#OOPS did it post already?? i thought i saved this to my drafts??

[hecatesbroom]

Young Rose & a chicken (coloured version under the cut)

(I prefer the sketch so that's why this is under the cut, but I thought I'd add it anyway!)

[flame-shadow]

A breakdown of my quirrel!nosk comic from last year (original post here) since I like doing breakdowns and talking about my process, and I know at least some people like reading those things. :)

First of all, a little background. I made that comic in an evening with just a pencil, a black marker, two grey markers, and a yellow-orange marker. (All markers had a thick tip and a thin tip, and all were water-based markers, so they don't blend like alcohol markers, but they can still be layered to affect the values) I had a text post from @g0at0ad saved in my drafts that said "gotta say. massive missed opportunity to not have nosk mimic quirrel to lure the knight into its lair." and finally, I had an idea for how to illustrate the reveal and felt I had a decent idea for the nosk's design.

I wanted to follow the same encounter order as the game provides, and by happy coincidence, I realized that the route from first sighting to nosk den includes the hot spring, so it made perfect sense for that location and the real Quirrel to appear in the comic.

Ghost spots a Quirrel-like figure in the darkness in the first panel, and then as the path continues and drops into the hot spring, there's (real) Quirrel, so clearly that's who Ghost saw a minute ago. Yay, friend! And since Quirrel explores around, it's not strange that Ghost would spot him again in an area not so far away, though it's odd how he got ahead of them. Perhaps a different tunnel? And it seems like Quirrel wants to lead the way to something, so Ghost follows, until- That's not Quirrel.

In addition to the potential of a reader already knowing the game's locations and recognizing the path to the nosk's den, there are other visual clues that subtly communicate that something might not be right. I made it so every panel but the hot spring one has black silhouettes encroaching on the space within.

The third panel is the mildest one being encroached upon because Ghost doesn't yet feel like something is off (still reassured from seeing Quirrel in the safe hot spring) but the trap is coming together. The existence of the spider web in the corner is a nod to the trap because it's a common visual symbol for being trapped.

Also note how both the first and third panels have some safety via straight panel edges. Contrasted with the fourth and fifth panels which have no straight edges as Ghost cannot escape and there is no safety.

Another subtle reinforcement of danger vs safety is how the use of black is very limited in the hot spring panel. It's a brighter room mechanically, yes, but it's also a Safe Room. The only black is Ghost's void parts and a thin outline around Quirrel (and also a bit of shading on his arm that I did out of habit before remembering that I wasn't going to use black to shade him here, oops!)

And, note that in the only panel with Real Quirrel, he isn't framed against a darker shape in the background.

Okay, and finally, I will share a bit about the nosk reveal panel and its design...

This pose and angle are dramatic and all, but they're The Worst for showcasing the actual design of the nosk! Just a complete mistake on my part that I did my best to roll with, since I didn't realize until too late how I'd messed myself up.

Which happens! I don't always get it right, and especially when I'm working traditionally, there's a point where I can't go back, so I just have to make do with what I gave myself. :) I don't hate what I have here, but I have been dissatisfied with it ever since I drew the lineart.

A thought I have had since then was that maybe I should've drawn it larger, to be more threatening? Maybe a different pose to show off the side-body frills? I explored a couple ideas below, but honestly, I think the whole panel would have to be reworked to get it right.

Making sure that the background frames the nosk effectively would be one of the main things I'd redo, but I'm getting tired and don't feel like drawing more, so I'll just leave it at the nosk replacement sketches.

And since I don't think I did a good job with displaying the nosk's design effectively, I quickly sketched some of the features to maybe show them off a bit better.

I like the gimmick of the nosk turning its head, so I pretty much always maintain that with my nosk designs. This one is no exception. Quirrel's head and face become the cranium and upper jaw while Monomon's mask becomes the lower jaw - the extra length causes an underbite. I've always been a fan of when people add a veil hanging from Monomon's mask while Quirrel is wearing it, so that's where the frills come from. ("Why didn't you include the veil in your Quirrel drawings, then?" I hear you ask. And honestly..... I don't know! That could've been an oversight or it could've been deliberate and I just don't remember my justification. That happens sometimes XD)

Anyway uhhh yeah! I think that's it. I like making comics. I like thinking about nosk. Tadaa~

[outsidersheadcanons]

Hiya! Could i get job head canons for the gang? (Not the jobs they already have, jobs you could see them having!) That's all, thanks! (BTW my home page is 99% your posts!!! 🥰)

Ofc!! (Sorry for yapping sm 😭 I'll stop using the tags as much bc I post A LOT more frequently than I thought I would oops)

But here u go!!

English teacher Ponyboy. He would be absolutely OBSESSED with the books he assigns, and he'd love teaching poetry (and reading everyone's essays!!) also ik his lessons would be fun asf

Soda isn't academic, but I feel like he'd love being an equine vet! That way he could be around horses all day (and save them too!) realistically tho I think after he worked at the DX he got a job at the old farm he used to work at training horses instead (bc I want him to be happy <3)

(Modern) I can see Dally working retail or in fast food tbh (only places he can work based off his track record tbh). "Welcome to Taco Bell man 😡"

I can see Steve in the military. Maybe he joined the air force or smth to avoid the draft?? But imagine him. Working on planes in a giant hangar or working in air traffic control

I think Darry would be a good social worker or smth in youth services. Someone on here had a hc that he started fostering kids and that's so. in character. Idk if he'd ever have his own family but he really loves helping others.

Johnny would also go into social work to help kids who grew up the way he did (If he survived ☹️).

Two-bit would sell cars when he got older and manage a dealership (and he'd be such a good salesman). Or maybe he could cut hair. Barber Two-bit would be interesting (and he's a good conversationalist so no one would EVER be bored while he did their hair).

[gr1evance]

villian mentioooooon. can you tell me more about him I love the funny bunny

I FORGOT TO POST THIS ASK I HAD IT SAVED AS A DRAFT OOPS LMAO

YEEEES ID LOVE TO. ok so like i've talked about in long posts about starb, his introduction in starb's story was interrupting one of him and russian roulette's spats and saving starb, leading to the two of them talking more and forming a connection. they kind of got romantic first and then did the weird business partners stuff? but it generally all happened around the same time. i've explained the whole stuff with that, he has a big ego and was using starb who already has a history as a decently well known hero to boost his image, starb was unhappy with just being his sidekick and eventually things came to a head and they actually talked abt it yada yada.

he comes from a wealthy white family.. his parents and all other family members are actually entirely human, he just has some weird recessive rabbit genes LMAO. the collaborative universe he's from is of course about people living in a world with superheroes and superpowers and the like so weird genetic shit like that can just happen. mostly he's a rabbit in a human family because i think it's really funny. his father was a semi famous hero before he was born, and he shares the exact same powerset as him. he REALLY really wants to live up to his father's image and puts a lot of pressure on himself for it.. at a pretty young age he developed this kind of walled off ego that he has, a lack of regard for how other people feel, as a result of being spoiled by his family and also a little bit as a way to deal with insecurities stemming from him being a rabbit and also figuring out that he's gay while being surrounded by similarly rich and petty peers.

so back to him and starb- his bad habits of taking advantage of people and disregarding others' feelings has him ending up in a relationship with someone he is actively using... almost like a dress up doll? i mean he literally changed starb's outfit (very integral to his character, mostly he's autistic and doesnt like wearing other clothes) to fit in more with his own and took him from being his own sustained hero to now his sidekick. he doesn't act totally maliciously, often i don't think he realizes he's doing things that hurt people just because he doesn't really think about it. he just acts in his own interest and then faces the consequences later and because of the environment he was in for most of his life he's never really been told No or that what he's doing is wrong. and it takes starb- who usually avoids confrontation as much as possible because he wants to be the most polite person in the room- actually kind of snapping at him to get him to realize what he's doing. i actually have written things about this storyline i may share someday! i've just never been sure how bc its like almost 7000 words and in all my privated stuff on toyhouse.. but i do still think it's good writing.

it's been almost two years since the big stuff with him and starb. starb is incredibly forgiving and also just has weird things in his brain about love and romance and didnt want to break up with villian, so the two of them ended up staying together and it's definitely better and good for both of them. starb is very much trying to like. teach villian how to be a better person and to give others more thought and sympathy and i find their relationship in that way very amusing. villian has a lot of repressed guilt about all the kind of stupid and rude shit he's done in the past and it's built itself up into that old insecurity he was originally trying to run from. it doesn't really help that he's the boyfriend of a man who's already married, which wouldn't really be a problem, but he's kind of like tesla's chewtoy a little bit and it makes him embarrassed. i enjoy examining why he acts the way that he does and how he's going about that guilt and insecurity in ways that aren't using other people to make himself feel better. and also having him examine his own personal like. biases and privileges now that he's dating someone with a weird gender who's openly a communist and known by a lot of people. it's just interesting to me!

i also like playing with his gender mostly in aus, i find him transitioning to be more of a show of confidence and getting over that insecurity than actually him like. Needing to be trans necessarily. he could be happy as anything i just view him transitioning as just him playing around because he actually feels comfortable with who he is enough to do so. i don't really have anything concrete about this there's no real place i'm actually doing it in i just like to rotate it

there's also an au of him in a minecraft roleplay campaign where he's infected with sculk and he's just really depressed and desperate to get back to starb and stuff. fun to play with him in a scenario where he hasn't had the chance to fix himself before being pried away from the one thing motivating him to do so and to watch him try to cling to anything he can

here's some images of him i like also :3

art by apotheoseity, pbjpuppy, sixofheartz, and lame-4-u!!

[raeyapper]

tortured poets department song opinions if you don't care then don't continue reading

Fortnight ft post malone

i like this song so much more then I thought I would

like it's actually so good

not how I expected "I love you it's ruining my life" to be used but by gods do I love it

Overall 8.3/10

The tortured poets department

Its really good

Unexpected name drop in like the first minute

Okay just drop the fucking f bomb go off taylor

Oh shit she actually name dropped jack antinoff(?)

Overall 6.9/10 (haha 6.9)

My boy only breaks his favorite toys

I was actually scared for this one

HOW DOES THIS SONG ONLY HAVE 5K LIKES

This song isn't what I expected but at the same time it is

I really like it. It's giving delulu.

It's stuck in my head now tho.

Overall 7.7/10

Down bad

unexpected but totally welcome

I think this is one of my favorites so far

Also another f bomb in the chorus holy shit taylor.

Very katniss and peeta coded

This whole album is unexpected

I expect folklore Evermore type album, but it's like synth

which is fine it's still great just unexpected

Overall 9.2/10

So long London

Track 5 wish me luck :)

I am OBSESSED (with your ex) with the call and answer in the beginning ahfjdhsjdhchfj

I will never be the same after this song

This has changed me forever

But I love it so

Overall 8.9/10

But Daddy I love him

This right here is fear

Side note: Thank God this draft saved

THIS IS THE BEST SONG ON THE ALBUM I LOVE IT SM

girl taylor you can't just say shit like that then go "no I'm not"

I feel like this whole songs reason for existence was to freak people the fuck out.

Like that one line "I'm having his baby no I'm not but you should see your faces"

Taylor was like "what if I pranked their asses?"

But still my favorite so far

Overall 9.5/10

Fresh out the slammer

it was really good I liked it. Not as much as the others but I did like it.

Also why did the beat randomly change near the end. I'm not crazy that happened right?

Also that beat change was kinda giving reputation soooo

Overall 7.0/10

Florida!!! Ft Florence +the machine

I don't really know if I love it or like it yet

Its either gonna be one of my favorites or I will only listen to it once or twice.

But I will say Florence's voice is heavenly

Also f bomb number 3 taylor.

Overall either 6.3/10 or 8.4/10

Who's afraid of little old me? (I am. I'm afraid)

THIS THIS IS WHAT I THOUGHT THE WHOLE ALBUM WOULD BE

I LOVE THIS ONE ITS MY FAVORITE PERIOD DONE THATS IT.

Hfjchdjdbfjfjd holy shit I am in love with you taylor swift

Overall 10.5/10 exquisite

I can fix him (no really I can)

AGAIN THE FOLKLORE EVERMORE VIBES IS WHAT I EXPECTED

this song is better than I thought and I love it oh so much

I envisioned mist or fog for this song idk why

It just has misty vibes

Still I love this song soo much

Overall 10.8/10 (they are just gonna keep going up I think)

loml

loss of my life at the end 😭😭😭

Literally the saddest song on the album

I love it sooooo much though

I just realized I think I forgot guilty as sin? Oops

Still 10/10 song

Overall 11/10

Guilty as sin?

I predicted that this song would be my favorite and it might be if I listen to it more but rn it isn't

It is the most relatable tho.

Am j allowed to cry apparently not.

I do really like this song tho

Overall 9.8/10

I can do it with a broken heart

I have 2 thoughts

1 this song is so relatable its funny

"I'm so miserable and nobody even knows"

This whole song is just like:

✨✨️✨️✨️ I'm super depressed ✨ ✨️✨️✨️

And she's so real for that

But thought 2

This song is so sad and now every time I watch the eras tour I will think of "the crowd keeps chanting more"

Overall 12/10

The smallest man who ever lived

H my God this is like literally a diss track

Like dam taylor he's already dead.

The bridge >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I was like "OH YEAH HERE WE GO" when that bridge started.

Overall 7.3/10

The alchemy

not what I expected

Definitely my least favorite

I don't know why but I don't like this one as much as the other ones

Overall 5.9/10

Clara Bow (again we are afraid)

this one was really nice

I like the message of like hey there were people before me and there will be people after me

Ya know like everyone is like omg your the next taylor swift

I like that she's addressing that.

Overall 9.8/10

Okay that's it I did the whole album. I will do the other bonus(???) Tracks later cause Jesus christ there is a lot of them. But thanks for reading my shit opinions on @taylorswift and the new album.

[vanityloves]

he either proposes with no ring or the most intricate/gaudy/cursed ring imaginable

[jackrrabbit]

🤍 Haikyuu WIP excerpts

preview post for hq because recently i showed sara a list of my works in progress and she laughed at me and then made a dn joke like this is 2015 or something. we got:

🤍 communal property /// ushijima x f!reader x tendou 🤍 sunshower /// atsumu x f!reader x osamu 🤍 corporate ethics /// kuroo x f!reader

anyway these are all terrible first drafts and i'm not sorry. however i am very very into these pieces and if you're interested in seeing them finished, you should tell me fr fr

🤍 communal property /// Ushijima x f!Reader x Tendou

Summary: Tendou shares everything with Ushijima—his food, his dorm room, even the AVs he likes. Why not his girlfriend, too?

Tags/warnings: poly relationship in progress (only you and Tendou are dating at this point), mild suggestiveness ??, s*ze k*nk

Status: 10k words written (holy fuck lol) out of ~11k total? this bitch better get finished is2g

After the match, your voice is hoarse from screaming but you still manage to yell congratulations for your boyfriend when you meet him and Ushijima outside the locker room in the stadium. You’re pumped on the adrenaline of the game, so you don’t even protest like you usually would when Tendou picks you up in the middle of your hug and lifts you off the ground effortlessly. “How was I? Awesome, right? I told you we would beat them!”

“You did, you so did—“ Even though your throat hurts, you can’t help gushing about every rally, every soul-crushing block, every impossible spike. “—and then the guy on the left thought he was clear to shoot it but you just—“ You throw your arms in the air and mime hitting the ball down like a blocker. “Wha-bam!—and the look on his face! I thought he was going to punch you!”

Tendou laughs and lays a sloppy kiss on your cheek, just as thrilled as you are by the win. “You really liked it that much? I thought you weren’t into sports.”

“I loved it! You were so cool! I can’t believe I’m dating someone so cool!” You wrap your legs around his back and hug his face close to yours, reveling in the fact that this weirdo belongs to you wholly and entirely, that you get to have him to yourself (well, other than his roommate). “And I’m not into sports, I’m into you.”

Tendou smiles in a way that makes the sides of his eyes crinkle up and little red patches bloom over his cheeks, a look that says, I like you so much (Y/N), I like you I like you I like you, except he’s probably trying not to be mushy like that since Ushijima is standing off to the side.

You feel a little bad for ignoring him (no one likes being the third wheel, even if he never shows signs of caring) so when Tendou sets you down you turn to Ushijima. “And you! Holy shit, Tendou said you were good, but I didn’t know you were that good. The ball when you hit it was super loud—honestly, how are your hands okay? If I hit it that hard I’d probably break something.”

“My hands are fine…this is normal for me.”

But just because you’ve got them here in front of you and you’re still pumped from the exhilaration of the win, you can’t help grabbing Ushijima’s hand and flipping it palm-up to inspect. True to his word, there’s no redness, just the calluses he’s built up on his long fingers. “Wow.”

“You don’t need to worry about Wakatoshi,” Tendou tells you, grinning and then making a face. “He’s a monster, he can handle it.”

“No kidding. You’re both monsters.” You put the base of your palm up against Ushijima’s to gauge the size of his hand against yours, and without prompting Tendou grabs your other hand to press against his own. Tendou’s fingers are a bit longer, but Ushijima’s are…thicker, more solid. Your hands look like a little kid’s in comparison. “Can I be honest? Half the time I was thinking I actually feel bad for the other team. If I had to take on both of you at the same time, I’d probably cry.”

You’re (mostly) joking, but it’s still a complete shock when you see the side of Ushijima’s mouth curl up a tiny bit. You’ve known each other for months at this point, but you’ve never seen him smile until now. Half of you is wondering if this is some kind of optical illusion caused by the atmosphere and the dim light of the stadium cutting through the evening, but the other half of you enjoys it. You made Ushijima smile. You did that.

“Don’t sell yourself short, (Y/N).” Ushijima says, tipping his head to the side.

“Yeah!” Tendou chimes in, resting his chin on top of your head and folding his arms around your neck from his place behind you. “I’m sure you could take both of us. Right, Wakatoshi?”

So that’s probably a sign.

🤍 sunshower /// Atsumu x f!Reader x Osamu

Summary: [Kitsune AU] You find an old Ō-Inari shrine in the woods that may not be as abandoned as it looks.

Tags/warnings: Shinto religion, this preview is biased toward tsumu oops, yearning/soft vibes

Status: 3.9k words written out of 5–6k? total

Atsumu was the one who found you.

That’s how he likes to talk about it, that he found you, like you’d still be wandering around lost in the woods if it weren’t for him. Osamu thinks you would have found your way back home eventually but Atsumu likes it better this way, this framing that makes it seem like they saved you.

It’s hard for him to tell time linearly the way humans do but you mention once that you’ve known them for a year and that seems to fit. It’s spring now, almost barely tipping into summer, and it was spring when Atsumu found you. He remembers because of the way it was raining: light and tender, a summer rain early in the season, each little drop tapping off a leaf and then rolling into the forest bed to be eaten up by the grass and the soil.

Atsumu likes the rain, likes the sweet earthy smell it makes and the way the plants look so lush and green and alive, like they’d bleed if he sunk his teeth into them. He was out in the woods because of the rain ('Samu was in the shrine, as usual, attempting to set buckets under the millions of holes in the roof so the rainwater wouldn’t pool and rot through the wood underneath). But Atsumu was half asleep in a tree when he heard you crashing through the undergrowth, tripping over ferns and snapping every twig in your path (thought ya might be a bear, he tells you later, that’s how loud ya were) but he wouldn’t really have woken up if he hadn’t heard you singing.

(The odd thing is, you weren’t actually singing. You remember that day as vividly as they do: the warm, humid air making your skin feel sticky under your yellow raincoat; the tiny raindrops filtering through the canopy and kissing your cheeks; the ink feathering out on the damp xerox of the old map you found in your great-aunt’s attic so you could barely make out the “X” that was supposed to mark the location of the lost Inari shrine… You were cursing how stupid you’d been to go on a wild goose chase into the mountains with no cell service and no marked trail to look for a shrine that no one had seen in decades. You definitely weren’t singing.)

But Atsumu remembers it differently. No matter how many times you explain that you were just talking to yourself, when he replays the sound of your voice back then (reaching and lilting and falling, the way the birds talk to each other in the early morning, except the music of it was poured into syllables and words), it sounds like you’re singing. He wasn’t sure at first, hadn’t heard a voice that wasn’t Osamu’s in so many years that he gets tired counting them, but then he saw you push into view from between two bushes and he thought, a human!

A girl, too—it was hard to say at first because you were wearing that weird, slick jacket of yours, so bright yellow it was like an oversized flower blooming out of the grass, but then you tilted your head up to feel the rain on your face and the hood fell down and he knew. Not just a human, a girl! Atsumu wanted to yell for Osamu, make him come and confirm that there was a person wandering around not a mile from the shrine. A real person! Singing and smiling and wiping the rain off her cheeks (does that mean you like the rain, just like he does? did you come out to feel it too?) But he also wanted to surprise Osamu so he hid his tails and his ears and came down from the tree and asked if you had lost your way in the forest, since you were so far from any path…

When you think back on this yourself you’re amazed that you just went with him: a strange boy (man?) wearing a fox mask and traditional Shinto priest robes, which were somehow pristine white and red despite him having appeared from nowhere in the middle of a dense forest, who told you he had no idea what direction the village was but he could take you to the Inari shrine you’d been searching for…well. Maybe you were too surprised to be wary, or maybe you were just exhausted and lost. But you like to think you had a sense of it even then, the irrational belief that the boy in the woods was not just a boy in the woods.

Atsumu thinks you knew. Humans always understand, even when they try not to… He remembers, he took your hand that day in the forest and you saw that the claws on his fingers were too long to be human, and you said nothing because on some level you already felt it. Your skin was cool then, smooth and damp from the rain; he wanted to stop, run his hands up your arms, touch the places on your face where your mouth had been turned up at the corners and press his fingers into your cheeks.

🤍 corporate ethics /// Kuroo x f!Reader

Summary: [Office AU] The new junior marketing associate just happens to be Kuroo’s favorite camgirl, and he’s having trouble keeping his hands to himself.

Tags/Warnings: boss/employee, businessman!Kuroo as a reformed player, camgirl reader, this excerpt has a lil bit of 18+ content 👀

Status: 1.2k words written out of 4k? words total

Kuroo doesn’t watch porn.

It’s not, like, a moral principle or something. He has nothing against pornography. As far as he knows, it’s perfectly normal for single men. He just doesn’t like it…unless it’s you.

When he was in school it was easy. Being a teenager meant being so flooded with hormones that a warm breeze could get him up, and the adrenaline rush of winning a game was better than any big-titted porn actress faking moans into a shit-quality boom mic. Sure, he watched porn back then (what teenage boy didn’t?), but it was more out of curiosity than necessity. It was all kind of a mystery at that point, the way it can only be when you’re a clueless virgin and you and all your friends are too busy practicing for the next game to get girls.

Somehow Bokuto was the first one in their friend group to lose his virginity, and the memory of the dumbass self-consciously describing the experience has been lodged in Kuroo’s brain for the 10+ years since. “It was…I don’t know. She smelled good. You know how girls always smell good?” Bokuto’s hands twitched and his face was pink. “It’s just really…soft.”

Soft was right, Kuroo would reflect when he got laid for the first time a few months later. Soft, warm, wet. Sex was awkward at first, but before he knew it it was more natural than breathing.

It didn’t change much after high school, either. He didn’t get into volleyball for the groupies, but they didn’t hurt. There were girls when he played for his college team, more girls when he joined a business frat, so many girls he couldn’t keep track…they blurred together after a while. It didn’t take effort. You don’t need game when you’re 6’2 and you’re in the gym 40 hours a week, and you definitely don’t need porn.

So he never got into it. Now that he’s promoting volleyball instead of playing, things are more complicated. Kuroo’s never been the type who expects things to fall in his lap, but there are so many rules when it comes to dating in the real world. Good morning texts, anniversaries, flowers, parents. It’s exhausting. One time—seriously, just one time—Kuroo misses his girlfriend’s birthday to go watch a Jackals game, and the next time he sees her she throws her drink on him in public and keys his car. After that, Kuroo decides that until he’s ready to settle down there will be no more girlfriends. Which means no more reliable sex. Which means resorting to porn.

Which means you.

You, batting your eyelashes at the camera and biting the side of your lip. You, purring and mewing like a kitten. You, lying back on your pretty pink bedsheets in your pretty pink lingerie, sliding your hands between your legs. It takes Kuroo a full month to decide to pay for access to your website (Kenma’s unsolicited recommendation) but it takes less than five minutes for him to upgrade access to premium. You look like a wet dream—no, you look like the centerfold of every dirty magazine Kuroo managed to get his hands on when he was younger. Pristine and alluring and so deliciously out of reach.

And you make it so simple. No delicate emotional games with rules Kuroo never bothered to learn. No pretending to care how your day was. You untie the little bows on the side of your panties and lick your fingers and Kuroo just has to take his dick out and watch you. Getting off hasn’t been this easy for him since college. You’re a camgirl, you exist on his computer screen, and that’s how he likes it.

Which makes it a lot more awkward when Kuroo finds out that the only woman he’s gotten off to in the past…year, maybe?…somehow just got hired in JVA’s sports promotion department as his junior associate.

Your prim work blouse is buttoned up to the collar and your makeup is different, but he knows it’s you. You have to tell him your name twice because he’s too stunned to respond the first time, and even then he can’t summon up more of a response than a curt nod because his mouth tastes like dirt.

You smile a little awkwardly at his cool reception, and the hand you’d extended out to shake swings back down to your side. “Um, the guy at HR said he sent up my info yesterday…I’ll be working directly underneath you?”

Directly underneath me. Kuroo is taking a sip of his coffee when you say this. He doesn’t spit it out, but it’s close.

[jemwritesstuff]

Joey; the Legion x reader

I actually read lore for this lmao also this was supposed to be a soulmate thingy but i forgot abt it halfway thru writing and it just,,,,got left off

another notable thing is that this has literally been sitting in my drafts for better half of a year with me writing maybe a sentence a week so it’s really jumbled and probably makes no sense mostly but i decided i've already spent too much time worrying if it's “good enough” so i'm just gonna post it as is and edit later if i feel like it

content warnings: canon typical violence, swearing, reader is a smoker, alcohol, something akin to an anxiety attack described, I can’t write dialogue to save my life, again a surprise father figure, what’s a POV, I’m a part of a Julie needs rights in fanfic gang btw

word count: 3738 oops

***

Julie invited you to a party. You’d missed the last one (you’d slept through it but that would be a secret you’d take to your grave) so she insisted you come and meet the guy she’d been getting it on with. 

You’d heard about him - someone out of town who had come here to stir up chaos in his steps. Everyone seemed impressed by him but it was easy here in Ormond - new blood did always get the attention. 

You promised to go, though, and there was no backing out of it now.

It was just how you’d expected from a party Julie threw. The music was loud and based on the stench, someone had already thrown up in the bushes. You beelined to the kitchen to get yourself a drink hoping it would help you handle the rowdiest kids.

Meanwhile in the living room Frank was in the middle of telling a little story about his fucked up little life. Julie was enamored, and so were most of the other kids at the party, too. Joey, however, had a hard time focusing on his words. Bouncing his leg up and down in frustration, he ended up just observing the front door.

His eyes found you, hands in your jacket’s pockets and a visible scowl on your face. He was a little taken back. Mostly people came to Julie’s parties to either get shitfaced or laid but you only looked extremely annoyed to be here. Now that he thought about it, that’s just what you always looked like, especially in class. He’d seen you around tons of times and knew you as one of Julie’s oldest friends. Maybe you just didn’t like groups of people that much, otherwise for sure Julie would have forced you to take part in her parties and hangouts a lot more often.

That must’ve been it, he thought, since you had no trouble emerging from the kitchen just to plant yourself on the sofa right next to Julie. Joey was intrigued by your ways but he would never admit that to you and even less to Julie.

He awoke from his thoughts to Susie elbowing him to the ribs. 

“Hey”, you started, “I’m partly forced to do this-”

Julie interrupted you by snorting.

“-but since you people mean so much to Miss Asshole here, I don’t mind.” You told the lot your name and a little of how you’d come to know Julie, as your parents have been friends for a lifetime already. You were surely gonna tell an embarrassing story about Julie before she slapped a hand in front of your mouth. Laughs erupted all around.

“I’m Joey, nice to meet ya, officially”, Joey raised his beer bottle towards you.

“Yeah, I see you ‘round a lot. World history, right?” You questioned, a little pout on your lips.

“That and French”, he confirmed.

“Oh yeah, although I always sleep through French”, you nodded and chuckled. If common sense hadn’t gotten the best of Joey, he might’ve thought your laugh sounded nice.

“I know”, he grinned. Oh, if he’d paid attention to Julie’s intrigued expression rather than your smile.

You stuck around the group for the party. It was easy for Joey to smile. It was obvious how happy you made Julie by getting on easily with her group, and that was enough to make him happy too. He was certainly glad Julie decided to force you there that day. 

“I’ll go for a quick smoke”, you rose up from your seat, hands fishing your pockets for a lighter. Julie gave you a pat on the back and moved her legs to reserve you a seat. 

Before the gears in Joey’s head had turned all the way, he had already stood up and agreed to join you. He returned the nod you gave and followed you out the back door, leaving the deafening music behind.

He can no longer remember where the conversation started. All he knew was that he enjoyed talking about everything under the sun with you. He got to share his deepest thoughts without feeling like a burden or worrying about seeming unstable. You weren’t afraid to knock him off his pedestal either. It didn't take long for those smoke break conversations to become a custom. 

***

Joey liked his new job at the hardware store. It was easy enough, even with the owner’s ridiculous snow globe collecting. The rest of the Legion teased him about it, especially after they found out a certain someone also worked there.

You shared quite a lot of classes with him in school and whenever the rest of the Legion was unavailable, Joey hovered with you. You’d introduced yourself at one of Julie’s parties and after that wherever Joey looked, you seemed to be there. He didn’t know if he’d just never really noticed you before or if it was “destiny” or some other bullshit his older sister went on and on about.

Whatever it was, Joey didn’t mind. You were good company and didn’t give a shit about his bad habits and more than alarming pastime activities. You had a knack for creating havoc as well, maybe not as crude as setting theaters on fire, but no old woman downtown looked at you and thought to themself; “what a delightful young person” and that’s all that mattered to him.

The day everything changed was quite ordinary in its core. Joey left the building right when you were preparing for your shift. He came across you outside the employee’s entry, a cigarette in between your fingers.

“Lucky you”, you offered him a smoke, “I’m stuck here for the rest of the evening.”

His fingers brushed against the sleeve of your hoodie you had wrapped around yours so as to not freeze them off. “He fired me.”

You glanced up at him. He was pouting and the corner of his eye twitched just a little to tell you how annoyed he really was. Not even the bitter smoke leaving his nostrils seemed to calm him.

“I’m sorry ‘bout that”, you shook your head. You knew he’d stolen some things with Julie and the others but you’d always turned a blind eye. You never liked the owner anyway but you needed the money. 

He passed the cig back to you and zipped his jacket up. You could guess what he was thinking, which gave you an idea. “Y’know, Joey, I might be tired when I’m leaving work today. Might forget to lock the back door.” 

Joey found it hard to mask his surprise. The raised eyebrow solicited a smirk from you.

“Would be a real shame if that happened, you know there’s a lot of fuckers wanting to thrash that place up”, he said.

You winked at him through the puff of smoke.

***

You’d just exited the building when you saw Joey’s truck pulling up at the front, right outside the cameras’ view. It was dark out and you didn’t see the faces but it was safe to assume that along with Joey, there was Julie, Susie and Frank also in the car. 

You pulled your hood up to get even a little protection from the howling wind. They got up from the car, breaths crystallizing in the cold air. You approached them, trying to keep the fire from your lighter alive long enough to get the cigarette between your lips lit. 

When that didn’t work out, you just huffed and stuck both items back in your pockets along with your freezing hands. 

“Can you guys believe some inconsiderate fool stuck a safety pin in the back door’s lock so I couldn’t close it properly?” You faked an annoyed voice and barely succeeded in hiding your grin.

“Now that’s too bad”, Julie smirked and pulled you into her side for a half-assed embrace. “It’s good to see you.” 

“You too. Now y’all have fun in there but just don’t touch my locker. You wouldn’t wanna find out what exactly is in there.”

“Don’t worry. knowing you, it can be anything from rotten guts to a five year stash of chocolate and I wouldn’t wanna be tangled in your wrath in either of those scenarios”, Joey chuckled and patted your shoulder. 

Frank gave you a nod of recognition and Susie smiled and waved at you before they all started moving towards the building, hoods up and faces hidden with eerie masks. Deciding not to question it, you waved at their backs and started making your way back home.

Once the building was out of your field of view, a terrible chill ran up your spine. Everything seemed the exact same but the feeling persisted. Unlike the familiar one of being watched, was it accurate or not, this one was more… sinister. Malicious, even. Despite the horrible wind, a thick fog was closing in on you.

You kept walking - you knew the way home after all - but it was no use. You were dead certain everything around you was disappearing, the park bench was not there anymore and you couldn’t even locate the lamp posts. 

The fog was thick enough to cause you to lose your heading and make your head heavy. All you saw was gray, anyway, but this gray was purely unsettling.

In the end, the Fog consumed you, leaving no other way to go than forwards.

***

The Fog was indeed sinister and malicious.

At the start, everything was so confusing to you. Jeff - who you’d chatted with in school or seen at the music store - was there too, which by itself would’ve been a relief if he hadn’t aged over twenty years in a single night. He and the others - mainly Bill, whose company you’d joined at first just for the seemingly unlimited supply of cigarettes, helped you get a hold of “things”;  handling the pain, sticking your fingers into an endless array of machines, patching yourself and others up and distracting the killer long enough for your teammates to get stuff done.

Easy enough, you thought, I’ll just have to keep performing, how hard can that really be?

The answer: really fucking hard.

Especially after Jeff told you about the other people you’d known in your life, and how they coincidentally were on the other side of this fucked up endless game of cat and mouse.

You called him out on his bullshit - you had never encountered them yourself yet and there was no way that out of all the possibilities this motherfucking lovecraftian being had, it would take six people that knew eachother just to fuck with them some. 

Only when you fought for your life back in the familiar winter breeze of Ormond did you start doubting your own mind.

You had spent time at the lodge before and there was no mistaking it. As gray as ever, you thought, no power in the world would bring this shithole color.

It was hard for you to concentrate on anything that trial. Jake was obviously fed up with you fumbling the wires and sent you off to “roll in the snow or something”. Hell, with nothing better to do, you did lay in the snow. The illusion of cold was all around you but the snow felt like nothing. It had the texture, sure, but it didn’t melt in your fingers nor did the falling snowflakes actually touch you - they went right through you - probably didn’t even stay on the ground, just disintegrated and fell again time after time. 

Yui ran right past you - the ghost girl fresh on her tail - neither paying you any mind.

You’d been there for, what, a week at most, and you were already beyond fed up with all the antics of the controlling shithead you’d come to know as the Entity.

With nothing but hatred on your mind, you flung a handful of snow in the air and cursed. The crows flew away and the banging in your chest got louder.

With the conclusion of “nothing matters so might as well have fun dying” you decided to harass the Spirit off Yui to get something actually meaningful to do.

As expected, you didn’t make it but it was worth it seeing the rest of your team skedaddle out. 

***

Jeff had heard all about your heroic deed last trial but his mood changed once he heard Yui mention the Ormond. You hadn’t come back to the campfire after, so he decided to go find you. Seeing familiar places and faces had been a shock to him, too, and he’d hoped he’d had someone to help him through it. 

He found you at the edge of the forest staring straight ahead, deep into the ever changing woods. He sat next to you on the cold ground.

“I should’ve known it would be you.”

Jeff huffed and smiled at you warmly, only you didn’t look anywhere near him. “I know what it’s like. There’s not many of us that know their killer like we do.”

“Y’know, it’s not just that I know them”, you took a long breath. “Hell, I’ve been friends with Julie since we were in diapers. She- all of them became my family-” You managed to choke out before your voice gave out. It was getting harder for you to breathe and Jeff noticed it. You sat together in silence, him patiently waiting for you to calm down.

You cursed loudly, not paying any attention to the tear that had made its way down your cheek. 

Jeff patted your back and you didn’t have the energy to shy away from it.

You were still far from calm, muttering curses under your breath and smothering your face in your already damp sleeves. So, he decided to start talking.

“Y’know, after the night you five disappeared, news ran wild in school the next day. Most were sure that you’d just ran away together.”

He kept a small break.

“It was your closing and opening shift, right?” At your meek nod, he continued, “Yeah, no one found the body until after school was over. The next day was pure chaos. You were all suspects, you, especially. I hardly believed it. Arson is one thing, but I couldn’t believe that anyone but Frank could do something like that. Now, it’s clear what happened but when I was still young and naive, I kept thinking ‘no way, these are the people I’ve known for years, this can’t be happening’. And it’s not like I was good friends with any of you, really.”

At that, you gave a small laugh.

“I mean that’s the truth!” He smiled, too, “You all came by the shop a lot, and I did the mural at the resort but at school, all of us had better friends to hang out with. I never even went to one of Julie’s parties. That’s kinda why I moved away after high school; I couldn’t keep living in the town where my speaking acquaintances had been ruled down as murderers.”  

The silence was comfortable now. 

“Thanks, Jeff”, you sniffled and wiped the last of your tears away.

“Anytime, kid-” Before he even had the chance to finish, you had smacked him in the arm.

“We’re the same age, old man.”

***

That trial started out as any. You greeted Dwight and stuck your fingers into the gears with him. It didn’t take long for your heart to start beating faster.

When you finally caught sight of the killer through the corn, you could barely believe your own eyes.

You would’ve recognized that black jacket anywhere.

Motherfucker. 

You scattered away from the generator as fast as possible, going the opposite way from Dwight.

Yui had talked you through about the logistics of going against “The Legion”, ‘stay separated, keep running and don’t bother healing each other up unless you really have to’, but, fuck, was it hard to be productive when you knew who was behind the mask.

He’d gone after Dwight, and it wasn’t long until you heard him yell. Your heartbeat picked up speed again.

“Keep running, huh?” You questioned as you watched him come after you. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Honestly, it was probably the dumbest decision you’d be making. 

Would he even know it was you?

Would he care?

Stopping dead in your tracks, your heart felt like it was going to give up any second.

He stopped, too. You were going to stare him down.

You recognized the knife. Fuck, you’d given him the knife. For his birthday, like what, three months ago? 

He was as stiff as you. The only sound you could hear was your own heartbeat and your combined, erratic breathing. The knife was lowered but it never left his grip.

“I should’ve known it would be you”, the voice is a bit muffled - courtesy of the mask - but undoubtedly the exact same voice you remembered.

“We heard of a newbie, stirring up trouble and always being half a step ahead”, he continued. You made no move, just looking where his eyes should’ve been. “I should’ve known it’d be you.”

He raised his empty hand towards you. For a moment, you forgot how to breathe. The silence was broken by a generator firing to life and he retracted his gloved hand back to his side. He quickly glanced that way before turning his head back towards you. You never would’ve thought you’d end up in this position. Staring straight into the eyes of a killer, your friend, and being guilty of the fear bubbling up inside of you.

“You should get to work.” It was a wonder your own voice didn’t waver. You just wished your eyes didn’t betray your inner thoughts.

He took another moment to think before answering.

“Come to Ormond when you get out.”

With that, he turned around, leaving to find your other friends, your teammates, no doubt murder on his mind. ‘When’, he’d said, you noticed. He never had an intention to hurt you - he’d had all the chances in the world.

You spent the trial in a haze barely getting anything done. As ridiculous as it was, it felt comforting to know he had the same problem. There was only a few hooks the entire trial and he didn’t dare look in your direction, even when you got caught in the open field, he just went the other way.

Back at the campfire, Ace took on the job of retelling the trial, of how he’d kept the “unruly teenager”, on his trail long enough for three generators to get completed. You decided to let him brag this time and wandered off into the surrounding woods. 

At the edge of the premises, you started doubting yourself. He was a killer after all, hell, they were all killers. You had no idea what to expect.

Joey had asked you to come there but would the others want to have anything to do with you? Worst case scenario, Frank would want to kill you. How’d Susie even get wrapped up in this, you wondered, she’d always been the warmest person in the room. You could hardly imagine her hurting anyone. And Julie; you’d always been there for each other but now, after being thrusted on different sides of a wicked game, would that change?

Before you had the chance to spiral further, footsteps woke you up from your thoughts.

He looked far more relaxed now, shoulders down and no bloodlust coating his veins. Still, expressions hidden away by the mask, knife tucked away somewhere.

You had no idea what to think. 

Neither of you wanted to make the first move.

“I heard it disfigures killers when they disobey or perform badly”, you started. A neutral statement but worry evident when reading in between the lines. The trial hadn’t been a good performance from him.

Before you could really even close your mouth, he had acted. In a fleeting moment, the mask was gone from his face. 

He was the exact same as you remembered him. You didn’t know how to feel. Would the other possibility have felt better? 

“Did you talk to Jeff yet?” He asked. You couldn’t read him anymore. Had you really been apart that long? You used to be able to tell what he was thinking from the little twitches in the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah, I…�� Everything about the situation was wrong. Knowing what they had done, what they had been doing in this wretched place - your body was screaming at you to run but your heart disagreed.

“He told you everything, didn’t he?” He frowned, only slightly, but it was enough to tell you just how much he hated the thought. At least you could read that off of his face.

You nodded. “Are the others here?” You were glad your voice didn’t waver. Your hands were sweaty and trembling, so you stuck them in your pockets – hoping he didn’t notice. You wanted to see the lot again so bad but you were deathly afraid of how they’d treat you now that nothing was the same anymore.

He nodded. You stared at the resort in silence.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to you, you know. I–” He started, before seemingly shutting himself up. His face said nothing but you knew it was bothering him, not being able to say it out loud.

You turned away from him and the resort. Your brain was scrambled and fried, heart beating like it was going to give up any moment, legs barely carrying your weight.

“I shouldn’t be here, Joey, I don’t- I don’t belong here anymore”, you managed to choke out.You didn’t hear his response, the ringing in your ears was sure to make you deaf. Your chest was tightening with every breath.

Warm hands guided you to sit on a rock. They were a nice contrast to the chilling tremor going up your spine. 

After a moment of calming yourself and evening out your breath, you opened your eyes – when had you closed them? – only to gaze straight into Joey’s soul. You knew what he was going to say before interrupting himself, what he was feeling, just from the little twitches around his eyes. 

The corner of his mouth lifted up.

“You’re always gonna belong here”, your name sounded far too familiar coming from his lips, “We’re not gonna abandon you, I’m– Listen, I’m not going to abandon you. Okay?”

You nodded. You knew he wasn’t lying.

***

[cudan2]

One Last Surgery

Spring Break Shadowing Part 5.1

Carlisle Cullen x Reader

Word Count: 2,043

Summary: You finally find out the reason for going to the children’s hospital, but you’re more distracted than usual today and Dr. Cullen can tell. 

A/N: Tell me why part 5 of SBS takes up over half of the whole series? I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for 5 months because I keep adding more to it smh. Now it’s too long so I’ve decided to split it up into 3 parts (in addition to parts 6 and 7). I’m making the final edits the rest of this part now - 5.2 should be posted in like two days.

Anyways, this is technically the beginning of  #1 and #2 on my headcanon list.

Masterlist

XXX

Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital is only across the street from Doctor Cullen’s office, but it seems to take forever to get there. You trail the doctor like a lost puppy through a skyway and a series of corridors before eventually reaching the right building. Different is definitely an understatement.

Gone are the linoleum-tiled floors, the abstract paintings lining the hallways, and the stark white walls. Instead, there are bright colors everywhere you look. Artwork featuring various galaxies and planets scatter throughout the hospital, and giant stars are imprinted along the floors; even the whole atmosphere just feels different.

You don’t get much time to analyze the differences though. Doctor Cullen is wasting no time to reach the destination, and his long legs aren’t making it any easier to keep up.

“Not that I don’t like surprises, but any chance you can tell me what we’re doing in the children’s hospital now?”

“Impatient, are we?” Doctor Cullen chuckles. He stops at an elevator and pushes the up button, only giving into your question once he catches a glimpse of your pout. “Alright, you win. Are you familiar with a cleft palate or cleft lip?”

The elevator dings, the doors sliding open with it. You shake your head no and get on the elevator with him. He presses the button for the floor and then leans against the wall, arms outstretched on the handrail, and gives you an explanation. 

“A cleft is a gap or split occurring in the roof of the mouth, upper lip, or both. It is due to improper joining of the tissue during fetal development. There are no definitive known causes as of right now, but it’s believed that the environment and genetics can play a role.

The hospital has its own craniofacial team, but I was asked to join this particular case given its more complicated nature. Hanna became one of the first patients I treated when I came to Columbia,” Doctor Cullen finishes fondly, a smile gracing his lips.

“What makes this case complicated?” you ask.

“Hanna was born with a bilateral complete cleft lip and palate, meaning her lip cleft is two-sided and continues into her nose. It took quite a few surgeries to repair the lip, but now the next step is to repair the palate.”

The elevator reaches the floor and dings. You follow Doctor Cullen out and continue prodding him with more questions, which he is more than eager to answer. It’s incredible how knowledgeable he is. Granted, it is his job to know these things, but you couldn’t begin to imagine yourself being able to even scratch the surface of these topics, not to mention give a mini lecture on it.

You’re soon standing at the door to a patient room while the doctor asks Hanna’s parents if you can observe. They readily agree, and Doctor Cullen motions for you to come in.

Inside the room, you see an infant that can’t be more than a year old – Hanna.  She’s sitting upright on the bed, leaning against who you assume to be her father. You notice two fading scars going up into her nose above her lip. Her mother is waving a stuffed toy around her, but Hanna’s attention is fixated on the blonde doctor.

“Y/N, allow me to introduce you to Hanna’s parents, Anthony and Linh Pham. And this is Doctor Giselle Adamou, who will be working with me on the surgery,” Doctor Cullen gestures to the older doctor in the room.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” you say politely.

Pre-op goes differently than what you’ve gotten used to observing this week. There is no case presenting given the lack of residents on the case. If anything, this is what you would expect out of a non-teaching hospital.

Doctor Cullen re-explains the procedures to Hanna’s parents, but halfway through, Hanna crawls to the end of the bed where Doctor Cullen is and attempts to stand, arms outstretched as if to say, “Up! Up!” Bewilderment is not a word you would have associated with him, and yet you catch the brief widening of his eyes that betray his usually calm demeanor.

“I think she wants you to hold her,” Linh comments.

“I can see,” Doctor Cullen muses. “Do you mind?”

“She’s all yours.” Linh picks her daughter up from the bed and hands her to the doctor. The sound of Hanna’s elated laughter fills the room, and you can’t stop a small smile from appearing on your own face. A cute baby and a gorgeous doctor? You don’t know who to thank for the sight.

Meanwhile, Hanna starts playing with various pens in Doctor Cullen’s breast pocket while Doctor Adamou continues where her colleague left off. You try to pay attention, you really do. Like Hanna though, your attention lies on someone else, and that someone else happens to be Doctor Cullen.

The more you study him, the more the minute features you never noticed about him before seem to pop out to you. Under the bright fluorescent lighting of the hospital, the dark purple circles under his eyes are more apparent than ever. How ironic for the preacher of health to lack sleep himself. His eyes, which you normally consider to be a vivid golden, are darker than you initially thought them to be. They are liquid pools of dark amber, speckled with dustings of gold and flecks of black. There isn’t a single blemish on his face that you can see either, further confirming your belief that this man is truly the most attractive person you have ever met. Either that or he must have one hell of a skincare routine.

It’s unnerving how young his appearance is. Skincare and diet can only do so much for a person, right? Doctor Cullen has to be at least 35 at the minimum, yet he could easily pass off as someone from your own school.

“Any last minute questions?” you hear Doctor Adamou ask and snap back into reality. By missing nearly everything the older doctor talked about, you already know you’ll be so screwed if and when Doctor Cullen decides to interrogate you on this case.

Neither parent has anything left to say, so Doctor Cullen gives a reluctant Hanna back to her mother. She lets out a cry and his expression softens.

“I know, sweetheart. I’ll miss you too, but I need to get ready for your big surgery, okay? I promise you’ll see me again in a few hours.” His soothing voice does wonders for her. In an instant, Hanna quiets down and her frown is replaced with giggles and smiles again. She waves the two of you off, and you both take your leave with Doctor Adamou trailing behind you. You’re not even halfway out the door yet when Doctor Cullen starts testing your knowledge again.

“Y/N, what procedure will we be doing to repair Hanna’s cleft?” 

You do not have this one in the bag whatsoever. You wrack your brain for information that could help you, but Doctor Adamou interjects before you get a chance to say anything.

“Why does it not surprise me that you’re treating students like interns already, Carlisle?”

“I am merely advancing the education of next generation’s doctors,” he responds.

“Whatever you say,” she laughs. “Don’t scare off Y/N though, or we won’t have any doctors left in the next generation.” She turns to you after picking up files from a nearby counter and says, “You come running to me if he pushes you too hard, alright?”

You grin. “For sure.”

“Good. I look forward to seeing you both in the OR,” she says before heading off.

You like Doctor Adamou. Each surgeon you’ve met here so far has had such different personalities, yet each also has the charisma and confidence to take control of a room and command respect. You, on the other hand, could barely get your own friends to listen to your own words. How are you ever going to get on the level of all the amazing doctors around you?

“She saved you there,” Doctor Cullen comments, leafing through Hanna’s charts as he walks you into an empty elevator to the operating floor. Oops, it’s just your luck that he noticed your lack of attention during the pre-op. “It’s unlike you to be distracted. Penny for your thoughts?”

The elevator doors shut, and he looks up from the chart, his eyes falling onto yours. He has that twinkle in his eyes again – the one that brings warmth to your cheeks and could make anyone weak in their knees. You know it’s silly, but a single look from him could make you spill any of your deepest and darkest secrets, yet a part of you also knows that he would keep it. You’re not naïve – you know it’s dangerous to put so much faith into a man you only met this week – but there’s something about him that told your instincts to trust him from the very beginning.

Call it intuition, or maybe it’s just plain stupidity, but you sure as hell aren’t going to tell him about how you got distracted because of his pretty face.

You hesitate for a moment and let out a sigh. “How do you do it?” He quirks a brow, momentarily perplexed, and you attempt to find the right words. “How do you make all of this look so easy? How do you know what the right thing to say is? Or trust that what you’re doing is even right? How did you know if this was all meant for you? This is really dumb, but it seems like everyone here was born for this job, and then there’s... me.”

There’s a slight sense of dread starting to form in your stomach. You’re unsure if what you asked even made any sort of sense and wonder if you gave too much away. Giving any reason to second guess your abilities is like digging your own grave when it comes to this career. Expressing uncertainty is one of the biggest taboos of the cutthroat world that is pre-med because schools would not accept students that aren’t absolutely, totally, and completely sure about this path.

You’ve wanted this for so long, yet there’s still a part of you that doubts if you would be enough.

Rather than going straight to gowning and scrubbing in for the surgery, Doctor Cullen grabs your hand and leads you down to an abandoned hallway, only letting go once the two of you are hidden in an alcove away from any prying ears or eyes.

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for surgery?”

“We have a few minutes to spare. Y/N, please know that I understand how you feel,” he says softly. “There was a time when I questioned my own abilities as well… whether my perseverance could overcome adversity. It took quite some time to reach where I am today.  However, without enduring those trials and tribulations, I would not be here. With time comes experience, and it is that experience that allows me to perform my job the best I can.”

His voice reminds you of a gentle breeze, rustling the leaves of a tree on a cool summer night when he continues speaking in hushed tones. It brings a blanket of reassurance, a sense that things would eventually be alright.

“I have said this before, but I see enormous potential in you. You still have a great deal of time to grow and develop your skills. It’s easy to get caught up in comparing yourself with others, especially given today’s societal standards, but I believe you are much more capable than you may think you are. Everyone’s journey is different and yours may not necessarily be as linear as you would prefer. In due time though, I have faith that you will succeed.”

What he says is exactly what you needed to hear.

The swell of tears pricks at your eyes and start blurring your vision, but you blink them away quickly, fighting the urge to wrap your arms around the doctor. 

“Thank you, Doctor Cullen.” Your voice is barely above a whisper.

“You’re very welcome. Now, I believe there’s a little girl waiting on us.” 

XXX

Tag List - Message me to be added or removed to either this series or the rest of my fics!

@jelly-fishy-babie @notahappytree @anxiousgoldengirl

[musicanddancingthroughlife]

Shklance - I Died

I feel like I basically dropped off the face of the planet, and for that I apologize. I have no excuses, except stress and mental health have been a huge problem lately and I’ve just been trying to find balance in my life. I can’t promise anything in the near future, with holidays coming up, and I have finals in like 3 weeks, and then my husband and I are moving at the end of the year, and then my little sister’s wedding is a few weeks after so I’m helping with that, and basically my life is just a mess right now, but I am still working on stuff, comments are always welcome and really do help to get me motivated, and hopefully I can get back into the groove of writing daily and posting weekly!

This story is probs gonna be a part 1 of 2. Hopefully. As is, I wanted it to be a stand alone, but I’ve been drafting it for almost a month now and I just want to throw it at you guys. So know I’m working on a part 2, where they talk about the whole thing and you see everyone’s reactions to what happened. This was actually a request someone made of me on my Ao3 account, but I’ve always loved reading stories dealing with everyone finding out about Lance dying. Just never thought I could do it justice haha. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

---------------------------------------------------

Lance knew that this was going to be an emotional day for all of them, but seriously, this was a little overkill. He knew he shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.

Sure, it was the one-year anniversary of the day they all saved the universe, ended the war that had gone on for decades, blah blah blah, but getting up also meant that he was going to have to see everyone again.

Not that he wasn’t thrilled to see them! He and Hunk especially had been waiting for this day for months, and he couldn’t wait to see Pidge and Matt again, either. Last Lance had talked to them, they had been working on some seriously neat stuff. They were sure to be a lot of fun.

Hell, he had even been looking forward to seeing Allura again, even though things had never really been the same between them after Allura broke things off. Though, considering how hurt he was still feeling about their break up, it was probably a good thing she had canceled last minute. She’d said that she needed to focus on helping the universe heal. Lance had wanted to go with her, but she rejected him. He knew she was trying to be kind, telling him that he “deserved the time to rest” and that she “knew how much he’s been missing his home planet.” But really, all it had done was serve to remind him that he wasn’t actually necessary.

Not like Shiro and Keith were.

Allura hadn’t had any problems taking them with her, even though everyone else (even Keith) and agreed that if anyone deserved the down time, it was Shiro. Especially since Shiro had seemed a little weary when he accepted the invitation from Allura. Personally, Lance believed the only reason he agreed to go was because he knew that Keith wouldn’t be happy staying in one place anymore, and of course, there was no way they were going to allow themselves to be separated again, not after everything that had happened…

And Lance was even looking forward to seeing Keith and Shiro, since he had probably missed them the most. But he also knew that it was going to be hard. It was always hard seeing them together, but knowing that they’ve been doing so much good out in the universe, that they’ve gotten to see so much more of those worlds than he had… That was going to be hard.

Not to mention Lance still hadn’t managed to shake the crushes he’d had on them for so long now.

Or the fact that while everyone else was off changing the universe, traveling the galaxies, creating newer and better technology and inventions, Lance had done nothing? Okay, so farming wasn’t nothing. And no one could deny that Earth needed some TLC after the trauma of the war had nearly destroyed it. But as much as he enjoyed the simple hard work involved, that didn’t mean he didn’t understand it was stupid. It was pathetic. His friends were still fighting, in their own ways, and Lance felt as if he had simply given up. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted to spend his time doing, what felt most worthy of his time and attention, and so he had allowed himself to fall back on something easy.

And he wasn’t sure that he could face his friends while knowing the truth about himself, that he was a coward and had no mission or goals in life.

******

So, maybe Lance was a bit of a drama queen, because things had actually been going better than he expected. Everyone looked good, older and more experienced. Hunk had even grown out some facial hair, though it was a little sparse coming in. Lance knew that wouldn’t be the case for very long. The most shocking was Allura’s news about expecting a child (Keith and Shiro had passed it on in her absence). That hurt way more than Lance thought had a right to, but he tried hard to suppress that pain until he could process it in private. Possibly while crying over a tub of ice cream.

And as far as their actual dinner and celebration went, well… it really had been inevitable that their discussion would become heavier. And, as usual, Lance couldn’t keep his own mouth shut.

“We had some good times, though, right?” Lance laughed easily, trying to direct the conversation back to something lighter, something easier (at this point he’d had a couple decades to cement his masks, and he was good at pretending like nothing was wrong). “I mean, we might have been injured, and tortured—”

“Lance,” Hunk warned. He darted a quick, concerned look to Keith and Shiro, but thankfully neither of them looked too worried. Instead, they were staring at Lance with such sappy looks Hunk was irritated Lance wasn’t paying enough attention to notice on his own. A shared glance with Pidge told him that at least he wasn’t alone in his annoyance.

Lance continued thoughtlessly, “and I mean, maybe a couple of us died, but hey! In the end, it all turned out okay, and look at everyone, living their best lives!” (Lance was firmly ignoring the fact that he had spent most of his free time leading up to today pouting in bed. No one else knew, and therefore it didn’t count.)

Pidge opened her mouth, but Shiro spoke first. His brows were furrowed, and his nose had scrunched up a little. Lance wanted to melt at the cuteness of it. “Did someone else die? I thought I was the only one. Who else died?”

Lance’s jaw snapped shut. He couldn’t remember if it had even been brought up or not… It had to have, right? There’s no way his friends – his team – had just gone on for this long without knowing! He thought they were just ignoring it! Things had been crazy, and they’d never really gotten a chance to slow down and breathe, let alone discuss everything that had happened. And that was fine! That was to be expected! But now he was supposed to believe they just didn’t know??? Did that mean they didn’t care? That they didn’t notice all the nightmares that had become the norm after his death? The way he was jumpier for months after that battle? And if that were the case, then was it even worth bringing up now, so long after it had happened?

Lance’s face was burning, the warm flush traveling up to the tips of his ears, and possibly all the way down his neck. He could feel his eyes welling up, but he brushed it away, pretending his face palm in order to hide the movement. He glanced at his friends, unsurprised to find Hunk staring at him intently. Pidge was muttering to herself, obviously trying to determine what had happened on her own. Lance couldn’t even bear to drag his gaze to Keith or Shiro.

He tried to get out of answering Keith.

“Oops haha, must’ve miscounted, I meant to say that one of us had died,” Lance laughed again but unlike earlier, this one was decidedly uncomfortable. “Because. Obviously. One of us… did. Sorry, Shiro. But like, you died. That happened. And it was weird and we got a weird clone out of the deal, which was weird – did I say that already? – and like he wasn’t a great dude, so I’m glad you didn’t stay dead, you know? You’re much nicer than that clone was, he was kind of a jerk. No offense, Shiro. I mean, not that you’re the clone or anything, cause you’re Shiro, and that was Not-Shiro—”

Oh dear God why wouldn’t they shut him up? Lance was so busy panicking about what he was saying that he didn’t notice Shiro and Keith slowly standing, approaching him from each side. But Hunk and Pidge could almost see the concern rising off them.

“But he was mean, and he yelled at us a lot. Although I guess he really spent most of his time yelling at me, which really, makes sense, but again, not something you would’ve done, Shiro, so I’m glad you didn’t stay dead or anything, because Not-Shiro was a terrible replacement and—”

“Shiro yelled at you?” Keith had come close enough that he could lay a warm, gentle hand on Lance’s shoulder. Lance almost flinched at the contact, it had been so long since someone had touched him like that. Sure, he saw his family way more often than he had while they were fighting in space, but, come on. They were fighting in space. He never saw them back then! Anything was an improvement over that! Anyway, the point was, he knew he was lonely. He ignored it. It didn’t matter. His friends were happy, his family was safe.

“Weren’t you listening when I said it was Not-Shiro?” was all Lance could think to say. Keith rolled his eyes.

“Why did he yell at you?” Shiro asked. Lance shrugged.

“Lance had some good advice to share. Though honestly, I’m thinking that Lance’s plan just wouldn’t have suited the clone’s purposes and he wanted to make sure that Lance would stop pushing. So he yelled, knowing that would be enough to shut Lance down,” Hunk said. He shot Lance an apologetic look as he did so. Smart, because Lance was Not Happy with him. Now wasn’t the time to share petty hurts!

“Personally, I believe it was because if anyone was going to find out he wasn’t really Shiro, it would’ve been you,” Pidge shrugged. And really, et tu, Pidge? This wasn’t fair at all. Not to mention, now Lance could feel the now-familiar guilt from knowing he hadn’t been able to tell.

And that was what finally had Lance speaking up. “Oh come on, guys, that’s not even the worst any of us suffered out there! Lotor joined the team! I died! Shiro died! Keith left! We had bigger things to deal with!”

There was a brief silence following this, long enough for Lance to squeeze his eyes shut and briefly mutter “Fuck” to himself, and then—

“What do you mean, you died?”

Lance’s ability to make things worse every time he opens his mouth really should be considered a wonder of the world.

He opened his eyes hesitantly to find that everyone was watching him intently. Tears were welling in Hunk’s eyes, and Lance knew that if he paid too much attention to his friend, then he would break almost instantly. He avoided looking in that direction, lips pursed shut, determined to stay quiet now. But they were just as determined to make him talk.

“Lance, please, what happened?” and since when the hell does Pidge beg? That’s just wrong. But effective, because that wrongness made Lance jerk his head up, eyes accidentally locking with Shiro.

He looked so sad…

“It really wasn’t a huge deal, I was just saying that there was a lot happening. It was pretty much impossible for all of us to keep up with each other, what with Lotor and Allura, and Keith disappearing then coming back, and the search for Shiro… and Hunk, Pidge, you guys had a great team thing going on there. That was a lot of fun! And then remember Coran had us playing Monsters and Mana? Good times!”

“You played what?” Keith asked, confused. Then he shook his head. “Stop distracting us, Lance. Answer the questions.”

“Um. What questions?”

Keith’s face hardened, eyes doing that dangerous flinty thing that Lance had always loved to see when he got mad. But before he could say anything, Lance’s phone went off. He really did try to hide the relief on his face as he stood, but the way Shiro set his jaw made him think he was not successful.

Before Lance could answer the call, he felt his phone plucked from his fingers. He lunged for it, and Keith slipped it into his own back pocket, out of Lance’s reach. Even worse, his lunge for it brought their faces way too close. Lance jerked back, face flaming a bright red, but he felt himself crash back into Shiro’s firm, solid chest. He started to stammer apologies, but Keith’s hands settled on Lance’s shoulders, pulling him away, and then he and Shiro pushed him back down into his chair. As Shiro moved to kneel next to Lance’s chair, Keith held him there, grounding and sure. He leaned down, putting his mouth close to Lance’s ear and then murmured “Please. We need to know. We’re horrible friends for not already knowing, but we’re asking now and we need you to tell us. Let us help.” And Shiro gripped Lance’s arm, thumb smoothing against his darker skin, making it harder and harder for Lance to want to move.

Lance knew that they were blowing this out of proportion. But he still felt touched. He’d thought they were just ignoring his death because other things were happening at the same time, but maybe that wasn’t really the case. Maybe they truly hadn’t known. Maybe Allura had never said anything, and Lance, expecting Allura to say something, hadn’t said anything either, and so maybe they just didn’t know. Maybe sharing it now would be okay.

[wrenhyperfixates]

Full Disclosure

Pairing: Loki x reader Summary: Thor has always been supportive of his brother’s love life, but Loki won’t tell him that he’s dating you. When Thor won’t stop setting him up on dates, Loki has to move past his fears and confess. Warnings: just a fluff-bomb A/N: Thank you for requesting, my lovely nonny! This is longer than a typical imagine might be because I had so much fun with it (in fact it’s really more of a oneshot, oops). If you wanted something a little shorter, I already had a similar incorrect quote in my drafts that I’ll be posting for you later in the week :)

Disclaimer: Gif not mine 

Sometimes it was hard to have a brother so dense. There were plenty of times during their youth when Loki would try to discuss lessons or ladies with Thor, but never seemed to make any sort of breakthrough. It was only when Loki started dating you that he was glad for it, as it made hiding the blooming relationship much easier. That is, until Thor kept trying to set him up on dates.

“I believe I might shove my brother off a cliff, darling,” Loki whined one afternoon, dramatically flopping on your bed.

“Aww. What did he do now?” you inquired after giving him a small peck on the lips.

“He arranged another date for me, and I was left with the arduous task of cancelling. It is a wonder how he has not noticed how absolutely smitten I am with you, my love.”

He nuzzled into your neck as you cuddled him, breathing in your comforting scent. You bent your head down to place a kiss on the adorable little crinkle between his brows. He relaxed a bit, but you could tell he was still stressed.

“Well, we could always tell him about us,” you suggested as Loki’s frown reappeared. “I mean, almost everyone else on the team figured it out. So I don’t really see why we shouldn’t tell Thor.”

Loki pondered this for a moment. True, the other Avengers were aware of your relationship, save for Steve and Bucky, who were too oblivious to even realize their own feelings for each other. Still, it was different with Thor, his brother, his only family left. He knew how fond of you Thor was, but if he were to oppose to the two of you dating, he had no idea what he’d do.

“My brother can be overbearing. I am not certain that telling him is the best option at present.”

“Ok. If you’re sure that’s all, then we’ll wait.”

He whispered a thank you into your hair as you shifted positions so that now he was spooning you. The whole reason you’d decided to keep the fact you were dating a secret in the first place was to be able to enjoy quiet moments like this. Loki has been worried that his teammates would disapprove and try to split you up. Surprisingly, they were supportive, even if they did engage in some subtle teasing. Though, their knowledge of your relationship made what happened at dinner the next night all the more embarrassing.

You and Loki kept secretly holding hands under the table, earning you some smirks from your teammates who happened to notice. Feeling self-conscious, you broke apart but left your legs touching ever so slightly, just enough to feel the warmth radiating off each other. You must have laughed a little too loudly at something Loki said because, suddenly, Thor got what he thought to be a novel idea.

“You know,” he said, pointing at you and Loki, “I believe you two would make a really cute couple.” As if that weren’t bad enough, he continued in a stage whisper, “You should really ask them out, Loki.”

The God of Mischief turned bright red as you started fidgeting in your seat. Everyone else made eye contact with each other before giving in to a bout of laughter. Thor demanded to know what was so funny, but no one could get any words out. When Tony laughed so hard he fell out of his seat, Loki decided that he’d had enough.

“Brother,” he shouted over the din. “I-well, we have something to tell you.”

“What is it?” he shouted back, still not catching on.

“Maybe we should do this somewhere quieter,” you suggested after a small sigh.

The three of you made your way out of the noisy dining room, and Loki started wringing his hands as both his lover and brother looked at him expectantly. This was his moment to finally get the truth out there. Unfortunately, his hands seemed to have a mind of their own and lashed out with a dagger, striking Thor.

“Surprise attack!”

“Loki!” you bellowed, upset with your boyfriend.

“Do not worry, my friend. This is a normal occurrence,” Thor assured you as Loki grabbed your hand and whisked you away.

Once behind closed doors, you fixed him with a withering glare. He knew that he was being ridiculous, especially now that Thor has shown he would be fine with you two dating. But Loki realized something else was stopping from sharing his joy with his brother. If he told Thor, it would be like bridging his old life and his new one. Granted, you already knew of his past misdeeds, but what if there was something else he hasn’t told you? Something long forgotten in his memory that Thor lets slip? In the end, his reluctance all boiled down to a fear of losing you.

“I know, I know. That was not the best route to choose. I just didn’t think it was the right time to say anything,” he lied.

“Why can’t you just be honest with me, Loki?” you pleaded as tears formed in your eyes. “It’s obvious that you’re embarrassed of me or something. The least you could do is tell the truth about it.”

“Oh, my darling,” he cooed, wiping a plump drop that had fallen and made a glistening track halfway down your cheek. “Please understand that my inability to tell my brother of us has nothing to do with you. You are the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me.”

“Then what is it?”

“I fear that you may come to resent me if you hear any more of my past.”

“Loki,” you said, voice heavy with emotion. “Look at me. I know that you’ve done some... questionable things before. But I know you now, and that’s what I care about. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, but you work harder than anyone I know to make up for it. It’s one of the many reasons that I love you.”

He looked at you with eyes full of gratitude before hugging you close. “I love you too, dearest. Never doubt that.”

The air relaxed around Loki and his beloved as a quiet contemplation settled in. He slowly rocked the two of you back and forth, trying to plan his next move. If there was one thing he didn’t like, it was not knowing what to do next. But he was sure that, with you beside him, he could figure it out.

“Ok,” you said after sucking in a long breath. “We’ll wait then. As long as you need.”

“No,” Loki interjected, coming to a conclusion as you spoke. “I want to tell him now. Well, maybe not right at this moment. But tomorrow for certain.”

After checking that he was sure of this decision, you agreed to have lunch with Thor where you would tell him the news. Loki’s nerves were at an all-time high by noon the next day. He helped you set the table to try to calm them, but nothing seemed to cull his worries.  You came up behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist, pressing kisses to the tense spots between his shoulder blades.

“Hey, it’s going to be alright. I promise,” you reassured him, hoping to relieve some of the pressure he was feeling.

He relaxed in your embrace for a second before you broke away upon hearing Thor’s heavy footsteps approaching. Loki tweaked the utensils once more, and you pressed a quick kiss to his knuckles in a final act of comfort. It also helped some that Thor seemed to be in an even more jovial mood than usual. Which, of course, was saying something as the god was relentlessly optimistic.

Sitting down, he greeted you both by name and told you everything smelled delicious. The God of Thunder bit his lip to hold back a smile, but you and Loki could see it tugging its way onto his face. The two of you shared a look, attempting to figure out what exactly was the cause of such joy for the older Odinson boy.

“Um, Thor?” you said. “Is there something you wanted to share with us?”

“No. Is there something you want to share with me?”

Another look passed between you and Loki. Suddenly, Loki realized that his brother must know the news you were about to share. It figures that after all this time, he worked it out moments before he was about to come clean.

“You have figured it out,” Loki sighed, “haven’t you?”

Thor nodded eagerly and came around the table to hug his brother and friend, overjoyed that they were dating. He loosened his grip around you upon hearing your gasping voice telling him he was hugging too tight, a terrible habit of his.

“But when did you figure it out?” you questioned, puzzling over the timeline of events.

“I have known for months, of course.” He tried to stick to this story, but the skeptical looks from both you and his brother made him abandon his position. “I saw you two being all cuddly just before I came in,” he conceded with slumped shoulders.

All three of you began to laugh, and Loki was surprised by how relieved he felt at not having to actually confess. The rest of the lunch went swimmingly, and the God of Mischief relaxed further, happy to have both his brother and beloved in such high spirits. Unfortunately, his own sunk when Thor offered to tell a story about him. It seemed like his worst fears were about to come true.

“One time when we were children,” Thor began with a wistful look in his eye, “Loki tried to use some of his magic and accidentally turned himself into a cat. He came to my room and pestered me until I brought him to mother. Remember that, brother?”

“Indeed, I do,” Loki said with a nostalgic laugh, feeling relieved that was all Thor shared. “It was one of the first spells I ever tried. I am afraid that I sorely botched it. I was coughing hair balls for weeks.”

“So that’s why you won’t let me get a kitten!” you added with a laugh of your own.

The brothers went back and forth telling embarrassing stories about the other. You refused to share any of your awkward childhood moments, and your companions vowed to get some out of you one day. All in all, Loki had a great time. He squeezed your hand in thanks under the table. With shining eyes he observed you and Thor laughing. He realized that, for the first time in his life, he had nothing to worry about. After all, he’d been wrong when he’d thought Thor was the only family he had left. Now you were his family, too. And nothing could possibly take away you or the love you shared.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Weeping Statue | Feeding Habits Update #6 & let’s chat about quitting writing

Hello! Are we back for another Feeding Habits update (finally)?? Let’s chat chapter 7, Weeping Statue.

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Can we talk about struggle? Because this chapter was IT. I believe I started it in late July and finished it earlier this month. I’ve taken my time with chapters before, but this was next level--the amounts of changes I went through in one chapter was astronomical, and reminded me of drafting chapter three earlier in the summer. I went through so many stages writing this chapter: from enjoying it, to feeling no joy from writing at all, to nearly quitting this book altogether!

Scene A:

Harrison and his mother Suzanna simultaneously avoid each other over breakfast after he failed to return home the night previous

She lowkey calls him out (calling out his denial of missing Lonan)

Scene B:

Harrison goes to a farmhouse owned by Theodore Harvey, a friend of his mother’s, to drop off the rescued litter of kittens from chapter 6. He realizes he is missing one kitten and concludes Reeve has stolen one after dinner the night previous.

Scene C:

Harvey invites Harrison inside for coffee where he admits his coffee machine is broken.

Harrison fixes the coffee machine, and is hired by Harvey to flip the rest of the farmhouse as he and his wife are moving.

Scene D:

On his way home, Harrison stops at a gas station where he buys a bouquet of tulips for his mother, a dog collar for the puppy he found in the kitten litter, a pack of gum, pastries, and sunscreen before heading to a beach.

At the onset of a lightning storm, Harrison swims in the ocean and has an epiphany--he decides to accept his miserable life (a development!)

Scene E:

After the beach ordeal, Harrison returns to his apartment ready to accept the plainness of his daily life when an old ghost from his past (his! ex!) Lonan appears to be having dinner with Suzanna

This chapter brought so many things. A) many... breakdowns lol (I cried a lot!), B) many false epiphanies that wound me back into ruts, C) a desire to quit this series that was just as terrifying as it sounds and D) an ideology I never would’ve gotten on my own. Just have to thank my sister Sarah for telling me a few weeks ago after I insisted that I knew what needed to logically happen but couldn’t write it no matter how hard I tried. She said: “It’s not about what works, it’s about what you want” << literally changed my philosophy on writing, even as someone who tries their best to advocate for care and enjoyment in writing. Not sure if it’s because of the timing when she said this, but I’d probably never had made it out of the rut without having this said to me.

I was *not* planning at all to have my boys reunite so soon in the book. Technically, it is not very soon and we are almost done the book, but for some reason, I really didn’t think it would work so early because I felt Harrison’s POV was so undeveloped already (I still think it is). HOWEVER, the fact of the matter is: it was not working at all. I knew exactly what I needed to do to get to point A to Z but the thing about writing is, it is not formulaic! I tried to make fit what I thought worked, but as time progressed and I immensely struggled, less and less did I want what worked. Writing was miserable and that’s not what I want writing to be for me. So I took Sarah’s advice, and I did what would make me happy, and that was, and has always been, seeing my boys interact.

Now that I’ve finished this chapter, I’m not sure if I made the right decision! I have yet to write the boys interacting so I don’t know if it will work, but what I liked about this method is that it freed me from this constriction I’d written myself into and opened a new avenue to do something that DOESN’T “work” for the story but that does work for me. To me, this project, this series, is more important to me than making something “work”. Sustaining my health and happiness (which were declining on the path I was on) is critical for me and my writing journey.

EDIT: by the time I’m editing this post, I have written the boys interacting and haha yep this was the right decision! Was doubting myself for a sec, added in a lil robbery, and now it’s all good (oops)

Excerpts:

I don’t have too many for you because this chapter does need an edit to “set” it in place (right now it feels like liquid Jello that has been in the fridge but is yet to set up). I know it needs one more scene but I cannot :) write :) what :) it :) needs :) no matter how hard I have tried, and so I am giving that section of the story a break instead of over-kneading it and toughening up the dough unnecessarily.

Here is part of the opening scene! There are things I don’t like about this but I am trying not to self-hate, so !!!

The next morning, Harrison gets up at dawn to drop the kittens off at the farm, and Suzanna makes coffee for one. This is unusual for both—Harrison rarely leaves the apartment, and Suzanna always makes coffee for two. In his room, Harrison combs his hair and twists his earring, its blue gem pearling in dribbles of sunlight. In the kitchen, Suzanna stirs coffee like it’s wronged her. Harrison dabs cologne onto his throat and blinks off his hangover. Suzanna flecks her spoon onto the tabletop so it leaves an egg of amber on the surface.

When he approaches the kitchen, Harrison pretends he does not see his mother and his mother pretends she does not see him. They move like this, repelled, one moving left, the other moving right, one opening the top cupboard, the other opening the bottom.

Harrison stops at a convenience store and buys a hodge-podge of things (also the beach scene which yes mirrors the last scene in Lonan’s POV hehe I indulge myself):

He picks up the best bouquet of fuchsia tulips, a collar for the dog he left in his bedroom even though it’ll be weeks until she’s big enough to fit in it, a pack of spearmint gum he doesn’t need, a package of pastries, and a tube of sunscreen—SPF 30. He almost drops every item at least once on his way up to the register, and definitely drops them when his receipt is spitting from the machine and the store clerk says she likes his earring—is it vintage—and he nearly vomits in the parking lot, trained against the hood of the taxi—is it even his taxi—the plastic bag teetering from his wrist, rain coiling against his cheek, the air so humid, his clothes so heavy, it is no wonder the next place he ends up is the beach.

It is never smart to swim during a storm. If he thinks hard enough, his mother’s voice warns him to keep from the shore, stand behind the yellow line, stay safe, stay where you are, don’t run under a tree, and even more, don’t run into the water. He does everything wrong in an even worse order—dollops sunscreen into his palm before opening the pastry so his teeth freckles with zinc, chews the gum and the pastry at the same time so his tongue becomes a slime of crumbs, rests the tulips too close to the shoreline so they wilt under a wave, misplaces the dog collar in his own left hand, and dives into the water fully-clothed.

Harrison getting very angsty about Lonan’s future (which he’s predicted completely wrong haha):

He will die alone. Reeve will not think of him again and he will deserve that. Somewhere in the city with the missing kitten, drinking bottles of holy water because there is no drink more fitting for a woman so sacred. His mother will miss him only briefly, and then return to her daily life of no longer needing to clean up after him. Maybe she’ll find the tulips. Put them on display until they wither, then use their carcasses as fertilizer. Save electricity. Use the coffee machine less. Downsize to a smaller, cheaper, prettier apartment with arched walkways and stained-glass windows. Harvey will think he is a fluke who missed his first day of work and will never think of him again. The dog isn’t old enough to recognize him. Suzanna will give her the collar. And Lonan will continue his life in Las Vegas, tottering after Eliza, refilling her wine, getting neon at house parties, watching French silent films without captions because he’s probably learned another language, cut his hair, gotten a tattoo, learned how to cross-stitch, bought life insurance, a yacht, a coastal summer home, learned how to play the mandolin, perfected his lamb sous vide. He’s probably married. Him and Eliza family-planning. He’ll expand a future, and Harrison will do the opposite. There is something freeing in being unmissed.

Lightning snaps across the sky like a wishbone, sounds like the prick of tambourines from under the water. Everything turns violet—the clouds, his skin, the waves. Tomorrow will be a better day, as he sinks lower into the current, tomorrow will be a better day, as the light fades and dissolves into blackness, tomorrow will be a better day, as seaweed wraps his throat, as the freezing water impales his ribs, as he burrows under and simultaneously, rises up.

This next part comes right after!

In the stomach of a tidal wave, the sky is so much bluer. An unrolling of cyan like fractals of a baked marble. There is so little to remember. No grocery lists, no fresh turmeric, no shift of portabella mushrooms. No outstanding to-dos—no kibble to by, no resume to update. Harrison folds in blue and lets it gorge his eardrums. He gives his body to that wide chasm of water and breaststrokes not into a second life, but a third.

Here is the last bit:

He buzzes back into the apartment at 3:00AM, tracking in saltwater and SPF, puff-pastry gummed to his palm, a dog collar wound around his ring finger, a sheath of tulips shedding into the elevator behind him.

He hits every floor button twice and is undisturbed when the elevator lurches and reopens in sixty-second intervals. A man rotating a jade cuff on his wrist gets on at the fourth stop and gets off at the sixth. A woman wearing a lynx cape gets on at the eighth stop, breaks up with two girlfriends, and gets off at the eleventh. Two children in coveralls tail in after she leaves and throw jacks at each other’s eyes until one of them bleeds, and by then, they are on the fifteenth floor and the children are leaving like they have not left behind accidental shell casings. On the sixteenth floor, a deer head chihuahua patters in with no owner and barks at the door chime the moment it releases and lets him out. A mother and daughter shell pistachios on the twentieth, a maintenance man introduces himself as David though his nametag says Maxwell on the twenty-second, a flock of teenage girls in whirl about a new way to blend oil pastel on the twenty-third. So it is no wonder by the twenty-fifth floor, Harrison misses his stop and becomes one of these people too—the man with zinc down his eyes like a weeping statue, juggling pastry and a dog collar and a seedy bouquet of tulips.

He tracks seawater in that hallway, parts of him scattering with the zinc, the petals, the crumbs. Like a way to get back home even though he hasn’t started at his destination, he moves through the labyrinth of halls, both starving and nauseated. Tomorrow he will rise at dawn and taxi to Brooklyn and hammer four nails into two pieces of plywood and repeat. He will feed his dog. Learn how to cook something that will impress his mother, something French that he can’t pronounce like brasillé or oeufs cocotte. Find liberation in the constrict of routine or at least pretend to. It will be good for him, the rising, the taxis, the hammers, the nails, the dog food, the cooking—it will all be good.

By the time he gets to their door, his fingers are oiled and dripping with sunscreen. Rising, taxis, hammers, nails, dog food, cooking. He nearly drops the house keys. Rising, taxis, hammers, nails, dog food, cooking. Tomorrow will be his arrival. Rising, taxis, hammers, nails, dog food, cooking. His beginning swelling as he turns the lock. Rising, taxis, hammers, nails, dog food, cooking. There is no other way out.

The apartment is dark when he tracks in. The scent of cinnamon steeping the air like Suzanna’s pulled a saucepan of papas off the stove. At first he doesn’t hear it, but he should, the voices leafing the kitchen like a flit of moths. He steps out of his shoes but never sets anything down, even after he passes the coffee table. Two plates ringing the centre, streaked with and caldeirada and bayleaf. A pitcher of lemonade sweating onto the glass. It is almost like he never left, like he and his mother shared dinner, sipped from each other’s cups, cleaned the tines of each other’s fishbones. And he almost believes it. He never went to the farm. The kittens are where he left them, just a few feet away, not in Brooklyn. He doesn’t have a job to tend to. He never fixed the coffee machine. He didn’t go to the convenience store. He is not slathered in sunscreen, not holding a dog collar or pastries or a bouquet of tulips. He never dove into the ocean like it was some port to asylum and didn’t emerge soaked and walking half-dead to his apartment because he never left. This reality is so easy to believe, he is unfazed by the voices and how they get louder when he reaches the kitchen, when one says “Were you shopping for the apocalypse?” and the other one chokes on its drink and apologizes for its rudeness and stares at him in daydream, those eyes like forget-me-nots, gas fires, seafoam, the wing of a starling, his drop earring.

Harrison is grateful he is soaking wet when he enters that kitchen and Suzanna and Lonan sit at the table sharing a box of petit fours. At least he has an excuse when he drops everything.

That’s it for this update! The tea starts HERE!

--Rachel

[delicatebluebirdruins]

Heartland s14 ep 1 take 2

tumblr was supposed to save my previous post to drafts so I could add to it (and did not do it which I did not realise until I looked at my notifications and someone had reblogged it in other words OOPS sorry)

to repeat myself anyone criticising Graham for his decision to leave and the timing of it will be blocked, and I wish Graham himself all the best for his future projects

under a read more because spoilers, a rant with some swearing and lots of rambling so it got long

so first I’m going to go off topic a little bit and rant because this hurt a lot when it happened. Last September I woke up one morning to the news that my favourite character (Bellamy) from the numbers show was shot and killed by my other favourite character (Clarke) for the most stupidest reason ever (she killed Bellamy over a sketchbook which he wanted to give to the bad guys... to protect her daughter... AND THEN SHE JUST BOUNCED AND LEFT THE SKETCHBOOK THAT MIGHT HAVE ENDANGERED HER DAUGHTER ON THE FLOOR NEXT TO THE BAD GUYS THAT WERE STILL LIVING). So i was still dealing with the death of my favourite character and the subsequent dragging through the dirt of both Bellamy he died alone thinking everyone hated him. No one really mourned him, he was all but forgotten except for a few throwaway comments that ‘he was right’. No one felt regret about not believing him. No one spoke up and said they wished he could have been here on the beach at the end. He was erased from the narrative and a minor character who died in S3 and whose story had already been wrapped up overshadowed him (and almost everything else that happened in the already shitty finale*- like seriously all of humanity was forced to join a universal consciousness and you don’t have to know a lot about science fiction to know it is really bad). (and everyone thought he was dead and his gf was ready to go on a killing spree about it for revenge but when they found he was actually dead they all just shrugged it off and said he died the moment he joined the bad guys when they were standing in the presence of another bad guy who was on that side for a lot longer and was only a recent turn coat) and Clarke who was the hero of this show was turned into cause of all of humanities sins and not a hero who tried (and then gets rewarded by being let to stay with her “friends” on a beach unable to bear children because aliens turned up as a master race and killed all of humanity and those that were left were made barren? yes in the last ever episode of a seven season show we got introduced to aliens- honestly putting all I know of season 7 into words like this still makes no sense)

*link to the youtube video The 100 Finale... May We Never Meet Again: Talis the person who made the video went off you know if you are morbidly curious

Bellamy was one of my favourite characters and he was done hella dirty. And Ty was another and he got given multiple love letters in just one episode and probably more to come as season 14 progresses. (I laughed as yesterday a youtuber called Hannah King made a video about the first episode of season 14 and I read the comments one of which saying that Ty was done dirty by the writers and I just??? I was hella tempted to put that rant above this part in a response to that comment good lord)

so onto Ty and Heartland

I watched the entire of season 13 in a day and cried a little when Ty and Amy got shot... and it hurt but was also very cathartic to watch because the worry and care was brought to the forefront like Ty not even realising he was shot and his panic was a very real moment

so when fandom started speculating about Ty’s death my only thought was if he did die he would do it with a complication with the gunshot wound and I was right. But it didn’t hurt as much to think about because I trust the writers even if they have made some missteps in past seasons. However, because of Bell and the faith I had in the writers back then (I trusted the writers until I remembered after the death because main character hater was promoted to head writer) I was also worried because of that.... Heartland is essentially the only ongoing show that I’m still actively watching and not just searching for spoilers.

I rewatched the first episode of season 14 twice (will probably do so again maybe)

Ty’s death was handled well, the blurring of the doctor delivering the news and Amy mentioning that the funeral was a blur (I kind of hope we get a flashback)

So it goes without saying the timing of Graham leaving and Ty dying is hard because of Covid-19 and the loss (all forms like normal routines, lives and you know what i mean I hope) that comes with it.

Because of everything in real life and the real life grief a lot of people have been going through, one of the many parts during the episode that made me tear up and cry a little was Grandpa Jack’s and Amy’s heart to heart in the fishing cabin. It was a very real moment the mentioning of how difficult Grandma Lyndy’s death was for death despite it being expected and how unexpected Ty’s was. And Jack saying “there is no right way to grieve” is possibly the most important part of it as there is no right way, and grief is not linear its not a straight line it will be very hard to deal with for a long while.

“keep me in your heart“ was a very strong start and I can’t wait to see what comes next (I hope at some point we see some old friends and Scott turn up and react to Ty’s death). And I am so glad that the cast and crew are talking about it in videos as a message to fans

in the end Ty was loved completely by the family and he loved them the same. the rest is confetti

[clevercatchphrase]

2019 year in review

So… The 2010’s are almost over. Huh. What a decade it’s been. Hard to comprehend how much has changed in 10 years. I can barely believe that I was in high school at the beginning of this decade, and now I’m a college graduate with 2 degrees who’s been working at the same job for the last 3 years. But trying to summarize the past 10 years in a single post is a good way to give myself an existential crisis, so let’s not do that! Instead, let’s just focus on 2019 because there has been more than enough shit that’s happened to me in this year to talk about.

PART 1 OF 2: 2019 AND 2020 GOALS AND RESOLUTIONS

Huh, looking back through my archives, I apparently didn’t make a tumblr post about my goals this year. I definitely had some, though. Lemme list ‘em off real quick, and then we’ll go through them point by point.

1)      Pay off all my student loans 2)      Finish some song comics 3)      Make art for my Redbubble account 4)      Finish the first rough draft/script of a game I wanted to make 5)      Practice ASL 6)      Sew some stuffed animals 7)      Finish some fan fictions 8)      Work on Ghost Switch 9)      AMVs 10)   Do some original writing 11)   Make illustrations for my fan fictions

Okay, first off, the student loans. I was actually SO CLOSE to successfully completing this one bUT THEN MY CAR HAD TO BE A WHINEY PISS BABY AND HAVE ITS ALTERNATOR DIE ON ME WHILE I WAS ON THE HIGHWAY AND THEN A BLOW OUT THREE WEEKS LATER.

GOD, if I had to summarize this year in two words, for me it would be “Car troubles”. I swear I spent more on auto repair in the first third of this year than I ever have just freakin’ OWNING a car. All four of my tires had to be replaced, my alternator failed and my car literally just SHUT OFF while I was driving, and I was barely able to coast into a gas station. Both my front breaks and rear breaks were worn down the metal and I only learned this when my car was barely able to stop after I had to slam the petal down full force!  I went in for an oil change, and they found some problems and then I didn’t get my car back for three days! I don’t even like owning a car! I hate driving! I hate my country’s refusal to provide universal, free public transportation! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!

Oh-kay… number 2. Finish some song comics. I didn’t finish any. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t work on them. I have made tiny progress, but that’s certainly better than no progress. One of these song comics I hope to be realizes is going to be a collab with one of my friends. It’ll be a long-time coming as it’s pretty low priority for the both of us, but if anyone else out there was disappointed with KH3’s ending, we’re gonna have ya’ covered… With SONG!

3. Make some redbubble art. I actually did this one! Not in the way I expected, but I added (technically) 3 new designs to my redbubble in the middle of the year. If you like butterflies and dragons, I got some product for you~!

Number 4, finish a script for a game I want to make. I… thought about this. I thought about this a lot, but I never put pen to paper, so… oops. It almost happened! I debated making this my main writing project for NaNoWriMo this year, but ended up having more inspiration for another story. Maybe next year? (god, I hope not. I don’t want to wait a full year just to write something)

Number 5, practice ASL. I just straight up didn’t do this and I only have myself to blame. Still keepin’ up that Danish Duolingo streak, though. 4 years going strong and not a day missed yet.

Number 6, sew some stuffed animals. Again, another one I just straight up didn’t do, but I have an excuse of trying to save money while my car crashed and burned in every other sense except literal this year. Hopefully 2020 will be different. I’ll definitely be able to pay off this last loan within the first half of 2020, and then I can start saving for whatever I want to buy.

Finish some fan fictions was number 7, and I did this! Well, I only finished, 1, but it was a story I’ve been working on for over 3 years, and it came out to over 200 THOUSAND words long, which is the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I’m quite proud of myself. Now that the big story is out of the way, and I’ve gotten into a good rhythm of working on Ghost Switch, maybe I can squeeze in some short writing sessions more frequently. (either that, or just wait for my car to break down again and then go on a writing spree in a pepboys. The lord and the fan fic discord know that’s solely why I finished my other fic this year)

Speaking of Ghost Switch, working on it was a goal this year too, and I did that! I kept it up all year and took a vacation in November and it was wonderful. While the major plot points have been in place since before I started drawing, I still need to script each arc beyond Snowdin, but hey, by the time we get there, it’ll be 2022 so I got time. (Note, don’t do this, kids. Script your stories and comics thoroughly before publishing. The road I’m on is paved with misery and pain and it will only end in tears unless I change lanes soon)

Number 9, amvs. Do people make AMVs anymore? Idk… the last one I made was... Jesus, 5 years ago? (it was a gravity falls/fall out boy crossover, if you were curious) I’ve been wanting to do 2 more for just as long, but in order for me to do that, I’d have to spend time re-watching the shows to find the footage, and then actually edit them together, and I just don’t…. feel like it. Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

10; do some original writing. I did this! For nanowrimo! I wrote the first draft of some original fiction I’ve been planning for a year or two now and it completely sucks! But it’s on paper now and I’m happy. Will I revise and edit it? Sure, but not for a while. I want to let it sit and forget about it and look at it with new eyes months from now so I can be sure I can make it better when time comes to rewrite.

11, make illustrations for my fan fics. Now that You Monster is done, I want to go back and add pictures to it. I didn’t do any this year, but I did keep a list of scenes I wanted to draw, so I have plenty of ideas to do as warm up sketches next year~ I kinda want to stream them~

So, that was 11 goals, and I successfully fulfilled 4 of them! That’s! Not a very good ratio… QmQ So, goals for 2020. Some I’m gonna keep from this year, some I’m gonna drop and some I’m gonna add. In short I would like to,

1)      Finish paying off that last student loan 2)      Put more stuff on my redbubble 3)      Illustrate my own fan fics 4)      Sew at least one stuffed animal 5)      Make an enamel pin 6)      Read one new book a month 7)      Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic 8)      Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make 9)      Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch 10)   Boost my patreon

Most of these I think are pretty self-explanitory, but I’ll go into detail just a bit because I’m on a roll and typing my thoughts helps me feel less alone in the middle of the night when you’re super tired and you know you should probably go to sleep, but the toddler in you is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t wanna go to sleep just yet, but you can’t fight the progression of time either way.

Number 1- I should be able to reach this goal by the end of March. End of June at the absolute latest. Once that goal is met, my secret new year’s resolution will be unlocked as well!

Number 2- I want to put more art of my OCs on redbubble. These OCs are tied to the game I want to make. There’s already some art of them up there, but I want at least one piece for each character.

Number 3- Mostly for You Monster. Embrace the cardinal rule of fan fic and apply it to fan art. If you want to read about see art about certain ideas, scenarios, or what-ifs, you gotta make it yourself.

Number 4- I have 3 potential ideas to sew. One is definitely leagues easier than the other two and will probably be chosen if/when I have the time and materials.

Number 5- This year I got really, REALLY into the idea of making enamel pins. Unfortunately it’s a pretty big investment (like, $350 to make 100 pins you  might not even sell). If this happens, it’ll probably be towards the end of the year, and if I get enough interest. I’m currently torn between making an original enamel pin and one based off Undertale. We’ll just have to see where this goes.

Number 6- Back in 2018 when I paid off one of my many student loans, I rewarded myself by spending over 200 dollars in used books. All these books had a theme; they were focused on dragons because I have a problem. I have not yet read a single one of these books I have bought, and I would like to fix that. I have, like, 20 unread dragon books, and even if I only read 12 out of 20, I would consider that an amazing accomplishment and money well spent.

Number 7- I currently have about 8 different WIPs I could work on. (well, I don’t know if I can even call them wips. More like, a general idea and a title written down.) I want to build good writing habits, and if I can write just 200 words a day, hell, even 200 words a week and just one of my 8 stories done, I would consider this goal met.

Number 8- I’m torn between making my game in unity or ren’py. I know jack shit about both. Ren’py is more user friendly, but unity will allow me more customization. (Lol, can you guess what kind of game I want to make yet?)

Number  9- I really just want the full story to be done and written incase anything goes horribly terribly wrong in my life and I find myself unable to continue making ghost switch in comic form. Then at least I can finish the story by other means, you know?

Number 10- It always surprises me every month when I get that patreon email saying I got paid. Sure, I don’t even make double digits on it, but it still awes me enough to know that people out there like my work enough to throw me a tip. I can’t thank my patrons enough for supporting me and I hope to one day be in such a good place I can update my comic/song comics/writing frequently enough without need for goals or milestones. But until that magical day arrives, money is always a great incentive for anything, I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 ALRIGHT. PART 2 OF 2: SHIT THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN 2019

Cheesus crust what a year. This year started off great! Back in late January Kingdom Hearts 3 FINALLY released, and let me tell you a little story. Back in the summer of 2006 I was a 13 year old middle schooler with no way of making money other than by doing house hold chores at a rate of 25 cents a task. A few weeks ago, I had a sleep over at a friend’s house and they let me play this weird game called “Kingdom Hearts” and god, I was instantly hooked on it. That summer, I did over 800 chores, enough to earn myself 200$ and buy myself a playstation 2 (just in time for the ps3 to come out, gg me) The only games I had for the ps2 were KH1, 2, Re:CoM and Okami, and I beat them all… except Okami. Miffed that the PS3 wouldn’t allow for backwards compatibility, little 13-year-old me made a promise. I looked myself in the mirror and said “I will not buy the next playstation console until KH3 comes out, AND BOY that was probably a good choice for me to make with my level of gaming. I’m even less of a casual gamer than the average casual gamer, but I have been waiting 13 years for this piece of closure, and I even told my friends and family that “the day Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out is the day I will buy a playstation 4”. My dad apparently thought this was the funniest shit, because he literally took the day off from work that Friday to drive me on base to get the game and console (he thought it would be less crowded than a regular walmart, I suppose). I paid $400 on a ps4 pro while he bought me the game. Again, I have an impecible sense of timing seeing as the PS5 is now right on the horrizion, but just like before, I’m not buying a new console until the next KH game is released. See you in 2045, sony~. While I was at the gamestop on base, I also picked up Okami HD and The Last Guardian. For all of February and even early March, I took my time playing through KH3. And…! It was the best disappointment I’ve ever played. After a month away from gaming, I started The Last Guardian and finished it in a couple weeks. I love trico and would die for him, but trying to get 100% completion on that game is udder insanity. Okami, HD, however… again after a month break after finishing TLG, I started replaying Okami. I think I had only managed to get about halfway through the game before I just… stopped playing it on my ps2 version. I am currently SO CLOSE to getting a 100% on the ps4 version. In fact, I’ve beaten the game. I only (techinically) need 2 more trophies to be done; 1st, escape the water dragon without being eaten, 2nd, I need to beat that dumb stupid race with Kai, in order to get the last bead on my rosary, as well as the top dog trophy. I hate her so much. I hate this race so much. It’s awful and bad.

Flash forward to December! Earlier this month I was at Barnes and Noble, buying myself a planner for 2020. I exit the store and notice that there’s a gamestop across the street. For shits and giggles I go inside to look at their game selection, and I find KH 1.5 and 2.5. Now, my PS2 died a few years back (it just won’t read my discs anymore, I don’t know why) and I haven’t been able to replay any of my other kingdom hearts games since. If you had seen me the day I finished kingdom hearts 3, after the ending credits rolled, you would have heard me say “Man…. I wish I could play kingdom hearts 2 again”. AND NOW I CAN, ALONG WITH BBS which I had never even played yet, but knew the story of. I’ve restarted playing kh1, and I was so happy to hear that familiar music when I booted the game up for the first time. While at the game stop, I also picked up Rime and Tearaway, two games that had looked interesting to me. At the time of writing, I’ve finished Rime and am 25% done with tearaway. Rime was…. An interesting experience. I learned about it through Jacksepticeye’s channel a couple years back and thought the art style was enticing. For a super casual gamer like me, I found the puzzles just the right level of challenging and exploring was a blast! The music gave me VERY strong Princes Mononoke vibes, but the overall story left something to be desired. Overall I had fun, and enjoyed completing this game to 100%. Now for tearaway. Can I just say this game is super fucking adorable? I know the original was on the ps vita and the gameplay there was arguably more diverse and imaginative, but this game is just so fucking cute I don’t care?? ALSO, this game’s sound track is ABSOLUTELY incredible and I’ve only heard the first fourth of it! Listen to The Orchards, Pig Riding, and Gibbet Hill Pilgrimage for a taste of their wonderful beats and fantastic use of string and woodwinds! God, I’m so excited to get some more games in 2020. I’m proud to say I currently own more ps4 games than I ever did with my ps2 (and now the majority AREN’T Kingdom Hearts titles!), and I’m still hoping to play Journey, The Witness, and Abzu before everything becomes ps5.

What else happened to me this year. Oh, I went to a doctor for, like, the first time in seven years. I also had my blood drawn for the first time ever, and the nurse said the most disturbing thing to me while she did it. Now, whenever I get shots, I refuse to look. I did that here. So she thought it would be appropriate to say to me “Can you feel your blood leaving your body?” Lady… You can clearly see I am uncomfortable with what is happening here. Why, of all the things you could say, did you choose to say that. Unfortunately, while my doctor is nice, she keeps wanting to run tests on me, that I just cannot afford with my current salary, and my monthly insurance is about to go up to 200$ a month, so I’ve cancelled my next appointment with them, and don’t plan to go back until it’s absolutely necessary. Capitalism is fun, guys. Preventative healthcare is for wusses.

I started going to a chiropractor on a monthly basis. Story time- I don’t know when it started, but sometime late last November I began to notice that I had a headache that just... wasn’t... going away? And each day it was starting to get a little worse. It made it hard for me to find a comfortable position to sleep, it made it hard for me to be in bright areas or move fast. So I said to myself “Okay, if this headache persist through the month of december, then something is proooobably wrong and I should go see someone about it. And hoo-boy were thing wrong with me. By the time this January rolled around, I couldn’t even stay on my feet for more than a few hours without it physically hurting to just BREATHE. So I started going to this chain called The Joint (A+ name, I know). THey aksed me “How are you doing?” I said “I’m in pain” and they said “We can help fix that!”. I’ve only been to a chiropractor once before in my life a few years back after my freshmen year of college because I began to notice my hips weren’t able to support me? LIke, I would lie on my back, and I couldn’t push my hips up when my feet were flat on the floor. I also couldn’t climb anything steep, because my legs just couldn’t push me up if my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees when I lifted my leg up. (Turned out both my hips were apparently out of place). This time only one of my hips were out of place (which they fixed. they said one of my legs was an inch “longer” than the other because I had been leaning all my weight on one leg when I stand). But two of my ribs were apparently “Stuck” which was why it was hurting for me to just breathe, and one of my shoulders was missaligned too, causing one of my trap muscles to constantly be streched, which was pulling on my skull, and causing the headache. Anyway, after they popped all my bones back into place, I still felt terrible, but by god, that night was the first time in weeks I was able to sleep without a migrane. A chiropractor can’t magically heal your arthritis, or fibro, but I definately think they have merit to keeping your posture good and helping your body with things like circulation. 10 outa 10, would recomend. It’s all the fun of getting your neck snapped without the dying!

Earlier this month I got together with two of my friends and we baked Christmas cookies. It was a lot of fun, as well as a great learning experience. A member of my family has a gluten allergy, so we used rice flour for most of the cookies. We learned this is a bad idea! The cookies will just fall apart! A few member’s in one of the friend’s family have nut allergies. Other friend and I knew this and were careful to avoid cookie recipes with nuts, bUT THEN COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT ALMOND MILK AND ALMOND EXTRACT COUNT AS NUT. IN FACT, ALMOND EXTRACT IS PURE CONCENTRATED NUT JUICE AND WE FELT SO BAD FOR ALMOST ACCIDENTALLY POISONING THE FAMILY.

Earlier this year me and these same friends took a field trip to Hobby Lobby and just dicked around the store for a couple of hours. It was super fun, 11 outa 10, would recommend, a great date idea for your artsy S.O.

Back in May I went to a wedding for the first time in my life. (well, not true, but the first one I could remember) we left at 5am, drove 5 hours to get there, hung out at a zoo and spent the night in a la quinta before the wedding day. I slept on the bathroom floor because my mom was snoring too loud in the main room and keeping me awake, and the rest of the day was just spent me trying to keep myself together because I was pissed off and tired.

Other than all of that, nothing really major happened to me this year. I guess one more thing I’ve tried to do this year is started the process of breaking certain internet addictions so I can use my free time for more personal projects. Seriously, I found myself watching way too much youtube and following blogs that didn’t even make me happy. I had a personal intervention with myself where I sat down and asked myself, “why do you watch these videos and youtubers? Why do you follow these blogs? Do you really enjoy their content? Do you really care? If you stopped watching/following them, would you even notice?” After critically thinking it over, I’ve found myself unfollowing several channels and blogs and suddenly I feel so much happier. I thought I would miss it, but I realized I didn’t really care if I saw their content or not. I wasn’t missing much. And now I feel like I have more time to draw, read and write. If you think you spend too much time consuming and not enough time creating, I suggest you try and de-clutter your internet habits as well. It’s done wonders to un-fuck my headspace.

And… well, that about sums up my year. How are your holidays going? Anything fun, exciting, dramatic happen to you this year? I hope your new year is warm and safe! Good night, everybody!

[mylifeincinema]

My Week in Reviews: March 30, 2020

Ah, shit... I thought I had posted this yesterday afternoon, but apparently just saved to my drafts. Oops. Anyway, instead of just waiting until next week, here’s a late edition of My Week in Reviews.

The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie, 2020)

Sure, it suffers in the same way all of Ritchie’s films do, in favoring plot over character and style over substance, but that’s part of the charm of a Guy Ritchie film. They’re vulgar and quick and clever and chock-full of immensely entertaining performances. The Gentlemen takes its Ritchie-isms to the next level, for better and worse.

McConaughey is a blast, as is the scene-stealing Hugh Grant. Behind them are surprisingly strong turns by Charlie Hunnam and Henry Golding, the always welcome Colin Farrell in a surprisingly tame role for a film like this, and Succession’‘s Jeremy Strong having waaayy too much fun.

The writing is exactly what’s to be expected from a film like this. It’s vulgar and twisty and often far more impressed with itself than it has any right to be. But it’s fun, so who cares? - 7.5/10

Bloodshot (Dave S.W. Wilson, 2020)

We've already known it for a looong time now, but this is a painful reminder that Vin Diesel is the single worst actor of this generation.

The entire film feels like disjointed video game cutscenes tossed together. This makes sense, seeing as this is Dave S.F. Wilson's feature directorial debut after working in the video game industry for the past 16-years. It's not always a problem, as Wilson does especially well on the tunnel action sequence, delivering a visually interesting, over-the-top moment that would go on to be the film's single saving grace.

Then there's the writing, which feels as though it was done in a single sitting by an insecure 14-year-old boy who was just called gay by a classmate. It's all so obvious, underdeveloped and chock-full of extreme machismo that only someone so fragile would ever mistake as being genuinely tough.

There are a very few, flickering moments where this felt like it could've wandered into the territory of a fun, mindless '90s action flick, but they were way too few and far between to save this from it's awful leading man, immature writing and unfocused direction. - 2/10

Dolittle (Stephen Gaghan, 2020)

Did Robert Downey Jr. & Co. bomb this shit on purpose?!? There's zero reason for nothing in this to work. It's a Goddamn family film that's completely devoid of any sense of fun or wonder, and the animals are, at their best, awkward and annoying. Plus, RDJ's a great actor, but holy shit he's atrocious, here. Was this all just some sort of insurance scam?? - 1.5/10

Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)

Beatty's direction is damn good, Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography is beautiful, and much of the cast is stellar. The problem is, I quickly formed a strong dislike for Jack Reed and was therefore lost pretty early on. Plus, about an hour and a half here could very, very easily be trimmed and you’d lose absolutely nothing that really matters. - 4.5/10

Downhill (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2020)

An absolute misfire on all fronts. It rarely knows when to utilize its humor, and when it does, it’s never confident in what type of humor to utilize. Is it a pitch-black comedy? It wants to be. Or is it an awkward dramedy about the avalanche that broke a marriage’s back? The tone throughout would make you think so, but Faxon & Rash never commit to it, in fear of losing the edge of the former. Is it a complete waste of both your time and a promising cast? More than anything, absolutely. - 2/10

The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor, 2020)

While I began wanting more out of the underdog sports story, O’Connor sticks to the character study within. Ben Affleck is incredible as a grieving alcoholic who finds a path to recovery in coaching his high school basketball team. It feels as personal as it reads on paper for Affleck, and because of that it saves itself from becoming just another film about redemption and basketball. - 8/10

The Call of the Wild (Chris Sanders, 2020)

After I got over Buck being CGI, I was quickly able to be taken by the heart of the story. Sanders & Co. stay true to the heart of London’s book, and because of that and a solid cast, as well as solid CGI work that brings Buck to life with a ton of personality (still wish he was a real dog, though), this is a light success, but a success no less. - 6.5/10

I also revisited Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in celebration of what would’ve been his 110th birthday. Then I revisited my second favorite film of 2019, Greta Gerwig’s wonderful adaptation of Little Women, as well as Clint Eastwood’s infuriating Richard Jewell and Nilson & Schwartz’s incredibly sweet The Peanut Butter Falcon. And finally, I spent my Sunday with Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom - a film that came damn close to breaking into my Top 10 of the 2010s - and Pixar’s Ratatouille - one of my favorite animated films of the 2000s.

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[livvywrites]

wip intro: the martyr queen

Genre: NA/A fantasy Status: first draft Major Themes: healing; found family; friendship; adventure; quest; destiny/fate; rebirth Content Warnings: depictions of ptsd; violence; self-hatred; suicidal thoughts; character death POV: third person limited

Summary

Alinora Mynerva lives under the alias Jezebel Eramyn. She works for the grandmaster of an assassins guild, and keeps an eye out for traitors; spies; and others who seek to bring the guild harm.

Or she did.

But then a servant came barreling into her room to tell her that he was dead. Her time among the assassins has come to an end–but as her final farewell, she begins to investigate the grandmaster’s death and in the process finds you can’t outrun your past forever.

Alinora is dragged into joining the Resistance, a movement born against the usurper who stole her home and slaughtered those she loved. There, she reunites with a sister she thought lost; finds out her destiny is oh-so-much more complicated than she had ever believed; and is consistently hounded by a spirit of death.

–

Or, more accurately; a girl who has long given up on herself but not the world, finds that the world has not yet given up on her. And in the process, maybe she makes some friends (who eventually come to be family.) [Unfortunately the more accurate summary is only partially accurate, because I’m not sure all of that will happen in the first book. Oops.]

Links

pinterest 

characters: alinora | elaena | lyr | ava | talitha | aishlynn | kai’os | kaltain | amara

places: mynera 

relationships: lyr & ava | 

poetry: little broken soldier girl | vengeance dances in her mind

excerpts: 

Characters

[This list is long. Some of these characters may be cut. Many already have been.]

Alinora Mynerva: 27. Protagonist. Elf. Black hair, golden green eyes.A woman who has given up on herself, but not the world.

Aishlynn Mynerva: I haven’t settled on an age. Elf. Slaeyr. White hair, golden green eyes. She wants to be remembered, but finds her younger sister overshadowing her at every turn. Often without even trying.

Talitha Jade: 29. Side character. Human. Blonde hair, green eyes. A genius who loves history and magic. A pirate captain who loves adventure and freedom. Partially deaf and endlessly obnoxious. Full of life.

Lyr: 29. Slaeyr. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Ava’s his twin sister. A warrior determined to save his people before his uncle corrupts them all. Wants nothing more than to find a home and rebuild.

Ava: 29. Slaeyr. Brown hair, hazel eyes. Lyr’s her twin brother. Like her brother, she wants nothing more than to reunite her people and find them a home, instead of living like nomads. Unlike her brother, she intends to do it with magic instead of blade.

Asa Veranus: 30. Human. Red-gold hair and brown eyes. A healer determined to keep the idiots he’s surrounded by from dying.

Elaena: Age untold. Reaper. White hair and golden eyes. Sent by Death to watch over Alinora, and assist her in her quest. Mischievous and curious; two things that often result in trouble. 

Kai'os: Old. Slaeyr. Antagonist. Brown hair and brown eyes. He believes that the gods have betrayed them. Unfortunately, the only way to rid them of the gods is to end this world and start over. To many, that makes him a villain… but he’s willing to die for his beliefs.

Kaltain: Age undetermined. Slaeyr. Antagonist. Kai'os’s oldest daughter. Brown hair, brown eyes. Unlike her father, there is little noble and good remaining in Kaltain. She’s a genius, and she knows it, and she’s determined to see this world suffer after it killed her baby sister.

Amara: 27. Slaeyr. Kai'os’s youngest daughter. Blond hair, brown eyes. Amara once believed in her father’s cause wholeheartedly. Now, however, she’s beginning to doubt…

Excerpt

“Who the hell are you?” Alinora hissed through clenched teeth. “And how did you get in here?” 

The woman shrugged. “I come and go as I please. There is no place on Eldora that can keep me out… though people have tried.” The smile she wore turned wicked.

Alinora narrowed her eyes. “Who. Are. You. Answer me, or I’m calling the guard.”

The woman’s eyes glinted. “Interesting you didn’t already do that. So confident in your ability to handle intruders? Or do you simply not think that they would answer your call?” She clicked her tongue. “No matter. They couldn’t stop me anyway. Nor could you.” She bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Elaena. I am the first reaper, Death’s eldest daughter.” Her eyes raised to meet Alinora’s again and there was laughter there. “At your service.”

Alinora scoffed. “You expect me to believe that swill?” She had more than enough time to slip the gem into a pocket and withdraw one of her throwing knives. She flicked her wrist. The woman didn’t even attempt to flinch out of the way, instead taking the hit as the blade buried itself in her stomach.

The woman merely blinked at her. She removed the knife, which dripped with black blood, and spun it, offering it back to Alinora by the hilt. The wound itself was surrounded by a swirl of shadow, and when they vanished, it was as if nothing had happened. There wasn’t even a tear in her clothes.

Alinora stared, stunned.

The woman—Elaena—waited patiently for Alinora to gather herself enough to numbly take the knife from her fingers. Elaena smiled again.

“Now that that’s settled… I need to talk to you. Do you have a moment?” 

Alinora closed her eyes. When she opened them, she wanted to be back in her bed—and for this to all be some sort of terrible dream. But when she opened them again, reality stared her in the face in the form of golden eyes and a sharp toothed smile.

“I’m investigating the murder of the Swans grandmaster,” she said, irritably. “So, no. I don’t have a moment.” 

“Too bad. I had an offer I thought might interest you.” Elaena placed her hand on her hip.

“If it’s death, I’m afraid I still have a few more things to do.”

Tag List

If you’d like to be tagged when I post about it, please lemme know!