#TY Fleecie

[toyarchive]

TY Beanie babies - Fleecie

Features: Is a soft plush lamb with hard beans in their tummy and a lavender bow.

Size: 17cm tall (Small plush)

Date: 2000

[planetbeanie]

do you have a beanie for a January 26th birthday?? 💚💚💚

You share a birthday with Fleecie the Lamb!

[besebee]

Question

Does anyone know if TY ever made a 'Fleecie' beanie baby bigger then the 6in?

[thegreenleavesofspring]

I warn you, it's actually kind of ugly. I think it was actually blanket material but I couldn't tell that in the store from the way it was wrapped. Anyway it's insanely warm and comfy.

A close-up of the drawstring and with the pocket turned out so y'all can see it. The drawstring is the reason I ended up taking so long; sewing the skirt itself only took about a week but I made the drawstring by hand and was almost done with it when I realized that a braid was 1, too long and 2, too thin to be comfortable. Took me two days to unbraid it entirely. Now about half of it is knotted and the ends are braided for easier tying. I didn't actually get photos of the completed thing but here it is as a work in progress:

It's heavy and fleecy and so so warm. 😊

And here's a bonus picture of the sky:

Y'all want to see pictures of the skirt i spent two-three weeks making?

[sylvanianfamiliez]

besties im going to ask a mentally unwell question okay? what would u do if a new plushie in your collection was sad and unhappy and lonely to be there. i don’t know what to do. she’s not with her original family who loved her and i feel bad but i would have no way of finding them :0(

[beaniebabyaday]

todays beanie is: fleecie the lamb!

[twdeadfanfic]

For the five sentence starter thing!

It was a freezing, cold wintery night. The windows were frosted shut with ice as the harsh December wind rattled the glass. Luckily, there was a warm, roaring fire in front of sofa where you laid, bundled under fluffy fleecy blankets. The door to outside opened and the stomping steps of a man approached you. He paused in the doorway and sighed, his body numb from the almost artic conditions raging beyond the walls of the house.

Send me an ask with the first sentence of a fanfic and I’ll write the next five.

It was a freezing, cold wintery night. The windows were frosted shut with ice as the harsh December wind rattled the glass. Luckily, there was a warm, roaring fire in front of sofa where you laid, bundled under fluffy fleecy blankets. The door to outside opened and the stomping steps of a man approached you. He paused in the doorway and sighed, his body numb from the almost artic conditions raging beyond the walls of the house.

There weren't many people willing to take night shifts on the lookouts during the cold winter nights, and so Daryl took many of those, probably more than he should.

"You're freezing..." You said as you got up from the sofa, keeping one of the fluffy blankets around you like a burrito and grabbing another that you proceded to wrap around Daryl, although his wide shoulders prevented it from covering him as much as you wanted it. "You even have frost in your eyelashes..." you sighed, reaching to wip some of it from his hair.

"Come on..." You tugged at his hand, walking him to the sofa near the fire and pushing him to sit down, then covering him with the heavy blankets that you had there. "I should put you on a hot bath...but we don't have enough hot water."

Daryl just hummed, shaking his hair, sending drops of the frost that was starting to melt flying around.

You headed for the bathroom, coming back with a towel that you threw over Daryl's hair, carefully rubbing at it to ty and dry it a bit. You were afraid of tugging at his messy hair and hurting him, but Daryl hummed again and this time it sounded more like a purr, as he leaned into your touch.

"There's some stew left, I'll warm it and bring it to you, wait here," you told him, hoping that it'd help him to warm from inside.

You were about to walk to the kitchen when you felt Daryl's and on your wrist.

"Hey," he rasped, a tiny half-smile on his face as he looked at you from the burrow that you had created with the blankets. "Thank ya."

You didn't say anything, just smiled, leaning to kiss his cold cheek before you went to get the stew ready.

*

Wops...this got longer than it should.

Thank you!

[buginateacup]

Fort Richmond

No one has said yes to pillow fights with Coach Lasso yet. Mostly because they're all a little nervous about what exactly a Lasso Special pillowfight would involve.

And also because Isaac did some digging and found a video of Beard at Tennessee State University Pillowfight championships absolutely whaling on a guy three times his size in something that looked more like a cage fight with feathers than a "Tee hee, lets braid each other's hair and talk about boys" pillowfight one would expect from a lifetime of cultural osmosising the actions of mysterious silly and strange teenage girls from TV.

The fact the other three girls on Beard's team where even more ruthless meant the team tended to err on the side of not getting your head kicked in the day before a match.

Movie night though.

Movie night can be bloody brilliant.

They're in this hotel up near Leeds. Its a nice place, kind of old wood homey rather than a chain motel. The kind of place you could take fifty boy scouts and have them camp in a single room and not worry about the floorboards.

Its got these great giant couches with wide arms that you can sit on or balance a whole mug of tea which is how you know its a good couch. And there are piles of blankets near a basket by the fire for any old guests who haven't had to run ten miles in the freezing Cardiff rain.

They're watching Coraline, which is fucking brilliant but also Colin is switching entirely to zip up clothes forever now. He didn't think he could get a button phobia from a movie and he's kind of sandwiched between Isaac and the arm of the chair when Isaac gets up to take a piss and check in with the gaffer and suddenly Colin's side is much colder and the Other Mother is looming large and scary on the screen and this is not great when a fleecy blanket hits him in the side of the head and flops open over him.

"Oi!" He squeaks which means Jamie (who's been staring somewhere near his phone and not at the screen while he takes some deep breaths) looks over where he's propped on the arm of the chair beside him and smirks, "Hiding under a blanket Colin? Movie too much for ya?"

Another blanket hits Jamie and the door to the bathroom swings shut behind Isaac as Colin flaps out the blanket, "Fuck off," He retorts, draping the cheap fleece over the arms and side of the couch, "I'm making a cubby,"

This armchair is massive, with the blanket open its like a little tent all snuggly under here and he can stretch his feet onto Isaac's side and curl up and have a nap.

There is a loud screech and the cushion under his feet is ripped away as Jamie shoves the chair he's been leaning on (with a startled Dani sitting on the back) closer to Colin's seat.

"You can't just throw a blanket over yourself and call it a cubby," He scorns, dropping the cushion between the chairs and draping his own blanket over the gap between the arms, "You have to actually make it not the thing it was before," He crawls into the space and lays down with his arms behind his head, "See? Actual cubby,"

"Si amigo," Dani agrees, fetching two more blankets and a broom for some fucking reason, "Though if we turn the couches back to back and hold the blankets up with this-" he brandishes the broom, "We can make a space large enough for the three of us!"

"How are you going to keep the broom upright?" Jan asks from behind Jamie and Dani's face falls.

"Why would we make a space on the floor when we can push them facing each other and prop the broom up between the cushions?" Colin suggests, partly because Jamie is right but he's not getting beaten at cubby making by him of all people.

They shove the couches together as quietly as possible which is not very, and make a little tent for the four of them, sitting inside it like they're ten years old and camping in the back yard, not twenty something football stars playing an away game.

"You call that a blanket fort?" Thierry scorns from the row in front of them, and they have to make a grab for the broom when it slips after all four of them stick their heads out, "You should put another chair at the end so you can make a tunnel in,"

The four currently in the cubby look at one another and at one of the wide armchairs contemplatively, "Fort Colin could do with an entrance," Colin agrees.

"Fort Colin?" Jamie scoffs, "Nah mate, your little sleeping bag wasn't a fort, we're calling this Fort Tartt."

That is a declaration of war and Colin will be first to the battlefield when-

"Or Fart for short," Jan smiles around the group and Jamie wilts.

"Fine, but we're not calling it fucking Fort Colin,"

Colin, founding member of the Fort Colin cubby would beg to disagree but Sam is crouching over with Bumbercatch and a couple of the other players, "Hey guys," He whispers, "Can we join in? We have blankets?" And he holds up the basket full of fleece.

"Bring some cushions too," Dani suggests and suddenly there is a flurry of activity as every couch in the room is dragged hither and yon and blankets are thrown over every available surface, making a maze of seats and cushions while credits play in the background.

From the back corner Beard is watching them with inscrutable eyes.

A fight nearly breaks out between Thierry and Jan over where to place one of the three tall props when there are footsteps and a clunk as a dining chair is dropped into the middle of the gap between Fort Colin (original) and its sister cubby Chateau de Montlaur, "You'll need to make sure you have a central connecting point," Is all Beard says with flat intonation, and goes back to the table he's seated at with Nate.

The players look at one another and start tying blankets to the high points of the chair back. Bumbercatch's headband is valiantly sacrificed for the cause and the final blanket is thrown in place, eighteen fit young men crouched, curled and huddled up on cushions and between couches inside their collective cubby before the name argument starts up again.

"Thierry Tower!"

"Rojas Palace!"

"Goal Keep" Gets some interest but then-

"Fort Richmond," Sam suggests.

There is a consideration of nodding and contemplating before they all agree and O'Brien knocks his emtpy tea mug against the side of one couch to christen it as the door to the room slams open again.

"Oi where's my fucking seat?" Isaac demands.

[leelaihardly]

CH4. THAT STUPID F*CKING UGLY SWEATER

[Chapter 1]

[Chapter 2]

[Chapter 3]

Rhett bumped into Link again at the park, their dogs had started to take a liking to each other and they somehow, stupidly,

perfectly

stupidly ended up tangled in a criss-cross of leashes.

He tried to extricate himself (he prided himself on his aptitude at knots) as slowly as possible, enjoying the overlap of limbs as Link, unable to do two things at once, wrassled with his pups and succeeded only at looping their ankles together. Link's was satisfyingly bare, he noticed, though he was wearing a stupid fleecy cardigan too warm for the weather outside.

"Okay, okay." he said throwing up his hands in mock defeat. "Guess I should just let go and let you do your thing, huh?"

Rhett grinned, not looking up from the knot he was untying. He was definitely focusing on the knot and not on the foot, unshod by deft fingers and wiggling cozily in socks with Lincoln logs embroidered on them, not the cuffed pants nor the muscular-looking calf that went up those pants. Like his hand was doing on its own.

"Uh, Rhett? Earth to Rhett?" Link said, though he stayed perfectly still as he said it and made no move to stop him. Seemingly letting Rhett do his thing.

A loud bark alerted him to Barbara's presence at his side pestering a woman eating a pretzel on a park bench.

He threw aside the remaining encumbering rope and jogged over to her.

"Sorry about that she- 's a little protective of me. Ha."

The woman looked up at his stature skeptically, made lankier no doubt by holding the small white parcel of a dog.

In Rhett's peripheral vision Link was pulling himself up and dusting himself off, joking to no-one in particular.

He cursed himself for not being over there even though he was fully aware the guy could do that for himself.

Later that night Rhett's dream was a flashback to his first day at camp, showing off his knot-tying skills to the bigger kids. Everyone having a good time singing round the fire, hoarse from laughing and all sporting bandages, badges and bug bites, everyone except for one kid with lego socks and watery blue eyes who'd cried pretty much the whole time.

A sniffly quiet cry muffled by a wet thumb, a sound that wilted the landscape and dampened the night air. He became conscious of an itch that wasn't there before. He noticed the darkness. Had it been this dark before? In his memory he'd simply rolled his eyes and tried not to let it kill his buzz. In this dream, however, he'd scooted over next to him on the oversized logs they were sitting on.

Neither looked at the other, instead looking down at their feet.

A droplet hit the dirt between them, more tears, dark little dots like ellipses punctuating the quietness- and more sniffling, and the other kids singing which faded away to crickets and audible darkness of the woods around them. His shoes hit the ground while the other kid's dangled.

Wordlessly he drew a line, connected the dots with his sneaker dug lightly in the dirt 'til it bumped up against the other kid's. Other Kid's breath hitched for a moment but he seemed determined to keep his little leg solid against Rhett's. Even brushed his foot back against his.

Rhett pulled back to get some momentum, knock heels again, and noticed one of his laces caught in Other Kid's velcro, causing his foot to crash back into Other Kid's. Other kid noticed too and a sound came out of him somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

Something about that sound did something, one firefly, then two, then a dozen appeared, 'til the night air was blinding and Rhett woke up with the summer morning sun in his eyes and a curious warmth in his chest.

He'd misplaced his dream diary else he would have looked up "left foot" or "lightning bugs" or "lego socks" or something. Instead, chalked it up to  a loss and had forgotten the dream anyway around lunch time at the studio.

They were shooting an episode called Opposite Day and Damiel had a lot of scenes with Mister Neal. This episode featured Damiel waking up to Opposite Day in full swing, with Mister Neal and the various Valley-dwellers celebrating it sincerely, saying strange and confusing things to him, insisting he loved cats and telling him to have a bad day.

At noon he'd sat in the lunch room and Link had sidled on up next to him, engrossed in a conversation with Stevie but still sitting close enough that Rhett could feel their shoes touch. Rhett quietly ate his ribwich and pretended to be engrossed in his copy of Hitchhiker's Guide while Link whipped out some layer pudding and began eating it in the most distracting way possible, humming appreciatively around the spoon in his mouth and sucking it clean every time, inspecting it with his eyes and tuning out everything else around him.

When he reached the peeb at the bottom of the cup he closed his eyes to appreciate it, a moan bobbing down his throat while a warm exhale puffed out his nose. He set down the spoon and licked his lips, which had reddened from all the action.

"-so Rhett, you into that?"

"Huh? N-no! I'm not- wha..at was the question?"

Stevie rolled her eyes.

"Are you up for it? One of the mail videos today mentions you- well, Damiel- so we wanted you in the scene. It's pretty much intro, roll clip, improv, merch, outro. You good with that?"

Rhett nodded and accepted the role.

After lunch there was a brief meeting to go over the results of some focus groups, and the ratings update.

"The people have spoken, Mythical Valley Ent." said Stevie, drawing out the suspense, "and wouldn't you know it, the people really like Damiel." said Stevie. She clapped a hand on Rhett's shoulder briefly in a gesture of congratulations.

"Dang, Rhett, you hear that?" Link nudged Rhett with his elbow, grinning at him,

"Well that makes sense" said Ellie, adjusting her makeup in a compact "Kids like puppies and kids like teddy bears and Damiel is kinda like both those things wrapped into one."

"-Yeah, it's almost like we didn't need another focus group for that." said Josh, earning him a pinch from Nicole,

"Be nice, the Ideas workshop worked hard on those."

"Yup, it seems like people want more episodes with Mister Neal and Damiel interacting."

"Oh?" Link said, leaning forwards, "that's interesting...I guess we got that on-screen chemistry." he said, smile spreading, "A man and his dog!"

Link opened his palms in front of him, gesturing at an invisible sandwich board, "Or-wolf, actually...well, bear...teddybear." Link corrected himself multiple times then turned to face Rhett before suddenly gripping his forearm and shaking it with both hands gleefully,

"Oh! Rhett-y bear! You're my Rheddybear, Rhett!"

Oh-

Oh gosh.

Behind him Kiko snort-laughed into his coffee and attempted to covered it up by swigging from his Mythical mug. Link looked triumphant but about what Rhett couldn't say -whether it was about his own wordplay or if he knew what he was doing. Rhett only knew his own face was redder than his flannel right now with Link's hands on him...Link...calling him that...everybody watching.

What was he supposed to say???

He couldn't think of anything funny, no deflections- his mind blanking white, fogging up. A small, traitorious thought:

He called you his.

It was so wrong but also...felt kinda...

"Right." Stevie said, "Well it might be a good idea to get on that, merch-wise." She nodded at the merch workshop who got to work making notes and sketching Damiel plushies. Stevie continued reading off some more lists and getting back to the more boring suggestions about how the old theme song was better or how the filter was too yellow.

The whole meeting Rhett was hyperaware of Link's gaze on him.

He looked like he was puzzling something over in his mind.

Link Neal was famously bad at dividing his attention but, hoo, boy- when that laser-target focus was trained on you it had a way of making you feel...something...

Special?

Weird.

Stevie had to pull his focus back to meeting matters several times before he finally snapped out of it. Rhett exhaled a breath he didn't realize he was holding, shook his head and got to work on his script.

Before the episode wrapped they'd shoot a one-take recording of Mister Neal reading the weekly mail, he'd sit at the kitchen table set of the cabin and read some letters, get gifts of drawings from kid fans which he'd stick onto the fridge, stand back and appreciate and then display there all week.

Usually they were drawings of kids drawing themselves along with other Valleyfolk.

Lots of them were renderings of Mister Neal himself. The letters had to be vetted ahead of time before being re-sealed, they'd gotten a few drawings of Candyman Randy with some ...creative application of red crayon that couldn't make the cut unless they wanted a big red rejection from Standards -and a reshoot. And you didn't want that cause Link was a real pain in the ass about shot continuity.

That day they'd got a tape that Stevie had described as good to go, which was Stevie for 'had been played and replayed and contained nothing off-colour but was also not another one for the complaint box i.e something something mythical yadda yadda occult.' It was the closest thing to live material they did and Link really seemed to be in his element, despite appearing nervous beforehand, fussing with a clipboard and making sure everything was placed just so for the cameras.

How could something be so annoying but at the same time so... a nudge from Mailperson Jen woke Rhett out of his reverie, and he realized he'd been staring instead of getting onto his mark, at Link's side.

He got into position so that Damiel was looking up at Mister Neal as he leaned over a counter strewn with letters.

Link popped in a cassette recording from a mom and a son who introduced themselves at the top of the recording. Some silence.

Link's fingers tapped against the counter and he stopped himself. Dead air made Link nervous but his camera personality won out over his OCD.

"Tell him why you like Damiel, honey."

"I like Damiel" said a kid, using his inside voice, and talking through a mouth full of his own fingers.

"Mhm tell him why..." she urged, "Remember Mister Neal can hear y- everything you're saying so speak up, okay?"

Link grinned while the sounds of rustling and soft instructions suggested a paper being unfolded to be read.

"You don't want to read what you wrote for Mister Neal? Hm?" the kid had gone quiet so his mum started to read the note he'd seemingly written himself. A few sentences about how he'd been watching Mythical Valley since he was in his moms tummy -just kidding - 'I was only listening to it then' (some laughter)

This kid's got jokes!

Link's smile turned gleeful as if he was thinking it too. The kind of stupid non sequiturs you thought were funny as a kid really horseshoed around back to being funny again as an adult.

The letter continued. How he liked the wolf Damiel and how his favorite animal was wolfs.

"Okay, he writes his 'wolfs' as w-o-o-v-s and you can guess why" the mom laughed and continued

He wrote about how wolfs can smell a hamburger from a mile away and some more facts about wolfs including some the mom seemingly didn't read aloud. The page was turned over.

"Damiel is my favorite and I like when he always asks "what's that" again and again" she said. Some giggling from the boy. He'd audibly extricated his hands from his mouth, seemingly plucking up the courage to say something,

"I hope he will be in the show next week and forever."

he said, almost too soft to hear over the winding hum of the cassette player.

Some more silence.

"Now what do you say?" the mom added, though there was a smile in her voice now,

"See ya later, Mythical neighbour!" he yelled this time, right into the receiver, and laughed, the mom sighing a sigh of relief in the background before it cut off.

Rhett looked up from where he was positioned behind a prop, currently in character as Damiel, controlling the wolfy puppet with shaggy mane and neck scruff, whose wolfish snout he could see and control, but not be seen under.

It was his first time being part of the mail day recording, although he played its intro and outro off screen. And he was taken aback by that whole...everything. He knew his work as a puppeteer brought him in proximity of kids, families, all that stuff was part of the gig and he was prepared for it but... being more of a lone wolf himself (ha) he liked the invisible boundary puppeteering necessitated between him and the audience.

He realized that this quiet was his cue, he felt eyes on him from behind the brights and then Mister Neal's glance moved from the desk, to where Rhett's hand that wasn't gripping the dowel was, shaking lightly, now he noticed.

Why did he have the shakes? Why did he feel so small?

A sudden shift in his peripheral. Mister Neal's shoe moved to touch his, sheltered under the table. Mister Neal spoke up, gaze directed to camera 1,

"He's a little nervous" he said, handling the cassette with one hand and then slowly moving the other hand to rest atop Damiel's head.

He was petting him.

Sure ,he'd touseled Damiel's fur multiple times on the show, but this felt...different.

better

The pressure transferred down, down through Rhett's body synergistically as Damiel leaned into the touch, held in the thrall of Link's strong fingers.

"Thank you Georgie. And Georgie's Mom." he leaned in over the desk and cupped a hand to his mouth conspiratorially, "Damiel's my favorite too." Rhett's cheeks pinkened in the shadows.

Rhett shook off the fuzzy feeling and got back into his role.

"Hi Georgie. You're right about the hamburgers. The other day when you guys were eating burgers... boy, I was so hungry..."

Link grinned. "Really? You're saying you can smell whenever Georgie and his family get burgers? What day was it?" Link seemed to be having fun giving him the third degree, calling his little bluff.

"Uhh...Uh I don't remember. I was real hungry." Rhett said in his most precocious Damiel voice, "Oh and also- also I wasn't quiet cause I was nervous or anything it's just that I get quiet when I'm...when I'm hunting."

"Oh you're hunting?" Mister Neal said, emphasizing the 'teeng' of the last syllable, a play on Rhett's speech quirk.

"What's there to hunt in here?"

Rhett's encyclopedic knowledge of random subjects came in handy as he smugly stated that Wolves Don't Only Eat Meat, Mister Neal.

"We like berries...pears...beans..." Rhett articulated Damiel so that he was looking around the room as he named the various items, Mister Neal followed his eyeline to those same items in the room and nodded, and it turned into a bit involving Rhett racing to list each item before Link guessed it in unisong.

"Okay, okay, I get it- just, everything in this kitchen is- something you would eat."

"No!" he said in pretend indignation, "I wouldn't... eat... Rhett looked around the room, out of options, his sight line landing on Mister Neal who was resting his head on his hand, looking down at him with half-lidded eyes.

"Me?" he offered.

The suggestion was innocent enough but Link's expression, the way the hand on-camera prodded at his own sweater-clad chest in question while the hand off-camera smoothed the fabric of his own slacks, his thumb circling over inseam once, then again.

All the thoughts, the bit- instantly, the scene wiped clean from Rhett's mind and just as instantly it was flooded with something -else -some dizzy, dirty daydream.

Naked legs bent over that desk, slacks around ankles and Rhett, knees purpling on the black and white tile of the kitchen floor, stopping to press a wet, wolfish half-kiss-half-bite to that perfect inner thigh, his tongue working, spurred on by a familiar moan,

No stupid pudding in sight.

A hand scrabbled down to knot into his hair, pulling him deeper into that addictive heat. He hit a sweet spot and the knees below him buckled and then pushed those legs back against him, drowning him deliciously.

God, what a way to go.

The grip in his hair slackened for a second to brush against his forehead -startlingly gentle. He heard his name from somewhere but he was too hungry for the soft skin and tight grip and the hot little mouth sounds that vibrated down, down, all the way down through him.

A whispered "Rhett" from his periphery, Stevie's voice, snapped him back to reality.

"Oh uh- I could eat you. I'm very big and scary." Damiel said, matter-of-factly. Mister Neal nodded down at him in facetious acknowledgement.

"But- I uh...I won't." he added.

Link quirked an eyebrow,

"Oh? Is that a promise?" Rhett felt like he was melting under the Look Mister Neal was aiming at him now. The glint of mischief teasing him behind those frames.

"I promise."

Link segued smoothly into the outro, said some words about the Mythical Valley thermos and they wrapped.

As soon as Rhett stepped out of the studio bathroom Chase was there, not in costume, seemingly waiting for him.

"Stevie wants you in her office." he said simply, pointing his thumb three doors down the hall. Rhett gulped despite himself. Nodded. He wasn't sure what this was about but he'd been chided by Stevie once today about missing his cue but maybe that was one time too many here?

He inhaled to try to make himself look as big as he technically was.

Well.

Time to find out. He knocked and was called inside.

"You can't screw him."

"Wha-" he started, thrown off by the abrupt utterance from Stevie's side of the table. Her long fingers were tented as she leaned back in her chair.

"Link." she stated. "Mister Neal. It can't happen."

Rhett's eyebrows shot up and he waved his hands in front of him, "Wai-ait a minute. You're- you're way off base here, you think I...and...him-" he punctuated, pointing to his right i.e where Mister Neal's office was situated in the building. "YouthinkIwanttoscrewMisterNeal?"

"Yup." Stevie didn't stutter and added "More than that, probably."

Rhett's mouth tried to articulate around words but nothing came to him.

"You think... I- Stevie, you've been drinking too much of that stuff-" he pointed at a can of Liquid Death sat on her tabletop, "if you think that I- and he- I'm not even-"

Dammit.

Why weren't his words working.

Why was this office so dang hot.

He fidgeted the hem of his shirt between his annoyingly sweaty palms.

"Rhett. Listen." she said, her expression alabaster, "As someone who is, you are."

"He's just my mentor!" Rhett snapped, "I respect him-- as my mentor, that's all!"

"Is this your script?" she asked, pulling a stack of stapled papers out of a drawer.

"Yeah? So?" he asked, but his hands gave him away as he unconsciously moved to grab it from her. She was too quick, licked her fingertips and flipped through some pages.

"Did you draw these?" she splayed open the script to reveal some pen doodles he'd scrawled all over the margins and even between the lines of print.

The usual stuff, dicks, random cross-hatching, more dicks, then the next page: a sweater with an arrow through it like a bullseye, a sweater on fire, the next page: eyes in blue ink, glasses in black, the next page: leashes, a collar reading 'Damiel',  most incriminatingly, the words Mister Neal with looping details, swirls, hearts.

"Rhett." she said, and he looked up wordlessly, "I see how you look at him. You zoned out on set for like 7 seconds today." Rhett blinked.

Had it only been 7 seconds?

He swore he slipped into one of his weird daydreams for a solid 5 minutes, dizzy...dirty...but he couldn't remember...who...

Oh.

He knew who.

"I know, it's a lot right now. Mister Neal has a certain..." she tapped her fingers on the desk searching for the word, she settled on "magnetism.... about him."

"People see the sweater and get star-struck." she switched on the shredder and slipped the script into it, watching it as it ate through the evidence, "and next thing you know we have to fire a perfectly good intern, just because one of them is still screwing with us."

"Huh?" Rhett's ability to speak had returned although he'd been a bit distracted by the scene of paper carnage.

"Nothing. Look. Mythical Valley Ent. might feel like home to you right now," she continued, "and it kinda is for me too. But-" she opened another drawer. "at the end of the day this is a business, and Mister Neal has enemies who'd like nothing better than to smear that pretty face across the cover of a sleazy tabloid for being spotted holding hands with some...hairy guy behind some dog park toilets, just, you know, for example."

She lay it out on the table, a polaroid of two people. It was him- and Link -at the dog park, taken from some shadowy vantage point. In the picture he was kneeling in front of Link, his own face out of view but Link's face was lit well by the only sunbeam, plain as day.

His expression which Rhett hadn't caught at the time, so...fond...the hand in Rhett's hair...it made something warm flutter in Rhett's chest.

Stevie flipped it over, the message stuck in magazine letter cutouts read, "public indecency?" Just a photo of...

of the back of a kneeling man's head lined up in front of the Mister Neal's fly in a shady corner of a public park.

The flutter in his chest stopped like it'd been dowsed with ice water.

"How did you-" Rhett spluttered,"-that's not what we were-"

"It doesn't matter what you were doing." Stevie sighed, rubbing her temples,  "All that matters is how it looks, Rhett. A photo can say a thousand words, but you only need three letters to get everything- this whole show eighty-sixed."

The cold realization flooded through him. What had he done? This wasn't fanmail. It was a ransom. How could they-

As if to answer the questions across his face Stevie pulled out a replica, identical except Link's torso had been replaced by that of an older blonde man with sideburns.

Another picture was pulled out with Link's torso attached seamlessly to some matching legs, standing on an ordinary street corner near the studio. The attention to detail, the direction of the light, everything had been done with precise hands.

Altogether if Rhett had been presented with all three he'd have trouble picking out the real ones from the fake ones. Clearly this was a counter-strike meant to call into question the veracity of the original sender's claim.

"Link's...different." Stevie sighed, "He does things he likes and he doesn't always care how he looks doing 'em."

Rhett knew that to be true. It was one of the things he...liked about him.

Fuck.

He was fucked.

He fucked everything up.

"Twinklefingers does good work." she spoke into the tense silence, "But he can't cover everything. If this ...person had sent us a video tape we would have been screwed."

"Rhett?" her voice softened but the expression she fixed on him was serious.

"Look...whether or not you're ready to admit to liking the guy- or even if you don't want to label it..." she replaced the photos carefully into a folder and closed the drawer.

"You care about him right?" she asked, "You care about the show not getting ripped off the air?"

"I- I do." came the words from Rhett's mouth before he knew he was saying them.

Of course he did. He wished he could see the face of whoever sent that photo, was it one of the college kids they'd seen that day? Was it a paparazzo? He'd punch a paparazzo. Gladly. He'd punch one right now. He'd face a hundred of them to keep Link's sunbeam smile safe from the scrutiny, from the creepy cutout question marks.

"Then you'll back off of Mister Neal?" Stevie said, dropping the hammer. The ultimatum.

"As in, outside of this studio, you can't go near him." she spoke firmly, but her eyes looked almost pleading when she added,

"Please."

Rhett gulped. Nodded.

He knew his role now, all of it.

[soniabigcheese]

Mike ....

.... is a big softie

Ignore the messy shelf.

That TY beanie is almost 20 years old and called Fleecie

[eowylesbian]

RULES: Answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you are contractually obligated to know better (answers under the cut to avoid a long post lmao)

@bishopsknifetrick tagged me in this ty atlas!!

i definitely won't be able to tag 20 ppl and ofc no pressure if u don't want to do it: @carbonbased000 @setting-in-a-honeymoon @afandomplace @queenoffakers @soup--punk and anyone who sees this!!

name/nickname: lucy or luce!

gender: probably female

star sign: leo!

height: 5'3ish, haven't measured myself in a long time so that's just an estimate

time: 9:44am

birthday: august 19th 2005

favourite bands: fall out boy, paramore, arctic monkeys, most fueled by ramen/dcd2 bands from the early 2000s, idkhow, green day, meet me at the altar, the last shadow puppets, doll skin, vial

favourite solo artists: pj harvey, david bowie, hozier, phoebe bridgers, hayley williams’ solo stuff and patrick stump’s solo stuff

song stuck in my head: grow up by vial

last film: the truman show

last show: grey's anatomy

when i made this blog: i originally made it 2-3 years ago i think, i was abt 12 closer to 3 years, and it was a sims blog lmao but about 7 months ago i moved my fob sideblog here bc i never used this one

what i post: literally whatever tf i want lmao i rb rob/pmore posts a lot and occasionally make those lyric comparison posts or just. vent into the void of tumblr

last thing i googled: robert smith bc my dad and i were listening to the cure and dad wanted to know what part of england he’s from (it’s blackpool, in case you were wondering)

other blogs: the old version of this blog and a couple unused sideblogs bc im holding possible urls lmao

do i get asks: hardly ever :(

why i chose my url: it was originally andyoucanget-whatyouwant after a line in favourite record by fob but someone in an ask said they always read it as andy you can get what you want so i added an extra y for fun lol. thinking about changing it again bc she’s Long 

following: like 109 or something

followers: i think just over 300

average hours of sleep: 7-8ish, sometimes 9 or sometimes like 5, and im always tired no matter what

lucky number: idk if i have one but i like 7 and 21

instruments: tried to learn bass but it did not go well...also kind of want to try guitar but im worried the same thing will happen :/

what i am wearing: fleecy penguin pyjama trousers, a grey turtleneck and a purple fleece pyjama top (nothing but style for my online classes)

dream trip: australia, germany, chicago, the list goes on

favourite food: pizza. always.

nationality: irish :)

favourite song: all time favourite is disloyal order of water buffaloes by fall out boy but atm i can’t get enough of r u mine by arctic monkeys

last book read: god not even sure, i never read anymore

top three fictional universes i’d like to live in: idk abt top 3 but probably the one in my Head that is far too complicated to explain and is slightly embarrassing

favourite colour: ab/ap blue, mania purple and pine green

[guileheroine]

animus 

almost a day in the life of riza's daemon and his human. a royai daemon au by me (fic) & @willoghby (art) / 3k / ao3, more

“Wait,” Argus whispers, and Riza retracts her step without a beat. His keener ears twitch, tail feathers bristling. “Now,” he continues in her ear a moment later, and they stride into the corridor and the unpleasant view of Bradley’s disappearing shoulders as he turns the corner, his rat daemon in his thick, curled hand.

“Wait.” Riza in his ear this time, stopping him as he’s about to fly ahead and peek through the keyhole of Bradley’s recently vacated private meeting room, claws itching to scrape at the handle. “Better give him a moment.”

Indeed, when Mustang steps out a second later, composure not quite threatening to disintegrate, Argus has the impression of a man only just come to a place of clear thought, let alone a conclusion.

Anything? Riza says with her eyes. Only he and Mustang can hear that urgent question. Argus has his recurrent thought that she knows him the way Argus knows her; something he’s learnt to nurture an ever greater appreciation of with every passing year.

Mustang’s eyes say a lot - in fact, they say a lot -  and Argus’s claws dig in Riza’s shoulder at the sudden apprehension dealt by the silent gesture. Riza feels less trepidation, and he knows it’s because she’s (always) prepared for the worst. Bradley’s bizzare heart to hearts betray an astonishing amount lately; or rather, it’s probably simply that they’re finally close enough to take what he’s giving them, thank to Hughes.

“The barracks, Lieutenant,” Mustang says finally, indicating that that’s where he’ll tell them; one of a handful of places unimportant enough that they might confer without fear, for now. “After lunch.” He clears his throat, a finger crooked near his mouth, nods, and strides off.

Only then does Nura slink from behind the door. She follows him automatically - at once quick and absent, without a glance of acknowledgement for Argus. She must have been working hard already to assimilate whatever information they had gathered - holding the strings together and tying them as fast as many as possible before they fell away.

They do this. Mustang has to be alert, be a man not himself half the day, so Nura lightens the load - one shrewd, discerning mind always connecting frantic dots while the other keeps up appearances. She can be almost immature in her displays of proud indiscipline, like when she stares superiors down where formality forbids it for her arguably more cautious human; but as they pad off quickly she leaps and curls into his arms for reassurance, settling against his chest.

Argus supposes it’s another such semi-vicarious expression - this odd moment of vulnerability that she can get away with, a temperamental cat daemon, but he certainly can’t within the walls of Central City headquarters.

Riza sighs. I guess we’ll wait. Argus settles more comfortably, making some attempt to straighten the crease he’s created in her uniform. They don’t follow Mustang and Nura.

-

He is patient, and so is Riza, so anyone might assume they’re just patient together - it’s what everyone does assume, when they see Argus on his perch on her left shoulder or hear the matched steady timbres of their hushed whispers. Their reality is more complex, unless they’re truly preoccupied; a fine equilibrium constantly negotiated - each keeping the other patient through days, months, years; through the anxious anticipation that fills all the pockets of their time not spent labouring for whatever it is they’re awaiting.

Patience is well practised. A notch up is perspective, something more difficult to relay, if only because Riza so rarely requires it of him. Argus still considers it his critical responsibility when she does, because when she does is at her wretched worst.

She lay with her fingers deep in the groove of her brow bone one night a few months ago. They were still in East City. Argus couldn’t sleep because of her so he hopped down from the headboard onto the bed.

He pushed his bill in her unbound hair before whispering her name twice. Her hand fell away to reveal eyes wide open, and though they didn’t turn to him her reluctant plea was evident in them. She almost made to sit up but Argus bore onto her arm.

Once, a long time ago, she had asked to know if he could still love her. He’d think it was the worst thought one could have - in fact, she would hurt him with it - if he hadn’t thought the same. They were partners in the gravest crimes, even if she had pulled the triggers.

“I just don’t know if I have enough to give,” Riza explained now, the grit of her teeth making Argus’s breast twist as he felt his own mind, awash with the memory of guilt.

When she lifted her hands up before her and examined the backs of them, as if the scant moonlight in here were enough to see by, Argus took it as his cue to tether her.

Their pain and their purpose had made a cold sort of contract. Normally Riza was the one who could maintain its terms with the most sensible, hard-nosed outlook, outwardly at least; as she pressed her sorrows into a manageable shape with the pursuit of this almost ruthless redress, powering their best hopes for the future with the worst of their past. He wasn’t as great at compartmentalising, had to stop and recollect more often - but it meant that when things did surface for her, he was better practised at pushing them down again.

“No, maybe not,” he soothed, because she would be unwilling to hear the truth (that she did have enough, that he loved her), “but you have to give what you have.” He curved a wing over her face, cutting her sight; and she placed her hands back at her sides. “There’s no other way.” There was comfort in that, refuge. Riza closed her eyes, and he was pleased to sense her lashes were dry, and when they opened her eyes were cool again. He felt his own little body ease.

He rested in the crook of her neck, her deliberate breath ruffling his own fleecy neck. And he found that if he made to sleep, she’d do it too, for his sake.

-

They don’t make it to barracks at the agreed time, don’t need to in the end. They don’t even make it to lunch: there’s a ruckus downtown, and they arrive only in time to catch the wreckage that whoever it was this time has left behind.

“Scar?” Is Riza’s first instinct, but Argus responds, “No,” immediately - they haven’t had any whiffs of him around Central for a while now, and he only targets State Alchemists, none of which roam anywhere around here, to their knowledge. Riza remains alert.

“The Elric brothers?” Is Roy’s second, more collected instinct. Nura sniffs, bounding ahead into the narrow alley. Argus sweeps down to fly at her level, leading their humans.

Nura seems confident though. “Nothing bad?” He asks, a foot or so above her twitching ears.

“Something bad,” she replies. “But they’re not here anymore.”

Rather than darkening into some backstreet, they come to a dead end before a battered steel fence, a surprisingly wide field behind in it. Argus is mildly annoyed that he still doesn’t know Central City as well as he’d like, despite careful surveys whenever Riza opts to go somewhere on foot - it sprawls further and stranger than East City ever did. The remains of a rough shack emerge out of the brick in one corner, clinging as though it had crept organically out of the concrete over decades. There’s a very strong odour about. Thick and strangely sweet but very much animal-like… Bovine? Some debris flutters down into Nura’s fur.

Argus picks it off with his bill and blows it away. She grimaces and scrunches her back but doesn’t stop him; he knows her irritation is nothing to be deterred by.

The door to the shack is still on the hinge somehow, but it probably won’t be for much longer. Nura slips under it easily, Roy flexes his wrist under his glove and Riza puts her own hand on her pistol. Roy is alert with his daemon hidden behind the door but all she finds, it turns out a second later, is a stocky man in farmers’ clothes struggling to collect his wits, his pygmy goat daemon shivering in his lap.

They question him for a minute - who attacked him, for what - and then, in the same moment that Nura stiffens and says, “Roy -” her human’s face turns white. Argus resettles on Riza’s tensed arm, shuffling his wings in momentary confusion, but they both know almost immediately that they have the answers they need, whatever they may be. They thank the man and take him with them for further questioning.

-

“His pet, remember - they wanted it, I know why,” Roy explains on the way in hushed tones. It had been plain from the way the farmer described the attack that his assailant had been one of the Homunculi. Argus gives Roy his full attention, flitting from foot to foot, whilst Riza keeps her eyes on the road, her jaw set.

“Roy,” Nura bites, eyes narrowing towards the man in the backseat, but he shrugs vaguely as if to brush her warning off: he’s already asleep, now that the shock is wearing off.

Argus has a hunch. Has had a hunch for while, that he didn’t dare confront with the full focus of his heart and mind - ever since they came to know that the Homunculi weren’t quite human, were something apart perhaps in their very essence.

Until now, that is. And his feathers bristle and his eyes squeeze shut as Roy speaks the words.

“Their daemons aren’t real.” Even Riza’s breath hitches a little. “Bradley’s - I saw it today. He kept it in a cage in that office. I don’t know what spell they put on them to fool us, but they’re puppets, alright.”

The weight of a heavy, horrific nausea is in the pit of Argus’s stomach, but he wills himself to cooperate. He had felt a way around Bradley always, a chill disquiet like the feeling of being followed, small but profound. He realises only now that he has never seen his daemon speak.

Mustang sweeps a hand through his hair in distress before continuing. “But I think they can’t transmute them. They have to twist real animals so they’re at least part way to some kind of soul. This man had the only musk ox in Central, brought it from his family homestead up outside Monmort, by the tundra. And that’s the creature they wanted -”

Nura is curled around the headrest of Mustang’s seat, uncharacteristically still. It’s easy enough to fill in the rest - there’s another Homunculus with a daemon wanting, but why -

“My guess is they want something that can survive up north, something strong,” Roy finishes.

He says he needs to spend some time with Hughes’ documents; see if they help fill any gaps in. Argus curls into Riza’s shoulder. Normally she doesn’t like that while she’s driving.

-

It isn’t long past lunchtime when they find themselves back in the office. Argus hops over shelves, picking tools and bolts from an open case as Riza fiddles with some of her older firearms. Both their minds are on this morning’s discovery. Periodically, he flies to Nura and back to Riza to relay Mustang’s progress as he pores and pores over his pages.

Nura is lazing on Mustang’s desk, as usual on a calm afternoon, with an unaffected, quiet sort of grandeur. It’s a clever guise, and terrifically effective - she the physical projection of the character he conveys to the world, preening away as a literal barrier before him as he works. A conscious ploy though it is, Argus can’t help but find it somewhat grating, having to wait and cough and bob his head every time he goes over before she stops licking her fur and her disdainful, idle eyes land on him. Lazy is the last thing he’d call the real Nura. Perhaps the strength of this show is just testament to the wiles of both daemon and human - which is good for all their sakes, of course, so he does what he tends to anyway and ignores her airs.

“Your daemon’s quiet,” some scally private delivering papers to their unit later that afternoon says. He makes small talk as he waits for Falman to return with something or the other that he’s supposed to take back. Argus is too occupied with trying to fix the slide lock in place on the pistol Riza has been reassembling to engage the man’s restless dog daemon, while Riza  reluctantly divides her attention between the task and their visitor. It’s only in moments like this that he feels aggressive - can’t he see they’re busy?

Anyway, it’s unusual for the man to refer to another’s daemon like that - more of a not-so-covert gibe at Riza’s own attitude. They both try not to roll their eyes. There are those that assume some kind of mutual dissatisfaction or character flaw when they see daemons and humans who aren’t constantly conferring, as if they need to talk to be wholly connected. They don’t. Argus’s eyes rove over the firearms as he considers their steady concord, how he circles to aid her aim, barely flutters when she shoots. All silent.

Roy and Nura are always sniping at one another under their breaths, but that’s them. Riza jokes at her poor luck to be saddled with a daemon who wouldn’t do the slightest to pull her out of herself. He has to laugh when she laughs at his sober, affronted response to that notion, like hers wouldn’t be exactly the same.

They’re quieter now than ever, and closer. He supposes it makes sense - she had settled too, just less visibly, and now they’ve been themselves together for a very long time.

She says she had always known how he’d settle. Though it had happened unusually early for Argus, which she couldn’t have predicted.

“Not a hawk?” Roy had said, masking surprise, the first day Argus didn’t change for hours and Riza was (even) quieter than usual. Nura transformed rather conspicuously into a meek red squirrel and slipped around his back, betraying his slight embarrassment.

Riza couldn’t help but give a reluctant smile. She would suffer his awkward curiosity with grace (and not much attention, it had to be said) the whole day. Her smile became smug, even. Argus felt pride. He flapped and curved his wings all afternoon. Although he had been a kestrel often, only now did he pay any heed to the feel of the form. Now he was wobbling, and had to learn how to wear it, weirdly; when every time before it had been as easy as a blink.

Roy had called Riza precocious, which wasn’t quite so damning coming from another - terrifically precocious - child, while Argus sat in her still lap outside on the old wooden bench in the overgrown yard. Sweet though she was, she was typically fairly frugal with her affection in company, yet today she barely took her eyes off him, running gentle fingers over his downy brow while Argus bared and retracted his talons experimentally. They were both getting used to things.

“How does it feel?” Nura said, blinking big eyes at him, shifting into a merlin so they somewhat matched, as if to keep pace or something.

It had taken her only another month to settle, but it was still strange considering that Roy had a few years on Riza. When she did settle, Riza had ribbed Roy more than he ever had them. Nura bared her little teeth viciously, and yes, they believed and knew her to be vicious, but it was impossible not to tease. A tiny, rusty cat (full of the world’s fury.)

-

It’s almost six o’clock when they return to the office with Havoc and Xenia in tow. On the way in they bump into Fuery. His gerbil daemon is scurrying in a tangle of wires in the bulky crate of mobile equipment he’s carrying. There are live wires.

“Hanna?” Riza says, slightly startled as she looks down, drawn away from the question on her lips.

Fuery waves the concern off. “Oh, she knows what she’s doing, don’t worry.” Only when Hanna plugs one into the machine with both her tiny claws does Argus realises that she’s in fact sorting the wires.

“Anything on what we discussed earlier?” Riza asks casually.

Fuery taps the crate. “No, but I’m working on it. I’ll need clearer frequencies from up north. I’ll let you know if they hear anything.”

Riza leaves him with a kind nod, Argus eyeing Hanna warily until the last moment.

He flies to Riza’s desk ahead of her, sailing past Havoc, who upon entering, goes to slump against Roy’s desk after a salutary point of the fingers at Breda in the corner. He’s only here to drag them all out again.

Roy pointedly continues to bore into his papers. Xenia claps her fingers in Nura’s back, making her scowl and scratch, and he finally gives a long-suffering sigh. Nura continues to bare her teeth.

Xenia, a macaque who stands out in all the military even here in Central, retreats into Havoc’s arms.

“Man, tell your daemon not to be such a shrew!”

“What is it?” Roy demands, struggling not to roll his eyes. There’s more mirth in the words than irritation - still a fine balance, but it’s sliding - and it occurs to Argus just how precisely he can tell. “And she’s a cat, Jean, not a shrew.” Havoc frowns.

“Oh, she’s just scrappy,” Riza pipes up, folding her coat onto her chair. She raises an eyebrow and her glimmering eyes fall on Roy, whose brow is still knotted seriously. “It has to come out somewhere.”

She’s trying to get a rise out of him too. Argus flaps happily onto her shoulder. She had spent a refreshing hour with Havoc at the firing range, and now they both feel easier.

“Come on, Colonel,” Riza continues, “you need to let off some steam.”

“C’mon…” Havoc parrots, making a motion of yanking him out of the chair. “The Salamander? That one down 47th? We can finish the night off at Madame Christmas’s.” He waggles his eyebrows.

Of course, it’s a little early to be making the rounds. And of course, they’re pushing him because there’s things to be done that require cover of night, and cover of this not entirely insincere pretense.

Nura leaps down from the desk, while Roy takes the added precaution of dragging his feet.

They follow them out into the dark, but Riza gives the men a slight head start before calling Argus to her shoulder.

“What is it?” He says.

“Nothing.” She laughs after a length of silence, though her eyes remain a little distant. “I just thought we could take our time. We’re supposed to lose them out by the station anyway.”

Argus accepts that without too much thought. And then he wonders, if the events of the morning had rattled her as much as him. He considers her, the beloved face serious again, despite the thumb and forefinger that have come up to clasp around his foot in absent affection.

Eyes larger and lighter than his beady ones, but only barely less sharp as they flicker into the room again.

Argus bows his head and lets it fall against her ear, tickling her. Riza comes back to him and smiles.

[seokmins]

I LOVE YOUUUUU 💕😭 omg sending all of the warm hugs to you!!!! sending tea, warm blankets, fleecy blankets 🥺🥺🥺💖 listen i am HUGGING U IN SPIRIT 🧡

i was on the phone WITH A CUSTOMER and i was scrolling through tumblr and i saw it and i was just.... SHOOK 😍 i was like ohmyGOD and had to play it off like my system crashed or smth 😁 i think they bought my excuse 😭😭😭😭😭 good thinking hev 🥰

MAJOR feels for dk lately, i'm struggling, pls HELP 😭 he's just so attractive like????? need to stay loyal to seungkwan but DK MAKES IT DIFFICULT GRR 🥺🥺

ahhhhh omg happy birthday btw bby pls 💀 give me some time and i will make u a pretty seugkwan set #fake but ty for the endless hugs and love 😘😘😘

PLS that's so funny tho aksjfk lich rally real time w/ a customer 😭 you're quick on your feet and that's sooo sexci. Also I KNOW RIGHT, fun fact, kwannie was gonna be my next bias after i saw him in the homerun era but then deekay came out of nowhere when i was watching boo videos and it's been like that ever since

[cowplant-pizza]

🌟tag thingy🌟

i was tagged by @foursims ty bby!! (and anyone else that tagged me, i am blind, pls forgib)

rule: tag 10 followers you want to get to know better.

name: jess!!! (or jessica if im naughty, pls no) gender: i have a vagine star sign: capricorn  height: 172cm have u ever had a crush on a teacher: ye bby. my high school english teacher. he was really young and all the parents thought he was a sixth former when they first saw him. he had brown hair and dark brown eyes and then a ginger beard. he was a massive dickhead but he was still v hot lmao. where do you see yourself in 10 years: idk tbh. i dont like planning my future too much as i dont want to be let down sdldslfsk. but i would love to be working in some sort of animal shelter in a cute town house surrounded by ppl that love me and lots of furr bbys. if you could be anywhere right now where would it be?: i wanna be in one of those roof top pools that like overlook beautiful cities? your coolest halloween costume?: i always used to go as a witch, omg how original right? favorite 90s show?: fresh prince of bel’aire or friends!!  last kiss: i gave my kitty smooches a couple minutes ago have u ever been stood up: yES. about 2 yrs ago, i was catfished for approx 10 months. i got stood up many times :)))) favorite pair of shoes: my doc martins!!! but i hardly ever wear them bcause i walk like ive shit myself  favorite fruits: blackberries favorite book: i like too many books, but im currently enjoying the originals series  stupid thing: um. im really chatty on the internet but literally can say nothing 4 hours irl and still be content???? 

i’m tagging @toxicsimlish, @fleecie, @randomcoffeesimmer, @witchescherry, @108sims, @hello-addictedsimmer, @felicitum, @sim-bubble aaaand @clumsyalienn

[fox-bright]

#that is glorious!! #I wish I could get into quilting #unfortunately I lack the funds and the patience

This one was actually a really easy quilt to make! It only took me so long because I had so much else going on (I perform as a Chinese lion dancer in the local show of The Nutcracker, I got married a couple of weeks ago, et cetera). This quilt is entirely made of triangles, called "hst" or half-square triangles, sewn together along their long end. You can produce these blocks in a handful of different ways; I did two-at-a-time but you can do them as singles or even four at a time, depending on the seams you make. They're very, very simple to produce.

The thing about an hst block quilt is that it's like a kaleidoscope; the way you turn the squares changes how it looks entirely.

Examples, taken from various quilted blogs (each of the squares in these quilts is half patterned, half white, where mine in the first photo above were half black and half a bright color):

(photos from auntiemscrafts.com, annemariechany.com , and jaimecostiglio.com .)

Here's a link to a bunch of other hst blocks, too: https://coffeeandmaking.co.uk/2019/06/21/half-square-triangles-the-most-versatile-quilt-block/

So these definitely let you quilt on easy mode! You can work up something that looks really complicated just by turning the pieces around.

Patience...well, it depends on which direction. If it's "I don't have the patience to wait for a quilt to be done, it takes foreeeeverrrrr," that's valid--quilts like this one work up relatively quite fast, so it might be a good place to start. If it's "I don't have the patience to sit at the sewing machine for ten hours in a row," the fun thing about ones like this is you can work up a block or two at a time and then leave it alone for however long you feel like, and the piece as a whole won't suffer.

I totally sympathize on the money, though. I'll stick two more photo in here--this is the first quilt I ever did on my own, a decade ago:

Sorry that they're not really quilt photos so much as "look how fucking clean my room is" photos, and that they are potato-quality, I didn't have a smartphone back then. But they give you an idea, more or less. I made that quilt out of squares I cut from precuts called "fat quarters, which are 18x21 inch pieces of fabric you can get for a buck or two. They go on sale periodically at JoAnn Fabrics for a dollar or so, these days I think they're usually about 2.50 a piece.

I got the filling, called "batting," on 75% off sale for about five dollars. Sales that steep will usually be cheaper, but I wanted the extra-extra thick stuff because that attic, there? Not really insulated. Most of the furniture in that room was scavenged from the street on Big Trash nights, the books were mostly library discards...you get the idea of how I was living, then.

And then I backed it with a pair of dollar-store fleecy blankets, but there are a lot of ways to make a cheap backing.

Basically I took six months of one-dollar and two-dollar purchases here and there, and when I had enough for the size I needed, I cut them into the right sizes and stitched them all together. There are a LOT of flaws in this quilt--and I ended up pulling the quilt sandwich apart and redoing it, this year, quilting it instead of ribbon-tying it, putting a new backing on, but before I had to do that, I slept under it for nine years! It's been washed dozens of times, and even with the cheapest possible fabric it kept me warm in cold times.

It makes me...how to phrase it.

@seththemusehub 's concerns are valid and 100% understandable. Quilting has in the last few decades become the pastime of women who are wealthy in leisure and funding, who make hand-dyed, exquisitely pieced, longarm quilted works of art that end up on magazine covers and maybe sold for a couple of thousand dollars. And that *is* quilting, and I won't talk shit about them, but the thing is that that is not all that quilting is. It's not what quilting was MADE FOR, any more than Michaelangelo was a house painter.

The art form started with women taking clothing that couldn't be mended anymore, and saving aside the pieces they could clip that still didn't have holes, and still weren't thin enough to see through, and then sewing those pieces together in pleasing fashions to make something that would keep their children warm.

Quilting was FOR people with next-to-no money, people with next-to-no time in the day, people who would sit around by the light of the lamp and work on the thing little by little. People who would get together with all the other women of the neighborhood and set up one quilt after another on a frame so that everyone's year's worth of work could be quilted or tied one after another, and everyone would go home with a quilt her friends and relatives had helped her finish.

I feel pretty passionate about this, I have to admit. But there's just something so tremendously human about taking scraps of pretty things and making them into something that is not only lovely, but that you can crawl into on a cold day, or when you're sick, or when you're just so tired and achy, and feel around you like an embrace.

And I absolutely hate the idea that our curse of Having No Money should mean we're denied this human thing that was made for us. If you want to do it, you can do it. I'd be VERY glad to go into ridiculous depth about how to source bits and scraps, what to look for, what to do. You--whoever you are, reading this--deserve to have this thing, if this is a thing that you want.

Now all that's left on this baby blanket is the binding! Finally.

[demiace-ask]

Felt like doing a little writing...

Summer Sweethearts

The summer grass felt like an old living-room carpet, nostalgic and feathery underhand. Aleah thought that maybe Mother Nature had aged in a bittersweet way, and was now more aptly dubbed “Grandma Nature”. She offered rounded, colorful rocks on riverbanks like wrapped candies and crocheted the sky with new colors every morning.

A second hand reached out and set its gangly fingers on hers. A tingle, a prickle, sprang from her skin and etched up her flesh. She squinted her eyes. It was not entirely pleasant.

A lumpy shadow rolled over, blocking out the sun, a crescent of white teeth glowing in the darkness. Two cat-like, round eyes blinked at them.

“Ugh,” Aleah muttered. “Babe. You’re blocking out the sunshine.”

“I am the sunshine,” Valley replied. Then they ducked their head, gently nosing the crook of Aleah’s neck. Again her skin sizzled and twisted with the touch. It wasn’t a desirous way, and an itch began to build in her stomach and throat. Maybe Valley was, in a few ways, right. They were the sunshine and Aleah felt like she was getting sunburnt.

Lips fell like flower petals on a curve of dimpled, gold skin. Aleah fisted grass between her fingers, dark earth rooting under her nails. She could imagine Valley wanted their skin to be that dark warmth under her claws, pain drawn from sexual desire, an ache satisfied by a brutal, lusty coming-together. Valley kissed. The itch rose to a feeling of nausea, and a deep, volatile pressure filled Aleah’s throat. She felt like a firehose. A scream waited there, primal and unabashed, and it wasn’t a pleased scream.

Her breath hitched and she pushed Valley off. A rough hand ruptured their rose-flower lips. They rolled down the slight incline and got stuck near a heart-shaped rock.

“Aw, babe, what was that for?”

“I’m--” Aleah paused. For a moment, she felt bad. Valley was a lover and a companion; then why did sickness invade her when they laid loving hands on her hips and brushed her with a beaming grin? “I just... wasn’t feeling it.”

Their cat-eyes twinkled, curious and somehow kicked all at once. “Uh, Aleah, you okay?”

“I just...,” she sighed. Then she put her head to her drawn knees - rigged, bony knees. “Can’t do it today, V. I can’t. I can’t.”

The wind whistled, Grandma Nature trilling as she stuffed the sky’s fleecy pillow with puffy cotton clouds straight from a stuffing-bag. Minnows danced in the nearby stream. Its surface was made of sequins.

“Is it that thing?” Valley asked. “That- what was it? Touch averse thing?”

“Yeah,” Aleah nodded, rubbing her forehead on her rigged, bony knees. “Yeah.”

“Do you want me to go?”

She gulped, swallowing the suffocating pressure left over from her partner’s touch. “No, no-no. No, Valley. I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay.”

I want you to understand.

Valley crawled back up the gentle slope, tying their kinky, midnight hair back with a vibrant orange hairtie. The pop of color drew out sweet purple shadows on their cheekbones and the latent amber undertones of their cheerful eyes.

“I’ll stay, then,” they reaffirmed. They raised a hand and the remains of fear, anxiety, intensity rose in Aleah like a tide. She flinched. Valley’s fingers curled, kissing their palms in hesitation.

“May I touch you?”

Aleah smiled, thinly. The aversion faded softly, no longer fire. It waited like embers for the dry fear of touch to be rekindled, to rekindle it. But words dampened the heat and Aleah found, thankfully, that it was growing dark.

Maybe tomorrow would be a good day.

“Yes,” Aleah declared, and Valley set a careful hand upon her shoulder, twisting a few locks of charcoal-gray curls to the side.

“I love you, Aleah. I seem stupid sometimes, and I do stupid things, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know, V. I know.”

“Will you forgive me for breaking your boundaries?”

She smirked. “Maybe so.”

Then Aleah leaned over, hesitant for only a second - a second enough to see no tension drawn in Valley’s lines - before propping her head on their shoulder.

“I love you.”

~*~

~ Mod Lyca