorganized my “Style” folder to have more specificity like: Close-up Complex, Close-up Simple, etc for Middle, Distant, and Environment. These probably get the most use, just like Style did. It’s where it all just came together in artworks with line style and thickness and backgrounds and… yeah, hard to put anywhere else haha." if you ever want to share a screenshot or something of those folders I'd love to see. Do you ever have trouble finding anything? I can't find shit ever. I kinda just pick a location in my folder and im like 'yep thats what ill use as inspiration today' lmaoooo. Yeah. I need to sort better. lol.

"I personally have to copy into several folders if something fits more than one category or I’ll worry about it being forgotten. orz It makes them even more cluttered, but if I like the piece that much then I figure I won’t mind seeing it again!" I DO THIS TOO LOL.

it's always super interesting to hear how someone else does things.

How did you learn to draw so well? Like was it from classes or a book on fundamentals or just trial and error?

//// thanks for the kind question!

I guarantee you I would have improved faster if I’d taken a class, but I hope some of the materials I’ve used over the years can be of use to you too:

Andrew Loomis’ books - I never made it past the first chapters, but those had some great advice.

Youtube - Proko’s bean method. Figure drawing references will greatly improve anatomy and “drawing what you see”. It’s boring imo, so doing just 5-10 minutes a day can keep one from burning out while still seeing improvement. Speed painting videos are a nice way to relax and study.

Will Terrell’s People Drawing series - He’s a humble man with personal advice for artists. I watch his videos when I feel discouraged or lost.

Art, art, art - Whenever I see an artwork that I like, I figure out exactly what pleases me: line thickness, nose shape, finger positions, composition, the way the hair bends in the wind, etc. Then I try to incorporate that specific characteristic into my own art.

I have growing folders of (I’m a bit embarrassed) almost 8,000 pictures, organized by characteristics, for the sole purpose of studying their prettiness. Sometimes we don’t need a tutorial to spell everything out, just an example can help us envision our own works’ potential. Also, staring at pictures is a relaxing way to study too!

And of course, trial and error~ I don’t post my sad, failed paintings or all the weird sketches I make, but they exist and teach a lot!

#text post #idk what to tag this as #???#art talk??#art talk

39 notes · View notes

moldspace · 3 years ago

Note

i am so in love with your art and your art style!!! you inspired me to take my first ceramics class, which leads to my actual question…what glazes and glazing techniques you use?

my prof was talking about how layering glazes changes the colors n stuff…but you obviously make gorgeous painted figurines, often with layered colors! how do you do that?

(my professor did briefly talk about underglaze and colored slip, but she didn’t explain them very well or do a demo)

i have terrible trouble getting glazes to work, so the only glaze i actually regularly use is a clear glaze over - you got it - underglaze!

underglaze is kind of like slip but a lot less finnicky in when it wants to be applied, and also available in a lot more colors. it's pretty much as close as you can get to a "paint" that you can use on clay. i underglaze bone dry greenware, bisque it, and then put a clear glaze on top with my work, but you can also use it on wetter clay or on bisqueware, it's pretty flexible. the only thing is it won’t fire shiny at all, it fires to the same kind of texture (and porousness) as raw clay, so you do need a clear glaze to get that effect. i haven't done this much but i've heard it can also be watered down to be used like a watercolor, and you can blend and mix underglazes to get new colors, and i've even seen some underglaze crayons/pastels being sold that are supposed to let you draw onto your clay. it's a very versatile material, but a little pricey and can be hard to find at art supply stores that aren't specifically for ceramics.

it also will go on completely opaque but fire thinner and more transparent than it looks, which always drives me a little crazy. 2-3 coats is recommended if you want your colors looking solid and not blotchy. sort of related to this i have favorite and least favorite brands, lol. i use coyote underglazes when i can because they're a little thicker than other brands and therefor easier to get a thick coat on.

#ask #ceramics #underglaze #process #underglazing

68 notes · View notes

ladyhindsight · 3 years ago

Note

i've noticed that clare uses a lot of angel metaphors/similes in her writing but often times they are overused and don't make sense. i was reading chain of gold recently and found that matthew's face was described as looking like a "dissipated angel's." i don't know what this means and it does nothing to describe his appearance or even his facial expression. i also remember reading about a character who was described as looking like a michelangelo statue or something? the metaphor to the statue was very sudden and very out of place, just "he looked like [name of statue]" in the middle of the paragraph and i think the author was trying to be flowery and descriptive but it just made it seem overwritten and random, and comparing a character to a statue doesn't tell me anything about their appearance anyway. jace and sebastian were described numerous times as "bad angel boy" or "golden angel boy" in TMI, which got very repetitive very fast. clare often uses these comparisons on the characters she favours but doesn't do so for the characters she pushes to the sidelines - in chain of gold there were very many angel comparisons for james and matthew but none for christopher or thomas, which made it obvious which characters she preferred, as the former two were often in the center of the story whereas we didn't spend as much time with the latter two

So. Many. Also constant reminders of the angelic heritage of the Nephilim and angelic magic and the Angel and the angels and the angel blood. Rinse and repeat. There’s a lot of smiling like angels, looking like avenging angels (Jace and Julian especially), angel boys (yuck), and oddly specifically at least two references to Caravaggio’s paintings in the series. So I just had to:

CITY OF BONES

In the faint light she looked half-transparent, bleached of color, wrapped in white like an angel.

Isabelle

He looked like a fair-haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish mouth.

Jace

Her sketchpad, open to the drawing she’d been doing, the one of Jace with angel wings.

Counting this in because Jace = Angel

CITY OF ASHES

Jace had stood stiff and awkward by the bed, his face like a painted angel’s, with blank indifferent eyes.

This adds nothing to Jace's demeanor.

He really did look like an avenging angel getting ready to dispatch divine justice from on high, as the Shadowhunters were meant to do.

Jace. Avenging Angels score 1 point.

You may look like an angel, Jonathan Morgenstern, but I know exactly what you are.

Jace.

Standing between two of the burning candelabras, their light casting a pale gold overlay onto his hair and skin, he looked like a painting of an angel.

Jace.

CITY OF GLASS

Angels were walking on the glass—angels with white wings that hung bloodied and broken from their backs, and each of them had Jace’s face. And then there were other angels, with wings of black shadow, and they touched their hands to the fire and laughed...

Clary being high on Lake Lyn and imagining Angels = Jace

Isabelle’s whip came alive in her hand like the flaming sword of an avenging angel; she launched herself forward, her whip slashing down across the demon’s back.

Isabelle's whip scores another point for Avenging Angels (2).

Sebastian had come to a stop now, just in front of Jace, and was smiling like an angel.

Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (1)

Clary couldn’t blame him—it was hard to look at Sebastian, at his angelic smile, and imagine he could say these things.

Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (2)

Jace, Clary thought, on the other hand, all in white, looked like an angel. Albeit one of the avenging kind.”

Avenging Angels (3)

He looked barely fourteen as he climbed the stairs, his thin face calm and angelic, like a choirboy mounting the steps to the chancel.

Raphael.

“What did you get for your ninth birthday, little angel boy? A cookie?”

Angel Boy 1 (and cringe)

His hair was a white halo; he looked like the sort of bad angel who might have followed Lucifer out of heaven.

Sebastian.

“Little angel boy,” he said. “You’re a fool, aren’t you—just like my father always said.”

Angel boy 2 (and double cringe)

“You’re the angel boy. I had to hear all about you. You with your pretty angel face and your pretty manners and your delicate, delicate feelings."

Sebastian to Jace. Angel Boy (3)

Jace’s face was calm, the face of an angel dispatching divine justice.

CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS

She’d seen Jace do it, and he looked like a falling angel while he did, flying through the air, whirling and spinning with beautiful, balletic grace.

Jace = Angel

“Max smiled like an angel as Jace turned the knife toward himself, blade inward.”

Jace’s nightmare: Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (3)

CITY OF LOST SOULS

“Oh, yes, I was going to ask.” He smiled like an angel. “Is everyone looking for me?”

Jace: Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (4)

He still had the face of a little boy angel, though his gaze as he regarded Simon was cold.

Raphael. I’’m counting this as Angel Boy (4).

Shaking her hair out of her face, she carefully drew the Fortis rune at the juncture of shoulder blade and back, just where, if he were an angel, he would have wings.

Clary draws a rune on Jace who = Angel

”Come along, angel girl.” He held out his hand.

Sebastian to Clary. Yuck. And you thought this was going to be limited to angel boys? Oh nay nay.

“As for the angel boy, he will be the last of his kind to die.”

Some demons talking about Jace: Angel Boy (5)

He let his arms fall to either side of him, outstretched like wings, a broken angel, fallen out of the sky.

Sebastian = Fallen angel (because he is part demon ;D)

She thrust her arm forward to take it, and in that moment she was no longer Clary, his friend since childhood, but a Shadowhunter, an avenging angel who belonged with that sword in her hand.

Simon about Clary: Avenging Angels (4)

CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE

“You are making a mistake,” he said, “talking to me like this, angel boy.”

Sebastian to Jace: Angel Boy (6)

“I can feel the fire of Heaven in your veins, angel boy, burning under the skin,” he said.

Again Sebastian to Jace: Angel boy (7). You really need to let this word combination go.

“Jace, no,” Alec said, but his voice was drowned by the clamor that ran through the room, voices rising like smoke and curling up toward the ceiling, and Jace stood calmly, with his hands out, showing he had no weapons, his hair shining under the light of the runes. A sacrificial angel.

Jace = Angel

“You cannot win,” Matthias said finally, and Jace laughed, that sharp acerbic laugh Clary had first fallen in love with. Not a sacrificial angel, she thought, but an avenging one, all gold and blood and fire, confident even in the face of defeat.

Wait, scratch that. Avenging Angels (5). Also, who the hell was Matthias?

“The vampire had killed all his friends. I don’t know why he Turned Raphael instead. He saw something in him. Will, strength, beauty. I don’t know. He was a child when I found him, a Caravaggio angel painted in blood.”

Magnus to Luke.

The stars were coruscating, reflecting the fire back, red and gold and blue and orange. It was as beautiful and terrible as an angel.

The sight Jocelyn sees.

Never had Jace looked so much like an avenging angel, hurtling through cloud and fire.

I assure you, Jace has looked like an avenging angel at least three times by now. Avenging Angels (6).

“We have to show them,” he said, and his face was as immovable as an angel pronouncing a sentencing. “That we are unified. Prove yourself, Clarissa.”

Sebastian asking Clary to kiss him. What the fuck.

“Indeed it is,” said Asmodeus. “For none of you caught a Prince of Hell in his place of power; not even you, Jace Herondale, child of angels, or you, Clarissa Fairchild, with your tricks and runes.”

Aren’t they all?

“He smiled at Jocelyn like an angel, and then went over to the piano.”

Jace. Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (4)

CLOCKWORK ANGEL

“Look at him. The face of a bad angel and eyes like the night sky in Hell. He’s very pretty, and vampires like that. I can’t say I mind either.” Magnus grinned.

About Will.

CLOCKWORK PRINCE

He had the ethereal look of angels in paintings, and though she knew that the silvery color of his hair and skin was a result of the medicine he took for his illness, she couldn’t help finding it lovely too.

Sophie about Jem.

His eyes were bluer than blue, his cheeks flushed, his features angelic.”

Bluer than blue. Roger that. (Will)

CLOCKWORK PRINCESS

“Have you been reading her letters?” Sophie looked furious, like some sort of avenging angel, lamp in hand.

This is hands down the best one. Avenging Angels (7)

LADY MIDNIGHT

Only he looked at Mark sometimes, when the others called him Nephilim and Shadow-spawn and angel-boy and other names much worse.

What could be worse than having to read “angel boy” (8) over and over again. This time with a hyphen.

After her came Emma. He registered her dress, but barely—that it was pale ivory, that it floated around her like angel wings.

Emma is like an angel

LORD OF SHADOWS

Evelyn looked irritably from Julian to Tavvy, who smiled angelically at her, showing off his dimples.

Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (5)

Julian didn’t move. He stared icily down at the faerie. He looked like a statue of an avenging angel, something blank and pitiless.

Avenging Angels (8)

QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS

Julian had always been rebellious at heart, but rarely openly. He smiled like an angel and said, “Why don’t you just tell us what you want?”

Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (6)

His eyes were closed, perfect half circles fringed with silvery lashes. He looked innocent, angelic.”

Ash.

Emma had always thought that Raphael, who had made his famous sacrifice to save Magnus Bane’s life, had an angelic face.

Simon and Magnus would agree.

She felt almost dizzy with it, as if she were rising above Zara to an immense height—looking down at her with the indifference of an avenging angel, a being of light gifted with power so great it had rendered them nearly inhuman.”

Emma adding for Avenging Angels (9)

Then Horace and Zara had come into the frame, striding across the grass, and because of the size of the Projection and the angle, they had looked like angels striding across the sky.

This is a bit different, because it is supposed to sort of “ridicule” their self-importance, not that they are awe-inspiring.

Emma whirled; Julian was behind her, the gleaming Mortal Sword in his hand. There was blood on him, and a bruise on his cheek, but with Maellartach in his hand he looked like an avenging angel.

Avenging Angels (10)

Expressionless as a statue of an avenging angel, Emma reached down and swept Jace out of the way.”

True Nephilim Emma: Avenging Angels (11)

They lay with their hands clasped together, their eyes closed, like angels who had fallen from heaven and now slept peacefully upon the earth again.

Emma and Julian after returning back to human form.

And when they caught alight at last, neither able to wait a moment longer, they were one person. They were incandescent as angels.

Emma and Julian having sex.

The Jace she knew had been beautiful as angels were beautiful: this Jace was older, haggard.”

About Janus. Jace = Angel

THE RED SCROLLS OF MAGIC

Magnus looked at the severe lines of his face and thought of the relentlessness of angels.

Alec.

THE LOST BOOK OF THE WHITE

Nothing besides that Alec is an “angelic warrior” that is afraid of spiders. Are surprised though?

GHOSTS OF THE SHADOW MARKET

Jonathan Wayland, the child who fought like a warrior angel, looked intrigued.

Jace.

Sebastian and Janus both leaned forward, Janus sick with a pain he did not understand and Sebastian smiling like a guardian angel.

Smiling like an angel/Angelic smile (7)

CHAIN OF GOLD

Now he was a well-built young man, his hair darkened to bronze, with a face like a dissipated angel.

Matthew. Dissipated i.e. overindulgent in sensual pleasures? Angels like that? What? And you’re right, this tells us nothing how his face looks.

CHAIN OF IRON

He looked like an angel painted by Caravaggio and sugar-dusted with snow.

Matthew. I kind of hate how I have to go and google Caravaggio’s paintings of angels because Clare rather does not describe Matthew with her own words.

He tipped his head back to smile at Risa like a Botticelli angel.

Matthew.

He was so beautiful, so awfully, terribly beautiful, like a marble carving of an angel—but no carving had such dark, tumbling hair, such secretive eyes.

Jesse who I constantly forget.

Such variety, truly.

#City of Bones #City of Ashes #City of Glass #City of Fallen Angels #City of Lost Souls #City of Heavenly Fire #Clockwork Angel #Clockwork Prince #Clockwork Princess #Lady Midnight #Lord of Shadows #Queen of Air and Darkness #The Red Scrolls of Magic #The Lost Book of the White #Chain of Gold #Chain of Iron #Reply

27 notes · View notes

candysweetposts · 3 years ago

Note

how do you edit the illustrations and what program do you use? could you make a tutorial explaining it better please?

Hi!

I made some tutorials here and here. I'm not good at explaining so I'll make another one so I hope you understand better.

!!! I advise reading the whole tutorial first before trying it.!!!

This tutorial is for PC/MAC programs but can also be used for phone programs.

I'll make this in 3 parts because Tumblr won't let me put more than 10 images per post and I need a lot of images to explain what I'm talking about.

Part 2

Part 3

First, the main program that I use it's Paint Tool SAI. This is a program mainly for artists, but it's also good for editing. it's not free (unless you're a pirate), but you can go with some other programs that are free like Paint NET, Krita, GIMP, PIXLR, etc. I tried them all at least once and I think are also good for editing, especially Paint NET and PIXLR which I use regularly.

So, for this tutorial, I'm going to edit this image using Paint tool SAI but I'll also explain a bit for Paint NET.

First, insert a new layer, so you can easily erase something if you make a mistake. Press the icon that I encircle it with red.

Now, we can actually start editing.

I'll start with the hair. My gardiene's hair looked like the wig from Music Event 2017:

We will clean the place first. In Paint tool SAI you can do that with a brush. I use mostly the airbrush with different densities and while regularly right-clicking so I can copy the colors around, and blur, so I can make everything smooth.

Airbrush

Use small strokes if you have places where you don't have to clean much and bigger ones where you have to clean a lot.

Blur

I forgot to mention something here before you use blur, there's a couple of things. Depending on what density (the level of visibility) you use, you might stomp on something like this. So, chose a low level.

A way not to worry about this is if you copy the original image and paste it over, like this:

Now, in Paint NET there's a tool called Clone Stamp.

This basically lets you copy a small portion of an image in another place. To move the place you just left-click once while pressing CTRL, move the cursor and when you are sure of your place, let go of the CTRL button and left-click again to claim the spot. The semi-transparent circle is the place where you take the image part and the bold one is where the part goes. I get them close to each other obviously. The things marked with red are the hardness (up) and opacity (down). Those together are helping in making different types of brushes.

Ok, so I've cleaned most of the things. If yours looks messy don't be scared, it's ok to look a little messy. You'll cover that up anyway.

Next, we can finally actually start with the hair part. Here you have 2 options: you draw the hair manually or use the wig from the game. I'm going with the second option. The thing here is that the wig is very small in comparison with the illustration, so we'll have to use some drawing anyway (this depends mostly on the part of the image and how close is the character to the camera).

I'm my other tutorials I mentioned something about cutting pieces of the clothes you want to convert in order to have a better result. I'll do the same here.

I'm going to split it in 4 parts:

Some parts may be even used multiple times to "fill" the head. You can blame the perspective here. You can use the Lasso or there's a brush named Select to copy the part, then you can paste it on your image. On Paint tool SAI, it will automatically add a new layer when you paste something, but in Paint NET you need to insert yourself a new layer.

Part 3

Part 2

#ask #anon ask #tutorial #mcl #eldarya #eldarya edit #long ass post

36 notes · View notes

daltonacademia · 4 years ago

Text

There’s A Time For Daring - 1

charlie dalton x fem!reader [post events of the movie]

word count: 1.7k

warning: allusions to sex / slight sexual harrassment? drinking, mentions of neil’s suicide, horrible parents

Charlie couldn’t help but emit a low growl as his vomit-inducing, picture-perfect, high-society mother and father, whom he despised, prodded him towards the expansive front entrance of Nealson Preparatory School located in southern Vermont. His fuschia-lipped, cakey-faced mother, Cynthia Dalton, was a well-dressed, dignified housewife by day and charming socialite by night; she was particularly harsh as she trampled his pen-stained oxfords with her spearish kitten heels. His eyes shot daggers at the snow-strewn path below, a familiar fire burning in his core.

There were many things Charlie was tempted to furiously spit out at his parents, but instead, he managed to keep his jaw clamped shut, his pearly whites digging into the light pink of his lips hard enough to draw blood. No matter what he shouted, cried, pleaded, they wouldn’t budge. They never would. And it was infuriating.

“Charles! Being expelled from such a prestigious school is no laughing matter, young man. That school cost us quite the pretty penny! How dare you defy the rules to the extent of expulsion. It’s disgraceful, and I will tolerate it no longer!” Charlie’s mother shrieked, furious tears smudging the thick mascara that coated her eyelashes.

“You’ll be shipped off to Nealson Preparatory School in February, and if I hear so much as a single mention of your name not followed with overwhelming compliments, you can expect nasty, nasty consequences! Go pack your things, you’ll be staying with Aunt Barbara until the first of February finally arrives!” The rims of Charlie’s brown eyes stung with anger, frustration, and furthest down, sadness. He was diminished to nothing but an image-ruiner to his mother. The person who was supposed to love him, protect him, save him from the horrors of this hell called Earth.

Mr. Dalton silently observed the boisterous outburst from his expensive leather armchair across the den, a glass of strong, half-drunk whiskey in his palm. Charlie couldn’t bear to see their despicable faces any longer, and as his body felt no longer under his control, stomped up the stairs in a huff, rapidly swiping away the glassy tears spilling from his eyes. Thoughts of running away, escaping it all, flooded his unstable mind. ‘I get why you did it, Neil. I really do. But did you have to go so soon?’

But instead of lingering on the image of Neil any longer, he hastily threw his bare necessities into his suitcase, which was still covered in an array of Welton Academy stickers.

The grounds of Nealson were unsurprisingly well-maintained; it reminded him a lot of Welton. The impeccably manicured lawns, gleaming, icy blue lake, the gothic stone arches and pillars. It was eerily similar to Hellton, even down to the ice-cold blanket of snow coating the distant rolling hills. It’s beautiful, Charlie thought, surveying the slow sprinkling of snow, No, it’s hideous.

Before he could fully vomit at the vile grounds of his new school, his parents fiercely shoved him inside the Headmaster’s dingy office, politely taking the vacant mahogany seats beside him. Charlie couldn’t be bothered to listen to a word his parents said with pearly white smiles, which were no doubt tooth-rotting, sugar-coated lies about the real reason he was expelled over a month prior.

He knew that they couldn’t just be transparent and tell the Headmaster that he had socked the utterly vile Richard Cameron’s face in (rightfully so, in his opinion), or that he was a star member of the infamous Dead Poets Society, or that he had gone to the extreme lengths to stage a phone call from none other than God himself. It didn’t work like that.

His mother’s cheeky, artificial voice sounded precisely the same as it always had: carefully rehearsed and slathered with naivety. Seemingly without hesitation, the catty woman could deflect any less-than-pleasant questions or insinuations about her “golden role-model” son, who’s admittedly “a little misguided at times”.

The new headmaster seated across from him appeared to be around the same age as Mr. Nolan, which, as far as Charlie was concerned, was older than the Cretaceous period at least. His pale-as-a-ghost skin was wrinkled and paper-thin; his patchy, gelled side-swept hair was (very obviously) dyed a deep, midnight black, reminiscent of an off-brand Elvis.

Charlie’s ears continued to mute the awkward conversation happening amongst him, his focus instead shifting around to the various awards and certificates lining the ivory walls. They all seemed so phony; ‘Best Headmaster- 1947-1959’, ‘Nealson Academy: Exceeds Expectations’. The Headmaster had even framed his high school superlative: ‘Voted Most Likely to Succeed’. What a pathetic-

In a swift blur, his parents rose from their seats, his mother clutching her magenta purse with matching pursed lips. Charlie was handed a hefty, stapled packet packed full of school rules and guidelines with a denture-toothed smile from Headmaster ‘Campbell’. This’d make some decent kindling, he thought as he yanked the packet from his clammy clutches, leafing through its pages with a smirk, this garbage’s almost laughable.

A syncopated rhythm of raps on the door, followed by a gravelly, ‘come in', presented his new dorm escort. His chauffeur just so happened to be you, the accomplished and universally admired student body president in the same grade as the newcomer. You were dutifully donning Nealson’s horrendous uniform: a crisp, white button-up accented with a blue and silver tie was topped with a depressing grey sweater vest. An equally loathsome pleated skirt concealed your thighs, and your ankles were shielded from the chilly February air with black crew socks.

You extended your perfectly manicured, soft hand out to your brand-new peer with a yearbook-worthy smile, introducing, “Hi. Welcome to Nealson, I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” You swore you heard the brunette mutter something disrespectful under his breath, but nonetheless, he, rather unprofessionally, shook your hand with an eye roll. Things between the two of you were not starting off the way you hoped, but you were determined to make a good impression. The best impression possible.

“Charlie Dalton,” he replied with a mischievous smirk. The brunette standing in front of you reeked of cigarettes, and there was the slightest smell of cheap beer clinging to his clothes. His brown hair was messy, springing out in every direction, despite the water furiously combed through it. His eyes glinted with rebellion, a look so alluring yet dangerous.

“I’ll be showing you to your dorm, which you’ll sleep in for the remainder of the year.” Since Dalton was starting in February, he only had five months of studying before long-awaited senior year. Mr. Campbell waved the two of you off, and with that, you trekked towards the Boys’ wing, Dalton sauntering at your side.

The walk through the main corridor was silent and awkward. You had tried to enchant him with fun facts about Nealson and its (extensively selective) history, much to his obvious boredom and dismay. His umber eyes glazed the walls, uninterested in the decor. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, but for all you knew, it could be on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

After a while of treading through the high-ceilinged corridors illuminated with fleeting pale rays of sunlight, the boy next to you made no attempt to hide him drawing designs up and down your body.

“I’ve never been to a school with both boys and girls,” he drawled with a smirk. “Do things ever get exciting around here?”

You shook your head no while indiscreetly tugging down the hem of your skirt uncomfortably, and he said, “Do you think you’d maybe wanna spend the night with me in my dorm? Make sure I’m all settled in?”

Your whole body, from head to toe, froze. The audacity of this… creep! Your tongue poked, nearly stabbed, the back of your teeth, wanting to unleash a select few words to the disgusting Dalton beside you. But alas, if he were to tell anyone of your fiery wrath, you’d be demoted from class president faster than you could explain what really happened. It’s a corrupt system, sure, but even with the power that comes with such a title, there was no way to mend it.

Eventually, while you were wrapped up in the furies of your mind, Dalton revealed a small, autographed golf ball from his trousers pocket and began throwing it up and down above his head casually with every step.

“Can you not?” you snapped at the chestnut-haired boy after he tossed the sphere up and down again in an arch. “Don’t wanna get in trouble on your first day, do you?”

“You think this’ll get me in trouble? Have a little fun, it won’t kill you. I promise.” Dalton turned his gaze towards you, an annoyed but smug grin painted on his lips. He slowly tossed the golf ball to your hands, intending for you to catch it. However, the small ball evaded your grasp, instead bouncing around the hardwood floors below you, creating a series of loud, reverberating thunks.

“You were supposed to catch it, you know,” Dalton teased, nonchalantly watching you chase after the rogue orb. After it was finally safe in your clutches, you stomped over to the no-good newbie, irritated.

“Nealson’s strict. They don’t let stuff like creating an awful lot of racket go unreprimanded.” You were seething; red-hot blood pumped through your veins. Dalton didn’t look anything but utterly amused.

“Wow, you’re just about one of the biggest suck-ups I’ve seen in a while.”

“A what?” you growled.

“A suck-up. A rule-following poster child of excellence? A bratty, know-it-all? Anything along those lines?” He sputtered insults so nonchalantly, it made your blood boil and eyes sting.

“You better watch it, Dalton. I don’t know who you think you are-”

“I’m the best thing that’s happened to this school, by the looks of it.”

You had nothing left to say to this conceited shuck of a boy who really thought that he was all that and a side of fries. Well he wasn’t! Not in the slightest! And if his first day of classes wouldn’t drill it into him, you would.

The rest of the walk was pin-drop silent and tense. No more fun facts about Nealson escaped your downturned lips, just the light patting of his beat-up oxfords and your pristine mary-janes on the polished wood floor. The hallways seemed more depressing than usual, their framed portraits and condensated windows didn’t fill you with the motivation that you came to expect.

After finally arriving at the boys’ dormitories, you grumbled, “well, this is it. Have a swell life, Dalton.”

“Right back at ya, Y/L/N. Let’s hope this isn’t the last time we meet.” He gave you a cheeky wink before slamming the door in your face.

#dead poets society #Dead Poets Society (1989)#dead poetry #dead poets society x reader #dead poets society quotes #DPS #dps fanfiction #charlie dalton x reader #charlie dalton x y/n #charlie dalton

204 notes · View notes

lazywonderlvnd · 4 years ago

Note

*hesitantly steps in the box* Umm.. soo.. I was listening to Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift again and that song (is awesome btw if you haven't listened to it already) just gives me such MAJOR drarry vibes .. like -

" And I screamed, 'for whatever it's worth I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?' He looks up grinning like a devil. "

Like if that's not drarry I'd chomp my pillows. So .. *twiddling thumbs* could you pls write something with that line as a prompt?? Pretty please 🥺🥺🥺❤️❤️❤️ maybe use the song as inspiration.. idk? Whatever you like. ALSO, don't forget I STILL LOVE YOU that ain't changing yet and you haven't seen the last of me! Imma tail after you for eternity and you better take that as the threat it is! *throws love at you* BYE!! ❤️❤️ *vaults outside the box*

my sweetest most loved angel!! thank u so much for this prompt based on a BOP i was obsessed w when the album first came out. it got sm longer than it was meant to be, so it can be found on ao3 as well!! i hope u like it ilysm ❤️❤️❤️❤️

warnings for minor drug use (weed) and implied suicide of a minor character (lucius, extremely vague reference but pls be aware!)

rating: e word count: ~5k

When Pansy asked him how it started, Draco discovered that he didn’t know what to tell her.

Technically, though, it had started at Ernie Macmillan’s party in the beginning of summer, with the cloying scent of Freesias and Freedom Roses (“Imported from the States,” Ernie told Draco pompously, when he asked) and all those string-lights dangling from the cedar pergola, perennial balls of fire inside their clear bubbles like tiny trapped suns. Cheap beer in plastic cups, Marlboro cigarettes, and some stupid Muggle game ... darts.

Technically.

* * *

“Get off me, Potter,” Draco says in a failed whisper. He’s laughing and drunk and fuzzy warm under a sprawling summer’s night sky that looks like black paint. Potter tastes like Guinness every time he kisses him, and his hands are surprisingly soft. In direct opposition to his own command he pulls Potter in by the face and glues their mouths back together ravenously. The alcohol makes him sloppy (he likes it, though — the sloppiness of it) and Potter’s skin is warm where Draco slides his hand under an ugly Muggle band T-shirt to touch.

Around the corner, he can hear music coming from the patio where nearly every single one of their former classmates are gathered, drinking and laughing and getting along famously with a much-needed buffer of five years between them and their Hogwarts days.

Much-needed for himself and Potter as well. Apparently.

He sees him sometimes, at get-togethers like this or around the Ministry, once or twice at a dinner party thrown by a mutual friend. They’re always cordial. He hasn’t insulted Potter to his face in five years.

Except for tonight, when he couldn’t help himself loudly drawing attention to the similarities between Potter’s hair and one of the shrubs in the garden. But they’re kissing now round the side of the house and because of that he’s quite glad for his slip. And it’s their five-year reunion, so. What would it be without some bickering between the two of them?

Potter presses him into the bricks and snogs him breathless, only he keeps grinning and laughing and ruining everything just when Draco starts losing himself in it.

“Quit laughing,” he scolds him. “You’re the worst, Potter. No etiquette at all.”

“That’s rude,” Potter says. His breath wafts across Draco’s mouth. His eyes are excessively green behind their round frames, which have not changed since their school days. The scar is mostly hidden beneath his wild fringe, save for the very bottom where it slashes neatly through a dark eyebrow and touches his eyelid. “I can’t help it, I’m pissed good and proper.”

His hand moves to Draco’s hip and even through the thickness of the alcohol coating his brain like a muffler he feels that touch clear and ripe as daybreak.

“So that’s why you’ve decided to snog me rather than …” He waves a hand vaguely, in lieu of the proper witticism with which he might normally have trounced Potter. “You know. Beat me to a pulp.”

“I only did that one time,” Potter says, grinning. Grinning and moving his thumb in circles on Draco’s hip. “And it was because you were being a twat. And I didn’t beat you to a pulp. You’re so dramatic.”

“Semantics,” Draco says. “I had a bloody nose.”

“And you deserved it.”

“Now who’s being rude?”

Potter kisses him again.

Guinness and Freesias.

* * *

“Macmillan’s party,” he told Pansy. “He kissed me.”

“So that’s where you disappeared to.” She looked smug. Her inch-long nails were sharpened to a point and painted a glossy black, and she drummed them against her cheek, the way a cat flicks its tail. “I’m surprised you kept it from me this whole time.”

“Well,” said Draco, lowering his gaze to his glass of wine and watching it flirt dangerously with the lip as he swirled it. His cheeks felt warm, but he wasn’t embarrassed. “We snuck around.”

Right, maybe a little embarrassed. Mostly conflicted.

“Oh?” For a single syllable the laughter underneath was remarkably transparent.

He looked up, eyebrows lifted. “Yes,” he said a little defensively. “For obvious reasons. At first it was just sex. A lot of it, so he usually came here. Apparently Granger and the Weasel are notorious for popping round his place unexpectedly.”

* * *

He feels opened up all over again every time Potter fucks into him, unhurried and so careful. His hand is hot on Draco’s thigh, both of them sticky with sweat and come. This has to be their third round at least, and Draco’s sluggish brain insists it might actually be four.

An open window lets in the late afternoon air, humid and drowsy and perfumed heavily with flowers (a la Macmillan, Draco planted Freesias and Freedom Roses outside his bedroom window and helped them along to full bloom with some careful magic). Potter’s hair is damp with sweat — from exertion and the relentless heat of July — and Draco slides his fingers into it, tangles them and pulls the way he’s learned Potter likes. If he’s honest, he’s harboured a very secret and very desperate yearning to touch Potter’s hair since he was quite young. He doesn’t know why.

Well, maybe he knows why.

Potter makes a quiet, whimpered noise that curls Draco’s toes. He speeds up his hips, closing in on his orgasm and putting his face in Draco’s neck even though it’s too fucking hot for it.

“Fuck,” Draco whines. He tries to lift his leg higher, wrap it around Potter’s waist to get that perfect angle, but they’re too slick with sweat and he lets out a frustrated noise when it falls back to the bed. “Potter,” he says helplessly, arching into each thrust and shaking with the effort. This third (fourth?) orgasm is building too slowly, sitting there hard and stubborn and heavy in his gut and refusing to be coaxed to completion. He’s dripping with the effort, muscles quivering. “Please — I need —”

But he seems to have figured it out for himself. He scoots forward, lifting Draco’s arse higher off the bed and bending him nearly in half. The angle helps him go deeper and he’s suddenly nudging Draco’s oversensitive prostate every time he fucks back in.

“Right there,” Draco gasps, tensing as this new angle lights a fire under his elusive orgasm. His cock is leaking but he doesn’t have the strength or energy to get a hand around it. Potter’s grunting with the effort of fucking him, sweat dripping down his temples and making his neck and torso gleam. “Right there, god, right there, please, I’m so close —”

Potter braces himself and redoubles his efforts, and it’s like he’s reached inside Draco and sunk his claws into that building storm in his belly because suddenly it’s ripped right out of him in a colossal wave of euphoria that approaches too much, cock spurting untouched between them . Potter keeps moving inside him while he rides it out, and at some point he feels the warm, wet explosion of Potter emptying in him, mumbling incoherent things that include Draco’s name.

They come down together too. Draco is clutching Potter’s arms and trying to catch his breath and Potter is trembling and clutching him back like an anchor in a veritable ocean of sensation.

It’s like this every time.

When Potter drops down onto the bed beside him Draco rolls over and kisses him, long and deep and satisfying, and Potter reciprocates with the kind of intensity that is completely unique to him as a person.

“That one was particularly good,” says Potter, and Draco laughs.

When he feels like moving, he knows that Potter will get up and go to Draco’s kitchen and make tea for both of them, and he won’t need to ask what Draco likes, because he remembered after the first time. They’ll drink it naked in bed as the sun sets on another endless summer day and transforms before their eyes into a humid and pungent summer night, in the midst of which they will fuck at least three more times, and Potter will keep smelling like sweat and bergamot and boy, and Draco will keep feeling starved for him.

And they won’t talk about it.

* * *

“And?” Pansy said.

“And what?”

“You said ‘at first,’” she pointed out, and arched a groomed eyebrow. “When did it turn into more than just sex?”

Draco tamped down on a smile, because that would have been more emotion than he cared to show at the moment. To Pansy or to himself.

He swirled his wine again and took a long sip, stalling. He wanted — needed, really — to talk this out with her, but he was becoming aware of an uncomfortable heaviness in his chest which was suggesting to him that he didn’t want to share everything. Not because he was embarrassed, but, well … it was private. It was between him and Harry.

“There was this one night he came over later than he was supposed to because of work,” Draco said. The memory stirred some emotion. He hadn’t thought of it in a while. “He had this bloody huge takeout bag of Thai food.”

* * *

He sets it down on Draco’s desk, takes out a container, and after toeing off his shoes drops sideways onto Draco’s bed with it and uses chopsticks to shovel in a mouthful of noodles. Draco watches this in awe.

“Want some?” Harry asks once he’s swallowed (small blessings). There’s grease around his mouth. “There’s a million other things in the bag but you have to get it yourself. I’m dead tired.”

Draco thinks of asking what the hell is going on, because they’re supposed to be fucking by now, but something stops him. Harry really does look exhausted but quite content eating his Thai food on Draco’s bed, and he doesn’t have the heart to berate him for it or remind him that they’re fuck buddies, not friends, and that if he’d wanted to eat and lounge about perhaps he should’ve stayed at home.

And the food really does smell good.

He gets up and fishes another container out of the bag that turns out to be some sort of heavenly-smelling marinated beef, which he brings back to the bed. Harry’s rolled onto his back and has the container of noodles balanced on his stomach.

“They thought they found a Horcrux on a raid,” he says. His voice is perfectly casual, but Draco thinks he can see something troubled in his eyes. He has one foot crossed over the other and it’s bouncing anxiously; he doesn’t think Harry’s aware of doing it. “Wasn’t. Obviously.”

“But they needed your expert advice to be sure.”

“Yeah.” Harry looks at him, then his food. “Is that the beef?”

“Yes it is.”

“Good?”

“Haven’t tried it yet.”

He opens the container and chooses a piece, but instead of lifting it to his mouth he follows some crazy impulse and hovers it over Harry’s instead.

“Open, Scarhead,” he says. Harry blinks but does it, and Draco drops it in. He smiles, then chews.

“Brilliant.”

* * *

“We ate it instead of fucking. It was the first time I realised something had shifted.”

“And you let it shift?”

The question gave him pause. He didn’t answer right away, mulling it over. It made it sound as if he’d had a choice, and that wasn’t quite right.

“It already had,” he said finally. “It wasn’t a matter of letting it; by the time I noticed, it had already happened. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come over with the food.”

“But you did let it continue,” said Pansy. She wasn’t antagonising him, nor accusing him of anything. She looked amused, but not in a way that was at his expense. Pansy was both a twat and a fiercely good friend, the combination of which meant she would do nothing more or less than hold up a mirror and force you to look at yourself, gruesome as the experience inevitably wound up being. “Even after you realised he had feelings for you.”

Draco swallowed. He’d not heard it said aloud before now.

“Yes,” he said. “It felt good. Knowing he fancied me.”

* * *

Harry’s shameless in his staring.

He stands in the doorway of the ensuite bathroom and watches Draco like he’s been invited to do so. Draco pretends not to notice, stretched out in a tub full of bubbles facing the opposite way. There’s incense burning, and candles. Harry is completely silent, but Draco could feel those eyes on him from across a crowded hall.

They fucked a few hours ago and fell asleep afterwards. Draco pretended not to think about it, but had actually made the conscious decision to let Harry continue sleeping when he woke up and decided he wanted a bath.

When he can’t take it anymore he opens his eyes and tilts his head back and a little to the side, just enough that he gets Potter in his peripherals.

“Well?” he says.

“Well what?”

“Join me, won’t you?”

Harry snorts. Then there’s a quiver of magic in the air, and a small, utilitarian chair appears out of thin air beside the tub. Harry sits down in it. He’s holding the joint they’d only gotten halfway through earlier.

He’s in his jeans and nothing else, all limbs and sparse chest hair, and when he crosses a leg over the other one, elbow resting on his knee as he hits the joint, Draco feels a bone-deep attraction to him that’s beyond physical.

“May I?” Draco asks. Harry hands it over and Draco inhales deeply before returning it. The humidity of the room mixes with the smoke and the smell of marijuana, pungent and cloying like the flowers.

After a length of silence, Draco says, “Will you read me something?”

“Will I what?”

He takes his wand from the floor and Summons a book from the shelf in his room — one of his poetry collections comes sweeping in through the cracked door and into Harry’s lap. Harry sticks the joint between his lips and starts rifling through it with his glasses all fogged up.

When he starts reading Byron (“I had a dream, which was not all a dream”) Draco smiles and sinks deeper into the hot water and bubbles, letting Harry’s voice lull him into a pleasant stupor.

* * *

“So you led him on,” said Pansy. “Because you liked his attention.”

He stared at her, then let his gaze drop to his wine again. Had he?

“It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

“Well,” she said, smiling wryly, “I’m only saying it as you’ve told it to me. Maybe if it sounds bad, it is bad. Some things are that simple, darling. Unless there’s more to it.”

“Like what?” he said, not looking at her. There was a touch of pouty defiance in his voice he knew Pansy would detect instantly. He heard her sigh.

“What exactly happened yesterday, Draco? You didn’t give me any context.”

“What context do you need?” he muttered. “He told me he loved me.”

* * *

They’ve finished an entire bottle of wine between them. He’s not drunk, but he’s pleasantly buzzed. Harry’s sprawled on his back, T-shirt rucked up just below his navel so Draco can see the dark trail of hair leading below his jeans. There’s something implicitly erotic about the movement of his chest when he breathes, his hands folded behind his head, one leg stretched the length of the bed and the other bent at the knee.

He opens his eyes suddenly and grins when he sees Draco looking at him.

“That wine just made me tired,” he says.

“So go to sleep,” says Draco. He takes a last swig, emptying it, and sets the bottle aside on his night table. He stretches his arms over his head and arches his back, yawning widely, thinking perhaps he’ll give into the tempting allure of sleep as well when Harry says, “I told Hermione about us.”

So he’s not sleeping, then. His stomach clenches hard and a completely irrational sense of panic rises in his throat.

“Us?” he says slowly, sitting up straighter. “What ‘us’?”

Harry looks at him upside-down, then rolls over and rises to his knees. He stares at Draco blankly.

“‘What us?’” he repeats.

“Yes,” says Draco. “What ‘us’?”

“Us,” Harry says. His voice is lower than usual. The word is starting to sound weird and lose meaning. “You and me, Draco.”

“‘You and me?’ Harry, there’s no you and me. We’re just fucking. What do you … what do you mean, you told Granger? Told her what?”

Harry looks … well, he looks fucking crushed. And angry. Draco forces himself not to look away.

“I told her I’d been seeing you,” he says quietly. There’s something … not threatening, but close to it, in his voice.

“Sure,” says Draco. “I see you three times a week, sometimes four. I s’pose if you feel the need to fill Granger in on everything you do with every second of your day —”

“Shut up, Draco,” Harry says. “You know what I meant.”

Draco glares at him. He gets off the bed, slightly lightheaded from the wine, horrified by the emotions welling up inside him right behind the panic, and he points at his bedroom door.

“Get out,” he says.

“Are you serious?”

“Go!” he says loudly, voice rising. “If you’re gonna start turning this into something it definitely is not then get out of my flat, Potter.” As usual the window is open, but it’s the third of September and getting chilly finally and Draco’s Freesias and Freedom Roses started wilting last week. There’s a chilly breeze coming into that room that is utterly barren of the sweet smells of summer he associates with Harry these days. “It’s time we ended this anyway,” he says. “Summer’s over.”

“So?” From his position kneeling on Draco’s bed Harry shouldn’t feel imposing at all, but he does. There’s no sparkle of humour in his eyes, none of the softness Draco’s gotten used to seeing there. He looks like someone who’s realised they’ve been betrayed.

Worse than that. Someone who’s been betrayed and realises they should have seen it coming.

“What the fuck does summer have to do with anything?”

“Ever heard of a summer fling, Potter? We’re not ‘seeing each other’.”

Harry finally gets off the bed. Draco’s stomach clenches again, more painfully this time. He doesn’t feel bad, he tells himself — this is Harry’s fault. His fault for making a big deal out of something easy and fun and, most of all, temporary. For ruining this with feelings.

“That’s not what this was,” Harry says. It’s not an argumentative tone; rather, he sounds disappointed. Devastated, and disappointed. And that look of betrayal, like he’s surprised but not … that surprised.

That hurts.

“This was as real as it gets, Draco,” he says matter-of-factly. “You and I don’t have the capability of doing anything as shallow as a fling.”

“Well, Potter,” says Draco, straining to maintain his level voice, “congratulations, because that is the most disgusting, romanticised, Gryffindorian piece of shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah?” He grabs up his wand from the bedside table and stuffs it into his jeans pocket. “Well here’s another: I love you. You complete fucking prick.”

Draco stares after him as he leaves the room, cowed for the moment. He hears Harry take the Floo powder off his mantle, hears the fire start, and then the sound of Potter disappearing.

And he feels hollow suddenly.

* * *

“And he said it completely out of the blue?”

Draco set his wine aside. He was suddenly feeling too sick to put anything else in his body.

“Sort of,” he said quietly, avoiding her eyes. “He was trying to make something out of nothing. He was just making a point, trying to guilt me, I don’t even think he meant it.”

Pansy said nothing for so long that Draco finally looked up. She had an eyebrow raised.

“Do you really believe that?” she said.

Draco didn’t answer right away. He glanced at the bottle of wine on the table and thought about the way it always tasted a little sweeter on Harry’s lips.

“I don’t know,” he said. “No. But it doesn’t change anything. It was a summer thing, not a … a relationship, for crying out loud. Like I’d date Potter.”

“Why not?”

Draco scoffed. “Why not? Pansy, please. He’s a …”

“A …?”

“He’s an idiot! He’s Potter! He’s …” He couldn’t think of the right word, something bad enough to express the audacity, the gall , for Potter to think even for a second that they could …

“Draco Malfoy,” said Pansy. She was smirking. “You love him too.”

Had he felt sick before? Now he was going to be sick.

“I never would’ve imagined it,” she went on, seeming to take pleasure from his outrage and humiliation. The bint. “Look at you, you’re blushing! Oh my god,” she laughed. And then she stopped laughing, and instead the weight of her own words appeared to descend on her. “Oh my god. You do, don’t you? You are arse over tits for Harry Potter —”

He was up and out of his chair before she’d finished the last word, absurdly, embarrassingly on the verge of tears all of a sudden.

“Draco —”

“I’m glad this can serve as your entertainment for the week, Pansy,” he said. A tear rolled down his cheek — could he be any more histrionic? — and he brushed it away furiously.

“Draco, no —”

“Call Blaise, tell him!” he shouted. “You two can have a good laugh over it —”

“Draco —”

“Poor Draco’s fucked himself over again, what a stupid wanker!”

Pansy got up. He slapped her hand away when she reached for him, but she only came at him again and grabbed it this time when he swatted at her, enfolding it in both of hers. He closed his eyes and hiccoughed and two more tears came.

“Darling, will you please listen to me?” she said softly. It sounded eerily like his mother, which only made him feel young and childish. He tugged his arm away and she let him go, but he didn’t move any farther away. “I am not laughing at you,” she told him. “Blaise might, but that’s because Blaise has a black hole for a heart, Draco, the only emotion he’s ever felt is disdain.” Against his will, Draco chuckled wetly. Pansy smiled and took his hand again, tentatively. He allowed it. “ I think it’s lovely that you have feelings for him. I don’t understand what’s got you so upset, I mean … I know it’s Potter, but we’re not teenagers anymore, right? Who cares?”

Draco exhaled a long sigh.

“He let my father go to Azkaban,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. He saw comprehension dawning. “How can I be with someone who could’ve saved my father’s life and chose not to, Pansy?”

“No one could have saved your father, Draco,” said Pansy gravely. His throat was tight, swollen. He hated that he was hanging on her words, looking for truth in them, wanting to hear something that would make this okay. “He would have done the same thing if they’d let him go back to the manor. It’s not your fault or your mum’s or Potter’s.”

“But —”

“But what?” she cut him off sharply. “Draco, please don’t let your father keep controlling your life from the grave! My god, you deserve happiness, don’t you see that? Even if it’s Potter! In fact, I … I think that could be really good.”

“What, being with Potter?”

“Yes, being with Potter,” she said. “Darling, I say this because I love you: you need to grow a pair of bollocks and start taking control of your own life. I’m not finished!” she added when he opened his mouth to retort. “I understand that it feels like a betrayal of your father, I do, and I’m not saying you can’t have your cherished memories of him, but Draco … you cannot live your life in his shadow, doing things because it’s what he’d want or wouldn’t want. I think that choosing to explore these feelings you have for Potter is the bravest and healthiest thing you could possibly do for yourself.”

He stared at her for a long moment, eyes wet though the tears had stopped falling.

“What if it doesn’t last?” he said finally. “What if next week he realises it was a huge mistake?”

“First of all, I doubt that,” said Pansy with a roll of her eyes that was clearly meant to be teasing. “You said you’ve been seeing him all summer, that’s plenty of time to have gotten sick of you. And, even if that did happen, I still think it would be entirely worth that week of being disgustingly in love.”

“Do you?” he drawled.

“Yes! I do!” She picked up his discarded wine glass from before and held it up. “Does the effect of alcohol last forever?”

“No …”

“Of course not! And we don’t expect it to. We expect to have fun while we’re drunk and it’ll last as long as it lasts.”

“Dating someone isn’t like being drunk, Pansy,” Draco said sourly.

“Oh, that’s not the point ,” she huffed. “We don’t do things because we know they’ll last forever, we do them because we want to. In the moment.”

“Sounds irresponsible.”

“Well, of course it is,” she scoffed. “Love is completely irresponsible, that’s the fun of it, Draco. Now take this,” she shoved the glass of wine into his hand, almost spilling it. “Drink up, and then get your arse over to his flat and fix this.”

* * *

Granger opened the door. Draco sighed.

“Hello, Granger,” he said lamely. Her raised eyebrows said she was surprised and thoroughly unimpressed by his appearance.

“Malfoy,” she said.

“Is Potter in?”

“I guess that depends.”

“On?”

She looked at him, dark brown eyes impenetrable. Then she closed the front door behind her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“To talk to him,” he said tightly. As if this whole thing wasn’t bad enough, now he had to pass a test to get past Granger the bridge troll. “I thought he told you —”

“He did,” she said flatly. “And about yesterday.”

“Well I’m here to apologise,” said Draco. Granger’s eyebrows lifted again. Still unimpressed. “And to tell him …” He sighed again and broke eye contact, willing himself not to give up, not to take this as a sign he should just go home and ream into Pansy for giving him such bad advice.

“Malfoy.” He looked up. Her voice was softer now, and her eyes seemed a little less hard. “What are you doing? You really hurt him, you know.”

“I know,” he said stiffly. “I said I’m here to apologise.”

“Well he doesn’t need an apology,” she said. “If you’re only going to let him down again —”

“I’m not.” He rubbed his forehead and looked at her again, exasperated, defeated. “I’ve … had some sense talked into me.”

She looked like it was the last thing she’d been expecting.

“Have you?”

“Yes,” he said. “So would you please get him for me before I lose my nerve?”

It was the right thing to say. Her expression melted into something much softer and he fancied he even saw the beginnings of a smile.

“Can I ask who affected this change of heart?”

“Pansy,” he said. And, when Granger seemed taken aback, “She’s very wise when she feels like it.”

“I see. Well …” She still looked a bit conflicted, eyeing him and then putting her hand on the doorknob. “All right. I’ll tell him you’re here, anyway, but he was really hurt, Malfoy. I don’t know if he’ll want to hear it.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said.

Granger eyed him another moment and then went back inside, shutting the door behind her. Draco only had to wait a minute before it was opening again, and this time Harry came out. The sight of him made Draco’s heart feel tender and sore.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, Potter.”

He waited to see if Harry would say anything else but he didn’t. He only stared at Draco expectantly, arms folded, in all ways closed off.

“I came to apologise,” said Draco.

“Well you can keep it,” said Harry. “I don’t need an apology because you told me the truth.”

“It wasn’t the truth, Potter,” Draco said quietly. “Opposite, really.”

Harry was silent. Then, “You made me feel like shit, Draco.”

“I know. I’m sorry. You freaked me out, springing it on me like that.”

A beat, then two, and then suddenly Harry was dropping his arms and sighing and he looked at Draco with so much vulnerability he nearly had to turn away from it.

“I didn’t mean to tell you …” He licked his lips, scratched his arm. It reminded Draco that beneath everything, Harry was still the same awkward dorky leader-of-the-losers he’d always been, just with a bit more confidence now and the title of Official Saviour of the Wizarding World. “I wouldn’t have said that if … I was just angry.”

He didn’t need to ask what Harry was referring to.

“I know.”

“Not that I didn’t … I mean, I … I do —”

“Please don’t say it again,” Draco said. Harry laughed.

“Right. I just meant … I really do have feelings for you, Draco. Like … mad, crazy feelings, y’know? I don’t want it to be a fling.”

“It wasn’t a fling,” he said. He moved a little closer and Harry watched him carefully, eyes flickering once down to Draco’s mouth. “I didn’t even sleep with anyone else the whole time.”

“Well that’s good to know,” said Harry sardonically. But he was smiling, so Draco found himself smiling tentatively as well.

“I wanna be with you, Potter. Properly. I thought …” But he shakes his head, deciding that now isn’t the time to explain about his father. “I thought it was a stupid idea. Now I realise that it probably is, but that I don’t really care much. I’ve decided to ignore my better judgment this one time.”

“That’s quite Gryffindor of you,” Harry commented drily.

“Yes, well.”

“So I go against your better judgment, then?”

“Potter,” Draco sighed. “Please, I don’t mean it like —”

“I’m taking the piss, Draco,” Harry cut him off. He reached for Draco’s waist and pulled him close, and before Draco could get his breath back from a short, surprised intake of breath Harry’s mouth was on his, warm and familiar and soothing. He brought his hands to Harry’s face and kissed back without bothering to hide his overwhelming relief.

Harry chased his mouth when he pulled away and Draco breathed out a laugh, holding him at bay with a hand on his chest.

“We have plenty of time,” he said. “D’you wanna come over later tonight, after your friends leave?”

“What? No, come in.” He took Draco’s hand and gestured with his head towards the door. “Please. It’s just Ron and Hermione. They know everything.”

“Really?” Draco drawled. “And you think Weasley won’t try to kill me?”

“I promise not to let him,” Harry grinned. “Please, Draco. You said you wanted to do this properly, right?”

He thought of what Pansy said about being irresponsible, and decided it was worth a try at least.

“Okay,” he said. Harry beamed and tugged him inside.

Towards his ultimate downfall or towards the beginning of the rest of his life, he didn’t know. That, as Pansy would have said, was the fun of it.

#anna writes #answered #drarry fic #god i had sm fun writing this tysm for the prompt 😩

274 notes · View notes

emersonfreepress · 4 years ago

Note

ok ok in the spirit of community, how would the ros fair in a paintball war?

(referring to this ask! like the zombie au post this ended up making me think a lot 😅)

ohh... interesting, interesting... p sure the only paintball wars i’ve really seen were the ones featured in The League, Peep Show, and Community... but let me wrack my lil head...

ok, i ended up coming at this from multiple angles like the zombie au post 😅 always so much to consider in battle environments! and in the spirit of community, I'll stick with the individual player elimination style paintball match. in the woods with other e prep seniors. last one standing wins bragging rights

Gabe

Shooting skill | 6/10 - Experience with shooting and practice with Kile ofc

Stealthiness | 8/10 - He's done a fair amount of sneaking around during his after school activities, is super observant (or just paranoid lol), and naturally light on his feet. Good luck ambushing him.

Strategy | 8/10 - Strike deals. Do favors. Form alliances. Shoot 'em in the back once they’ve outlived their usefulness. ...What? It’s just paintball.

How does he win? | Graciously. Gabe likes winning, and especially via strategic manipulation, so it puts a smile on his face. And he's in a good mood so he treats a bunch of you to ice cream or smth 👀

How does he lose? | Slumps in frustration at being outwitted or taken off-guard, sulks about it for a little while. He's not that sore of a loser but needs time to lick his wounds and stop thinking of the different choices he could have made.

Kile

Shooting | 9 - The most accurate shooter of the cast and easily one of the best shots at E Prep. Lots of practice + talent

Stealth | 10 - They're stupid good at climbing trees and 100% consider that a valid method of ambushing their classmates. People start having flashbacks to 3rd and 4th grade recess and P.E. Scanning the trees. They just start taking people out with such efficiency it quickly starts ruining the game 😂

Strategy | 0? 10?? - “...Strategy? You just stay out of sight and kill 'em all, right?” (immediately scolded by Gabe for word choice 🙄) They really do mainly stay out of sight and pick people off with max stealth, like 😆 they'd be such a terror, people would need to take them out early for anyone else to stand a chance! They spend a lot of the game staking out the most frequented paths in the area and taking out groups quickly, all at once. Then they'll get around to stalking and picking people off one by one. The real fun...

Winner type | Stoic. Likes winning combat but the stakes were non-existent, so... the win is meaningless! this just infuriates the losers more 😅 such disrespect

Loser type | Sucks their teeth and tosses their paintball gun to the ground. "Y'all suck." (they're over it five mins later tho lol)

Jack

Shooting | 3 - This is nothing like shooting light guns... ☹️

Stealth | 5 - Not just due to his size making him an easier target, but homeboy is liable to get distracted by a cute squirrel or some pretty flowers 😂 He's not great at keeping his voice down either so good conversation would make him easy to seek out. He's just out here enjoying a beautiful day 😅

Strategy | 7 - All that movie-watching (and DMing) make him a valuable creative mind for problem-solving, but he needs a cooperative team to be effective. Rescued and recruited by Rupan/Rohan early on in the game ^ ^

Winner type | Disbelief! And everyone’s content and satisfied with him winning. Except Vivian/Vincent, that jealous fool

Loser type | Doesn't mind losing at all! He just hopes he was a good teammate and was glad to have fun ☺️

Jessie

Shooting | 7 - Comes from a family of hunters, girly knows how to shoot.

Stealth | 6 - Familiar enough with woods and stalking prey to be capable of sneaking around. Having too much fun to not giggle and get overly invested in the developing plot of the game. Even more easily distracted by critters and flora than Jack 😅

Strategy | 5 - Oh, she's just here to have fun. She'll go with whatever the person she's teaming up with decides, but can adapt easily enough.

Winner type | Surprised... then elated! Bouncing and happy and it's completely contagious. No hard feelings about a single thing. Convinces Heidi to invite people to the Emerson Estate—it's a hot day and they have a nice pool

Loser type | Same as Jack! Congratulates the winner with a hug because she's sweet like that 🧁

Rain

Shooting | 2 - This... thing is so cumbersome. And ugly. At least it shoots pretty colors.

Stealth | 7 - Small and used to sneaking around different environments and seeking out hiding spots. Their height and frame makes them harder to spot too.

Strategy | 4 - Hide!!! They’re not getting assaulted with paint and pellets!! Especially not after managing to make this ugly jumpsuit look cute?? Waiting it out is perfectly legitimate. Might share snacks if you decide to join them in hiding 😆

Winner type | Falls asleep in an unexpectedly cozy hiding spot and emerges as everyone thought they’d declared the winner. I imagine R and others yelling at them to get their gun while the original winner scrambles to get theirs, just for Rain to win by pure luck of the draw. Won’t stop them bragging about it, though! (I want this spurned runner-up to be Vi bc ofc)

Loser type | "So I can stop holding this thing?" Yawn. "I'm so hungry and bored, we've been at this for hours..."

Rupan/Rohan

Shooting | 4 - Ah, shit. These don't shoot anything like light guns.

Stealth | 7 - They sneak out and around town a lot 😂 They just force themself to be careful about how loud grass and bushes are.

Strategy | 7 - They’re treating this shit like an action movie and banding together a ragtag team of misfits to take down the strongest alliances and players. Savvy enough to reject Gabe’s and Curt’s offers to join, not opposed to strategic backstabs. They're very clearly just as focused on having fun as they are on winning—and playing Predator, which honestly works with Kile runnin around. They even brought war paint and borrowed a tactical vest. Is it mostly packed with snacks and weed? Maybe. Does it prove useful for negotiations? Hell yeah.

Winner type | Raucous celebration, just pure joy and adrenaline ☺️ Celebrates with their team, brags a bit, rubs it into Vi's face, makes fun of Curt, the usual. Then invites allies out to get pizza because it's the obvious next step

Loser type | Mostly disappointed they can't keep playing. They're a little sore about being left out of the action, but soon just start chatting with other marked players about how the game went for them. Plenty entertaining on its own, they want all the details

Vivian/Vincent

Shooting | 5 - They've got a little bit of shooting experience.

Stealth | 4 - They're overly sensitive and hate being in nature. Their skin is sticky, they keep feeling bugs everywhere, they've gotten dirt all over their pants, it's so hot, they keep WALKING into SPIDERWEBS, [flails about, screaming furiously]

Strategy | 8 - They have good ideas, they're just difficult to execute alone, especially since they're getting sunburnt and getting crankier and can't stop swatting at insects 😅 they're one of the first people to figure out that someone's taking out groups from the trees, so they stay solo and try to find a single person to team up with. Really what they need is someone who's a better shot but easy to boss around. They can probably just owe them for an in-school favor...

Winner type | Barely suppressed gloating. Vi somehow finds a way to be an obnoxious winner almost entirely by the look on their face. Once they're in a smaller group, they're passionately discussing the details of the game and happily boasting about their triumphs (while glossing over all of the whining and and slip-ups lol)

Loser type | Booo, such a sore loser. (Especially in the scenario where Rain wins 🤣) If they're outsmarted or outgunned in a clear, transparent way they'll growl and stomp off, then quietly glower and sulk for way too long. If they're double-crossed or beaten in an underhanded way oh lord —they're fighting it to the end. R can't help but get involved either way, reminding them it was a damn game with literally no prize. "C'mon, Vi, chill. You want ice cream? Let's get you ice cream."

Heidi

Shooting | 6 - Some shooting experience.

Stealth | 8 - She's very aware of her surroundings and her body. Perceptive yet quiet. Tactical. All residual traits picked up from her many activities over the years.

Strategy | 9 - Most likely to outsmart everyone. The first one to figure out groups are being targeted from the trees. Goes it alone and only open to trading (unless she sees Curt with Jess in which case she puts a quick pin in her plans to rescue her 😂). She also immediately figures out it's Kile, because ofc it is. Keeps close tabs on what groups are doing, knowing that eventually Kile will come down to ground level to pick off individuals and couples. Predator becomes prey 👀

Winner type | Proud but not boasting. She doesn't need to be. Victory looks good on her, natural and fitting. Thanks everyone for a good game then takes the girls for a long ride in the Cadillac 😎 top down on a bright day, baby

Loser type | Damn. She should have won this. Maybe if she'd... She probably could have... Then she snaps out of it, roped in by the celebratory mood of congratulating the winner. She's over any feelings of frustration or regret after getting to discuss the match with the person that took her out/the winner and there's no hard feelings. If anything this was fun as hell, it should be an annual thing. ☺️

Curt

Shooting | 8 - Some shooting experience and a natural knack for it. Good reflexes.

Stealth | 8 - Curt likes to say he gets along with the woods around these parts. Sneaking around is second nature to him. Really good hearing too. He's an easy target if you manage to seduce him though, having no issue leaving himself vulnerable if it means that kind of fun 😂

Strategy | 7 - Honestly, he's most interested in seeing how long he can get away with using charm and seduction for both protection and double-crossing 😂 Eventually becomes persona non grata and gets all of his ammo stolen by a vengeful mark, barely getting away in the process. Since that jig is up, he finally starts thinking a win might be nice... and so he teams up with the only competent player who would never betray him and also inspires the least vitriol in others: Jessie. What? Is his back-up plan using her as a human shield? No! 😚 Of course not! 👉👈

Winner type | Insufferable and gloating. Rubs it in a lot of people's faces, specifically Heidi, Rupan/Rohan, and any participants who genuinely don't like him. Brags to Gabe (who is completely disinterested in gassing him up 😂), then promises he'll make things up to Jessie (who didn't mind and had fun lol). Then celebrates by asking whoever he's flirting with these days for a quick date—and a ride in the Ferrari. Makes a scene pulling out of the parking lot. Ass.

Loser type | Doesn't care one bit as long as he had fun! And he always finds a way to have fun, it's why he's so carefree 😅

#lovely anon #answered #ROs #scenarios #someone pls confirm that kile is using paint pellets thx #I can totally see myself writing this out as a an actual short story 😂#maybe as a kofi reward whenever I get that set up 🤞🏾#I don't think any of these are incomplete...

58 notes · View notes

lillian-lang · 3 years ago

Text

Zutarians, I need some help...

Happy Zutara week, y’all! I’m Lil.

I’ve been working on my fic for...awhile now, and I’m at the point where everything’s kind of turned into word salad. I’d like to finish this thing, soon, but I need editors - badly. So, if you’re one of those folks who can write. (And particularly if you can write Katara or Zuko’s voice really well.) Please, please take a look. Friendly feedback is welcome!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653406/chapters/62276836

And here’s an excerpt from a Zutara moment below the cut:

Katara looks out from high up in the north wing of the palace—reserved especially for the royal family and their guests. She can see across acres of bleak concrete pavement leading up to the palace gates and, behind them, the jagged volcano walls of the capital city rising in the distance. It isn’t a particularly comforting sight.

Fifty-six bacui berry, fifty-seven bacui berry, …she counts to herself. Until, finally, she reaches one hundred bacui berry, and turns away from the gray window, back towards Azula’s wide canopy bed. The princess’s mouth hangs open and a trickle of drool spills out, but otherwise, she looks better than she had an hour ago. Katara removes the last acupuncture needle from her wrist and places it onto a gauze pad, which she rolls up and hands to Zuko.

“These need to be sterilized in a white-hot flame for twenty minutes before they can be used again,” she instructs.

Zuko puts a hand up to the bundle. A flame appears at the center of his palm. “Do you want me to just—?”

“Sorry Zuko, but you’re not hot enough,” she says, without thinking.

The corners of his mouth flicker upward into the kind of smirk she hasn’t seen since his ponytail days. Spirits, he’s infuriating, she thinks—grateful that her skin is dark enough to hide a blush. She removes the rest of her supplies from Azula’s bedside and takes a seat by the window, trying to ignore the burning sensation of Zuko’s eyes lingering on the back of her neck. She forces herself to concentrate on the little vials and instruments in her hand, but it’s no good. Everything is in the wrong place. She’ll have to take it all out again and repack it later.

“Katara,” he says, coming up beside her at the window. “Did you ever read Love Amongst the Dragons?”

Katara shoots him a wry smile. “No,” she says. “Funnily enough, we didn’t have a lot of fire nation epics in our village library.”

“Azula made fun of me, but I always liked it.” He smiles a little to himself, then points, drawing Katara’s attention to a spot on the grim horizon. “Do you see that mountain, there? The one that curves?”

Katara shivers, drawing a little closer to Zuko. “The one that looks like a claw?” she asks.

He nods. “I know, it’s scary, isn’t it? If you believe the old story, it’s the claw of the great dragon, himself. It’s where the name of the district comes from — Kaa Garr. Great Dragon. And, right there where the mountain turns in on itself…” he moves his finger up the pane a little so Katara can see a black spot in the distance, “is the prison where I’m keeping my father.”

Katara lets out a little involuntary gasp and presses her fingers to her mouth. Zuko looks down at her, a wry glint in his eye. “If you thought my sister’s arrangements were bad,” he says, “you should see his.”

“I’m sorry,” is all she can think to say.

“Don’t be,” he shrugs. “You know my father isn’t exactly a nice guy. I didn’t get this scar on my face from a training accident, you know?”

“I know,” Katara says, reaching up to touch the edges of his burned skin with the practiced hands of a healer.

In truth, they had never really talked about how he’d gotten his scar, but Katara had heard rumors going all the way back to her time in the Fire Nation with Toph, Sokka, and Aang. Zuko allows her fingers to wander over his scar for a moment, tracing the lines and folds on the puckered skin. He gets lost for a minute in the phantom sensation—wondering if he’s only imagining the gentle pressure. It’s so tender and intimate that his breath catches in his chest for fear that a sharp exhale might disturb the delicate balance between them. But then Azula flops over in bed, bringing Zuko back to himself. He clears his throat, and Katara’s hand drops to her side.

“It just makes me wonder if I should be trying to help my father…you know…the way you’re helping Azula.”

Katara tries not to let her emotions show on her face. She does not believe for one second that Ozai is entitled to the same treatment as his daughter, but she also believes that, ultimately, the decision is Zuko’s to make.

“Do you think your father deserves a second chance?” She asks, trying to keep her voice even.

“No!” he shouts, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. “That’s the problem, I don’t think he deserves it! But I can’t figure out why. I mean, he not that different from my sister, is he? But, every day, I felt guilty about Azula, and every day I’m grateful that my father is still locked up!”

Katara watches as Zuko paces back and forth across the antique carpet, winding himself up. “Then you came, and I feel better about Azula—I really do, Katara—but now I’m suddenly guilty about my father. I’m the fire lord, shouldn’t I at least be fair?”

“Zuko,” Katara says, holding out an arm to stop his pacing, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but when was the last time you had a bath? Or slept in a real bed?”

He blinks down at her, “Uh, it might have been a few days. Why?”

“I think,” she says, using her most soothing voice, “that all these big questions can wait for a day or two while you rest.”

He looks skeptical, but Katara insists: “Look at you, Zuko, you’re exhausted. I’m not saying that it won’t be difficult, but I promise it will all seem better in the m-morning.” As she says it, she stifles a yawn, and Katara suddenly realizes that she, too, is exhausted.

Noticing this, Zuko takes the medicine bag from her hand and, after checking all of Azula’s locks, leads her down the hall to her room. It’s hard to tell with Zuko, but he seems excited about something. The corners of his mouth keep twitching up, like he’s trying to hide a smile. The whole of the third-floor hallway smells like fresh paint, even though the hallways look the same as they’ve always been. It makes Katara’s head swim. When they arrive at what she assumes will be her bedroom here in the Fire Nation, Zuko throws open the door for her, and Katara gasps.

The room is in the style of the Fire Nation—a wooden chest for clothes, a low-slung writing table, and an imposing four poster bed, but the details are all Water Tribe. The walls are covered with bright blue paper depicting life in the poles. The furniture handles are all solid, gleaming mother of pearl. The bed is strewn with gigantic, fluffy pelts that could only have come from the south pole.

“What do you think?” Zuko asks, studying her face. “Is it too much? I had rooms made up for the Earth Kingdom and the Air Nation, too. I don’t want you to think I’m abusing your culture, but I do want my guests to feel welcome here. I know the Fire Nation royal palace isn’t anybody’s favorite place.” He winces, thinking about the terrible stain of his father’s legacy.

Katara considers Zuko kindly. He’s hovering just outside the room—neither in nor out. She realizes that she’s never felt more warmly towards the young fire lord.

“You’re a lot like your uncle, you know that?” she says, after a minute.

Katara watches as his guarded features break into a genuine smile. “Thanks,” he says, running his fingers along the edge of the doorframe. “You know I was hoping you or your brother would be the first ones to use this room.”

“You’re lucky it’s me! Sokka would be jumping on the bed, already.”

Zuko laughs, and Katara grins with pride. It’s not easy making Zuko laugh.

“I didn’t even ask!” He says, eagerly. “How is Sokka? And Aang?”

Now it’s Katara’s turn to look guarded. “Sokka’s fine,” she says, trying to keep her voice neutral. “He’s angry because he can’t go to Ba Sing Se without Appa…” Then, anticipating Zuko’s next question, Katara explains everything in a rush: “Aang left for Omashu. He got a letter from Bumi saying that the city was unstable, and he left me and Sokka behind.”

Zuko’s reaction is not what Katara expects. His eyebrow furrows, and he lets out a troubled groan, so sharp and low that Katara can almost feel the reverberations in his chest. “Katara…Bumi is dead. He died about a week ago. Didn’t Aang tell you?”

“Oh,” is all Katara can manage. She plops herself down at the end of the bed and looks up at Zuko, dazed. “No, Aang hasn’t written to me since he left for Omashu.” The admission earns her a sharp sideways glance, but she doesn’t notice. She’s too wrapped up in thoughts of the Earth King.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he admits, lowering himself down beside her on the bed. “The Fire Nation has…informants…in Omashu, but I haven’t heard from them in a few days.” The way he hesitates before the word ‘informants’ makes Katara wonder if he is uncomfortable having spies in the Earth Kingdom. Zuko had always preferred fair-play and transparency, even at his own expense.

“But you have suspicions,” she presses him.

He nods. “To tell you the truth, I’m glad Sokka’s not in Ba Sing Se right now.”

“Why not?” Katara gasps, “It’s not unstable, too, is it?”

“No,” he says, resting his head against the bedpost and letting his eyelids droop. “At least none of my advisors seem to think it is. I’m the one who has an issue. And it’s only a feeling, Katara…”

“Because of Kai Kozu?” she asks.

Zuko’s snaps to attention so quickly that he sprains his neck. “Where did you hear that name?” he growls.

“Bumi wrote about him in his letter to Aang,” Katara explains.

“Ah, that makes sense,” Zuko says, rubbing the sprain. “Kai Kozu used to keep a pretty low profile. Barely anyone outside the Earth Kingdom had ever heard of him… But lately he’s been moving more and more into the public eye. I don’t like it. He’s already got power in Kyoshi and Chin. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had plans for Omashu and Ba Sing Se, too.”

“Oh no! Zuko!” Katara’s hand flies to the reassuring carvings on her mother’s necklace, and she traces them apprehensively. “What about Toph and Suki? What about your uncle? Isn’t he still in the city?”

“I did write to them,” Zuko shrugs. “I asked them to stay here in the palace, but Toph and Suki are out in the country somewhere. I can’t reach them.”

“And your uncle?”

“Uncle doesn’t want to leave his tea shop. And besides…” Zuko blushes brick red, “I think he might have a lady friend in the city. He’s acting like a love-sick teenager.”

Katara watches as Zuko drags his fingers through his hair, tugging at the ends. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” she asks.

“I am,” he admits.

Katara leans back into the mountain of fluffy pillows and soft white furs, and closes her eyes—too tired to care that Zuko is still watching her. She says a silent prayer for Toph, Suki, and Iroh in Ba Sing Se, and thanks every spirit she can name for her father’s stubbornness. At least she knows Sokka is safe in the Southern Water Tribe—far, far away from the Earth Kingdom capital…

As she drifts off into sleep, she reaches out to feel Zuko’s warm body beside her—his chest rising and falling evenly. She draws a little closer, and he opens his arms wide to make room for her. She pillows her head in the crook of his arm and breathes in a scent like something out of a dream. In fact, she thinks it must have been a dream, because when she wakes up in the night he is gone, and the spot where she imagined he had lain is awash with moonlight.

#zutara #zutara week #wip #y'all please help

23 notes · View notes

owlidoodles · 4 years ago

Photo

so i do a lot of shading like this in my art (or try to) and i asked if anyone in my discord server wanted a tutorial.... and they said yes!

so im gonna do my best to explain how i shade things under the cut....

(i use clip studio paint but honestly this should work in any art program i think)

1. FIRST- have your drawing. have Layer. I usually have three layers at LEAST when im doing this- and i keep them stacked in this order: top is lineart, middle is flat colors, and bottom is the background.

the purple circle shows the icon for making a layer into a clipping layer- IMPORTANT

the pink circle shows the icon for locking transparent pixels- helpful! it makes sure you don’t “go outside the lines”

(in case you’re curious this is my csp layout)

2. create a new layer above your flat colors, and press the two little squares. this makes a clipping layer! it basically makes a mask of the layer below it, and you can draw whatever (in this case shadows) and it only follows the filled in areas of the layer below it. so if i drew a bunch of yellow stripes on the clipping/shadow layer, it would only follow the form of the werewolf flat colors and not anything else. i hope that makes sense!

3. decide where your light source is coming from! ngl i totally draw a little sun to remind myself where the light is coming from in a piece.... in this case the green shows where i think the light would be hitting the werewolf, and therefore i would draw shadows opposite/adjacent to that. im not the best at explaining lighting though, so heres a good reference.

heres another.

4. SHADING TIME..... so for my shading i just use the default pen tool in clip studio. g-pen, i believe. Stabilisation!!! between the two pink stars!!! use it. its so good for lineart, and for drawing smooth, non trash lines and shapes. it has Saved my life. the higher the number, the ‘slower’ your brush moves, and the smoother your lines become. i tend to keep mine around 60-70 but play around with it....

i usually shade with a bright annoying color so i can tell what im doing. (purple usually), as shown in box one. thats your foreground color. 2 is your secondary (background) color, i dont usually mess with it and leave it white. hitting box three turns your current pen into an eraser version of itself... i use it a lot! dont forget about this box

i usually tend to think of shadows as shapes.... in the werewolf’s eyebrow/spot/thing you can see where ive drawn a line.....

and then filled it in! i dont normally use the paint bucket to fill in areas... just the pen. it gets too hard

hair/tufts are the fun part!!! you can see that ive drawn solid chunks of shadow in the werewolf’s mane....

...then i click square three to turn my brush into an eraser and carve out little details

here are some more examples of that... i use it a lot. A LOT.

go wild. go crazy. sometimes i dont think my shading follows like TRADITIONAL physical rules of the laws of light but just. dewit

5. SO YOURE DONE SHADING..... if you refer back to your Layers window, you’ll see a drop down box that usually says normal and a slider.... knock that slider down to like. 50, or 30 (what i usually do). this lowers the opacity on the shadows layer so you can see through it kinda. the drop down box is the layer styles... play around with it!! you can do some really cool stuff with overlay/multiply/etc and make your shading layer super funky.....

if you hit the lock transparent pixels button, you can color your shadows differently if you want! sometimes ill duplicate the shadow layer and color it differently and run it through the gaussian blur filter... it can make it look a little softer and less hard.

usually in my art, when im done i merge all the layers together so you just have one layer left. i duplicate that layer, run it through the gaussian blur filter and drop the opacity down to like.... 20 maybe so everything looks soft. on this picture, i duplicated the werewolf layer (without the bg) and did a motion blur on it to make it look like he was moving....

.... and here he is after dropping the shadow opacity/adding other little details and running it through 5000 filters

i really hope that gave you some kind of idea on how cel shading works!! i am by no means the master, but if you have questions or tips please don’t hesitate to ask me ;a; im really not good at explaining things lol

thank you for reading!!! <3

#tutorial

30 notes · View notes

asphuxia · 3 years ago

Text

/ * WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THIS DANCE CALLED MEMORY?

CW. suicide, death, self harm, general heavy / violent / graphic writing.

with thanks to friends that encouraged & helped read over it for me. :) please read it here for its original form as tumblr does not support my formatting endeavours. thank you!

YOU REMEMBER her.

the way she talked about you, her

smiling face

fingers curled through hair

her hand on the back of your head

( she cradles you as though you had never done anything wrong, )

it wasn’t your fault!,

to the fractals littering the floor, each transparent

gleam stained carmine; YOU broke this,

you grind your feet into the glass ——

( you bleed. it is not the first time. but in her arms, there is no pain. )

there is a silence, a loving sort of wordlessness,

( —- as though love could be more than an act of service, so mundane as a touch ;; )

and there is an unspeakable comfort in her embrace, as though you are meant to be here.

you raise your head to look at her

eyes, mouth, nose /

the upturned corners of her lips

( her hair is just like yours, )

( she looks like your mother — hel?

no: she does not smile as sweetly, not anymore. )

you blink. her eyes are blue.

your foreheads touch. her eyes crinkle in a way you know.

.__ …. ___ ? are you my—

do you know her ?

. . . . . . .….. THIS SINKING FEELING … ?

you want to call her something. you want to tell her something; i don’t know what. you can listen to her heartbeat through her shoulder as though it is the crackle of a hearth. she feels so, very much, like love.

( but it is an odd thought, to believe you might know what that is. )

thin arms wrap around her neck — whenever had you remembered being this small ? more fragile than you already are —- you shift into her, savour this moment and savour this warmth, fleeting as all things ever are for you; and then, that once gentle weight is replaced by something else. heavy; warm, comfort in the form of a body stained red that seeps through white fabric, holding on and holding on and still ——

her voice is so soft. so gentle. eir knows it. she knows it. she knows

“ ausra, my ... “

( ‘ ausra ’ ? )

— daughter ?

she holds her close and shuts her eyes.

(as if that would make this moment last forever.)

…

I REMEMBER a field of flowers, soft beneath my feet. running, chasing, but this is a past that does not exist

I REMEMBER the taste of iron, rising through my throat like bile. you remember that your heart stops before you can spit it out

BLUE SKIES ..

I REMEMBER a kingdom of white; our smiling people. this is a place that you do not know, this is a people you do not know

WHITE WINGS ..

I REMEMBER on that day, i had wanted to tell you something. when was this? who are you… ? did i

I REMEMBER askr and embla, fallen to ruin. this was your fault, was it not...? when you had once been —

GENTLE SMILES … ?

I REMEMBER giving mother a flower. she smiled, and i was so happy. THIS MEMORY CANNOT BE REAL IT CANNOT BE REAL YOU HELD YOUR MOTHER YOU ARE HOLDING HER IN YOUR ARMS AND SOON YOU TOO WILL BE —

I REMEMBER that once upon a time,

YOU BELONGED TO A FAMILY. YOU HAD A LIFE.

she blinks; eyes half-lidded. the visions dissolve just as souls do; into dust, into air— eir sinks into the dying embrace as though it is her duty to hold onto wraiths. ( her fingers curl into harmless claws into the back of the dress. ) she has spent a long time waiting. wondering. wanting. but as all things are — as the opportunity of life is — she is never quite granted rightful time with it. and eir has spent a very long time growing tired of the ordeal.

the woman ( … her mother ? not hel. not hel. ) is gone, replaced by the chill of something only slightly more than empty air— she knows this touch better. it is the one she knows most, even blind, even in the recedes of her mind; her mother’s embrace is second, only, to death’s caress. but perhaps the two are the same.

the former is better, eir decides. at least in that, there was fulfillment.

or so she says, but the latter is ever more compassionate.

.. oh, what she would give for hel to hold her again.

( she leans into the crook of her mother’s neck. she remembers the feeling, the gratification. the way her heart pounds in her ears when it should have stopped. guilt stirs in the bottom of her stomach — i should not be as eager as i am i should not enjoy this at all and yet,

she does not mind the way her life pours out from the slit in her neck.

the blood pools; it dyes white fabric red with little remorse— eir can feel it trickle down her throat and crawl, uselessly, back up to her knees. if she squints hard enough, she can see herself in it. and, for a moment, hel will be in that reflection, too.

she stares, a little longer. as though the woman in her arms would morph back into the person she had been before.

(she does not, ultimately. and in the end, eir is only staring at her own blood as it darkens; a mirage all too indifferent to the life that escapes it.)

eir does not think that she remembers this.

( but the truth is that she does not remember much at all.)

she stares at the cup in her hands ( the memory. the mirage. this bloodied familiarity. ) and watches her reflection shift, paint a circle of light in the confines of her hands — it returns to her, always. once, she had wondered if her reflection would disappear entirely. there is so little of her that is left alive that it would have been nothing more than expected— eir looks up.

... thank you, mother.

hel smiles.

eir presses her lips against the rim, and tilts her head backwards.

( do you recall? the sensation of coughing up your heart as it lurches up your throat——

ah. but you can certainly remember the way you

convulse

as it sinks in, like fire

in your throat.

in your veins.

the cup shatters between your fingers.

...

the crisp touch of iron against her skin is a sensation that greets her before light ( or so you can delude yourself into thinking ) can fill her eyes; before she feels herself breathe. ( these lungs do not stutter in the same way as the pairs that came before it — but how can she know that..? ) she watches the chains dance impassionately around her feet — what is the use of shackling down a ghost ? — as her vision focuses.

the blood that stains her dress is hers.

( it has always been hers. it will always be. )

the fabric is all too loose around your frame. you are ill, more

diseased than one should be

you are so thin.

the flames lick at your skin as though you are made of coal

after the many times

you have returned to ash.

( the searing fire you make of your death does not draw the eyes of anyone, even as you swear that muspell is no hotter than this. )

you gasp.

is that your head that rolls away from you?

she blinks.

lyfjaberg sits idly in her palms.

she does not need to look up to know what to do with it.

—— the blade sinks deeper into her chest, pale fingers curl around the handle as her hands tremble ( … don’t you want to be A GOOD DAUGHTER ? ) and the crimson that spills leaves her unflinching, sapphire eyes searching ever upward ( i only want to serve you ! ) to a face that does not smile; a face that does not love her. her grip on the blade grows tighter; deeper, push it in and maybe her lips will curl, ever so slightly, upwards; finally! content with you, —— her vision swims / will you hurry up ? the second heart forms in the confines of her ribs ; TO SURVIVE YOU MUST KILL THE YOU INSIDE OF ME / AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN! ; she cannot stop shaking. chest rises and falls around the dagger, around the home it has made of the hole in her heart, if you would only force yourself to just

_.. .. .

lyfjaberg is in her hands. her trembling hands.

lyfjaberg is the blade that offers her mercy.

┊

wrests a spear from her neck.

THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG. the helian — no, no! that is not what i am. ( how is the feeling so resolute, so sure? ) but who is — glances downwards, in the way the light catches upon the blade that flirts with her collar; the sharp spark of metal against metal.

— her stomach roils in a way she has forgotten it could.

she recognises the blade. but eir does not recognise the way she wields lyfja, nor when fensalir had ever been pointed towards her like that.

she parries without thinking. her body is a

renegade to her own mind.

she moves deftly; the spear redirected, lyfjaberg scraping against the shaft. the rasp of the dagger against something other than flesh rings; parry, thrust! eir watches lyfja fly towards the torso ( WHAT ARE YOU DOING ….? ) watches her hands disobey every cry of her mind — but surely, these are her hands, if not anyone else’s— watches, still, as fensalir fails to defend its wielder. the steel edge rips through fabric, through skin; eir cannot remove her gaze from the way lyfjaberg offers no compassion.

they say that light is composed of every colour

but in this moment, there is only red.

her weight shifts; fensalir does not falter even as the woman commanding it bleeds— you are kind, always, to your life; to the memoir that is your spirit — and the cut whistles through empty air. her head spins, every pulse a mistimed step (her heels sink into the mud / her leg rises upwards / to slam into her enemy’s side. ) as blood rushes through alabaster skin. eir watches as her opponent’s chest heaves, as the woman’s movements grow sluggish;she wants to cry.the soil shoots out from under her. don’t give up, please, please, please, please, please

( fensalir thrusts forward. lyfjaberg rises to meet it. )

there is something familiar about this moment. this place, her bloodied face, the feeling of two worlds torn apart by one single — —

SHE REMEMBERS that this is the day the light died.

…...….. SHA ... RE ..NA ?

but there is nothing familiar in the way that she kills it herself.

the blade twists in its place, wrenched within her beloved’s stomach. eir does not want to feel the way the princess’s fingers curl into the flesh of her arm. sharena leans (falls?) against eir’s shoulder.

she steps aside.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ?

what was necessary to pay the price of love.

the silence is —

filled with her dying breaths, like a song

— empty.

lyfjaberg slips from the sharena’s body as if she had been, momentarily, its sheathe— her knuckles are white around the handle, but unseen beneath stained gloves. eir forces herself to breathe.

but she cannot will herself to look as she dies.

she cannot will herself to believe that it is she who drives the

blade into her light, her life, and invites the darkness to swallow the sun whole.

( you turn away. but is it you who chooses to walk? )

her steps fall soundlessly upon askr’s ruined lands, upon the border between hel; until she is returned to her mother’s court. the dead watch her as though she is revered; eir hardly notices — perhaps she is too busy dispelling the image that lingers in her mind. but then, she is at hel’s heel, kneeling ( she always has / it seems for a moment she always will ), head bowed low.

“princess sharena is dead.” she feels her throat dry.

i killed her.

hel knows.

her mother hums, satisfied (is that what it took?). “and of the queen and her son?”

“retreating, into embla. that realm’s princess has not fallen yet. they intend to use angrboða’s heart.” eir hears the words leave her before she speaks them ( she does not recognise herself ). “they will fail.”

this is what mother wants to hear.

hel reaches forward, and tilts her daughter’s face upwards. death is smiling.

eir rises to her mother’s side. but it is with a deep sense of pride; one that she does not think to have ever known.

she stands, for a moment— basking in the euphoria that is mother’s acknowledgement — before the ground starts to change, rolling out beneath her feet; eir watches as the scene fades and askr crumbles ( for there is no need for it to die a second time ). instead, a field of green replaces the ruins of that dead land — this is not askr, even within the memories of her distorted mind. white towers sprout upwards, firm and gleaming as though they are composed of nacre; somebody is reaching out to her. father? ( did she have one? surely... ) white wings span out from behind him. eir instinctively touches her ears.

she steps towards him.

— he disappears.

what had once been the circle of his arms transforms into a throne ( it is not composed of skull and bones, she notes ); the crest is not one eir can ever admit to have known — but it invokes a feeling that rings through her her sternum, as though it is of her blood.

your true parents were royalty,

blessed by the dragon of life.

i slaughtered them,

when you were young,

and claimed you for myself.

her birth mother ( i am sorry i could never learn your name, ) urges her to sit — no! not yet, eir laughs, and the sound is not alone. her mother takes her hand; they run outside of the white walls, towards that rolling flower field— she breathes and feels alright.

was this something she had done, as a child?

eir remembers the flowers. she remembers the smiles.

she’s pulled forward by a loving hand, into that warm embrace — please, just a second more — as they tumble into the grass. verdant blades lick at her face. eir laughs; her eyes close, gently, shut.

if only time could stop like this, forever — she knows it can’t, but opening her eyes would force her to acknowledge that — her inhales come slower, not with the gentle embrace of drifting off but of holding on, trying to memorize the sensation of being so close, so near to touching but not needing to cross that distance, because where is it going?ever is the nothingness that paints this mundane surreality pressing in, against her from all sides, and it is not suffocating, it is not living, truly— but existing in this moment, with her.

she shifts to lie on her side.

a sigh lifts her reticence pulling away as sanguine light retreats from the sky at dusk.

…?

this place…

when this is all over, we’ll go back to askr.

we’ll go stargazing on my favourite hill. all right?

… do you promise?

she looks to sharena's beaming face. if this was not a worthy purpose to defy death for, what was?

I SAW THE WORLDS RISE AND FALL AWAY.

… i was happy.

i was happy.

as if existing in itself was an achievement and that such a thing as insignificant as that could make her smile —

… i was…

reluctant to let go, of the shadows she cast— facing darkness equally establishes the presence of light— of the shape of the water you poured between my fingertips. it cleansed me... i poisoned it?

media vita in morte sumus;

in the midst of our lives, we die.

and it’s a feeling she knows. it’s a feeling that leaves her helpless, as though she can all but drown. she wants her raucous heart to stop beating, for blood to stop flowing through traitorous veins, for her mind not to tolerate another aching thought and all she can hear in her ears is the roar of a past(s) that did not happen and could not happen

you forfeit

joy, patience,

winsome lives

acrid recognition

like a fool;

played by fate.

for a final time, eir wants

to die.

#➵ 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐘.┊❝ our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist. ❞#➵ 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐋𝐄.┊It was love’s absence that let me know how much love mattered.#unlockedbunker2021

10 notes · View notes

headaching · 4 years ago

Note

i'll eat my own face if you don't post a headaches excerpt <3

no please don't eat your face i'll do anything

Ty Lee begins spreading the makeup across Mai’s cheek in one long motion. This is worse than the eyes, Mai thinks. Her open eyes find no refuge from Ty Lee’s beautiful face; her brows are furrowed in concentration, bare lips pursed into a thin line, eyes rarely blinking. Regrettably for Mai, Ty Lee’s hand abandons her arm to hold the compact of white makeup, dipping the brush back into it more frequently as she continues.

“Are you okay?” Ty Lee asks after a while, when she moves on to Mai’s neck. Sweat beads Mai’s forehead.

“Yeah, of course,” Mai lies, completely avoiding Ty Lee’s face. Ty Lee is silent at first, and when she’s done with the face makeup, she sets the brush and compact on the table. She sighs and steps closer to Mai, holding a small brush doused with red lip paint.

“You sure?” Ty Lee sounds genuinely concerned, leading Mai to bitterly wonder when she became such a bad liar.

Although Azula is the last person on Mai’s mind, she says, “Yeah, I’m just worried about Azula’s plan.”

“Well, don’t be. You’re good at this kind of thing.” Ty Lee leans forward and touches Mai’s shoulder freely, and Mai’s heart is at her throat.

“You think so?”

“Um, yes!” Ty Lee laughs, like it’s obvious. “You’re intimidating to most people, and you get what you want because of it. It’s awesome.” Mai allows a tiny, closed mouth smile to break onto her face. Ty Lee’s hand is still on her shoulder, and the smallest caress of her thumb doesn’t go overlooked.

“Notice how I said, ‘Most people’? You’re not intimidating to me.” Ty Lee’s smile is honest and extremely smug. Her hand leaves Mai’s shoulder to tilt her chin upward with her thumb and index finger.

Mai exhales slowly, then glances up into Ty Lee’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. “No?” Her voice is ragged and barely audible, not intimidating in the least. Ty Lee shakes her head, and opens her mouth to say something, then closes it. She brings the brush to Mai’s lips and tests a single stroke.

“You’re not so scary. Watch.” Before Mai can do more than gasp, Ty Lee is sitting in her lap. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, so she holds them in front of her like she’s just been caught.

“Ty Lee!” Mai hisses, eyes narrowing in anger.

“You let me do this,” Ty Lee says innocently as she pats Mai’s back with her free hand.

“I didn’t let you; you just did it,” Mai huffs in exasperation, her cheeks unbearably warm and dangerously close to Ty Lee’s face, which remains easygoing.

“But you’re not making me get up,” Ty Lee points out. Mai rolls her eyes for lack of a better response, because she should make her get up, she really should. “It’s okay, Mai,” she consoles, and somehow, the tenderness of her voice eases some tension in Mai, specifically her hands. They hook around Ty Lee’s hips, connecting at the wrists. Ty Lee beams, “Nothing’s wrong with a little casual affection.”

Casual. The word echoes through Mai’s head, leaving her more embarrassed with every passing second. “Just hurry up,” Mai mutters, and Ty Lee breathes a short laugh with the shake of her head. Her braid swings from side to side, and Mai glares at it for being so cute.

“Then, stay still, silly,” Ty Lee commands playfully. Mai is close to fuming, but she keeps her lips closed as Ty Lee finally resumes painting. “I have to sit here, anyway.”

“Another tradition?” Mai asks with as much sarcasm as she can manage while hardly moving her lips.

“Still.” The demand of Ty Lee’s voice shuts Mai up, but it doesn’t stop her from rolling her eyes. Ty Lee begins on Mai’s upper lip as she clarifies, “No, this is just a better angle.”

Mai gives a curt, “Mhmm,” of disbelief.

“It’s important we get this right.” Mai isn’t sure if it’s Ty Lee’s soothing, measured voice or their undeniably intimate sitting arrangement, but her imagination starts to wander. She pictures her fingers dancing along Ty Lee’s back, reaching up to kiss her, drinking in her smile as she draws Mai in closer. This fantasy is where she is safe; Mai’s reality is much more dangerous.

The clang of Ty Lee setting the brush on the counter startles Mai. Ty Lee is still sitting in Mai’s lap, though her torso is stretched to reach the table. She returns empty handed, and she’s pouting.

“You’re not okay,” Ty Lee proclaims.

“What?” Even to herself, Mai sounds far away.

“You were spaced out,” Ty Lee answers, relaxing her fingers on Mai’s shoulders, thumbs gently caressing the fabric of her tunic. Ty Lee’s mystifying, yet unattainable touch combined with Mai’s supposed transparency suddenly has her outraged.

“I told you I’m fine, Ty Lee,” Mai snaps through gritted teeth. Ty Lee’s brows furrow defiantly, but she doesn’t move her hands. Mai’s arms feel numb around her hips.

“You don’t seem fine. I know you.”

“No, you used to know me,” Mai growls, glaring up into wide gray eyes, “but you left.” Me, a choked voice thinks, you left me. “Now, you’re here just because Azula asked you to be.” You left me with her.

“Hey,” Ty Lee says, defensively crossing her arms, and Mai allows a lapse in her indignation to mourn the loss of Ty Lee’s fingers. “You don’t know the whole story. That’s not fair, Mai.”

Mai’s voice gets louder and more acidic as she says, “What’s not fair, Ty Lee, is after all that, you’re pretending like nothing happened.” Like I didn’t spend years convincing myself I was over you. “You don’t get to come back, talk to me, touch me, like nothing ever changed.”

Then again, nothing really has changed between them, has it? Whatever false progress Mai believed she made crumbled between her fingers when Ty Lee hugged her as they reunited. Ty Lee’s deathly sweetness was as potent as it had always been, and even now, though she’s clearly hurt by Mai’s words, her features are soft and still.

Ty Lee’s hands find her own shoulders, and a tear shines in her eye as she leans forward, supporting her cheek against her crossed arms. “I don’t?” Her voice is hushed, strained, on the verge of breaking.

“Not without saying something,” Mai says, her tone much softer as guilt swells in her chest.

“What happened?” Ty Lee whispers.

“Nothing,” Mai replies against any good judgment she has left. “Nothing happened. You were gone, and it was like…” Ty Lee lifts her chin from her arms, her jaw slack, eyes huge and expectant. “I felt nothing anymore.”

Ty Lee sighs and unwinds her arms to rest her hands against Mai’s shoulders again. “I missed you,” Ty Lee says quietly, fiddling with the collar of Mai’s uniform, staring at her fingers. Mai’s tongue is like steel in her mouth, unable to form a response. “I’m sorry,” Ty Lee whimpers, then finally looks into Mai’s eyes. She shakes her head and gives something between a laugh and a cry.

“Ty—” is all Mai can say before Ty Lee’s shoulders crumple forward and heavy tears streak her makeup slightly. “No, no, no,” Mai mutters as she sits up straighter. Instinctively, Mai’s hands find Ty Lee’s shoulder blades and begin rubbing circles into her back. “It’s okay. Don’t cry, Ty Lee. You’ll ruin your hard work.”

Ty Lee’s hands move to touch her face, but Mai’s catch them first. She squeezes firmly, and Ty Lee watches in surprise, tears momentarily lapsed. Mai scours her brain for something, anything, to make them disappear altogether.

“Hey,” she says gently, then smiles, only adding to Ty Lee’s confusion. “Do you remember when you used to have nightmares, at the academy? And you would crawl into my bed because you were scared?”

Ty Lee breathes a genuine laugh, and Mai sighs in relief, ignoring the familiar sense of danger that accompanies these memories. “And you would say, ‘Ty Lee, go to bed,'” she growls in her best Mai impression, gruff and angry, complete with a scowl. Mai rolls her eyes and scoffs, but she’s grinning, too. She tries to elbow Ty Lee, but she can’t without breaking their hold, so she sits back in defeat.

“But you would get in anyway,” Mai deflects.

“You would lay facing away from me,” Ty Lee’s smile is fond, her eyes adrift in the memory, “at first. You’d always turn around eventually.”

“Because I could hear you crying,” Mai murmurs. “I couldn’t sleep,” she adds defensively.

“You always looked so mad,” Ty Lee mocks, and Mai is half tempted to yank her braid.

“I was mad,” Mai retorts instead. “You cried so hard you shook the bed.” Ty Lee laughs, then exhales calmly. Her eyes are suddenly hooked on their hands, which are still clasped together. She pulls one free to intertwine their fingers instead, and any hint of amusement on Mai’s face is gone.

“How else was I supposed to get you to turn around?”

The assuredness of Ty Lee’s voice, the graze of her thumb against Mai’s, the wholesomeness of this memory (and their mutual acknowledgment of its existence), has proven to be too much for Mai. Blood pounds in her head, a headache rapidly approaching. Her eyes water as her palms go clammy in Ty Lee’s.

#tay i was hoping you would ask for this one #it makes me insane im happy to spread that to you <3 #no but tysm for sending this 💕#this is one of my fave fics im working on i love them so much #mailee #mailee fic #becks #my work #asks #mutuals

13 notes · View notes