#Since it’s technically part of Leif’s story

[duusheen]

Leif changing the subject isn’t because he doesn’t want to tell Bryce about his life—it’s really the embarrassment of having to tell his friend (who, by the way, is super close to his family and all his kids) that he’s not exactly winning “Dad of the Year” when it comes to Jay. And like Rory says, in this timeline, Leif is trying to get back into Jay’s life (buying the studio and all that), but it’s way too soon to say they’re on good terms ☝🏽😔

Bryce has always been fond of Jay, so it was only inevitable that Leif would be asked about him. Over the phone, hiding the fact of their estranged relationship was easier, but in person Leif felt so exposed.

Transcript & Context:

Bryce: Louis is in blue and Harvey green, without these colours you can't tell them apart! [Leif looks at the photos while listening to Bryce talk about his life] Bryce: Well anyway, that's enough blabbering from me. How's your Jay doing? With the music and everything?

[In all honesty, Leif doesn't know, though it left him wondering if Bryce knew about their estranged relationship. He knows that Renee and Jay are close, but how much did they share? He managed a melancholic smile] Leif: Eh, same old. He's doing just fine without me, what about Renee?

Bryce: Doing amazing! She's going back to work next month. Man, I had doubts about her being a detective, you know how dangerous it can be. Have I told you this before? A year of studying history then changed to criminology and I said are you sure sweetie? But she was adamant about it. Billy being there makes me more at ease-

Bryce: …That's her dream job, can't get in the way, can I? And look where she is now! [Leif felt punched in the gut. He bought the record label for Jay's dream and that was it. No contact at all] Leif: Hey are you free this weekend? Let's go out to eat somewhere.

Bryce: OoOohhh Leif Pollock, are you asking me out for dinner? Leif: …[chuckles] You're the same as always Bryce. Bryce: I'll take that as a compliment mate. Text us the details and I'll let Leilani know too!

Writer's note: Leif doesn't want to admit to Bryce that he has been a bad father to Jay. The last time he heard about him was with Miracle then went on to buy the record label (1/2/3). Leif didn't bother to make contact, nor did Jay, so that's why he knows nothing about how he is doing in the time that has passed. Also if you know me, I pay too much attention to detail in my posts and am very picky with my ages and timeline lmao. All the events from here to now, happen in 3 years which in my head are the red squares in @/duusheen posts (saying this because you are getting a glimpse into Leif's perspective with Bryce being here and them being good friends and Leif should be old but we keep quiet about that shh) and time jumps between my posts vary from hours to months or happen simultaneously!

The only unrealistic thing with timing are the cases, which I want to span over the generation. This is a whole lot of unnecessary rambling, but yeah, my thought process 🤓

[mushroom-madness]

🍄 Round 1: Match 25 🍄

🍄 Vote for your Favorite Fungi! 🍄

Descriptions Below ⬇️

Zommoth

“Zommoth is an optional/hidden boss in Bug Fables, fought at the end of the Leif's Request side story. It is also a cordyceps fungus inside a moth host and Leif (whom we also submitted) refers to it as their sibling. It was an experiment to see if bugs could be given magic by infecting them with the parasitic fungi, and the result was This Beast (affectionate). There are other cordyceps in the same laboratory it's found in, but Zommoth is the strongest and the most notable by a large margin. Very little is known about it as a person but it's stated to be a "guardian" figure and implied that it was protecting the lab and the other zombies in it. We are emotionally attached to it. Also, its color scheme is the nonbinary flag.” - Submission 47

“Oh boy, do we LOVE this fungus! Zommoth is a cordyceps beast and immortality experiment made in search of the power of the Everlasting Sapling, a thing said to bring eternal life. Unfortunately, as it often is with this sort of things, they the fungus and they the moth were both quite displeased with being involuntarily used for the sake of roaches chasing immortality. It killed everything in the lab and proceeded to take it over with their many, many fungal siblings.

Technically speaking, Zommoth is a blend of both the fungus and its moth host, now twisted beyond recognition and unable to separate even if they wanted to, but we do think it still counts. It's at least 50% fungus. Probably more, it doesn't seem to have had much use for most of those moth bits. It is loving sibling to many undead fungal hybrid abominations, and its hobbies include screaming, firing lasers at people who intrude into its lab, and crawling out of the water like a beast from a horror flick. We believe it deserves to compete, and also to win.” - Submission 52

“Oh yeah this thing is a fungus isn't it. Positively overflowing with cordyceps. Honestly kinda forgot about it for this but saw my mutual bring it up and I figured it would need the support. It sure is a Phucking Phungus” - Submission 68

“A zombie moth full of Cordyceps fungus, the result of a horrific experiment. “Sibling” to Leif, as in created through the same unethical project, if you read my last submission.” - Submission 105

Bug Fables Wiki

Room

“Room is a giant radiation-mutated mushroom and the partner of Lou (the smartest person in Laketown City) (a genius teenage girl) who often carries her on their shoulder and stuff and is the brawn to her brains. Also this is my way of saying listen to Join the Party campaign 2, it's D&D reskinned for a modern day superhero setting and hey. Mushrooms play a big part in the plot ;)” - Submission 58

No Wiki Available. Sorry Room, I’ve been trying to flesh out character descriptions so everyone has about the same amount included in the posts in an effort to create a fair vote and include links for everyone since I started including links for some. But I just. Couldn’t find anything other than the submitter’s description. Only image I could find too.

[koritea]

how do the b-side characters interact with the a-side of the story?? :0 you mentioned they're side characters is it more of a "they appear for two seconds in-canon but they have a lot of other shit happening" deal or a "they're important to the story but I don't want to derail everything to talk abt this guy for 50k words so well address that later" deal. Or smthin else entirely

A little bit of all three!

I had to pull up my fucking excel sheet for this oh my GOD

Part of this is because a number of the B-side character are non-mortals (gods, angels, demons, inexplicable creatures from other realms, etc.) And to avoid a lot of Deus Ex Machina I've removed them from the spotlight and/or limited their powers outside of their own realms (I.e. Icarus, the Deity of Fallen Stars (Reincarnation) could just resurrect a bunch of people and that alone would solve a bunch of problems but I wanna put Aria through hell and back so Icarus can't resurrect people outside of the Arcane realm (WHICH IS A WHOLE OTHER THING LOL but there's basically the Arcane realm (gods of obscure powers), the Primal realm (gods of fundamental powers), and the Trinity (Angels, Humans and Demons) and each realm has it's own world and yada yada yada)) where was I-

B-SIDE okay so depending on the character, their interaction with the A-side can be rather frequent or non existent. Leif and Dew show up frequently in A-side, while Empress is only ever mentioned.

Some B-Side characters only show up for plot hooks - like Michael.

Some of them are literally just here to make the goal harder, like Atticus.

SOMETIMES these interactions have consequences! During the time Aria is in Tyrinth (Arcane world), Atticus (Trinity world "Earth") technically shouldn't be able to show up when he does (there is no physical or magical means of transporting a being of one realm to another, but Reality is neither physical nor magical and they're REALLY fucked up right now)! His appearance causes some unwanted side effects and his counterpart, Jahan, suffers the brunt of it in the form of some biblically accurate angel body horror-esk stuff :)

Additionally there is a LOT of stuff that happens behind the scenes since the story is only from Aria's perspective.

Having the B-side characters limited in their interactions with the A-side is also a way to sort of... lighten the load for me? Some of the god-like character are rather non-human even in their behaviors and whatnot, and thus are rather difficult to write effectively. So to limit how much "would he fucking say that???" I have to do, they get put behind the curtain :D

[milkywaydrinker]

Normally I'm someone who really tries to see things positively when engaging with media, who prefers to give it the benefit of the doubt, understand what the creators were going for, and appreciate the angle they actually intended.

And that's the thing with Amphibia; I've tried all that. I'd be a lot less critical of how Amphibia handled its worldbuilding (or didn't) if it was because they were busy focusing on the interpersonal relationships of the characters. I wouldn't really complain if it felt like the writers were at least doing something, even if it wasn't the specific thing/direction I personally preferred.

But Amphibia's problem is that it feels like the writers weren't doing anything; The show is neither plot nor character-driven, it feels as if the writers are actively wasting time with formulaic sitcom plots in which the characters 'learn a lesson' that they never really apply afterwards, with said episode not impacting their overall character. It's like a supposed flaw is introduced and resolved within eleven minutes, there's no buildup and thus no satisfaction to characters, particularly the Plantars, conquering an issue they've had for a while.

That isn't to say the Plantars haven't changed at all, but given Amphibia was given three whole seasons and how much focus the Plantars take up, it's actually disheartening to realize how little they develop with all that in mind (and in Hop Pop's case, he becomes flanderized and worsens, and not in a good way). At first I tried to give Amphibia the benefit of the doubt, reasoning that the Plantars are overlooked because anthropocentrism leads the viewers to prioritize human characters...

But now that the show is finished and I have hindsight, I really can't blame fans for making it all about Sashannarcy, because they're the only characters who are treated with consistent emotional depth and change. The Plantars are just meant to be goofy sitcom characters and are supposedly Anne's true friends and emotional support, but they do nothing to help her cope over True Colors' betrayals in season 3, and that's because the show decided there is nothing for Anne to cope over, thus weakening her story.

It's apparent that the Plantars are just kind of sort of there during the plot-driven moments of the show, and the writers struggled to shoehorn in a last-minute thing for them to do; Like Sprig finding Leif's note, even though he has no connection to her whatsoever beyond as a distant ancestor, or the Plantars referencing a 2A episode to defeat the herons that, while relevant, are re-introduced without any buildup and had already played their part.

The Plantars are just notably stagnant and flat, which is ironic since Matt chose to write about Amphibians because they're animals who represent change; But in practice, it's the human girls who feel fleshed out and developed (to an extent at least) while the Plantars, who are mainstays and supposed to be Anne's true friends, remain largely the same. Only Polly changes for the better, but she has the least focus out of the three, and the other Amphibian side-characters don't fare any better. It's no wonder people associate the Plantars with the frustrating, limiting sitcom aspect of the show because that's what they represent in the end.

Again, if the writers actually did anything meaningful with the Plantars and were consistent about their development, I wouldn't complain as much if at all. But it feels like they were given all of this potential and all of this runtime and just wasted it on repetitive slice-of-life antics that I can find in other shows like Big City Greens or TGAMM, which do that better because they actually know what they're about. It feels so inefficient, like most of an episode will be goofy antics but I guess a brief detail occurs that contributes to the larger plot, so technically you can't write off the whole thing as filler! I'm sorry but Matt insisting "There is no filler in Amphibia" was an invitation for people to evaluate the show and see if it lives up to that claim.

I have mixed feelings about this personally.

When it comes to writing, Amphibia falls apart similarly to the last seasons of Star Vs. The statement that "There's no filler in Amphibia" isn't necessarily false. I dislike the idea that only the episodes that push the plot forward have any value. You could make an argument that s1 especially had no filler because of all of the new and unfamiliar things that needed introducing. Season 3 doesn't get a pass though. The prevailing opinion about s3a is that it was a waste of time. Earth doesn't need much introduction at all and all of the townie episodes fall flat (maybe except the ones that focus on Anne's parents or Polly) and I'm not going to get into the Mr.X thing for the sake of my sanity.

The Earth episodes don't accomplish anything at all because despite the abundance of time, what has happened in True Colors casts a long, dark shadow over any feel-good slice-of-life silliness the show might try to push. Episodes like Spider-Sprig, just with the title alone made many people groan. The only reason episodes like that work are likable characters. That's why many Ronaldo focused episodes of SU were met with exasperation, he was easily the most unlikable townie in the whole show.

That's also why shows like OK KO were able to both create and engaging plot and great slice of life, sitcom episodes. The plot hinges on those fun, colorful characters growing and changing, often due to shenanigans, not despite them. People cared about the characters and their relationships. The characters grew and learned despite the show's largely episodic nature and the grand finale felt earned.

It's the backpedaling I've mentioned before. They probably felt like they pushed the dark tone too far in True Colors and wanted to counter it. They failed. The only thing the audience could think about during those episodes was the aftermath of the s2 finale. I remember people reading into the most improbable slivers of subtext to connect all of that back to Marcy or Sasha. I remember people going crazy for anything that could hint at Anne coping with trauma or something, anything. S3a feels weightless and inconsequential and is the greatest sin the show has ever committed.

It's hard to judge the writers. We don't know what was happening behind the scenes. Maybe they were pushed into making more lighthearted episodes for reruns? The only thing we can judge is the end result and let's not beat around the bush, it was underwhelming at best, frustrating at worst. We knew they were capable of more but for some reason that didn't happen. Matt acted in an almost condescending manner towards the critics, it didn't pay off and riled up many of the former and current fans.

In the end, it's just a shame, really. At its best, the show was captivating, with hard hitting emotional peaks and nice slice-of-life episodes. At its worst it was tedious, cagey about the lore and darker parts of the story and apathetic to its own characters. I still enjoy parts of it, but the bad outweighs the good in my personal opinion.

[lunar-wandering]

previous rounds of Interdimensional Mistakes are as follows:

Dove (Mystic Gems) ends up chasing a Crystaloid (monster formed from tainted magic crystals) that gained the ability of dimensional travel through various dimensions. Crosses Over with Cyber Thunder Cider-verse, Forest-verse, and Music Beats-verse.

All members of the previous teams end up summoned to one area. All get captured, except for Torch (Cyber Thunder Cider), Leif (Forest), and 'Zing'- a new addition from a universe I am just realizing I never named. ...Also realizing I never changed his concept name, it's been YEARS how did I overlook that. ...These three specifically are called the No Braincell Quartet (it's a Quartet for ReasonsTM)

Set in 'Zing's universe, him and his friends end up finding a being that's connected to the Concept (there's a whole explanation behind it but essentially "Concept" means "a god") of Dimensions. They have to keep bounty hunters from capturing the being, and throughout the course of trying to get the Being back to where it needs to be, the other previously mentioned universes' heroes end up getting summoned/dropped in to help out. (Mainly as only Torch and Leif really had the opportunity to interact with 'Zing' in the previous one, and I felt that was unfair).

This is technically just something I did to develop these characters to see how they'd bounce off each other, but the Interdimensional Group Chat. (adds the Evangeline-verse characters to the group).

Not a full crossover, but in the Starkiller-verse, May (Mystic Gems) ends up summoned by Trickster (Mystic Gems/Evangeline/Starkiller (I'll explain how he's in all three if asked)) to help the main characters out- mainly cause Trickster, as a god Not From This Dimension, is not allowed to interfere.

May (Mystic Gems) and Eva (Evangeline), are cousins, so they appear in each other's stories a lot (May appears more often in Evangeline than Eva does in Mystic Gems).

Most of the above crossovers pertain to what I labelled as the "Heroes-verse". There is also "Magic-verse", and "Thief-verse". The only story that fits into all three categories is Mystic Gems, hence why it's the one that crosses over with the others so often.

I have a bunch of new Magic-verse characters who, since they weren't part of the Heroes-verse, were never in the big crossover stories- I am now planning to change that. (I also have one new Heroes-verse story to add in).

thinking about my original story ocs tonight.

[starsstruck]

cloudbusting; part one.

a classic coffee shop story. harry is a painter that quickly becomes a regular at his neighbourhood cafe, and it just might have something to do with a certain barista. hazy opening shifts, paintings on walls, and new regulars.

pairing: harry x reader warnings: language words: 8.3k

art by holly warburton. (i have no vision for the mc of the fic, people in the images of paintings i use are purely because this is how i envision harry’s art to be !)

series masterlist | story tag

a/n: first part !! i am so excited (and slightly nervous) to start and share this story i really hope everyone enjoys <3. as always, please share if you can and i would love to hear your thoughts !

There was a lot you liked about the city, especially the city in the morning.

The walk you always made to work wasn’t too long, the day still early enough that there were only a handful of people out along with you. Some joggers, some dog walkers, some people heading to work and likely some heading home.

Grateful for the sun being up before you were, the July morning already heating up the early air of the day. Feet moving you quickly through the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood, you walked the last few blocks that led you from your apartment to the coffee shop.

The one thing you didn’t like about the summer morning, was that the air was making your eyes itch.

It was that fresh morning haze, the one that held the night’s humidity and somehow the night’s pollen as well, having you rub your nose for what seemed like the thousandth time that morning.

The sky had turned a light blue, a warm glow just rising over the buildings as you crossed the road, your hand already in your bag to fish out your keys.

Grabbing the newspaper that was placed on the street by the door, tucking it under your arm, and unlocked the door to the café. Stepping inside and promptly closing and relocking the door behind you. The air inside was stuffy and hot as it always was in the summer especially after a lack of airflow all night.

Punching in the security code, haphazardly throwing your bag and keys on the counter before shrugging off your jacket, already finding yourself feeling too hot. It was always the same path you followed, every opening shift.

Turning off the alarm, dumping your things on the counter, moving further behind the counter to turn on the iPad where POS were made, before walking into the even hotter back room to turn on the sound system. One of your playlists was already queued, soon the sound of Lizzo blasting through the shop while you moved to prep and bake the pastries.

Your body worked on auto pilot, not even having to think that much; preheating ovens and unwrapping thawing croissants. The air conditioning was slowly settling in the large space, grabbing yourself a glass of iced water to help cool yourself down.

Opening didn’t take very long; it was just the food prep that took a bit longer and needed you to come in a slightly earlier than necessary.

The café would be opening in about twenty minutes, and all you had left to do was brew the drip coffee and dial the espresso. It was always simultaneously your favourite and least favourite part of opening.

It gave you your first taste of coffee of the day, but it also meant you had to take multiple sips thus drinking too much coffee at once in the morning. Scrunching your nose at the acidic taste of the first shot you pulled, promptly dumping it out in the sink and rinsing out your mouth with some water.

Every opening shift was the same, hands moving without your mind as you pulled a few more shots, adjusting the grind of your espresso.

Two minutes until opening; you flipped through the daily newspaper and easily found the crossword, taking out the section that contained it to put it aside.

Grabbing the sign that would sit outside in one hand, you unlocked the front door and placed it on the sidewalk by the door. Moving the patio furniture that was kept inside at night, laying it out along the side of the café across the windows.

Changing your playlist as the clock changed to 7:00, the soft sounds of Leif Vollbeckk filling the space. Grabbing your laptop from your bag, hoping for a slow morning as you pulled up order forms you needed to fill out for next weeks deliveries. Filling a glass with ice, deciding to finish off the rest of the cold brew –knowing there wouldn’t be enough to fill up a cup to sell to a customer.

“Morning!”

Smiling at the sound of the familiar voice, diverting your attention from the spreadsheets on the screen to see the older man walking up towards the counter.

“You’re here early today.” Grinning, you pushed yourself away from the counter and grabbed the crossword puzzle and a pen that were put aside earlier.

“I’m going for lunch with my son later,” Dani sat himself in the plushy chair he loved so much. “I still wanted to make sure I could come in for my coffee.”

Handing him the crossword that was always saved for him, knowing he loved to get to it first.

“Let me know when you want your coffee,” you hummed, hands resting on your hips.

“I’ll take it right away today.” He told you, as you watched him reach in the paper bag he brought with him, pulling out a bagel.

He often brought his own food. You really didn’t care that he didn’t patronize the café for its food, and only the coffee. He came in nearly every day, sometimes two times in a day and he was definitely one of your favourite faces to see walk through the doors.

“I brought you some breakfast.”

Another reason why you really didn’t care was that he often brought you a little treat along with his own. He was familiar with everyone who worked with you, constantly asking about the schedule and who would be working when so he knew who to expect. But you knew that you were his favourite, and he never forgot to tell you that.

“You didn’t have to,” you smiled, as he waved off your comment and handed you your own bagel. “Thank you.”

“I know how you are in the morning, always running out of time and forgetting to eat.”

Leaving it with him at his table, making the short distance to go back behind the counter to get his coffee ready.

“It’s going to be hot out today.”

You listened as Dani spoke to you in the empty coffee shop, making the obliged daily weather talk. “I know. It was far too hot in here already when I came in.”

The big windows that didn’t have blinds acted as heaters in the morning, the rising sun shinning through them and heated up the entire coffee shop. The air conditioning that was recently turned on was starting to help with the air flow, but it was still heavy and humid around you.

Your hands working on muscle memory alone as you twisted your arm, tamping the espresso and clicking the portafilter in on the machine. Grabbing the little scale you used to weigh out the water, still early in the day and tinkering with the grind of the espresso, making slight adjustments.

Steaming the milk until you felt it hot enough, knowing Dani liked it extra extra hot no matter the time of year. Tapping the air bubbles out until you were satisfied, filling the paper cup up only halfway, just the way Dani wanted it.

“For you,” walking back to the regular customer, placing his coffee in front of him and seating yourself in the empty seat beside him.

You watched as he took a sip of the coffee, smile on his face. “Excellent as always.”

It was mostly a joke amongst everyone, that Dani would always personally review everyone’s skill at making his drink. It still gave you little ego boost every time he commented on how well you made coffee.

“I’m glad,” you said, swirling the ice around your glass before taking a long sip. You sat together for a bit, eating your bagels together while Dani told you about how his grandkids were doing.

This was probably one of your favourite parts of your job, getting to know the regulars. It was always so nice when you saw them walk in with a big smile, asking how you were doing and how things were going in your life.

Dani was obviously by far your favourite. He sometimes brought in his kids and grandkids, a big order of coffee going around as he bought everyone their drinks. He had lost his wife a couple years back, telling you that ever since then he was always looking for a new routine, and you were so happy to be a part of his daily pattern.

Your conversation was interrupted as a couple and their child walked into the shop, recognizing them as regulars as well while they waved hello to you.

Making your way back to behind the counter, putting their orders through. You knew they lived in the neighbourhood; you often saw them around. It was endearing, how often they came in for a little breakfast and coffee together with their daughter who couldn’t be older than four.

Things were starting to pick up slightly, a few other people stopping by for a coffee and breakfast to go on their way to work. You kept darting your eyes over to the big window that faced the street, checking the time over and over knowing that you had a milk delivery coming in at any time.

“Are your croissants baked in house?”

“Yes,” you nodded, not technically lying. “We get them frozen from a bakery, and we proof and bake them here every morning.”

“So are they fresh?” The middle-aged man asked, eyes glancing over to where the food sat in the display case.

“Yes,” you repeated. “They were baked this morning.”

He nodded again, pausing for a second. “I’ll just take this.” He grabbed for a muffin that sat in front of him.

You only nodded, blowing out a quiet sigh from between your lips. Already finding your patience running a bit thin this morning. Really for no particular reason, other than it would finally be your day off tomorrow.

Putting his order through, grabbing the itemized receipt for yourself so you wouldn’t forget what his drink was and bagged up his muffin.

You heard the door open, glancing up to see someone else walk through the door. “Can you make mine right away?” The man who had just ordered glanced towards the door as well, seeing the other customer walk in. “I’m in a rush.”

Only nodding, narrowing your eyes at him slightly in annoyance. If anything, him telling you that he was in a rush made you want to make his drink even slower. Still, ever the good customer service employee, you pulled the shots you needed. Steaming the soy milk and making a bit of a messy design with the milk, not quite caring about how his latte turned out.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” You didn’t hide the wrinkle in your nose at the use of the pet name, the man not even noticing as he struggled to get the lid on, spilling a bit of the latte on the counter before he headed towards the door.

Plastering your fake smile on your face, going back to the till to take the order of the client who had been waiting. “Hi there, thank you for waiting.”

You glanced around the space by the register, knowing that the pen you liked the use was sitting on the counter somewhere. “What can I get for you today?”

“Do you have bulletproof coffee?” Deep accent pulling your attention away from the search for your pen, facing the man standing on the other side of the counter.

“Uh –” you paused and bit your lips together for a beat, trying not to show your distaste. “No, I’m sorry.”

“That’s too bad,” the customer hummed, craning his neck to look at the menu board that hung behind you.

Is it really though? You saw your pen tucked between two receipts on the counter next to you, gripping it between your index and middle finger.

“I think Garden Coffee might have it? They’re a couple block down.”

Pointing in general direction of the neighbouring coffeehouse, personally not finding a liking to their coffee. It was a very similar set up to where you worked, but in your opinion, they tried far too hard to mimic a trendy third wave coffee shop and came off highly pretentious.

“No, no that’s okay,” the guy smiled at you. “I’ll have an espresso. Are they doubles?”

Nodding, you put his order into the system. “All the espresso drinks come as doubles, but I can do a single if you’d like? Or a shorter shot.”

You were mindlessly flipping the pen between your fingers, eyes continuously darting out the window just knowing the milk delivery was about to arrive. “No, a double would be perfect.”

“Sounds good,” you said. “Was that going to be for here or to go?”

“Here,” he nodded, opening his wallet.

“And was that going to be all for you today?” Not even fully paying attention, speaking through every line you asked customers before finalizing their order.

“Yeah – thank you.”

Telling him his total, opening the till as you dug out his change.

“Any reason you don’t have bulletproof coffee?” He brought your attention over to him again while you double checked you had the right amount of change.

It’s gross. “It’s not very popular,” you told him truthfully. “We don’t get asked for it too often either. Plus,” you tried to hide your grimace at the thought. “It’s a bit of an odd order. Not many people like it.”

He laughed at that. “Guess it is a bit of a refined taste.”

You could only nod, refined not really being the word to come to mind but you weren’t going to tell him that. Heading over to the corner where the espresso machine sat, quickly going through the same motions all over again and waited for the little mug to fill.  

Taking a sip of your water as you watched the seconds pass on the machine, the slow and steady pour of the espresso landing right into the cup.

The man who had just ordered had wandered over to where orders were to be picked up, glancing around the space. “I’ve never been here before,” he was standing opposite of the espresso machine, half of him hidden behind it. “It’s a nice place.”

“Yeah, I like it,” you nodded, not glancing up at him to stop the espresso, tapping the little cup on the counter once the pour ended. You never knew what to say when people complimented the coffee shop, saying thank you seemed a bit odd since you weren’t the owner, but any other response always sounded the slightest bit off.

“Espresso for here,” you smiled, placing the little cup on a plate, spoon next to it and slid it over to the counter towards him. He was leaning closer to the wall, arms crossed over his chest and eyes slightly narrowed, likely observing the paintings that hung up on that wall.

Your name was called through the café, attention being pulled away to see Dani now standing, empty cup in hand.

“Bye!” He called, waiting for you to walk to his side of the counter as he handed back the pen that you had lent him. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“No,” you shook your head, watching a look of mock shock dawn Dani’s face. “Even I need a day off.”

“That’s true,” he laughed. “Get your rest, I’ll see you Saturday.”

Waving bye to him once again, attention turning to another patron that was waiting for you by the till. Another morning regular, putting their order through quickly and heading over to make it.

“How does one get their art up here?”

“Sorry?” You weren’t paying attention, small diversions all around you.

The incoming milk delivery being on the top of your list of things to think about; next to making the iced americano, cleaning up some milk you spilt, and the shrill cries coming from the toddler seated directly across from you.

“The art.” The guy who had asked about bulletproof coffee was still standing in the same spot, small mug in hand, by the series of paintings that covered the wall. “Who – I mean how could I get my art up there?”

It was a common question, but not one you could get into right away because it was just then that you saw the familiar logo on the white truck pull up across the street, signaling your milk delivery.

It was like this every week, but you hated when you were alone and this delivery came. Since it was one that you had to put away right away, and if customers came in they would get fussy because you had to be in the back, putting away all the dairy since it couldn’t exactly sit out for that long.

“Uh –” you smiled at the regular when you handed him his iced americano, turning to the other customer who had the question about the art. “Sorry, just a sec.”

Watching through the window as the delivery man made his way with a dolly packed with crates. Moving from behind the counter and taking the short walk to the front door, propping the door open for him.

Greeting him as you usually did, grabbing the order form from him to sign while he brought the dolly around the back, knowing where the milk went. Quickly signing your name at the bottom as you reviewed the order, shoving your pen back into your pocket to go fill up the back fridge with rows and rows of milk jugs.

The delivery man had already left, and you knew he was going to be coming back with more so you worked as quickly as possible, keeping an eye on the front counter to make sure there were no impatient customers waiting for you.

Stepping out of the back room, searching for the folder where you kept receipts and order forms from deliveries. Delivery man promptly returning, leaving another stack of crates for you before he headed off to use the restroom.

“Do you need a hand?”

“Jesus,” you couldn’t help the small curse at the unexpected voice and presence that made itself known next to you.

Accented voice pulling you out of your thoughts once again, seeing the bulletproof coffee man standing far too close to the inside where only staff were allowed in. Realizing he was offering to help with putting away the milk, you narrowed your eyes slightly at the odd offer of help.

“What…” you paused, fully taking in his appearance for the first time. He was young, probably around the same age as you. Brown hair that fell in floppy curls around his face, square jaw and bright eyes that completed his whole charming look.

“I’m good, thanks,” you took a step towards him, hoping he would get the hint and take a step outside of the space that was really just for staff. He seemed to catch on, watching you with a little smile playing on his lips.

“Sorry,” you found yourself apologizing, remembering he was waiting for an answer about the paintings. “I just have to –” sticking your thumb to point behind your shoulder, motioning to the dairy that was left to be put away. “I’m nearly done.”

“No worries, take your time.” He smiled, and you couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit watched as you walked through the narrow back room to where the fridge sat in the back, unloading the rest of your delivery.

Finishing up, waving goodbye to the delivery man you knew very well you’d see again in a week’s time as he wheeled away empty crates on his dolly.

Searching for where you last placed your coffee and half eaten bagel, grateful to not have seen a single new customer and you added some more ice to your now watered down cold brew.

Eyes flitting over to where the bulletproof coffee drinker stood by the counter where you had left him, seeing him currently glancing at the space around him. You yanked open the messy drawer next to the till, rifling through it while you looked for the business cards you knew you kept somewhere deep down.

“Here,” grabbing the attention of the man who was observing paintings on the other wall, leaving the inside from behind the counter, to the open floor of the café.

He turned around to face you, eyes dropping down to the card you extended out to him. “The art doesn’t go through us. This woman here,” you motioned to the card. “She runs it, in a few coffee shops actually.”

You had only met Janeen a handful of times – when the art got switched out and a couple other times when she came in for a coffee. She was probably in her late fifties, a painter herself.

“Some of the art up right now is actually hers,” you glanced around, pointing to a few you were fairly certain belonged to Janeen, all for sale.

“Great thank you.” He gripped the card between his fingers, eyebrow furrowing slightly as his eyes skimmed over the name and email on Janeen’s card. He really must be an artist. Catching what you assumed was dried paint on his hands, the deep blue swiped over his skin standing out.

“Do you know how I should like, submit art to her? Or if there’s a process or anything?”

“I don’t, sorry,” offering him a small sympathetic smile. “It’s out of our hands, best bet would be to talk to Janeen about it.”

“Is there a manger I could ask?” He was glancing behind you as if you weren’t working alone.

Narrowing your eyes at him, knowing it was an easy mistake and was not at all meant to be a rude comment towards you, but for some reason you found yourself so socially exhausted so early in the morning.

“I am the manger.”

It came out a bit harsher than intended, but you didn’t care too much by this point. You saw his eyes visibly widen, mouth part slightly. “Oh -” tripping over his words as he held your narrowed gaze. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean anything –”

He was cut off, saved by the bell if you will, to a group of young women walking through the door which meant you had to excuse yourself and head back behind the counter.

Mind drifting as you took their orders, feeling slightly peeved with the way the conversation with the apparent artist went. You knew you shouldn’t take it personally, customer’s said things all the time that really shouldn’t be taken seriously.

But it was small things like that, that had your mind trickling down a drain of will I ever be taken seriously and what am I doing with my life.

You loved your job, for the most part at least, you really did. But there was always that little voice of doubt inside of you, telling you that you weren’t doing enough with your life.

And when someone seemed to doubt the things you accomplished in life, it left a bad taste in your mouth and an unhealthy train of thoughts bringing your mood down.

At its core, it was pretty dumb to be irked by a comment asking for the manager. It was obviously because as the manager, you felt like maybe your position wasn’t well deserved, or like it shouldn’t be what you’re doing.

After making two iced mochas, cleaning up the small mess of spilt chocolate on the counter before digging out the folder where order forms were a bit haphazardly placed. Deciding now was the best time as ever to start putting them in order.

Glancing at the clock, you saw it was just barely past 8:30. You realized you still had about six hours left on your shift. Your eyes quickly shifted around the shop, seeing mostly empty tables as most of the morning customers got their orders to go. There weren’t any dishes pilled up anywhere, not yet at least.

The man who had been asking you about the art seemed to be finally seated, hunched over a table in the corner with a little book in front of him, twirling a pencil between his fingers the same way you did. You felt a bit bad for snapping at him, but you didn’t feel like entertaining conversation with him again.

Heading to the back room again, deciding that soft indie guitar wasn’t really the mood anymore, you changed your playlist once again.

A soft sigh left your mouth again, already feeling done with this day. You don’t really know why you felt so on edge. It was likely because today was the last day before a day off, after working a long stretch of shifts without much of a break.

Hours trickled by, the day never really picking up with just a slow stream of customers coming in. It gave you time to finalize the upcoming weeks schedule, sending it out to the rest of the staff.

It was just before one o’clock when Aleena came in, bright smile on her face when she greeted you.

Aleena as by far your favourite co-worker. She was in her mid thirties and was an absolute sweetheart. She was, for lack of a better term, your work wife.

When the both of you worked together you were always on the same page, not having to talk to know what the other one was thinking. The two of you would take turns bringing each other lunch, or snacks, or just little treats for each other.

“How has today been?” Joining her in the back room, shooting a glance to the front to make sure no customers were coming in.

“Hey Leena! It’s been okay,” you shrugged, watching her hang up her purse. “Pretty slow, which is kind of nice. I’m just,” you blew out a sigh for what felt like the hundredth time. “Tired today. I don’t really feel like talking to customers.”

She offered you a sympathetic smile. “You’re off tomorrow, yeah? Hope you have the time to relax, and see your friends.”

“I am! I’m seeing Mae tomorrow, she managed to get the day off too.”

“That’ll be good! You know if its slow it’s okay if you want to leave early today.”

You had an hour left on your shift, a small overlap between workers. It was unusual, to have one person working alone all day. Usually one person opened and then was joined by another later in the day, and the two people would close together with some staff changes in the middle of the day.

But with a last minute shift change due to someone getting food poisoning, you spent all day alone and Aleena would be closing alone. You had offered to come back in later in the day to help her close, since it was a bit of a feat to do alone, but she has insistently refused and said you needed your time off.

“I think I might…” you smiled at her. “If you’re okay here! I doubt it’ll pick up, the sales today have been really low.”

“Of course,” she waved you off. “Go, go. I’ll be okay.”

Forever grateful for Aleena, wrapping her in a little side hug as you bid your goodbyes and promised you’d bring her some baked treats next time to thank her.

“Oh! And the schedule is out, and I’ve already done the ordering for next week so there’s nothing else to worry about. Take it easy today.”

Gathering up your things and making yourself some iced tea for the road, swinging your bag over your shoulder and dreaming of the next day and a half of putting your feet up, and seeing your friends, not giving the shop one more look now that you were off.

You were never really one for routines.

Rather, you weren’t really one to be setting routines, instead letting them work into place for you. In a sense, you still really didn’t a set routine, forever slightly disorganized.

Your weekly schedule was always a bit different, depending on the shifts you had. Sometimes it would be the same ones for weeks on end, being able to find a good groove with them.

But that never lasted. You didn’t mind though, always saying that you were just taking life as it came.

The one big consistency was the walk from your front door to behind the counter at work. No matter the time of day, it was always the same. Walking the steps down from your building and out to the street, sometimes taking your time and sometimes your pace quick.

And when you opened the door to work, you would head to the back room first, take a few seconds, and then face the rest of your day.

This Saturday was no different at all.

Waving hello to your, after the much needed day off, shutting the door to the staff room behind you for a second of peace before the long shift started.

“How’s the day been?” After taking a minute by yourself, you walked out and stopped to ask one of your coworkers, Erinne, about the sales so far.

“Busy,” she sighed, turning away from the till to face you. “Finally slowed down for a bit, but I’m sure it’ll be the same this afternoon.”

You only nodded, glancing around the space to see Aleena and another colleague, Noah, working on bar. They were cleaning up grounds that littered the counter and arranging milk in the small fridge underneath the bar.

Signs of a rush that hit the café, the quick clean up that was needed before another wave of people came in.  

“Well, I’m off.” Erinne said from next to you, clocking out of the system.

You didn’t have a single bad thing to say about any of your coworkers, or least you pretended that you didn’t. When you became manager, you knew that you were no longer able to gossip too much or talk about baristas you didn’t like.

Still, you couldn’t help but slightly dislike Erinne. She showed no sign of ever really listening to you, only doing half a job even when you reminded her to finish her duties.

“Have a good rest of your day,” you smiled to her, watching her reach for her phone that was in her back pocket as she headed to the back to grab her things.

Walking over to the back, greeting Aleena and Noah, promptly making yourself a drink to get a little caffeine boost. “How was your day off?”

“Really good,” you nodded, smacking your lips at the slightly bitter espresso, making a mental note to double check that later.

Filling in Aleena on your day off, before the conversation was ultimately interrupted by a group coming in. She went to the till, taking their orders while Noah stayed on bar to make the drinks. You saw them not needing that much help, no yet anyway, deciding to grab the dish bin to collect the emptied mugs you spotted left behind on tables.

Walking to the back of the shop first, finding a few mugs stacked and abandoned. Propping the dish bin against your hip, gathering up the dishes to be cleaned. Eyeing over seated customers, catching snippets of their conversations as you walked by.

Your eyes fell to a table tucked in the corner, recognizing the man who had been asking you about who to contact in relation the paintings on that hung on the wall. He had the same black book in front of him, pencils laid out around the table with one in hand, tapping it against the table.

He glanced up at you seemingly when you walked by, eyes flitting over to yours. He sent you a small smile as you bussed the table across from his, your eyes briefly leaving his to glance up to the front of the café, making sure the line wasn’t that long.

“I emailed Janeen.”

His voice pulled your attention back to him, as you picked up the buss bin again, not seeing any more dirty dishes that needed to be run through the dishwasher. He was obviously talking to you.

“That’s good,” you didn’t know what else to say.

He put down the pencil he was tapping against the table, closing the book in front of him. “I – I’m sorry about the other day –”

You were nearly embarrassed about snapping at him. Shrugging as your lips twitched to a little smile, gaze falling over the table in front of him. He had another espresso in front of him, this time over ice. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“I didn’t mean it like – you couldn’t be manager or anything. Just –” he motioned with his hands, as if replacing his words. “Looking to get some more exposure for my art.”

“Is a little coffee shop really the best exposure?”

“I mean,” he shrugged, sitting back in his chair. “I’ll take what I can get.”

“That’s fair.” Assuming the conversation was over, glancing back up to see Aleena taking someone’s order.

“How long have you been working here?”

“Hm? Over two years now.” Glancing back at him, hearing the door opening and most likely welcoming more paying customers.

“That’s a while,” he nodded, shifting in his chair again.

You nodded absentmindedly, seeing two large groups walk in the café, knowing you needed to head over to work behind the counter. “Sorry – I need to head back.”

“Of course,” he sat back again. “Sorry again.”

The sound of your name on his lips stopped you in your tracks. You turned back towards him, brow furrowed and mouth slightly gaped open.

“Heard a customer say your name last time,” he spoke before you could ask how he knew your name. “I’m Harry.”

“Nice to meet you,” words mumbled, quick nod in his direction before you were walking back towards the counter with your dish bin in hand.

It wasn’t uncommon, that customers would learn your name. No one wore nametags, so it gave a slight ounce of anonymity.

Obviously, regulars like Dani got to know you pretty well.

But it wasn’t all of them. Some customers would introduce themselves to you and ask for your name even though you swore you’d only seen them once, and some would come in everyday without the slightest inclination of wanting to get to know you.

Harry watched you walk away, disappearing to the back room before he heard a loud clang of dishes, assuming you set down the bin that you had been holding. He saw you reappear again, quickly walking over to the register and putting a hand on your coworkers’ shoulder, telling her something.

He looked around the coffee shop again, glancing at the paintings that decorated the walls. He had already taken his time to look at each and every one, nearly all of them by the same artist. They were all beach scenes, the talent of the artist very apparent in the way that they painted the reflections off the water.

Though the only one that really stood out to Harry was one depicting a sunset, bright oranges and reds filling the entire frame.

He glanced down to his own orange coloured pencil in hand, the haphazard shapes and scribbles that were on the page in front of him. He hadn’t made much progress as he tried to plan out his next series. All he knew is that he was currently very drawn to orange, tangerine to be exact, and that he wanted this next series to be big.

He still had yet to find it, the small idea that would start to form in the back of his mind that would grow into something huge. His inspiration usually came from little mundane ideas, liking to take his time to observe everything around him.

The warm glow from the sun cast through the windows, the harsh hiss of the steam wand from the espresso machine, the crumbs that fell around a child eating their croissant.

He took the last sip of his coffee, crunching the spare bits of ice that fell out of the cup and under his teeth.

Sketching random faces he saw around him, eyes moving all around the space. Gaze flitting over to where he saw you reappear for a very brief second, placing a now empty dish bin out for customers to fill, before spinning way and disappearing from his line of sight again.

The scuffed white floor wasn’t one that was particularly nice, per se, but it gave a feeling that this shop was lived in and well frequented. There was one wall that was all wood, with little shelves lined against it. Potted plants and random books placed on the shelves, next to a little sign that read “take a book, leave a book”.

He had no idea how he’d never seen this café. He must have passed it a few times at least, never really noticing it until the other morning when he walked a different route.

It was big and open, but still felt warm. The ambiance inside wasn’t stiff or off-putting, instead it was inviting and bright.

Even on a day like today, where the lineup at the register never really seemed to go away, there was a calmness in the air and not intensity or stress.

Which is why he came back a couple days later, bright and early on Monday morning. He realized it was a slight oversight on his part, getting there a bit too early, before the doors were even unlocked.

Seeing as he had about ten minutes to kill, deciding to take another walk around the block while he waited. Going down the street and walking past the shop, squinting lightly to gaze through the windows.

Harry saw you at the counter, gloved hands holding a knife as you carefully sliced a loaf, one he assumed to be banana bread. Your eyebrows were lightly drawn together, concentrating on the task at hand.

Amused to see you grab what appeared to be a thinner piece away from the others, breaking off a corner and popping it into your mouth. He didn’t realize he had stopped walking, until your attention diverted away from the cutting board in front of you and up out the window.

He immediately heated up as your eyes found his, embarrassed to be found watching you through the window. He was already certain he hadn’t made a great impression on you, and this wasn’t really helping his case.

Your lips moved in a small smile, eyes darting away from his for a beat. He followed your gaze, assuming you were looking up at the clock that hung on the wall.

The next time he glanced at you, you had placed the knife on the cutting board and were walking around the counter until you reach the door to his left.

“Were you waiting to come in, or?”

Propping the door open a bit, waiting as Harry walked the few needed steps over to you. “Yeah! I know you’re not open yet so –”

You moved aside, keeping the door open. “You can wait inside, if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” he said, after a slight pause. He was a bit shocked to have you inviting him in like this even with only a few minutes left until the shop opened.

“Yeah, no worries,” you closed the door behind him after he walked in. “Although,” you spoke again, already walking back to the counter. “I won’t serve you for another eight minutes.”

He could hear a small smile in your voice, even with your back turned to him. He only laughed in response, putting his bag down at the same table he sat at last time, secluded and tucked away in the corner and with the sun’s rays hitting the wall next to it.

Suddenly the music around him changed, mood going from loud and upbeat, to soft and soothing with what seemed like the volume being turned down quite a bit. Harry couldn’t see you form where he sat, but he heard the occasional tap turning on and whir of a coffee grinder.

He waited a bit longer, making sure it was past seven before he walked up to the register. You were standing in front of the espresso machine, swirling a little clear glass a couple times before you took a sip.

“Espresso this morning?”

You hadn’t moved from your spot, taking another little sip from the glass in hand.

“Please,” grabbing his wallet from his pocket, digging through for some folded bills. You walked the short distance to the till, standing in front of him with the counter separating the two of you.

Wordlessly grabbing the money from the counter, putting the order through and counting up the change. “Oh, keep the change.” He smiled, refusing your extended hand.

“Thank you,” you murmured, palm opening to let the coins fall into the tip jar in front of you.

He followed you, from opposite sides of the counter as you moved to the back where the espresso machine sat. “It might be a bit bitter,” your voice cut through the shop. “I’m still adjusting it a bit, so let me know if its no good.”

“Will do,” Harry nodded, hearing the whir of the grinder as you prepared his coffee. He didn’t know why he was suddenly finding himself so unsure of what to say to you, very aware of the emptiness of the shop.

A beat of silence passed, the only noise in the shop coming from the music blaring through the speakers. He’d never heard it before, quickly finding a liking to whatever you were playing.

“Have you heard from Janeen?”

The question took him aback slightly. “No, not yet anyway.”

You hummed from behind the counter, tapping the cup on the counter like you had last time, before placing it on a little plate and sliding it over to him. “I think they’re changing the current painting’s soon. She’ll for sure be in for that so I can ask her about it if you’d like.”

He beamed. “That would be great! Thank you.”

Getting a taste of the coffee you had just made him. “It’s good,” he nodded. “Not too bitter.”

Another moment of silence fell, and that would be when Harry should’ve grabbed his coffee and walked away but for some reason, he didn’t want to leave the counter just yet.

You broke the silence again. “You’re here really early for a sit-down coffee, and not a to go.”

“Is that odd?” Harry was curious of why you brought it up.

“I mean,” you only shrugged, moving from where you stood to do something behind the espresso machine he couldn’t quite see. “Not really but – usually early morning regulars who get coffee for here are above the age of sixty. At a minimum.”

Harry laughed, watching you fiddle with the blue mugs that sat on top of the machine. “I’m just up early I guess. I like the sunrise.”

You smiled in return, and Harry thought that maybe he hadn’t made that bad of an impression on you after all. He didn’t know why he was so suddenly drawn to this café, drawn to spending his free time here, but he warmed when you mirrored his grin.

But when he heard the door open behind him, and you moved to greet the customer that came in, he realized that it was simply your job to be nice to him.

“Someone’s here before me!”

Harry recognized the older man from the other day, the one who had called out your name when he said bye to you.

“I thought I got the first coffee of the day?”

You laughed, grabbing a cup from where they sat stacked. “You didn’t get the first, but you get the best.”

Moving to make Dani’s drink, pulling a shot and steaming the extra hot milk, bringing the cup over once the drink was made to where he sat at his usual table.

Harry had gone to sit back down, once again hunched over a black book with a pencil twirling between his fingers.

You took your time to fully notice his appearance. He loose fit blue jeans, with an off-white teeshirt that read something you didn’t quite catch, slightly tucked in. You had never fully noticed the tattoos that covered one of his arms before, only briefly catching glances of them but in this moment, they seemed to stand out even more.

His hair was falling over his forehead as he leant over the table, and you couldn’t help but admire the clear cut of this jaw that was apparent to you as you gazed at his profile. Your eyes fell back to his hands, fingers toying with a pencil. Even from slightly further back, you could see some green splotches of paint on his skin.

You were slightly curious to what he was doing.

Always a bit nosy, especially with customers that you recognized to come in more than once. Whether they were writing a novel, reading a book, working from home; you liked to see what people would come in to do.

Both you and Aleena loved to discuss the personal lives of regulars, mapping out your own stories for the lives your customers lived. Based off who they came in with and small tidbits they would share with you.

You liked to think that you were good at reading people, and that you could more or less understand people just based off small interactions.

It was obvious to you that Harry was going to become a new regular. He had already come in three times in the past five days.

You wished you weren’t working alone, because you found yourself needing to talk to someone about him. Although you knew nearly nothing about him. Only the fact that he for some reason liked bulletproof coffee, that he was an artist, and that he liked to wear vans.

Another thing you did know, was that making him his coffee was going to become part of your work routine.

He always ordered an espresso, sometimes over ice. From the few times that you walked past his table and stole quick glances at the sketchbook that he always carried, he seemed to be working on bright colourful sketches. Always using pencil crayons, and never pencils or pens.

He had become such a quick new regular, that even Dani was talking to him. The both of them often came in the earliest out of anyone else.

In the past three weeks, he had come in nearly every day that you were working. He usually came in bright and early, right after the doors were unlocked and would seat himself comfortably in the back.

On the days when you weren’t opening and would stay to close, he was already there and would leave sometime in the afternoon. A few times he came in later in the day, staying close to closing as the coffee shop emptied out.

He had kept asking you about Janeen, and if he could get his art up on the walls one day. You had seen her one day when he wasn’t there, briefly asking her about the process of how she decided about who’s art went where.

You knew that her little painting rotation ran in a few other shops around town. She said that she wasn’t looking for anything new for a bit, but she was keeping all the submissions she got on file.

“Did she say when she would start looking again?”

“No,” you shook your head, after repeating what Janeen had told you to Harry the next time you saw him. “Sorry. But I’m sure it shouldn’t be too long.”

Harry nodded, glancing down at the glass of water between his hands that he had gone up to grab, before you went up to him with the news from your talk with Janeen.

“Why isn’t it run through you guys?”

“What?”

“I mean,” Harry paused. “I’m just curious about how it works. Why is it Janeen who does all the art if she has nothing to do with this café?”

“Honestly I don’t know,” you told him truthfully. “The owner set it up with her, long before I started.”

“Oh okay,” he nodded. “It’s a neat thing, to have local art for sale like this.”

“It is,” you glanced at the art. “But honestly we don’t sell them very often. I think only two or three times in my time here I’ve seen one sold.”

That surprised Harry. “Really? I mean, I guess people don’t come for coffee to buy a painting. Still, it adds a nice atmosphere to the café.” He paused, watching your lips quirk up to a smile. “Would be nice to have my own art up, but…”

Your eyes narrowed on him slightly. “Can I see this art? That you so urgently need to put up in here?”

He tried to stop the beaming smile that was building, biting his lips together for a second. For once feeling like it wasn’t him incessantly asking you something or bugging you, this time you asking him something about himself.

“No,” he heard himself saying, watching your eyebrows jolt up in surprise.

“No?”

His smile was sly, idea forming. He quickly walked back to his table and ripped out a small piece of paper from his sketchbook. He turned back around, seeing you hadn’t moved from your spot by the register.

“Here,” he said once he returned to his side of the counter where he had left you. “I have a few pieces up in a show next week. It’s just for one night, at a little gallery downtown.”

Writing down the date of the show and the name of gallery, he handed the scrap paper over to you. “You should come.” 

[12raben]

Adventurer Career - Ideas?

Since I can’t seem to beat the final level of the Stronghold campaign (damn, this game is challenging!), I dug up an old project of mine: A medieval default replacement for the Adventurer Career. It hasn’t been done yet (as far as I know) and I do enjoy creative writing from time to time. I did a light research on the topic and while I had fun reading about historic figures like Robert Guiskard, Walter Raleigh, Ibn Battūta, Erik, the Red and his son Leif Erikson, I find it hard to put this information into a career for a sim. Not that there is a lack of inspiration, but these figures had one thing in common: Travelling. Sims, as we know, live in their home and are “sedentary“ (I don’t know, if that word is correct in the context, I hope you get, what I’m on about.) On the top of my head I can think of a special lot of sorts, where sims in the lower levels of the career live. (Kinda like a travelling camp, just like military barracks for lower level military sims) The higher your sim climbs in the career, the more comfortable gets his position, so he can afford to live in a set spot. It seems almost unavoidable to have a combat element in the career, because adventurer is mostly mixed with merchenary aspects in historical records. I don’t mind a fantastic element, so a computer-gamey/RPG approach (maybe like a hero in fable? Or the dragonborn?) seems feasible and my fiancé came up with the idea to have a more scholastic point of view. I want to get rid of the “pirate stages” of the career as well, because with the replacement for the oceanography career my maritime needs are satisfied.

Under the cut, I’ve written down some ideas.

tl; dr: If anybody has ideas, references, suggestions or just an interesting direction, please let me know.

Happy simming!

Here is, what I’ve came up with so far. For simplicity‘s sake let’s assume, the sim enrolled in the career is a dude named Bob. :P

Traveller (Pilgrim? Maybe?) Bob has been restless in the backwater country, where he lives. The spark of wanderlust became a raging flame, so Bob set out to find his fortune elsewhere.

Ruin Researcher Bob has found plenty of old ruins to explore alongside his travel route. Maybe there is something valuable inside? Or something... dangerous?

Loot Chaser Bob’s research turned out to be very rewarding. He can now estimate, whether a ruin is worth the risk. Though sometimes appearances are deceiving.

Explorer’s Assistant (or cartographer or sellsword/hired thug/witcher of sorts?) Admitting, that Bob needs help in the wide world, was the first step in the right direction. Now Bob is hard on the heels of an more experienced adventurer, who might be his stepping stone for the next great achievement. Or: Though Bob’s sense of direction is infallible, he found, that others will pay good coin for an exact map of places he visited. Or: Bob receives a more stable income, than he had hoped. People are pretty generous, when they want something killed.

Explorer (maybe switch this with lvl 4? Depended on lvl 4...) No dungeon is too deep, no cavern too old for Bob to explore. He is now exploring for the heck of it, but there is surely a better way to make coin other than avoiding traps and escaping collapsing tunnels.

Insert a word here, that suggests, that the sim writes travelogues People have always been facinated by stories of Bob’s travels, so he decided to stop telling them and writing them down.

Hero of the realm (Or maybe raider for a not so nice setup? ) Thanks to a good reputation (which may or may not be self inflicted due to fantastical storytelling) the people of the realm adore Bob. He is called for help frequently and the nobles invite him to their lavish feasts. Selective schmoozing can bring Bob good fortune in this company.

Lord? Landed gentleman? Laird? Landowner? Bob was lucky enough to be favoured by the queen/king/leader of the realm/court council(?). His great feats for the commoners are rewarded with land, title and most importantly coin. Though it’s not time to rest yet. If Bob is clever enough, he might be able to get a more stable position at court.

Court Ambassador The majesty sent Bob to another court to act as an agent for the affairs of the crown. His frequent visits at the other court(s) are worth their money and he can almost not believe how lucky he got. Beeing paid for extravagant vacations is a good way of life. But what is there to achieve now?

Legendary Hero Everybody knows Bob. He is a living legend. His fiends shake in their boots and his admirers swoon, when hearing his name. The only thing Bob has to look out for now, is too not live long enough to become the villain.

And these are just the levels/job descriptions. Chance cards are a whole other level as well as career outfits. I think, it would be fun to have chance cards with choices like in Fable: Very black and white, good and evil stuff. I figured out the technical part, so far, but I have a hard time with the creative part. :(

[nobaettadr]

 🍇  :    how would my muse describe their childhood?  how much has it impacted the person they are now,  or will become as an adult?  around what age did they or will they start to mature,  and why?  do they wish to go back to their days as a child,  or have they embraced adulthood? 

       ★   //    FRUIT HEADCANONS.  /   @rivclry

these are all pretty loaded questions for leif and blend together, so at the risk of meshing stuff and going on tangents, i’ll split them up.

how would my muse describe their childhood?

looking back on it now when he’s older and understands context, leif would be able to describe his childhood for what it really was: a difficult time where every day was lived in fear of persecution. he’d readily admit though that his childhood was much, much harder for lachesis and especially finn than for himself ( and maybe nanna, though he wouldn’t try to speak for her ); he still remembers, especially many of his earliest years, a relatively innocent time before he knew what was going on and his own role in everything. 

his earliest memories are largely benign, and he talks in canon about fondly looking back on warm, familial occasions with dorias, glade, and selfina. he also fondly remembers the years with the bishop of frest. even though, in the big picture, they were refugees who scraped by day to day, i don’t think leif himself recognized this during those early years, in large part because those around him, finn in particular, went to great pains to make sure leif didn’t suffer where they could, even, as canon tells us, going for days without food so that he would have something to eat.

so i think that even though he’d be able to now pragmatically say that his childhood was hard, he’d also emphasize that it wasn’t all gloom, and that there were still bright spots he holds closely to.

how much has it impacted the person they are now,  or will become as an adult?

all of it, and immensely. leif exclusively has his upbringing to thank for the kind of person he is now. there’s multiple instances in fe5 where he says something along the lines of “[X person] helped me / sheltered me before, so i have to help them!” of course, this is indicative of leif’s innately magnanimous spirit, but i think it also speaks to his unique circumstances. he’s well aware that he would not have survived, would have been captured by the empire and killed long ago, if not for the selflessness of people who had little reason to aid him, but did anyway. this sticks with him over the course of his life, and he never forgets it. it’s the reason why he’s fairly unique among FE royalty in his ability to put himself in the shoes of even the lowest commoner and understand what it’s like to have so little that you have to live off the generosity of others.

i’m fairly certain august says something to the same effect in fe5, that leif has to use this unique circumstance of his to not make the same mistakes as his ancestors, who, for all their good intentions, still suffered from the ‘prince in his high tower’ problem that made them unable to bridge the gap between north and south thracia. because of his impoverished upbringing, leif is in a position to help the south thracians from a place of genuine understanding rather than as a rich king coming in to dole out alms for the third world country ( that he technically conquered ).

around what age did they or will they start to mature,  and why?

while i think that leif in general has always been a pretty serious kid, having the bishop of frest, who at the time was the caretaker he’d had the longest and had been the closest to, sacrifice his life to execution to buy leif time to escape, was the event that took the last of his innocence and opened his eyes to what was happening around him. it was the first instance that keenly showed him his own youth and helplessness, as well as the weight of the responsibility on his shoulders, and the weight of the first of many lives that would be given so that he could fulfill that responsibility and hope they had in him.

do they wish to go back to their days as a child,  or have they embraced adulthood?

a difficult question. i think leif would admit to both. part of him misses back when he didn’t have as many worries and could play make-believe stories with nanna and asvel and dream of battles grander than they ever ended up being, or even return to the simple life he had in fiana. he does, in some way, feel like he never got to have a childhood, which later in the war he realizes is hardly unique to him and that, in some ways, he’s fortunate to have had the people around him that he did have.

but leif is also sensible enough not to really long for that past nostalgia, anymore. he wouldn’t want to leave behind the people who are depending on him now, and he knows that his place is in fulfilling the duties and position he’s stepped into. leif might have been forced to grow up too fast, but he also has always wanted to grow up, to be ready, to be seen as an adult and fully capable. he doesn’t want to be a child anymore, or be seen like one, since for him that’s associated with vulnerability and, more importantly, with helplessness.

[murasaki-murasame]

With Gala Leif almost certainly being on the horizon, and the skill share system also coming out soon and presenting all sorts of interesting implications about how characters will be built from now on, I’m gonna just go ahead and post my current hopes and predictions for what Leif’s kit might look like when he comes out.

Firstly, I think the chapter 13 interlude makes it super obvious that alt-Zethia is going to be our new story unit from chapter 14, which leaves this month’s gala spot open for Leif, so I’m just gonna go ahead and continue to assume it’ll be him even though we technically don’t know for sure, lol.

Anyway, if we just assume Gala Leif is gonna be a thing that exists in the first place, it’s pretty obvious he’ll be a sword unit, and honestly I want him to be a flame sword. Which is weird to say, but we already have gala sword units for wind, light, and shadow, and he really doesn’t look like a water unit, so that just leaves flame. Also we’re right about to get mVolk so it’d be nice to get a new gala flame unit to use in it.

On the one hand we have way too many flame swords in general, but honestly the main issue with them is just the fact that they’re pretty much all DPS units who overlap with each other too much. But I think Gala Leif is very likely to be some kind of support unit, going by his whole character type, and the fact that I’m pretty sure he used a team defense buff in the chapter 9 battle we had with him. And if he’s a support unit, then he’d at least serve a different role than the other flame swords we have.

The interesting thing about him potentially being a support unit is that the skill share update would give him [and all support units] a lot of flexibility, and a lot of room to use shared skills to cover up any holes in his kit, so he can get away with not having certain things in his kit if he can just use certain shared skills. Mainly, even if he doesn’t have any healing in his kit, he might still be able to substitute for H-Lowen if he can just use a shared healing skill. So basically there’s a high chance that he’ll at least avoid the awkward situation of missing out on some vital piece of team support utility that makes him basically useless, lol.

There’s not really a whole lot to go on to try and get any concrete guesses about what his kit itself will be like, but in terms of what I want out of him, I basically just want him to be a universal flame support unit, since that’s the part of the flame roster that’s most lacking right now. There’s lots of really strong flame DPS units, but the only viable support units are basically just H-Lowen and maybe Emma. This might change with the skill share update, but I still think we need more options.

So this is just pure theorycrafting, but I’d like to see him be a stance unit like Valerio and co, with two stances based around offensive and defensive support. There’s a lot of ways they could have that play out, but I like the idea of him having an S1 that gives either a 30% strength or 30% defense buff based on his stance, while his S2 gives a team life shield based on around 50% of his HP. This way he’d be able to give different types of buffs without being too offensive or too defensive. I also just think it’d be neat if his S1 was similar to Patia’s, but obviously better since he’d be a gala unit. And I think the idea of him being a flame support unit with a life shield could be really interesting. It’s not a Grace-exclusive mechanic anymore, so it’s not impossible. It might have some unintentionally negative interactions with Volk’s plague mechanic, though, if having a life shield active while at full HP means that heals wouldn’t be able to get rid of your plague, but I don’t really know how that would play out since nobody in flame can use life shields yet.

His first ability, and whatever unique mechanic that gives him, is the hardest thing to speculate about since they could do anything with it, but if we keep going down this whole train of thought, I like the idea of him giving an additional, passive team buff based on what stance he has active. Which mainly could be really interesting if he could, say, provide a passive team health regen effect while in his defensive stance. If that would be enough to cleanse plague even on someone with a life shield on, that could really help him replace H-Lowen in Volk without even having to equip a heal skill. And if it’s along the lines of T-Hope’s team healing doublebuff, or the Odd Sparrows healing doublebuff, then it wouldn’t be very potent healing, but would do enough to handle plague, and hopefully deal with unavoidable damage as well.

And maybe in his ‘offensive stance’, he could provide something like a team skill haste buff. I actually don’t think a passive team strength buff would be ideal, since that’d put everyone one step closer towards maxing out their strength buffs. But a skill haste buff for the team could be interesting, even if it’s pretty minor.

And having these sorts of effects [mainly the heal] tied to different stances, along with his skills, would give you a reason to switch between them, instead of just spending all your time in whatever mode gives you the team strength buff skill. Since you’d need to switch over to the defensive mode to get the health regen effect. And if you wanted to instead just use shared heal skills instead, you’d have to thus opt not to use more offensive shared skills instead. So it’d give you different options to play around with depending on how you want to specialize him, in a way that I think would work nicely with what they seem to be going for with the shared skill system in general, and how it’ll give you more team composition options.

Also as a support unit he’d really benefit from having buff time as an ability or a chain co-ability or something. I don’t really have many ideas for what his regular ability and whatnot will be beyond that, though. Skill prep might be really nice, though, since it’d be useful in both HMS and Volk, and let him avoid using Chocolatiers.

There’s also the option of if they might give him the ability to attack from a ranged distance like Tobias can, maybe tied to one of his stances, but that might make him a bit too similar to Tobias, and I’m not sure if it’d be a big deal for him to be a melee unit instead.

One thing that’s also interesting to think about is the fact that the version update post indirectly confirms that you’ll be able to equip gala character’s skills as shared skills, since they gave the example of OG Ranzal being able to equip a skill from Gala Ranzal. So that puts some limits on what I think they’ll do with Gala Leif’s S1, no matter how they decide to design him in general, since they’d want to avoid making it really overpowered as a shared skill. This is also assuming that either all gala character S1s will be available to use, or none of them will, but it might be on a case by case basis. I guess we’ll see when the update comes out in a few days, lol. But one way or another it makes me think that his S1 won’t be super powerful, or that a lot of it’s utility might be tied to his ability, like with Gala Cleo or Gala Alex. Which is one reason why I think something like a stance system that toggles what his S1 does might be likely, since if you used it as a shared skill you’d only be able to use the ‘default’ effect, so they could do something more powerful as an ‘alternate’ effect for it.

So yeah this is basically my idea of what I want him to be like as a character, with the goal of him being a meaningful addition to the flame meta who fixes some of the holes it has at the moment.

I’m still bracing myself for the curveball possibility of us getting, like, Gala Laxi instead this month, and Leif continuing to never come home, but let’s just hope that doesn’t happen, lmao. I might actually just skip the whole gala out of spite if it’s not Leif, at this point, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

[gascon-en-exil]

FE16 Golden Deer Liveblogging

Chapters 16-18. Just like the Lions route, until it isn’t. There’s also some Dimidue content here, but not enough for its own post.

Chapters 16 and 17 are virtually identical to those chapters for the Lions apart from which army you’re controlling. Ferdinand still shows up to die on the Great Bridge, with a generic taking the place of Lorenz. (Oh, and I’d forgotten to say last time that Ashe appears in Ailell. I read somewhere that he can be recruited somehow here, but I didn’t see it.) The big battle at Gronder Field is a fair bit easier with the Deer; the Lions are less mobile and I believe fewer in number, with the only thing that surprised me being Sylvain and Ingrid coming from behind with reinforcements a few turns in.

Keeping Dedue alive is fairly simple in Chapter 17 since you only have to defeat Edelgard and Dimitri to end the chapter, but I’m not entirely certain I got anything special out of it? In any case, I did so by rushing Edelgard’s lines as fast as possible to get close to taking her out before the Lions start moving. Once they move it looks like Dimitri and his two boyfriends’ AI is specifically trained on Byleth (...why?) unless that’s only because mine was about 30 levels below the rest of my army and cowering in a bush because I’m not using him. It’s therefore not too hard to leave a few units behind to rush Dimitri on his way north as soon as Edelgard is down.

Chapter 18 at first looks like it’s going to be a retread of the Lions’ Chapter 20, the showdown vs. the Death Knight in Fort Merceus, but then the plot happens and you’ve got a bunch of Almyran NPCs led by Nader backing you up while everyone other than Claude assaults the fort from a different starting location. Then the DK surprises everyone by retreating, turning it until a rout map unless you can kill him before he leaves. On that plot point, see below.

Claude’s paralogue is technically the first new map I’ve seen on this route, although it’s really just the story map for the Sreng desert one used for skirmishes. It’s not completely awful to navigate once you realize that there’s a path of normal terrain circling the central structure, which was very helpful when trying to grab the loot from a bunch of thieves determined to commit suicide by dragon. The Wind Caller/Macuil wasn’t particularly worse than any other major monster boss I’ve yet encountered, and he was great for dropping little worldbuilding hints. It’s funny to me that the other house leaders’ paralogues target major military installations while Claude goes on a field trip to another country for information.

Character/Story observations

Let’s start with the Dimidue. The reason I say that I’m not sure that sparing Dedue accomplishes anything is that he retreats from battle and the post-chapter cutscenes play out as if this had happened anyway. Hilda describes Dimitri charging after Edelgard alone before collapsing and getting run through by Imperial soldiers. Claude then asks after Dimitri’s vassal whose fate was unknown - and then it cuts to Dedue alone, saying this: “Your Highness! Your ambitions are my own now! I...I will bring you Edelgard’s head... I swear it!” This is indeed the route where these two go full Quan/Finn, and although Dimitri’s offscreen end lacks the poignancy of Yied the results are no less tragic or less gay. And because Dimitri has no son to be fueled with righteous anger, Dedue has to carry within him not only Finn’s unbroken loyalty but Leif’s rage. I know he’ll be making a reappearance in a later chapter, too, so this isn’t the end for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the anons I’ve gotten on the subject were really about the chapter where you kill Edelgard.

I made a point to defeat Dedue first before rewinding time to see what would come of it, and actually I think that adds even more to where their relationship is/was on this route. In this version of events it’s left ambiguous who’s leading the mysterious Faerghus army until Dimitri appears on the battlefield, and apart from the bit about Cornelia’s coup right after the timeskip no explanation is given for why Dimitri is his one-eyed feral self. Unless the game says otherwise, I’m going to assume that events played out as they did in the Lions, with Dedue rescuing him from prison but needing to sacrifice himself and inadvertently leaving Dimitri to wander alone as a vagrant for five years. This Dimitri is as such violent, contemptuous, and obsessed with revenge, and when his allies die in battle his “mourning” quotes are nothing but ellipses (Sylvain), dismissive grunts (Mercedes), or their names (Felix, Ingrid). For Dedue, though, who protests that he can keep fighting after being defeated, Dimitri says this:  “Shut up and retreat. You must live, Dedue.” So I was right about how this storyline plays out; per his Gilbert support, Dedue has to have his prince command him to live for him to have not charged to his death alongside Dimitri. Also, way to have all that homoromantic co-dependence flow both ways to have even a feral, death-seeking Dimitri insist on Dedue’s survival while all his childhood friends (and Mercedes) are dying around him and he barely spares them a word.

Anyway...let’s talk about lighter things. Not many supports left for me to get; I finally finished off Catherine and Shamir’s line, and it is blatantly romantic down to marriage propositions. As a counterpoint Claude’s last support with Shamir is one of his more romantic and one of the few endings that sees him eventually abandon Almyra. Flayn/Manuela dances around prostitution - good thing Flayn is secretly hundreds of years old, right?

Monastery tidbits: an NPC soldier confirms that the Fódlan year begins with the Great Tree Moon - the April equivalent. This means that numbering the months to match up with the Gregorian calendar was solely so the player could give Byleth a real world birthday. So worth it. I’ve also noticed that there’s a line of minor quests for supplies and skirmishes in Part 2 that are the same across all routes, with the only difference coming from who’s handing them out. For Edelgard it’s Hubert and for Claude it’s Hilda, but for Dimitri it’s Gilbert as yet another thing Dedue misses out on by being dead by default.

In a rare bit of honesty that’s kind of hilarious, Claude admits that he’s using Byleth for their connection to the church, now as a means of smoothing over tensions within the Alliance.

I complained about how the Alliance’s presence and behavior at the Gronder Field rematch on the Lions route has little explanation, and unfortunately the way the Kingdom remnant is handled is only slightly better here. Claude’s forces don’t try allying with them first because their movements have been erratic, and then later because it’s foggy at Gronder...fog that doesn’t stick around for the map itself, thankfully. Dimitri may be feral and unable to be reasoned with, but what about Gilbert or Rodrigue? The rematch is a big marketing moment, but having the Kingdom and Alliance fight each other instead of unifying against the Empire feels like a contrivance either way.

One thing I think Three Houses does really well compared to earlier games is that there’s less of a sense of what I think of as arbitrary chorus characters: people aside from the leads who show up in most dialogue scenes for the protagonist(s) to play off, who get to be there because they have plot armor or are NPCs so they can’t die in battle and therefore don’t need to be written around. FE16 goes out of its way to include every character in your army at one point or another in story cutscenes, sometimes even in plot critical ways. For example, after Chapter 17 it’s Lysithea who provides the plot hook to bring Those Who Slither back into the story by sharing her traumatic past. Meanwhile in Chapter 18 it’s Hilda who comes up with the ruse of invading Fort Merceus disguised as Imperial soldiers...as well as a gag about dressing Claude in drag that’s mildly amusing but goes nowhere.

Oh, right...I need to talk about the DK, and Those Who Slither’s nukes. The DK retreats from Fort Merceus because his side has “javelins of light” that totally obliterate it in the same way that Arianrhod gets obliterated in Edelgard’s route. As this happens in a cutscene I assume the DK doesn’t die there if you defeat him, as he does in the Lions route. If it seems odd that I’m not dwelling on the fact that the enemy now has anachronistic nukes, it’s nothing compared to Claude, who takes the opportunity to have an extended discussion on racism. Lorenz takes him to task for allying with the Almyran general Nader, and Claude reveals his plan to solve racism with imperialism. As silly as that is, he’s still deft (and manipulative) enough not to do so by revealing his own heritage but rather by dragging Cyril into the spotlight as an example of an Almyran among their own forces. Cyril protests, but that’s just how Claude rolls.

Part of Claude’s big speech references the Officer’s Academy bringing together people from many different backgrounds, among them the princess of Brigid and a man of Duscur. You know, an Imperial hostage and the vassal/boyfriend of the mentally unstable crown prince of Faerghus, because those are completely normal circumstances for adding diversity to the student body. It’s also strange to me that he considers Duscur as outside Fódlan. Ethnically and culturally distinct from Faerghus, yes, but Fódlan is a continent with three independent political entities that also includes the peninsula on which Duscur rests. To use a real world comparison close to how I imagine the relations in question, this would be comparable to saying that the Basque people do not live in Europe because they are an ethnic group distinct from the people of France/Spain. I’m clearly putting more thought into this than the game does, but still.

[superbatson]

first lines

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have fewer than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag some people to take part.

technically tagged by @batratobin bc they opened up the challenge to anyone who wanted to do it 

1. putting on a show - stargirl (tv 2020), pat/henry jr & henry jr/cameron/rick

"Tell me what you like, stud," Henry says as he leans over his customer, a middle-aged man with soft-looking brown hair and a light southern drawl.

2. further apart (the closer that we are) - spider-man (tom holland movies), peter/stephen

He couldn't forget about Peter.

3. you can borrow mine - blue’s clues, joe/steve

Having Steve over at his house felt strange for Joe, even if it was the good kind of strange.

4. it all begins again - army of the dead (movie 2021), dieter/vanderohe

After the heist, Dieter heads to the States.

5. who’s that girl - army of the dead (movie 2021), dieter/vanderohe

Van swears the world is punishing him for something.

6. she’s the tear in my heart - spin (movie 2021), rhea/max

The guilt feels like it's eating Max alive as he returns home from the Beatmaster competition.

7. playing with lightning - shazam! (2019), billy/freddy

Ever since he was little, Freddy loved superheroes.

8. you were mine for the summer (now we know it’s nearly over) - high school musical: the musical: the series (tv), ricky/ej

“i wish you could come with me,” ricky says, the slowly setting sun warming his fair skin as he lies in the soft sand, the waves softly rolling in over his feet.

9. we’ve still got time - american idol rpf, hunter/chayce & hunter/chayce/graham

hunter is still in tears when he steps off the stage.

10. i need a hero - wonder woman (movies), diana/barbara/steve/maxwell 

When Diana and Barbara return home to discover the predicament Steve and Maxwell have found themselves in, they are amused, to say the least.

11. is it too late to open up? (i’m dying to say, oh how i love you) - zoey’s extraordinary playlist (tv), leif/tobin 

It was just a little holiday get-together at Zoey’s apartment, nothing unusual about it.

12. earth angel (will you be mine?) - julie and the phantoms (tv), caleb/alex

"Look," Alex says, looking up towards the sky just as the white flakes begin to drift down from the clouds. "It's snowing."

13. i think i love you (but i don’t like you) - brave new world (tv 2020), johh/bernard

When around Bernard, sometimes John just wants to punch him in his stupid, handsome face.

14. you’ve got nothing to lose - julie and the phantoms (tv), reggie/caleb

There was something alluring about Caleb Covington.

15. sing it to me - zoey’s extraordinary playlist (tv), zoey/leif

Zoey always loved Leif's singing voice.

16. colder by the minute - stargirl (tv 2020), gen

When Cameron hears the news, his whole world comes crashing down.

17. a full body workout - stargirl (tv 2020), larry/pat

After several workout sessions at Ripped City, Pat thinks he might actually be starting to see some results.

18. together, we’ll heal - stargirl (tv 2020) & shazam! (2019), rick/billy

There's an unexplainable bond that forms between people who endured similar traumatic experiences in their childhoods.

19. love heals all wounds - stargirl (tv 2020), rick-centric ot4

When Rick shows up at school with a pair of sunglasses on, Beth's the first to notice.

20. all for one - stargirl (tv 2020), gen

Rick knows it's his destiny to become a superhero.

~

screaming @ the shazam one being #7, i’m obsessed with how that worked out. 

uhhhh well a pattern i see is a lot of stargirl fics, which is kind of ironic, given how i still haven’t caught up on s2. (i will, just maybe when the semester ends?) though, to be fair, the latest one was actually written probably sometime back in s1 along with the others, i just sat on it for a long time before finally deciding to post it. (i had initially kept it private between me & a friend but i keep going back and forth between wanting to finish that kinktober series i started in 2019 and not wanting to, so i posted the fic in the heat of one of my “wanting to” phases.)

oh yeah that’s another pattern - there are 4 kinktober fics here. i’ve already said what one of them is, but maybe i should leave the others as a mystery for you guys, if anyone wants to play that guessing game. (you can easily click on the fics to see what they are, but if you wanna guess just based on these first lines/titles/pairings, go right ahead.)

also yes there are a lot of song-based titles here. sue me. it’s hard to articulate patterns in the actual first lines, but i guess they vary between kinda generic introductions and dialogue. and said dialogue seems to always be punctuated with description to establish the setting and character’s actions. heh. yeah, i do have a tendency to do that a lot. 

OH and if i had to pick a favorite, um... i like the ones from “who’s that girl” and “i think i love you” bc they’re kinda funny, but i think my favorite might be from “you’ve got nothing to lose”. it’s probably one of my most simple, yet accurate character descriptions. (is it somewhat of a self-projection bc i’m absolutely in love with cheyenne jackson? perhaps.)

Tagging: also whoever wants to, lol. i do have my usual suspects of users i tend to tag in these sorts of games, but idk who does and doesn’t write fanfic, so if you happen to click on this and wanna do it, go ahead. credit me with tagging you, if you want. 

[juniperpublishers-ttsr]

Icelandic Chronicle - Juniper publishers

Journal of Trends in Technical and Scientific Research

Abstract

At least three reasons make Iceland a fascinating country: its nature, its history and its people. The following lines are a result of my visit to Iceland in 2013. The following lines are bases on personal impressions gathered during my stay in Iceland, in the year 2013. Special emphasis is laid on geographical factors, as well as on cultural circumstances.

Keywords: Iceland; Geology; Geography; History; Culture“People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland”. Björk

Half in America, Half in Europe

E15 was the abbreviation established by the press for the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, when it erupted in the year 2010, given the near impossibility of pronouncing properly that sixteen-letter word (E + 15) for those who do not speak the language of Iceland (Figure 1). Its uniqueness and richness seem to mirror the very society that speaks it. Descending from the old Norwegian (gammelnorsk), the Icelandic is a member of the family of the northern Germanic languages, and is part of the cultural legacy of the Vikings’ era (793 to 1066). During that period, the Vikings – a Scandinavian people who used sail the rivers and seas of Europe, in order to raid and trade –settled in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Normandy, England, Ireland, Scotland, Sicily, the Baltic Sea, Russia, Greece and in Anatolia (which is already a part of Asia). They also reached Greenland and Canada; it is believed that Leif Erikson (c. 970 – c. 1020), the Norse explorer who landed in the American continent five hundred years before Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), was born in Iceland.

Crossed by the 66th parallel, just as if it was trying to enter the Arctic Circle, Iceland, literally an icy land, is the youngest geological portion of Europe [1] : it emerged tectonically in the form of a volcanic island about 20 million years ago, which means little more than that a blink of an eye if compared with the age of the Earth, which amounts to c. 4,6 billion years [2]. In addition to being located at the junction between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans, Iceland belongs to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which separate the American and Euro-Asian Plates and has an average spreading rate of a few centimetres per year. Nearly half of its territory is on the North-American Plate; geologically speaking, Reykjavík, Iceland’s capital and home to almost half of its population (c. 350,000 in total) is an American city (Figure 2). More than twice as big as Denmark (with the exception of gigantic Greenland, of course), but more than half smaller than Norway, Iceland is a vast basaltic plateau, 10% of which covered by glaciers. Such a small population spread through less than 40,000sq mi of land mass makes of Iceland the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Demographically speaking, Iceland is also very young by European standards. Its earliest settlement dates back to 870 AD and is often attributed to Vikings of Swedish origin. It is known, however, that Celtic monks from Ireland or Scotland arrived in Iceland a century and a half before. It is presumed that the Irish monk and saint Brendan (c. 484 - c. 577) at least caught sight of the coastline of Iceland during his quest for the Terrestrial Paradise. Brendan also sought the island Bresail (in Old Irish: “land of the blessed”), which ended up being shown in more than one medieval map. Such is the origin of the word “Brazil”, name of the largest country in South America and the fifth largest in the world, discovered by the Portuguese Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467 - 1520) in 1500 [3].

The is that Cabral and the other great navigators of the Modern Era owe more to the Irish Saint Brendan than to the Viking Leif Erikson (whose exploits left no important cultural traces in what became the New World), since of them knew, at least by hearing, the content of the Navigatio, an anonymous work written by a Celtic monk in the 11th century, in which Saint Brendan’s deed are described; it is not impossible that he has landed in America, preceding this way Christopher Columbus’s voyage by roughly one thousand years [4]. As an inspirer of the Great Discoveries, Saint Brendan matches in importance names like those of the Venetian Marco Polo (1254-1324) and of the British Sir John Mandeville (name attributed to the author of a famous travel memoir which first circulated in Europe during the second half of the 14th century) (Figure 3). Who are they, the Icelanders?Roughly speaking, Icelanders may be considered as an ethnic mixture of Scandinavians and Celts. In 930, Iceland became the first country in the world to adopt democratic parliamentarism – a political heritage of Greek origin and developed alongside with Christianity, which, based on the extremely rare virtue of self-criticism, grants equality of rights and duties to all members of a society [5]; significantly, this occurred in the Þingvellir valley, on the crest of the mid-ocean ridge – a geological peculiarity that allows, being in Þingvellir, to cross on foot from America to Europe and vice versa. During almost seven hundred years (between 1262 and 1918), Iceland remained annexed by Norway, Denmark or both, who came to constitute a single kingdom. Autonomy came in 1918 and total independence in 1945. Icelandic economy relies mainly on fishing and metallurgical industry. Economical and social problems are minimal compared to those of the outside world; the country has no armed forces and its police is almost symbolic, since crime practically does not exist in the island. Reykjavík is perhaps be the safest capital in the world (Figure 4).

Iceland, a place where geological facts happen before our very eyes, is also suitable for cultural growth. Music, cinema, architecture, sculpture and painting have their place in Icelandic society, but literature is supreme. The island is home to a rich literary assortment of mainly Scandinavian origin, which was firstly put down in written form between the 12th and the 13th centuries. We are talking about the sagas, literary genre that many see as the ancestor of novels and that turned Iceland into the cultural capital of the Scandinavian world in the Late Middle Ages. Geographical isolation seems to have functioned as an advantage: far from everything and everybody, Icelanders have endeavoured to preserve their oral collection of poetry (notably the Edda, attributed to the Icelandic historian, poet, and politician Snorri Sturlason [1179-1241], consisting mainly of poems in homage to Germanic heroes and gods), legends, short stories and so on; great distance from the European continent and long winter nights favoured the development of the habit of reading, which left permanent marks in Icelandic culture: until today, Icelanders read (the country has a literacy rare rate is of 100%) and write a lot. In 1955, the Literature Nobel was given to the Icelandic Halldór Laxness (1902-98). Indeed, “Icelanders are avid consumers of literature, with the highest number of bookstores per capita in the world. For its size, Iceland imports and translates more international literature than any other nation.

Iceland also has the highest per capita publication of books and magazines, and around 10% of the population will publish a book in their lifetimes. Most books in Iceland are sold between late September to early November. This time period is known as Jolabokaflod, the Christmas Book Flood. The Flood begins with the Iceland Publisher’s Association distributing Bokatidindi, a catalogue of all new publications, free to each Icelandic home” [6] (Figure 5). Christianity came to Iceland around the year 1000. Nordic paganism did not die out; it remains alive until the present; there is a widespread belief in ghosts, mythological beings (gnomes, trolls, etc.) and “hidden people” (huldfólk). Rarely do Icelanders talk about this matter with foreigners, which is a typical trait of a centripetal culture, so to say. Nowadays, “Iceland is a very secular country; as with other Nordic nations, religious attendance is relatively low. The above statistics represent administrative membership of religious organisations, which does not necessarily reflect the belief demographics of the population. According to a study published in 2001, 23% of the inhabitants were either atheist or agnostic. A Gallup poll conducted in 2012 found that 57% of Icelanders considered themselves “religious”, 31% considered themselves “non-religious”, while 10% defined themselves as “convinced atheists”, placing Iceland among the ten countries with the highest proportions of atheists in the world. The proportion registered in the official Church of Iceland is declining rapidly, more than 1% per year (the Church of Iceland has declined from 80% in 2010 to less than 70% in 2017)” [7] (Figure 6).

Plunging into the unknownLike all islands, and especially those too far away from the continents, Iceland naturally tends to promote the preservation of the biological traits of their inhabitants. (Part of Australia’s Mesozoic fauna exists to this day.) The same applies to culture, as it is manifest in the already mentioned Icelandic neo-paganism. Like the deserts, islands are constantly inspiring the creation of imaginary worlds, places that came to existence in literature and its ramifications (theatre, movie etc.). Those are places where things are not what they seem and whose difficulty to be mapped leaves us with no easy answer concerning their concrete existence [8]. What is out there, beyond that mountain, that valley, that river, that ocean? Such is the kind of question that motivated Vikings like Leif Erikson, Genoese like Christopher Columbus, Portuguese like Pedro Álvares Cabral and, long before them, Celtics like Saint Brendan to plunge boldly into the unknown.

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[cielospeaks]

honestly i cant say exactly what or why but this new years in f-h is just increasingly uncomfortable. tbh i think its mostly bc of the featured characters being ones that really grind my gears, and theyre a stupidly overpowered unit as well for no reason other than “main character!”/”fanservice!” reasons. and like, even outside of character their part in the story is just annoying, all their dialogue makes me want to rip out my hair. in the last map especially, just fk off. the tt story is awful also, super uncomfortable for some reason, i cant rlly say exactly why. but its up there in uncomfortable level w the dancer banner one (i dont mind the actual maps in the story since they have nothing to do w the story)

i mean i am annoyed as well abt spending prolly 100+ orbs and only getting a pity break character i dont care much abt, but whatever. ig the game just wants me to max level all the 15 characters i dont care abt lol.

i am happy abt rebecca getting a refine, u go girl! leif too, im glad for him! cordy and henry are technically on my tentative “all the sheperds 5 star” thing so. idk. but thats way tbd. im a little nervous tm bc im hoping to get deidre from her rerun in february (early) so ill try to save orbs for her, but idk what the january banners will be and im afraid tbh

[sweet-star-storybook]

Hey all, back at it again with the random posts, aha. I have been working on something that will formally address the month long art / comic hiatus I’ve been on, but that’s taking a bit longer than I expected. So as a break (I guess?) I took it upon myself to update what I call my Original Stories Timeline, i.e. a chronological list of all of my story ideas (as of October 2019 anyway). I have not posted this list anywhere, but I like to update it on my laptop every now and again.

There is a bit of ambiguity with some of the years that these were made, as sometimes there’s a difference between coming up with the title or lead character for a story versus actually making it a “thing” with an idea or scenes attached. As an example, Moth to the Flame technically began when I first drew Kiida in April of 2015, but aside from a snippet of reasoning for why she was an archer, the story as it is now did not start to take form until I drew Zander in December of 2017. Other times I flat out can’t remember when some of these stories were made, and digital files don’t always have the correct dates. 

For this post (and for curiosity’s sake), I wanted to add up and categorize them to see just how many stories I have in this brain of mine. It was actually quite a fascinating exercise, so I thought I’d share! I might as well list the titles for each category too, even if some of these are only titles at this point. I’ve renamed a few over the years and others are still working titles, but if any pique your interest at all, feel free to send me an ask about them! I love chatting about this stuff. :)

This got quite long once again so I’ll put it under the cut. Enjoy!

Stories that are old and/or need revamping: 6

Titles in this category:  Pasha & Marley (2003), Sonora (2004), Billy and the Rainbow Fish (2005), Spirit Fire (2006), The Darkest Light (2013), Polarity (2013).

These are stories that I’ve either had since I was a kid and would need overhauls to make them usable, or are simply dormant stories that I haven’t touched in a while and may need similar upgrades. This doesn’t mean that I will revamp all of them, but either way they serve as an interesting look at my progression as a story writer and character designer. My oldest story dates back to around 2003, and to put that into perspective, I was 8 years old that year.

Stories that are just titles / a smattering of ideas right now: 10

Titles in this category:  Fletcher (2016), The Dragons of Kitevale (2016), King Ace (2017), Ochako & Mai (2018), Psychanimate (2018), Mage Lights (2019), Trickster’s Gambit (2019), Switching Gears (2019), The Owlands (2019), Goodnight, Starlie (2019).

I always have too many of these for my own good, but this happens a lot if I have stray character designs that I think could maybe go together, and then before I know it the gears start turning in my head to add something more. I’m also really good at coming up with titles and logos to make me love the idea even more, even if there’s not much else to it. I guess you can blame my affinity for wordplay and clever puns for that, haha. Coming up with titles is really fun, but at this point I don’t know what kinds of stories these will be if I choose to develop them, so I gave them a separate category. Making this timeline reminded me of how many logos I still need to make!

Short films / animatics that I could also make into short comics: 7

Titles in this category:  The Aurora’s Child (2016), Blue (2016), Harpy (2017), Hearth & Lantern (2017), Leif & Shel (2018), The Healer (2019), In Your Orbit (2019).

My background in animation has afforded me the skills of writing for animation, specifically short films. I have always loved short films that communicate their story through little or no dialogue, and using the character’s actions and emotions to do the talking instead. Unfortunately my dreams of making a short film during school did not come to fruition, but that doesn’t mean the ideas have to go away, regardless of what form they take. I’ve made too many at this point to stop now anyway! I will likely do both a comic and an animatic for each one I decide to flesh out, as I want to practice both kinds of storytelling and they each have their advantages. Plus I could potentially make a comic anthology of these shorter stories in the future. Much like the animatics, the comics would likely be “silent”, in that they communicate more with action than dialogue.

Things I call “illustration worlds”: 2

Titles in this category:  Fruit Bats (2017), Lucky Stars (2019)

This one is a bit strange to explain, honestly. I picture these as more of a series of character interactions rather than a cohesive narrative, i.e. snippets of ideas carried out in a bunch of individual scenes, portrayed via illustrations. I am reminded a lot of the character interactions that exist in concept art for games and movies (the ones from Spyro: Reignited Trilogy come to mind). These illustrations would feature characters that could be in any sort of environment or setting, and we learn more about their personalities through each one, whether it’s a simple domestic scene or a fantasy world. There may not be anything much deeper than that, but there doesn’t have to be. A great deal of energy and expression can still be shown with these, and I love illustrations that have their own little stories contained within them. I could even compile them as a series of themed illustrations, hence why I still gave them titles (and once again, titles are fun).

Novels / story ideas I don’t plan on making into comics: 2

Titles in this category:  Shining Trigger (2014), A Mightier Pen (2017)

I’ve always loved writing long-form prose ever since I was a kid, and based on how many words these posts end up having, I can’t say much has changed! As such, I’ve always wanted to write a novel someday, but it does require a different skill set than script writing. With my background in animation and my new love of comics added in, I’ve done a bit of both. I might do novelizations of some of my comics later on, but these stories are, for the most part, better suited as written prose in my mind. They focus more on the characters and dialogue, rather than an imagined visual design. Not to say that novelists can’t paint detailed pictures of a character or world’s attributes, but it is communicated differently via words than pictures, especially when you consider the mind’s eye of a novel reader. That “design” has to be malleable enough for the mind’s eye to interpret, but clear enough so the reader knows what it is. I’d have to make sure that any reader could picture what I’m describing with my writing alone, and that’s a difficult balance to strike for a primarily visual storyteller such as myself, but a challenge worth taking nonetheless.

Large comic stories that have big worlds, a lot of characters, etc.: 3

Titles in this category:  Starglass Zodiac (2015), Id Pariah (2015), Feather Knights (2017).

I call these “The Big Three”, as they are the stories that will take the most world building, character creation, and story development to complete. They will have multiple chapters, expansive lore, several character arcs, you name it. I am very excited to tackle all of this development of course, but I want to make sure these are given the time they need to come to fruition. These projects will take me years to complete, which is why I choose to balance them with smaller projects in between. The potential these stories have is not something I want to squander, so even if the production moves slower, I feel it’ll be worth it in the end.

Smaller comic stories with fewer characters, simpler concepts, etc.: 5

Titles in this category:  Moth to the Flame (2015), The Onomancer (2015), Demon Exchange (2018), Take Wing! Emilia’s Tale (2018), Ashes (2018).

This is worded kind of strangely, but this category is meant for stories that have a smaller “scope” than the larger comic stories I mentioned. That doesn’t mean I love them any less or that they’ll be less developed, but they are far simpler in concept and rely less on the development of a massive world and lore and more on individual character experiences. I feel like any creator needs these smaller projects to tackle every so often, especially when tackling the behemoths gets tough. These stories will also have a faster turnover when it comes to completion, and I hope to complete one of these stories in the near future. These will also help me practice writing good foundations for stories, like proper character motivation, pacing, and relationship development that would translate into investment for the reader. There’s a great degree of skill required to do this correctly for any kind of story, but starting smaller in this regard is usually better.

Smaller stories that are supplements or spin-offs of other stories: 3

Titles in this category:  Counting Hearts (2019), The Serpent and the Sun (2019), Riders of Eldrigar (2019).

I know it probably seems a bit early to be thinking about stuff like this, but I do like thinking about the extended stories or supplements that I could add to my pre-existing projects, especially with characters or ideas that would best be told separate from the main story, be they backstories or another perspective on something. I also like the idea of stories that could exist in the same worlds, but can function independently of them as well. It’s a lot of fun to see how these could connect with each other, like having your own equivalent to a cinematic universe. This category currently only has smaller supplements to my comic stuff rather than fully fledged sequels, but who knows what might happen later on? I need to make the beginnings of these stories first!

And with that, the grand total is: 38!

-me after reading this total and spending way too much time on this post-

In all seriousness though, while it is a bit daunting to see just how many things my brain keeps tossing at me and how much that number has increased in recent years, it does make me excited for the future, even if I panic about time a lot. It tells me that I always have stories to tell, and new ones could be right around the corner. I’ll always have something to work on at least! I might periodically update this post as I edit the timeline as well, but for now, thanks for coming along on this little journey with me! :D I hope it was at least entertaining, haha.

[comicteaparty]

September 28th-October 4th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from September 28th, 2019 to October 4th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

What is a part of your comic you don’t particular like right now, and how are you trying to improve it?

Kay Rose

Something in my current comic that I dont like is how my characters look inconsistent, to fix it, when im back drawing hopefully next week, I'd like to change my webtoon release time to every other week So i can spend more time making sure theyre on model, and not hurt myself again trying to get 15-20 panels done in a week like a scrub

Ash🦀

I came from a novel-writing background. Although I wanted to write for comics, of course I had to learn about the fundamentals of writing at all, but that made me too dependent on words, so... I think in the beginning, there was simply too much dialogue. I didn’t let the characters breathe because I felt I had to give people at least a rundown of the world, foreshadow future events, all the things. I wish I’d taken more time to let the characters breathe and let the art speak for itself. As I edit the second chapter, I’m taking out whatever isn’t necessary, and focusing more on the marriage of art and words, letting them work with each other. I also dislike that it took me this long to get from the “it’s almost finished” stage to the “it’s finished” stage, solely my fault. I guess I can’t say much more since it technically isn’t out yet, but the pages are all there and everything’s finished, and I’m sure I’ll learn way more about the process as I keep going.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

1) Fast pacing. People have told me it’s not a problem at all, and it’s actually good to have a webcomic that doesn’t drag - but I do feel somewhat restrained by my self-inflicted chapter page count. Sometimes I have to squish some things together in (what I feel is) an awkward way. But maybe it’s just me wanting to show more??

2) Lettering! Lettering is not my forte. Typography itself was always a problem for me to get right in graphic design classes. One of the few critical messages I’ve gotten on Phantomarine is about the wide-set lettering, and it’s stuck with me. I kinda want to fix it up in the future, or hire a proper letterer. Or... hand-letter! I dunno, it’s just bothered me ever since it was pointed out...

Urbanjawdust

@Ash🦀 that is AWESOME. more power to ya!!!

DaemonDan (The Demon Archives)

Heh, the main thing I don't like right now is that I'm on hiatus XD But the biggest artistic issue I'd been having recently was my previous artist wasn't very consistent with character appearances, especially the women/girl characters. Now that I've hired a new artist, the first thing I paid him to do was to make character sheets of them, with the hope that this will let us be consistent going forward.

Deo101 (Millennium)

I think for me it's also gonna have to be fast pacing. I get so excited about moving on, and so afraid of dragging things out, that I tend to forget to linger where it's needed. Since it's been pointed out to me, I've been working on adding an extra page or 2 to really wrap up my scenes... but it's definitely a problem in my past pages.

Urbanjawdust

Does anyone struggle deciding how many pages to post per update?

I'm debuting a new series and am struggling to decide how many pages the first episode should be

Deo101 (Millennium)

Hmmm...... Personally, if I'm uploading more than one, I like to get it to a point of "kind of a little bit of a cliffhanger" every time

instead of a particular amount of pages

Kay Rose

I upload on webtoon, so I count by panels.

snuffysam

depends what kind of comic it is, how much you get onto a page, etc. like if a page doesn't have anything interesting on it, it should probably have more on it or the update should include a second page. or like if you have a comedy comic, you shouldn't cut off the page in the middle of a joke.

DaemonDan (The Demon Archives)

Also where you post it. On my own site, i post 1 page at a time. On Tapastic, I'll post a few pages per update.

AntiBunny

Probably the slow meandering pace at which the story is told. 13 years and I still haven't gotten to the point I planned. Mostly because I want fully realized characters, and they need to go through a lot to get there.

Erin/Leif & Thorn on Kickstarter

Tapas & Webtoon seem to be optimized for taller updates, but with a regular site I'd post one page/strip at a time. People who want to read in batches can still bookmark it (or add it to ComicRocket, etc) and only check in every few update.

Most of my CR bookmarks, I wait until the comic has at least 10 unread updates before catching up.

(exceptions are mostly things like xkcd where there's not continuity to keep track of)

...also, seconding the "my least favorite thing is that it's on hiatus" for But I'm A Cat Person. Combined with "my least favorite thing is that it's not finished". (One more chapter! Just the one!)

sssfrs

I honestly really like the direction "Joe Is Dead" is going right now but there are areas I could definitely improve. I need to figure out how to strike a balance between perfectionism and speed, so that I don't take too long to put out pages but so that I can still put out high quality work. I'm also trying to work harder on characterizing characters, making their responses more individual to who they are and the kind of things they think about. When I first started writing I was putting in a lot of lines that were helpful to move the scenes along but the characters didn't have so much personal motivation to say them. I've been editing my writing over several times in an effort to really streamline the dialogue. You can read Joe Is Dead on Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/JoeIsDead(edited)

DaeofthePast

While I'm not too fond of the colors I used in the first episode of Dating Not-So Simulation, I have to remind myself that the duller colors serve a purpose. It works for symbolizing Morgan's emotional state at the beginning of the story and it'll get more colorful as the comic goes on.

Desnik

What I don't like about http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/ is that it's been a couple of years working on it and it's STILL not done!!(edited)

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

Pacing is my biggest issue right now. The story is so huge, so I can't linger. But also a comic needs time and space to breathe. I'm trying to let the scripts flow in a natural way, but I'm nervous to see how it's going to work once we get to thumbnails!

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

it is going to work GREAT!

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

Haha, well in that case... I'm excited!

[natjoofficial]

Personal reflection

Apparently I submitted this wrong. That sucks.

Also: In the time between this post and when I handed in James made a documentation of our Group’s important discord channels, so I’ll link to his blog for that to save space:

https://icantplaythis-bct.tumblr.com/post/185653480001/bct-projectstudio-process-documentation

Rest of the reflection is down below.

I wish I tied myself closer to the progress of the game.

In the early part of the project I was tied deep into it due to 3D modelling. I was given a task of recreating everything on the floor and working on that. That took… 3 weeks? It was also my most active time on Tumblr since I actually had something to write about. Once that was done, I was essentially jobless so removed myself foolishly from the game to focus on ITS and KIP projects. Unfortunately, everyone started treating the game the same way.

Now, I hate to brag but I’m going to do it. I was the main reason we finished the Carriages project in an acceptable stage. I’m sure you can argue that it was also with Max’s and James’ programing skills we also completed it, but taking the reigns of an over-ambitious Jordan was a good idea and shifting the group into ‘passable product’ mode.

The same thing happened this time as well, although I didn’t have as much as an influence. This time we all got together, realized how screwed we were and began to rush. I think there was a 2-week period where we all focused on anything but Project Studio, although I’m probably overstating it.

 Then there was the problem with Github and the unreal engine, thank gosh we had James on support for that. Just a reminder, I didn’t really work during the unreal engine part so I don’t know every single problem we faced but I’ll do my best to explain.

In the early days of that we hit some success with Datasmith. Datasmith is a useful exporter developed by Epic (unreal publishers) which can export directly from Maya, Blender, 3DSmax and, surprisingly, my program of choice: sketchup. It’s not often you get something like that. The first problem we had with it was that it was meant for Unreal Studio, however with a bit of experimentation we got it working for the Engine instead (since Studio runs off the engine you can just open the engine and use Datasmith if you have Studio and Datasmith both installed). I take credit for the discovery of Datasmith, James (I think) for getting it to work for the Unreal Engine.

Our first problem was this: We didn’t know how the engine worked.

A quick thing about engines: they’re really good at doing certain things. Unity for instance is really really good at making games, but it cuts a lot of corners. It’s simple. Its rendering is mixed. You can create impressive stuff with it, don’t get me wrong. Look up videos of modded cities Skylines, but at the end of the day most of the industry uses it to test concepts (Nintendo did this while developing Arms. I recommend searching it up). That looks bloody realistic, but not without lag or a powerful computer. The unreal engine, however, renders really really bloody well. It’s an industry standard as well. It was also technically capable of what we wanted to achieve, so we decided on the unreal engine.

Looking back at it, we should have chosen unity. With Unity we could have had an entirely finished product since even I know how to use it to some degree which is a bloody miracle. With Unreal we could make a really amazing looking game and towards the end we even managed to add a trigger for some lights to go on and off depending on player action, but it caused so many problems…

Right, I need to mention those problems. Like I am to bananas or Sketchup to exporting to any other kind of software, Github doesn’t like Unreal. Or the other way around. There seemed to be a new problem everytime someone edited the project, and that’s not a joke.

Worst of all it took us a few weeks to figure out not to edit the project at the same time. This is because if two people were to open the project at once it’d give them two separate copies of the project files. It doesn’t work like Google Drive sadly. So, this made it possible for someone to accidently copy over someone’s hard work. Even worse if the person who saved and pushed to github (saving files to github basically) first did more progress than the second… yeah. Luckily, we had back ups so more than often we were able to save stuff.

In the future we’ll use branch projects, so we all have a separate project to do stuff in then add to a master project. I think.

 Errr… what else was there?

We had multiple problems but I think that honestly covers the main problems we faced…

Oh, right. Personal peeves.

Starting off with the yearly “Jordan rant”

Jordan was assigned to:

-          Level design/planning

-          Asset listing (so I knew what I needed to make)

-          Sound listing (same thing as above but more sound stuff)

-          In game lighting

-          Director (again. This was a mistake I tried fighting against)

What Jordan did:

-          3D modelling. Literally what I was meant to do.

-          Add the first trigger to our game (a positive. Sadly, we only had one at the show case)

-          An attempt at lighting which he eventually gave up doing his way to do the way he didn’t want to do which worked like a bloody charm.

-          Vague level design (He told me the themes for the objective models for the player to find in the last 4 weeks. I managed to think up one which didn’t even make it into the game.)

I like Jordan but everything we assigned him to do he either didn’t do or took him a long time to do. But I probably put too much shit on him. Again, I lost a lot of contact with the Unreal Engine part of the project so what he did is very much a blur. However, the 3D modelling and the Vague level design directly affected me which isn’t a good impression.

Ah… there was a small problem I have with Leif but to be honest, I don’t blame him for what he did. He went off and brought a bunch of assets during a time I didn’t actually have anything to do. I could have modelled some of that stuff, even textured it. But if I was to critic him for that you could complain that I took a hand model off the internet for use. As well as the dummy model I found.

 Now for the best self-reflection of the year! What did I do wrong (I think?)

1.       I still used Sketchup

2.       I grouped stuff in the AUT floor model in a terrible way which caused problems.

3.       I forgot to send Leif the model for the reception room for an entire week.

4.       I failed to get into the Tuesday stream meaning our group could have spent more time together

5.       I still used Sketchup

6.       For a good portion of the beginning phases I had multiple ideas which clashed with the majority. I basically wanted to create a horror experience where you would go through a cycling warehouse similar to P.T. but without any game objectives but all the scares, they wanted to make a horror game in the school with a story and objectives and I didn’t fall in line with this thinking for a good while. I still firmly believe we should have done that instead.

7.       I didn’t take steps in making sure we were all doing something.

8.       I stopped working on it once the largest bulk of my work was done.

9.       I STILL USED SKETCHUP

So yup, that explains my personal feelings towards where I went wrong… erm… I’ll stop this here. I know I complained about Jordan, but really, I think I’m just as bad as him. James and Leif did a fuck ton of the work I know about, Cristian and Elias I don’t know what I did. Again; I only know some of what happened past the modeling stages of the project.

So yeah.