#Was planning on doing a comic thing but again . deadline had to rush .

[teamfortresstwo]

Uhh not the happiest cause I kinda started on this last minute (can you tell by the fact that I am a day late?) but !!! HAPPY STATICAPPLE WEEK ! My first ever hazbin ship back when it was in its pilot days so you KNOW I can’t just miss out !

[kmgkmg]

GOOD RIDDANCE, A NEW TIME - JOSHUA HONG

word count: 4.7k... (my longest fic yet!!)

pairing: joshua x gn!reader x jihoon (for the first half)

synopsis: it’s the start of the new year and you’re spending it with a wildly attractive stranger in a leather jacket. 

genre/s: angst (for the first half), fluff, non-idol!au

warnings: alcohol mention, cheating mention, angst

rating: pg-13

a/n: my first joshua fic! i hope y’all enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it :D!! this is another submission for k-vanity’s season’s greetings event! theme: formal, accessories/extras: new years eve, holiday party, resolutions, transition. the title comes from the song good riddance, a new time by laica!

“You have got to be kidding me, Y/N.” Jihoon sighs, his irritation quickly becoming evident. 

“Aren’t we supposed to get off two stops from now?” You ask your boyfriend, confusingly looking at your phone and the maps app that was open. 

“No! We should’ve gotten off at the stop the driver just drove past.” He slid back into his seat, beginning to tap his foot impatiently. 

Who would’ve thought that your navigation app would misguide you, but you could tell that your boyfriend’s anger was growing by the second and nearly going to burst. The other occupants of the bus were looking at both of you, causing you to nervously look down at your phone and the incorrect directions once again. You wished that you could explain that his loud voice towards you wasn’t a regular thing to the people watching, but you knew that would only upset him more. Jihoon was always pretty understanding when it came to you, but lately he became snappy. You figured he had been more susceptible to emotional outbursts since he was rushing to meet the deadline for producing a new singer’s album, so you could only look at him apologetically and press the button to alert the bus driver that you wanted to get off at the next stop. 

You had persuaded him with much effort to attend the New Years Eve party your mutual friend, Soonyoung, was throwing, hoping it would be the most opportune time for him to destress. It’s understandable to be upset, you thought to yourself. Especially when you were the cause of the two of you to be running late. You had recently bought a washer and dryer, sick of needing to visit the laundromat when the nearest one was a forty minute bus ride away. The problem with these new appliances is that the outfit you planned to wear for the party was still damp when Jihoon informed you that he was waiting in your apartment complex’s lobby. You still find it comical how you found anything and everything that matched Soonyoung’s party theme of ‘New Beginnings’, before haphazardly selecting articles of clothing. 

The bus takes a slight turn to the right and abruptly stops, indicating that it was your stop to get off. You’re torn from your thoughts of earlier and look beside you, only to see Jihoon’s spot was vacant. He was already at the bus’ door and asking the driver to open the exit. You frown, unused to him ignoring you, but regardless get up from your seat and leave the bus. Promptly putting on a smile, you hurriedly try to catch up to Jihoon, who was walking at an overwhelmingly fast pace. He was busy on his phone, probably texting Soonyoung to inform him that you would be late. 

“How good do you think the music will be this year? Last year’s music was awful, but I feel like that was because Chan ordered a random local DJ to perform. At least Hansol is going to be in control today.” You try to start conversation, cautiously glancing at his expression and attempting to read the mood between the two of you. 

Silence fills the air as he continues to walk at his hasty pace, before he finally looks up from his screen, exciting you for the potential interest you sparked. 

“Why would I care about music when I’m not working? God Y/N, you are so dense.” His tired expression and monotonous tone leave you flustered, resulting in another apology, yet this time it was quietly muttered. Silence suddenly fell onto the two of you again and the rest of the walk was finished with the complete absence of words. 

The music can be heard nearly a block away, but the familiar tunes of popular songs amongst your friend group causes you to feel a bit more at ease with yourself and the night. The queue to get into the club was snaking around the corner and you felt extremely grateful that your friends had rented out a section of the venue. Jihoon gives the bouncer your names and the worker checks their list before nodding and letting you both enter. Walking in Jihoon makes a beeline for the bar, leaving you alone once again. Sighing, you start to search for Soonyoung’s reserved table by yourself and prepare yourself for a stressful night. 

You hear a voice that you’re accustomed to before you feel an arm sling around your shoulders. “Y/N, the one and only! My favorite fellow moodmaker is finally here, and with Producer Woozi!” Seungkwan slurringly shouts to express his joy at your arrival, before grabbing your shoulders with each of his hands to look you straight in the eyes. His face turns serious and you prepare for what he’s going to say before he hiccups, “You know we love you, right?” 

You laugh at his drunken antics and hug him, before nearly jumping out of your skin at the sound of another familiar voice behind the two of you. 

“Jihoon finally decided to take a break from his work and we have you to thank for that.” Breaking from your hug with the intoxicated Seungkwan, you turn around and see Seungcheol waving at you with a smirk grin. He told the group chat that he wasn’t going to be able to attend since he would be abroad when the party was going to happen, so his appearance was entirely unexpected. But he loved surprising you guys and he had successfully done just that. You enthusiastically wave back at your friend, having your mood drastically improve from earlier when you were alone with Jihoon. 

“Where is he by the way?” Seungcheol asks and Seungkwan’s arched eyebrows prove that he was equally as curious to know where their other friend was. You point to the bar, expecting him to be there, and he was sitting near the end, already having three empty glasses in front of him. 

His presence was intimidating enough to make you all aware that you should leave him alone for the time being. Sensing your regained sadness, Seungkwan looks to Seungcheol and points with his head to the dancefloor. 

Noticing Seungkwan’s hint, Seungcheol begins to ask if you’d wanna dance together but is discouraged to finish his sentence when you sit back on one of the club’s sofas. Wonwoo, who has been keeping you company, gives the guys an urgent look to lift your spirits. The three of them look at each other and shrug, unsure of what to do with the awkward tension between their friend group’s favorite couple, you and Jihoon. As if on cue, Hansol turns on one of your favorite songs and your ears perk up and eyes sparkle as if you were a kid who just got gifted their favorite candy. 

“No way, did one of you tell Hansol to play this? I love you guys!” You were easy to satisfy and your three friends thanked Hansol and fate for playing the song at the right time. You run to the dance floor, making sure to motion for your friends to follow you and soon enough the four of you were dancing and enjoying yourselves to the beat of the song. 

The party ended up being more fun than you originally thought it would be and although you arrived at 8:30, three hours had passed in the blink of an eye. The clock was ticking, time was dwindling, and in thirty minutes it would officially be a new year. A while ago you stopped dancing and you noticed that Jihoon was still sitting at the bar with one more empty glass. Making your way over to the bar, you gently placed your hand on top of his as he maintained a blank expression on his face. 

“Babe, did you say hi to Seungcheol yet? He fooled all of us and actually showed up tonight!” You inform your boyfriend, laughing at how surprised you were. 

“Yeah, he came over some time ago.” He replied simply. 

“Oh nice!” You smile at him, taking a seat and ordering a mocktail since you didn’t really want to drink when Jihoon had already drank multiple drinks. 

“3…2…1… Happy New Year!” The whole club erupted into cheers as people began to kiss whoever was next to them, a tradition that you always found to be one of the cutest. 

“Happy New Year!” You exclaim, leaning towards Jihoon to kiss him, only for him to turn away from you. Confused, but blaming it on the alcohol in his system you put a hand on his cheek, you then tried to go in for a more lighthearted kiss on the cheek, but he still dodged your affection. 

“Stop, Y/N. Let’s break up.” 

His words hit you like arrows piercing through your heart and the music felt deafening now. “You’re drunk, I’ll take you back to your place and we can talk in the morning when you’re sober.” You reason, struggling to conceal the hurt that he had caused you to feel throughout the night. 

He turns back towards you, with an alarmingly scary expression. “You know my tolerance is high. I’m serious, Y/N, I don’t want to be with you anymore. I’ve been seeing someone else for about two months, we really aren’t compatible.”

“You’ve been cheating on me?” Tears begin to well up in your eyes and you find yourself standing up from the seat you were positioned in next to him. 

“Don’t act like you aren’t all over our friends, instead of being with me this whole time you’ve been hanging out with them.” 

His reply leaves you speechless, dumbfounded even. “How is hugging my friends who I’ve known for years, able to be compared to you cheating on me? I wouldn’t have needed to spend time with them if I had an attentive boyfriend. I never expected you to be fully energized going to this event, but I surely didn’t anticipate that you would give me the cold-shoulder for the entirety of the night either. You didn’t even wait for me to get off the bus together, Jihoon.” 

“Well, I’ve made this decision a long time ago. We aren’t together anymore.” He shakes his head, irritated at your futile attempts to salvage your relationship. 

“You really think relationships can be ended unilaterally?” You whimper, turning into a mess because of his damaging words. 

“So you’re going to force me to stay with you? What type of relationship is that, Y/N? Relationships do end unilaterally all the time, it’s called getting dumped.” He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated that you weren’t giving up as easily as he predicted. Almost as if he had timed it, a girl walks to him and interlocks her arm with his and whispers something in his ear, arousing a laugh from him. “Are you starting to comprehend the situation better, Y/N?” He triumphantly asks you, making it the final nail in the coffin. Your sadness is now mixed with anger, and he walks off with the unidentified girl, once again leaving you alone. 

You stand by yourself, reflecting on all that had happened and it all transpired when it was still less than fifteen minutes into the new year. “Wow, alright.”

You can sense that your friends were watching the whole scene play out and you couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the thought of being soothed by them. You know that this break up wouldn’t break up your friendship with the other guys, especially since you had introduced some of them to Jihoon, but knowing that didn’t make the fresh heartbreak hurt any less. You needed to get away from this club, away from Jihoon. Granted he wasn’t in your eyes’ sight, but you weren’t about to risk the chance of seeing his tongue down some girl’s throat. 

You walk out of the club, having friends call out for you to come back inside. You knew it wasn’t smart to go out by yourself, especially since it was cold and late at night, but being in the club was too painful. How could Jihoon be so cruel? Thoughts racing in your head, you find yourself experiencing intense dizziness. Swiftly, you sit on the outside steps of a nearby building, putting your head in your hands to calm down. Panting can be heard from two people and you know they’re your friends. Sitting on the steps near you, you prepare yourself for whatever pep talk they thought of. 

“Y/N, please come back inside.” Seungkwan begs as Wonwoo puts your coat over your shoulders and begins to rub your back. 

“I don’t want to go back and see him.” You state, defeated. 

Wonwoo and Seungkwan exchange looks, unable to figure out how to make you feel better. “At least let one of us drive you back to your place. Or we can take the bus with you back?” Wonwoo proposes, causing you to feel slightly warmer at the extent to which your friends cared for you.

“I’ll be better, I just need some time to myself. I have a pretty full battery for my phone and I can keep in contact with y’all throughout the night to ensure I’m safe. I had no drinks tonight, you know I’m responsible. Go, have fun at the party Hansol is DJing at.” You manage to lift your head from your hands and smile softly at the two friends in your view. 

They sympathetically looked at you, understanding you wanted to be alone. “Okay, we’ll respect what you want, but if anything happens don’t hesitate to call any of us. We are all on your side, I can’t believe he would do that, and today of all days. The fucking audacity he has.” Seungkwan accepts your plans for the night and huffs in exasperation at Jihoon’s actions. 

“Sounds good, thank you guys. Really.” You say before watching as they walked back in the direction of the club’s loud music. 

Hearing three guys chat with each other, you continue staring at the pavement of the stairs. “Dude, we know your birthday is always overshadowed by New Years but we should still go have fun! It’s only a little past two, the night is ours.” 

You overhear their conversation, not meaning to eavesdrop, but they were right in front of you and definitely weren’t whispering. You stayed quiet, hoping they would eventually walk away until noticing one of them wearing converse with small four leaf clovers painted on the white front part. “Oh, is it my lucky day then?” You chuckle to yourself, fed up with the irony of seeing such a sign, unaware of how loud your rhetorical question came out of your mouth. 

Amused at the comment on his shoes, Joshua motions for his friends to stop talking for a minute, taking in the image of you on his apartment’s stairs, looking about as rough of a condition that he felt. He figured asking if you felt alright was a question doomed for failure, anyone could tell how dejected you are. Instead, he decided to be straightforward. 

“What happened?” 

You’re surprised that four leaf clover shoes is talking to you, and even more surprised when you look up and see three insanely unrealistic attractive men in front of you. The one in the center being four leaf clover shoes, wearing a leather jacket that only added to his hotness factor. But then again, it’s late at night and stranger danger is always a good code to live by. 

“Who, who are you?” You countered instead of answering his question. The three guys look at each other before grasping the situation and realizing they must’ve looked intimidating to you. 

“Sorry,” the four leaf clover shoes apologizes, “this is Jeonghan,” he introduces the guy on his right, “this is Mingyu,” he introduces the guy on his left, and finishes with himself,  “and I’m Joshua. I live in the building that you’re currently sitting on the steps of.” His explanation of why he was on the steps with you instantly makes you jump up onto your feet, before stumbling at the dizziness that hadn’t diminished since you left the club. 

Joshua’s amusement quickly becomes worry as he catches you from nearly tripping down the stairs. Tonight was truly not your night, he thinks to himself. 

Mingyu tries to stifle his laugh before carelessly commenting, “Woah, someone must’ve had a lot of drinks tonight.” He didn’t mean for his sloppy judgment of you to be said out loud, but he had a few drinks already and was way beyond the tipsy state. Still, he knew well enough to recognize when he messed up and covered his mouth with his hands, clearly remorseful at his inner thoughts coming out. His clumsiness wasn’t anything new, but it still earned him mean looks from Joshua and Jeonghan, never failing to be shocked at their younger friend. 

“I actually didn’t have any drinks.” You defend yourself while regaining your composure and leaning on the handrail next to you. 

“Well, do you want to be left alone or taken to a nearby hospital to get checked out? Or would you rather go out with us?” Joshua inquires, not realizing that you thought he offered a health checkup and getting drunk in the same breath. 

You laugh at the absurdity of the questions being asked, but drinking with them didn’t seem like the worst thing right now. “Sure, I could use a drink.” 

Joshua blinks at Jeonghan and Mingyu and they respond with knowing looks, both aware that when Joshua meant go out he meant eat with them at their favorite 24-hour restaurant down the street. Since his birthday was so close to New Years, he never was a huge fan of partying all night. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to casually deny you from drinking, especially when you were feeling the way you were. Their plans were to catch up on the latest season of one of the series on Netflix that everyone had been talking about on social media for the past week, but Netflix can wait. He could sense that you needed companionship right now above everything else.

“Um, what type of drinks are you looking to have?” He starts to ask, before a phone suddenly rings. 

Jeonghan pulls his phone out of his jeans pocket and picks up the call, unable to hear his friend past the blaring music of what he assumed to be a club. “Seungcheol? What are you saying, I can’t hear a single word you’re trying to tell me.” 

Your eyes darted to the man who stood farther from you to accept his call, not expecting to hear the mention of your friend’s name. “You’re friends with Seungcheol? Choi Seungcheol?” 

Now it was Jeonghan’s turn to be surprised as he removed his phone from his ear, “How do you know Seungcheol?”

“He’s my friend! Could you tell him I’m still safe?” You request, happy to know that you had mutual friends with these three strangers. 

“Sure,” Jeonghan replies, returning to his phone call with his friend before noticing they never asked what your name was. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Y/N L/N!” You respond, waiting for him to be done with his conversation so you could drink with them. 

“Seungcheol, Y/N L/N is with us right now and they’re still safe. They wanted you to know that, I really can’t hear you though. If you need me, or them, just text us.” Jeonghan practically yells into his phone, before ending the call. Exhausted from the unexpected use of his energy, Jeonghan looks at the three of you with a more haggard expression on his face. “I should go pick him up. Whenever he calls me, 99.99% of the time it means that he got hammered and needs me to take care of him.” He groans and the fact that Jeonghan knew Seungcheol’s drunk habits made you feel even more comfortable with the guys in front of you. 

“Him and Soonyoung really are the clingiest when they drink, huh?” You agree, nodding to yourself at the thought of your drunk friends. 

“How do you know them by the way?” Mingyu asks, confused since he never ran into you at parties or other events. 

“I’ve known some of them since high school, others in the friend group I met through Jihoon. It’s easy to get acquainted with your boyfriend’s friends– or should I say ex-boyfriend now, ha.” You explain, turning uncomfortable at the mention of your freshly established ex. 

Mingyu makes an ‘O’ shape with his mouth, “You were Jihoon’s partner? They talked about you all the time, when did you change your hair from the ruby color he always talked about?” 

Your face twists in confusion, letting the truth of Jihoon cheating on you finally set in. “Oh, that must be the person he was cheating on me with. I’ve had this hair color for the past year.” You grab a strand of your hair while looking at it seemingly unbothered, as the three men in front of you are left flustered by your nonchalant energy. 

“Sorry, we should really go pick up Seungcheol, Y/N. Also Jihoon is absolute trash for cheating on you, we’ve only met you tonight but you seem way too good for him.” Jeonghan glares at Mingyu again for speaking before thinking, that was one of his resolutions to fix for the new year. Jeonghan pulled Mingyu down the stairs and waved goodbye to you, leaving the disoriented Joshua alone with you.

A silence fills the air, a limitless amount more comfortable than the silence you experienced with Jihoon earlier in the night. You both begin to speak at the same time, causing an overlap and making both of you laugh at your impeccable timing. “You first.” He offers, but you shake your head and motion for him to speak first. 

“Well, where would you wanna go?” He asks. 

“Somewhere that you feel at peace.” You stated, hoping your night would get better. 

The first place he brought you was a diner about three blocks from the building he lived in. Even though it was New Years Eve weekend and everyone was outside partying, the diner seemed to function in a completely separate dimension. Its interior was a bit barren, making it seem like a prime example of a stock photo when someone would search liminal spaces on the internet. However, being with Joshua the diner still gave off welcoming energy. The heater was also on, warming you up on this cold winter night. 

He took the initiative to choose a booth and greeted a waiter that he seemed to know. So he was a regular here, good to know. Giving a menu to you first, he pointed out his favorite items off the menu, asking what your preferences were and altering his recommendations to fit what he thinks you’d like. You wanted to pay attention to what he was saying, but something about him made it impossible for you to look away from his face. Not realizing how long you were staring, Joshua had looked up to see you in what he assumed to be a zoned out state. 

“Y/N?” Your name being said makes you stop staring at him and quickly look down at the menu, trying to play it off that you were shamelessly checking him out. 

He smirks, trying to lighten the mood. “Do I have something on my face?” 

Before you can reply, the waiter comes to your table asking if you were ready to order. You internally sigh to yourself, relieved that you didn’t have to answer him. Joshua looked at you, expecting you to order what you wanted to eat, but you hadn’t paid attention to the menu since you were too focused on his face. “I’ll get the same as whatever you’re getting.” You mumble as your embarrassment only continues to grow by the minute. 

He nods, placing the order before handing his friend the menus and leaning back. “Do you want to talk about what happened tonight?” He carefully asks, not sure how serious the events that occurred were. 

You normally wouldn’t talk about your feelings, especially to a stranger, but something about him was different. He had the kindest eyes you’ve seen, eyes that look as if they would understand you even if you shared your deepest and darkest secret. “Well, it started with my dryer not working…” 

Hours passed and multiple glasses had been emptied between the two of you. Neither of you were drunk, although you had been with him for a long time all of the empty glasses were from smoothies. The diner was also known for its smoothie flavors, a dessert that you loved to consume. Your food had long since been devoured, with the only remains being cold fries. You learned he had grown up in LA and only moved to this city a couple of years ago so he wasn’t as well acquainted with your other friends like Jeonghan and Mingyu were. He continued to go on about his life and the recent happenings, even revealing that his last heartbreak was about four months ago when his ex confessed they cheated on him. His similar experiences only bonded the two of you quicker, and you found yourself sharing even the most cringeworthy stories with him. You liked how free he made you feel, you could say anything and still not have to worry about how he perceived you. 

Joshua holds up his final smoothie of the night and begins to toast, "Good riddance to Jihoon, and here's to a new time, a better year!” He smiles at you, downing the remnants of his drink and paying the waiter for your food. You offered to pay half, considering you spent way more than you expected, but he adamantly refused. 

“I was the one who invited you out, wasn’t I?” He concludes, holding the door as you both walk out of the diner with the sun starting to rise. The approaching sunrise made the city look anew once again and although you got your heart broken earlier, you felt refreshed. You had been through hell and back for the last day of the past year, but you were grateful that you could begin the new year with your newfound friend. A clean slate, with a sincerely caring person was what you needed and words could not articulate how thankful you were for Joshua’s presence. 

“Let me take you home, only if you’re comfortable with me doing so.” As you were about to walk to the nearest bus stop that offered your route, Joshua’s voice interrupted your thoughts. 

“You would do that?” Once again, you’re touched by his attentiveness to you. He only nods in response, smiling at you again.

The bus ride back to your apartment was more relaxing than any other bus ride you’ve had before. Somehow, the fifty minute commute was satisfying to experience today. Knowing that you had today off, seeing the city before everyone was fully awake was a consoling way to start the new year. It was an added bonus that you got to spend more time with Joshua. Soon enough, you were near your apartment complex and you hit the button to get off. Joshua trailed behind you, stopping at the bus stop to wait for the next bus back to his place. Seeing how he didn’t expect anything and genuinely wanted to make sure you were safe made your heart beat faster, and you decided that if it was the new year, you weren’t going to live with regrets. Although you had been walking to your building, you turned on your heels to walk back to him. He was patiently waiting at the stop, clearly tired from the night, but that sight of him only made you more certain that you were interested in him. Tapping his shoulder and making him jump slightly made you giggle, but his face soon softened upon seeing you. Anytime he smiled at you, it made your heart beat even faster. 

“Did you forget something?” He innocently wondered, standing up in your presence.

“Yeah…you actually. Do you want to stay over for breakfast?” You boldly suggested, pleased with his reaction when his face lit up and he shook his head in agreement. 

Maybe it was your lucky day after all. The new year was going to be memorable, you could tell.

[fezwearingjellybananas]

You’ve written a lot of amazing AUs 🥰 which one was the most challenging and why? What did you learn from writing it?

Thank you so much <3

I think that everything has had challenges, but due to just how long it is, it's probably the Milk and Sugar 'verse. I had so much fun writing that, but there were definitely moments. Beans in particular- it's one of the very rare occasions I started posting before having the entire fic written and the last few chapters really started diverging from the original plan, which did make writing feel a little more rushed and I learnt I very much prefer having the entire fic written than trying to work to self-imposed deadlines (hence Gone in a Flash updating daily but being fully written first). I think also there are a few parts of the Milk and Sugar 'verse I would do differently now, maybe more with other timeline Barry in Paper Cups, and part of the changes to Beans included losing some more Lily and Laurel focused parts, so they definitely did not get the relationship development I was necessarily hoping they would get in the original plan.

It did take years to write though, and it is the longest thing I have ever written, so it did teach me a lot, and apparently enough I should probably use a read more here.

There were a few points at the end it felt like I was maybe trying to juggle a few more characters than really fit in some of the scenes because I got attached to writing them and didn't want to send them off out the narrative (which I think is also something the Flash TV show maybe fell into a little with later series), so when I wrote Old Friends, the last Flash & Hawkgirl fic, although pretty much everyone is there by the end, there are only a handful of characters who get the focus of the plot, to be able to follow them more.

(I think that's actually that's one of the things comics can pull off better than written works- when you're writing you need to find a way to tell the reader a character is in a scene, whereas comics can have panels with dozens of characters in the background while only actively focusing on a handful, so the Justice League can be fifty odd people trying to stop the world ending again, while the focus of the plot is Batman again)

It also taught me about planning and what kind of plan works best for me- the way we did planning for creative writing at school was always the very rigid plans where you write down everything that happens and stick to it and I actually can't really write with that sort of plan, so previously I mostly just wrote by having a vague idea in my head and dropping backwards and forwards a lot. When I wrote the Milk and Sugar 'verse though I planned everything while writing Coffee, To Go, but I did it by splitting chapters and making a brief note of who the PoV character would be and a handful of bullet points on what I wanted to happen to get to the end point (and any future scenes I wrote early- some of these made it in, some got reshuffled, and some got cut entirely). Which I find works far better for me, I like having flexibility in a plan and the parts in the middle as finding out how they happen when I get there, but having like checkpoints almost to take me to the end of the plot is helpful, and quick bullet point brief planning is something I use for all my long fics now.

And also continuity- because it took so long to write I went back and read parts again but I also rather than take the chapters I'd written out the plan entirely I kept some brief summaries in there, as well as a list of dates I'd referenced (birthdays, things like that), a few lines that got picked out for Barry to say again post coming out the Speed Force at the beginning of Beans, and a list of all the canonical C.C.P.D. members- this came from the Arrow wiki and quite a few of them ended up with lines through their names because I did not feel quite so bad about killing them as I did about killing Ronnie (hence he came back again). Which helped me keep track of a few things to try not to keep contradicting myself later, and did come in helpful a few times, so if I were to write anything quite that large again, I'd probably use the same method.

And I learnt a lot about science! I did so much research for that fic, predominantly out of reading one little thing then getting curious and going to find out more, partly because I felt like writing scientists I should probably put some sciency stuff in there, and also because I was writing it approaching it as science fiction, when I got stuck at parts one of the things I did was go look up the actual real science of this scenario as much as possible and then twist that to fit what I needed the plot to do, which is something I learnt is helpful because of that series and have found very helpful for not getting writer's block in several situations now. Gone in a Flash there was a point I was stuck so went and read the wikipedia page on tachyons and that helped.

It also taught me I quite like writing Snowest.

Thank you!

[Talk Shop Tuesday]

[lightluxcollie]

Regarding The Future Of Walk With Me And More! (Please read!)

I’ve been trying to ensure that this post is as easy to follow and understand as possible. Hopefully it’s not too long. I realize that not everyone will see it and I’ll probably get some comments asking what’s happened to Walk With Me. So I am going to try to explain what’s going on here. In addition I have some other things to say. So please read the whole thing. To get to the point. I’m going to be making some changes coming up. Changes that are looooong overdo. Please understand that running three comics, commissions, art, animations and more is very challenging and time consuming. Especially when I have constant real world distractions that pull me away from my work. Just to be clear. I am NOT stopping any of my comics. I am however changing how I do one of them. Denatured and Comic-Comic will continue on their regular update schedule as usual. Denatured post every other Monday, alternating weeks with Comic-Comic which is every other Wednesday. This is just as they’ve always been. Now as far as Walk With Me goes, I have one final page to complete for Chapter three, which will post to my Patreon in a little over a week, then to the public a month later as always. Once I am completed with Chapter 3, Walk With Me will no longer be on a regular update schedule of every two weeks. From now on I will be working on WWM in my spare time and will continue posting the completed pages as they are finished to my Patreon and Subscribestar. Once the next chapter is fully completed, I will then post all of it to the public in rapid succession. So again, just to be clear, you will still get to see it. It’s just that it will take some time before the next chapter is completed. If you want to see each page as they are completed, you can subscribe to my Patreon or Subsribestar and get early access as has always been the case with WWM. Why am I doing this? First: There are multiple reasons. To start. I’m tired. You may have noticed some comics have been posting later than usual. This is because I recently made the decision to never again stay up past midnight into the early hours of the morning, just because there’s a comic do the next day. It wrecked my health and I was doing it for pretty much no reason since very few people even cared. A mistake I will not be making again. My health is too important. Second: the quality of my comics has suffered greatly. I’ve reached a point where almost every time I have a comic do, I have to rush through the entire thing. It’s resulted in really crappy drawings that has not helped my comics to grow in the long run. Doing this will allow me to focus on one comic per week and I will be able to work on WWM at a slower pace where I will no longer have to rush to meet a deadline. This will improve the quality of all three of my comics. Third: By taking Walk With Me off a consistent schedule, I will now have much more time to animate. I’ve been wanting to do regular animation for a good while, but have never found a consistent enough schedule. So you can look forward to all of characters being brought to life more often now that I can. In addition, this will also help me to dedicate more time to Patreon and Subscribestar centered content. You may have seen my post that I did announcing the Faye’s Diary tier benefit. If you haven’t you can check that out in the link below. This is just one of the things I’ll be able to do now that I have more time. I’m planning on doing more content for Patrons in the near future. https://www.patreon.com/posts/intro.....tent=join_link Fourth: Finally, this will help me to be able to work on Commissions in a more timely manor. I have people who have been very patiently waiting for me to finish their drawings or to open back up. Unfortunately, I have had zero time to work on them do to unnecessary comic deadlines. Thank you all for you patience. I promise to get these completed and to you soon. A Favor: I’m not going to lie. I’ve been discouraged as of late. I put in so much work and effort only to get little to nothing in return. That’s not to say that I do what I do for monetary gain or popularity. Even if I could, that’s obviously not true. But please understand it’s become incredibly difficult to do what I do when I don’t even see any growth. Now I’m about to ask you to do something that I have never in a million years asked anyone for. Mainly because I never wanted to become one of “those” kinds of people that routinely complain or beg for things online. There’s a lot that happens in my life that you don’t know about because I’m not the kind of person to share it with you. Mostly because I don’t want to annoy any of my viewers with details that they probably don’t care about. I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the fact that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much work, effort, blood, sweat and tears, I put into this. I grow at a painfully slow rate, or I don’t seem to grow at all. It’s like every algorithm in existence is against me. I’m not saying I’m the best artist in the world. I’m not. It’s probably just because I suck at everything, but when people who draw literal stick figures, shit post, and crappy hard core pornography acquire mass followings of thousands of viewers, you can image, this is very disheartening and demotivating. I know my art sucks, but I’m asking you my friends and loyal viewers. Help me to grow. Share my stuff. It might look like I have a large following to some of you, but I don’t. I haven’t really grown anywhere aside from DA and a little bit on FA. Everywhere else is near impossible to develop a following. If you could help me out on these sites and social media that would be great. I’m not asking you to donate money or anything like that. (Although becoming a patron would be nice.) I’m just asking you to help me to get my stuff and existence out there. You can find all my social media links Aside from FA and Weasel on my website. https://www.sabercolliestudios.com Again, I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t feel I needed to. I could really use your help. I understand this is a problem most people face in the online world. Even so, I would appreciate your help. Light Lux Collie

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Do you love daddy?

Summary:  

“Do you love daddy?” Luke repeated. His eyes were wide, he was probably reading into her soul.

Hange didn’t want to give him too easy of a time mind reading. “Of course I do,” she said.

“How come you never tell him you love him?”

Luke asks Hange a question and Hange reflects on it.

Written for Levihan Week 2021, Day 2: Confessions

Link: AO3

Notes:

Levihan Week Day 2 Prompt: Confessions, organized by @levihanweek.

I edited this half asleep to meet my own internal deadline for day 2. I hope it still suffices. Feedback is very much appreciated!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

There was a small forest near their house. In fact, Hange had decided on their permanent home mainly for its proximity from the park.

In the middle of the park was a small, small forest. But to Hange, it was ginormous. Or at least, what you would consider ginormous in an urban setting. It held adventure. It held mystery. It held some breathtaking liberation, something withheld from her during her years as a commander.

That particular weekend was a lazy weekend. It was just her and her son. For some parent-child bonding, Hange was ready to get lost in the forest. Before she could even dive deeper though, reality rammed into her in such an abrupt, yet such gentle and adorable manner. “Do you love daddy?” Luke asked.

With those words alone, Hange could almost hear the curiosity burning inside him. She kept her eyes trained ahead, focusing on the forest. The woods were small, the forest was only large enough for a few small kids to play some hybrid between tag and hide-and-seek. The trees were of a safe size, some convenient shape that framed their surroundings.

It was a beautiful view, something she didn’t see often, especially when cooped up in the office forty hours a week. She decided to enjoy it and let whatever answer to that question come organically.

Do I love Levi?

The forest held more than adventure. It held something silent and invisible. Along the way, she had suddenly become aware of the breathing of her son, the rustle of the leaves. He was only inches away from her. In surprise, she turned back to her son while attempting to conceal the discomfort. She willed herself to keep her chin up, her eyes a reasonable size and her breathing very much even.

“Do you love daddy?” The kid repeated, his eyes wide. He could probably read into her soul and she didn’t want to give him too easy of a time mind reading.

“Of course I do,” Hange said.

“How come you never tell him you love him?”

“I do.”

“Corbin says his parents tell each other they love each other everyday,” Luke said.

Corbin… Was that a friend at school? It was nothing more than a passing thought. If it demanded to be something else, Hange didn’t notice, her thoughts had embedded themselves into something a little more pressing. “Luke, you don’t think I love daddy?” she challenged.

The young boy cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “You don’t tell daddy you love him…”

Hange could have sworn she did. She found herself racking her memories for some hint to an answer, some hint to reassurance that would suffice for her son.

When Hange indulged that nostalgia, the trees blurred for a second, the greens extended beyond the frames of her view. The sky that wiggled themselves through the canopy as streams of light disappeared for just a second.

Why don’t we just live here together? They echoed inside her and with it, they sent a rush of confidence through her. “I love him.” She had enough confidence to introduce it as if it were a well thought out proposition. She turned to his son.

Luke narrowed his eyes. Through the years, he was starting to look more and more like his father. If Luke expressed emotions anything like his father, Hange could be certain, it was doubt written all over his face.

Luke didn’t believe her? Hange was in no mood though for a lecture. She was in no mood for a moment of introspection, especially when there were still lichens and moss around her she wanted to identify. “Let’s talk about that when we get home.”

The conversation was over. Hange walked ahead then into the forest and tabled that problem for later.

***

Children never forget.

Hange scolded herself for underestimating the boy and to add insult to injury, overestimating herself. She wasn’t at all ready for the talk, especially not in front of Levi. She had just indulged that bad habit of hers, that tendency to assume that a five year old would forget what the hell they had just said.

“Do you love each other?” Luke had asked. It came too out of nowhere, over half finished plates of homemade pasta and untouched bowls of soup.

Levi coughed violently then dropped his spoon. One hand flew to his mouth. “What the fuck.” It came out like a mumble, a second later, concealed by one smooth deep breath.

Hange was frozen, too frozen to even tell what had been her first reaction.

Levi composed himself quickly. “Why are you asking that?”

Hange had known him long enough to know though that he was raring to insert some curse into that query. “Of course we do” Her response was automatic. Still she found herself, flashing Levi a look.

He returned it with something unreadable, seemingly uninterested but with a sliver of surprise.

“How come you never tell each other ‘I love you?’” Luke asked.

“We do,” Levi said.

For a second, Hange was relieved. At least they were still in the same wavelength.

“When?” Luke asked.

“Sometimes… when you’re asleep,” Hange said. Once again, those words had been automatic, impulsive. They were a product of Hange's inability to process such complex emotions, especially with a five year old of all things.

It was a mistake, an utterly stupid mistake. How the hell Hange hadn’t seen through it, it was a mystery. Really though, five year olds were very unpredictable creatures.

Luke wasn’t sleeping that night and he was doing a shitty job pretending he was asleep. Their apartment wasn’t too small but the walls were thin enough that everything just went bump, sometimes the doors went creak.

Overcompensating maybe for her stupid move, Hange decided to just perk her ears up. listen closely and attempt to make sense of the sounds. A few reiterations later, Hange figured it out. Luke was walking back and forth from the bed to the door and he wasn’t doing such a good job. He bumped, he creaked, sometimes he whispered.

Eventually, Hange would have to come in and put him to bed herself.

Still, that could wait. “Levi. You wanna go back to bed?” Hange said, just loud enough for the sound to travel to the open kitchen. Levi was once again reorganizing the cupboard.

Levi looked back at her, his eyes sleepy and his expression just a little dumb. It was late at night and she couldn’t really blame him for his utter obliviousness and his apathy over the whole fiasco. He shifted his eyes towards the partially open bedroom door for a second, then he met Hange’s gaze. He made his way the few feet to the sofa. “Do you plan on doing anything about… that?” He settled himself on the sofa next to Hange and looked at her expectantly.

“He’s gonna fall asleep eventually.”

“I know the kid. If you don’t talk to him about this, he’s not gonna sleep,” Levi said.

“Talk to him about…” Hange was feigning obliviousness.

It didn’t seem to work with Levi though. “That love thing, whatever that is. I don’t know what even happened between the two of you.” Levi leaned back on the sofa. “But I want my son to get a good night’s sleep.

Hange sighed. “While we were playing in the park, he asked if I loved ‘daddy.’”

Levi turned to her, a deadpan expression on his face. “Do you love me then?”

Comically Deadpan. Hange couldn’t even make sense of it herself, the question, the reaction had come so abruptly, so unexpectedly that Hange had to look away for some space and peace, enough at least for her to come up with some sorry excuse of a response.

“Why? What’s so funny?” Levi pressed.

The more he asked, the harder it would be to answer. And Hange didn’t want to make a big deal of it too late at night. The wry grin on her face was all she could muster. “Sorry, it just came out of nowhere--- What the hell, why are you asking it like this, all of a sudden.”

“Because Luke was asking?” Levi answered matter-of-factly. Hange was starting to wonder, was she making a big deal out of those three simple words?

“There must have been a reason right? A reason we never really said those words...”

“Why don’t you?” Levi asked.

“It feels….” I love you. She echoed it then she moved her lips slightly, just enough to feel for herself how it should have felt to say it out loud. “Excessive?”

“Does it?”

“Well… People say it all the time but then they cheat on each other, they abandon each other, they fight and it just seems like… something people say to be dramatic.”

“Unless you mean it right?” Levi suggested.

“What if--- I just wanna prove it. I wanna earn and support the family. I wanna spend time with you and Luke and I wanna just commit to making the relationship work. I don’t wanna add any unnecessary verbosities to it.”

“Would it hurt to say it?” Levi asked.

“It feels tacky,” Hange admitted.

“Even for your son?”

Hange sensed the slyness, the amusement in Levi’s voice. The war freak in her wanted some retribution. Her mouth went faster. “Do you love me?”

Levi turned a beet red, a rare scene particularly since they had started living together. And before Hange could even confirm that it hadn’t been some trick of the light, he looked away.

Hange craned her neck, ready to take one peek.

Levi couldn’t look away forever. “Do I really have to answer that?”

“Why? What are you so scared of?” Hange didn’t bother to stifle the smile. She snuck it into her words instead as a soft chuckle. “You okay?”

Levi spun around, his head bent down. “You’re right. It sounds tacky.” He put his hand out, balled it into a fist and pressed it to her chest. “Other words just sound better.”

The hand was warm, familiar and with one gesture, Hange felt secure. “Dedicate your heart? So you said that because you love me?”

“I thought I was going to lose you.”

“I thought I was going to lose you too,” Hange admitted. “That’s why I invited you to live in the forest with me.”

“Back then, did you…” Levi raised his brows expectantly.

Love me? Hange took the risk. “Of course.”

“Then why did you stop yourself from saying it?” Levi averted his gaze. He hung his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

“It’s excessive, melodramatic,” Hange admitted. “Why put ourselves to that drama in the middle of the war?”

“But you still invited me to live with you in the forest.”

“Other words just sound better,” Hange said. She mirrored Levi’s tone of a while ago. She hovered her hand over his, and propped it.

Levi looked up once again. Their eyes met and once again, they connected. Like every other time before and Hange was looking back at those other words again.

“Other words just sounded better then.” Right, circumstances were different then. There were words that had just been off limits, too melodramatic, especially in the middle of the war.

The war was over. They were in their own house. They were basking in the peace of post war Paradis.

It could have been a force of habit that the words kept themselves in, even when Hange had opened her mouth to speak. “I love you,” she whispered. The words were heavy, they were looming and somehow when she let them free, some other tension she dind’t even know existed had broken free from inside her. She let out a laugh, too loud for too late at night. “I love you,” she said again, much louder that time.

“Me too,” Levi said. “I love you too.” His response was smooth, natural and not at all hesitant and Hange wondered how long he had kept it in or if he had ever even rehearsed it.

She grinned, gripped his hand harder and let out a long exhale. They were silent for a few seconds and in the silence, the thumps, the thuds were deafeningly loud. Hange studied Levi’s expression, the subtle smile that climbed up his lips.

There was another thud, a few more bumps and suddenly it was silent. On the way to their bedroom, Hange snuck a glance at the partially open door, looking at the lump under the bed, the movements even, the breathing peaceful.

Luke had fallen asleep. For Levi or Luke, or even for herself, Hange made one last gesture. “I love you.” She bent forward, planting a kiss on Levi’s forehead. “Sorry if it’s five years late.”

[nobodyfamousposts]

As much as I love Lila cracking under the pressure of such a short timespan for party planning, I love the idea all the nebulous paperwork is just the same few pages having to be redone due to clerical and filling errors just to be class president. Because "I had a week and was incredibly busy just becoming CP" is a good excuse for a sub-par party. (As though Marinette wasn't relaxing because she's done all the prep and like hell will this revote keep her from her party).

Fair enough on the excuse. But let’s be honest about the party matter: if this is how her classmates are going to treat her, I don’t see her wanting to arrange a party for them.

Still, onto the matter at hand... (Because I too find the idea of Lila refilling out the same paperwork repeatedly to be hilarious.)

Say Lila doesn’t have a deadline of a week? What if instead, there’s a timetable all the classes are on to get their various class trips and events in order. And it’s even a contest of sorts to see who manages to come up with the best. Nothing “official”, of course. Just bragging rights.

Marc’s class were working together to set up a trip to a comic book convention.

Aurore’s class had already made arrangements to visit the beach as part of their trip. With scuba diving.

Kagami’s class is set to visit the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Not too far from Paris, but the place is a landmark and the gardens are beautiful.

Now Lila is expected to come up with something amazing for the class.

Not that she actually has anything. But she can fake it. It can’t be that hard, right? She even says as such in one of the meetings when she’s informed of the responsibility.

The other Class Reps just gape at her in horror. Some shudder. One murmurs a quick prayer. And one of them, perhaps in an attempt to be friendly, warns her to get on it as soon as possible. (If you listen closely, you can hear Marinette cackling from far away.)

Let’s pretend for the sake of humor and moving things along that Lila doesn’t just blow off the responsibility altogether. In all fairness, she probably would and then claim some last minute issue to get out of doing anything, but her classmates are really pushing the matter and her position as Class Rep means she now has a number of people watching her. Bustier is following up with her regularly to make sure she’s acclimating and making progress. The other Class Reps seem to be judging her and are just waiting to see what she comes up with and how it compares to what they’ve done for their classes.

So after a couple weeks, Lila can tell people are getting antsy and possibly suspicious, so she decides to just set up a trip to some random place in the area and call it a day. Of course, this means filling out the forms.

The damned forms...

With multiple pages.

What’s worse is that either out of laziness or rushing, Lila didn’t read the full instructions. So she fills out a spot in error, which results in the form not being accepted. She has to do it again.

So she does and turns it in. But wait! The form was filed incorrectly. Oops! She has to do it again.

She fills out another one. Turns it in. But oh dear! It turns out this form is actually the outdated version! She’ll have to do it again with the correct version—which as it turns out is almost an exact replica of the previous one only with a different header.

She fills it out, her eye twitching. Turns it in. Days later, she gets alerted that it was never received. It looks like it got lost and she’ll have to do it again.

Fills it out. Turns it in. But she misspelled the name of the place she said they were going to. She has to do it again.

Fills it out. Turns it in. But the point of contact apparently got married and left suddenly. So now the paperwork has to be redone with a new contact person. Sorry about that!

Fills it out. Turns it in—oops! An unlucky break in that an accident occurs where someone bumps into her while she was carrying the forms. That someone was carrying coffee, which of course falls onto the forms in question, rendering them unusable. She has to do it again.

Fill it out. Turn it in. But in the midst of all the refilling out and refiling, Lila lost track of her lies and just where she said the place they were going to was. She filled out the form wrong and has to do it again.

Now bear in mind that Lila is being kept an eye on while this is all happening. And the teachers and school administration and even her own classmates are getting a bit doubtful over all the issues she’s supposedly been having with the same damn form.

It takes the cake when the next time, Lila comes to school and claims that some sort of dog somehow ate the forms.

And for once, no one believes her.

Meanwhile, Adrien is concerned about Plagg’s grumblings of an inexplicable stomachache.

[ac-liveblogs]

RWBY vol 8, ep 11

, So... what narrative purpose does Ironwood diving off the morality cliff actually serve at this point? Because he’s kinda overshadowing Salem as the major threat at this point, and I’m really getting tired of the “but Atlas! But Mantle! But Atlas!” tug o’ war. tbh

I’m assuming his actions are going to be what results in Salem getting the Staff and Atlas falling, but like... we’re sure taking a long time to get there.

Okay, the decision to make the dog faunus call working for Ironwood equivalent to wearing a collar is... a choice

For someone willing to shoot Marrow for speaking out, Ironwood sure had no problems with Winter letting political prisoners go? Did we forget about that? No bullets for her?

Team “Ruby always has a plan!” does not have a plan, and things are finally starting to fall apart! Oh no! Well, they were comically unprepared for this anyway and they sure are wasting a lot of time given their deadline is an hour. 

nora holy shit stop lazing around, damn, it’s not that bad

Nora’s “don’t worry, I’m always stupid and reckless, I was bound to get disfigured at some point :/” would carry more weight if the way in which she was injured wasn’t so astronomically stupid. Nora had no reason to think she’d get injured by a DOOR because SHE CAN TANK LIGHTNING, and. Again. SHE WAS OPENING A DOOR, this isn’t some grave war wound??? Holy shit, stop dragging it out!

Ren and Nora’s conversation - Ren needs to stop pushing people away and lettng the team down and Nora’s feelings of inadequacy because of it, plus some chatter about noble self-sacrificing tendencies being admirable - really, uh... feels like a conversation Yang & Blake should have had?? 

Look... the resolution to this is fine, but the Renora relationship drama was rushed and forced to begin with, so like... I don’t care. The “boop!” callback is kinda cute though. 

Sorry, Robyn the hero of Mantle, is the voice of reason when Qrow wants to go on a murderous rampage to stop Ironwood? When Ironwood is threatening to drop a bomb on her city? I’m sorry???

And now we’re just gonna besmirch Clover’s good name posthumously to make Qrow out to be the better man?? Whatever we can’t go 10 seconds without digging at Ironwood I get it 

Incidentally if this turns into another “the adults deal with the problem while RWBY is useless” moment I swear to god 

Why is Yang pronouncing Schnee “Sche-knee” all of a sudden? Has she always done that? Did I just not notice??

Blake said “Ruby and the Schnees took the hellhound down”? Excuse me, RWB were cowering against a wall and Whitley and his mom took it down, lets not mix up facts here

Salem wanting silver eyes to make these weird Grimmdogs is uh... a motive, I suppose... kind of a lame one, but sure...

They uh... sure forgave Emerald real quick, huh... seriously, Emerald gets a free pass but Ozpin- ah, forget it. Dead horse, stick. 

Ozpin is now blaming himself for running away from Team RWBY when they attacked him. ok

Is... is the moral of this story really “we have to take risks sometimes”? I? Huh???????? It takes THIS LONG for that to be an actual LESSON that has to be learnt?!

Hey so about “you have an hour before I drop the bomb” - long hour, amiright?

So like... what exactly is the loss associated with giving Ironwood the Staff again? He evacuates Atlas but Salem might attack (which she is already doing)? I get like, not wanting to give Ironwood any victories, but.. sheesh...

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales 87 Reviews: Working for Scales (CACC Finale): Islands in the Sky, Stereotypes on the Ground

The grand finale to Catch as Cash Can as commissioned by @weirdkev27​! It’s a race to the finish as Scrooge, The Boys, Gyro and Launchpad hurry to get a now floating Atlantis to Macaroon before the deadline while Glomgold sets the Beagle Boys against them to stop them! Sterotyping, mother trucking balloons, Scrooge being a jerkhole again and one hell of a climax are floating on by under the cut along with the full review!

I made it! A full week almost of reviews, 4 episodes, and one big commission and with this it’s finally done. And it’s been a heck of a ride and i’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing it and hope to get more commissions in the future. For now though the Goal Line is in sight, let’s get going. 

Previously on Ducktales:

And as for this series, if you haven’t been following along at this point, Scrooge is in a contest with Glomgold to get his fortune to Macaroon to be weighed in order to get marketing rights to the Lightbulb replacing world changing Firefly Fruit. He’s had to deal with Beagle Boys, Sea Monsters eating his ice cream that turn out to be robotic whales driven by smart morons, and a bunch of asshole frogs with on sense of anything in a really boring adventure best forgotten. Point is Scrooge found atlantis, that’s where his gold is and the contest is almost up. Everybody ready? 

We open with Disney Plus giving me a very nice message. 

I’d heard about this but it was my first time seeing it.. and I prefer this to the previous content warnings as instead it just flat out apologizes for it and tries to use this racist bollocks as a learning tool instead of just covering their ears and pretending they weren’t racist. Granted it took them a few months and is clearly to cover their own ass, but even an ass covering disclaimer can still have some good intentions behind it and given how big and unwieldly disney is it’s not suprising it took 6 months to put this on there. They still haven’t put House of Mouse, Wonder Over Yonder, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero or American Dragon: Jake Long on here after a year, Disney can be slow sometimes. Dosen’t mean there isn’t some good that can come from this or that I don’t appricate them going as far as to put this one one of their tv shows. And given how they’ve basically had to be fought to get full gay content into one of their shows and they shot in a region of china where there’s concentration camps, I think there are bigger issues with disney than “oh no they took a bit to decide on how to readress their racist content oh no”. It was a nice gesture, I can give them that while still booing them for the other things. 

Now that’s out of the way the episdoe itself opens in Macaroon where Glomgold is already there and at the scale and naturally is trying to get the Kishke to just end it already. The Kishke being a fair man though refuses as Scrooge still has an hour to get there and refuses to budge.  And that’s ALL I can say good about this character. I already thought he was bad and racist in part one and let them know it but since Disney has acknowledged via this blanket statement that “It was wrong then and it’s wrong now” and he’s even worse now, I feel it’s my duty to lay the hell into this awful, obnoxious, annoying stereotype of a character who, as I must remind you, was played by a white dude. And unlike last time i’m not giving Hamilton Camp credit because I did my homework: This guy had plenty of rolls at this point, was an accomplished singer and song writer and could’ve walked away from the roll if he genuinely wanted to or put his foot down but clearly had no issue playing a “waccccckyyyy” foreign stereotype for a little extra dough.  It’s just obnoxious to watch this outdated even by 1987 standards stereotype of an indian leader with a bit of a sultan thrown in because why not piss off the middle east too? Just make everybody good and justifably pissed off at this bullshit. The Kishki repeats words, is dumb enough to think glomgold’s coat is talking to him, and is just unplesant to watch. As Disney themselves said “It was wrong then and it was wrong now”, their own words. This character is terrible, obnoxious, offensive even for the 80s and think about that for a second and it’ll get worse for you and drags the episode down considerably any time he’s on screen. Scre the Kishke, screw hamilton camp for agreeing to this, screw the writers for thinking this was REMOTELY okay, and screw anyone who thinks i’m taking out unecessary time to bitch about this. It was bad then, it’s bad now. Nuff said.

SO yeah as you can tell i’ll be glossing over the bits of him and glomgold.. basically over the episode the beagle boys, we’ll get to them in amoment, will raido glomgold, the kishke will think his coat is talking.. it’s a whole thing and I’m not giving this uttelry stupid and offensive bit any more time than I have to and I just did. 

Back to the main story, Glomgold , while publicly sure Scrooge lost, continues to be a good villain here: while I still prefer Keith Fergueson as his delivery’s are a lot more lively and he’s a lot more 3 dimensional, i’ve REALLY grown to like the original 2: He’s a clever mastermind who always has some trick up his sleeve and spends most of the four parter ahead of scrooge: None of his schemes link back to him in a meaningful way, and he basically has a straight shot to the Kishke and getting his gold there since Scrooge is too busy protecting his gold from Glommy’s Goons to retaliate and too honest to do so if he could anyway. He’s a fun villain to watch and is easily the best of this four parter and my opinion on him has gone up since the last few parts. He’s still not AS interesting as Magica or the boys, but he’s far more compelling than I gave him credit for . 

Naturally he brought the beagles to Macaroon via air mail, a nice gag, though Burger quickly gets old fast as every sentence is some sort of “He likes food joke’ Get it...

It’s annoying it’s outdated and i’ts obnoxious. And frankly Fresh Price of Bell Air also took part in a lot of fat jokes.. but they still work on some level since they mostly come from Will, a snarky teenager who doesn’t know better and Geoffry, a snarky butler who probably has to put up with a LOT even with a healthy paycheck and thus has every reason to get his tiny digs in where he can. Here it’s just.. the joke is he’s a fat guy. This must be where a young Kevin James learned his schitck from. 

But yeah the Beagles are there to watch for Scrooge since Glomgold can’t without giving away the fact he’s you know, tried to actively sabotage scrooge through most of this 4 parter. I almost typed 3 because I still wish Aqua Ducks  never happened, though he somehow set up a radar station in the country without the Kishke knowing. Maybe it’s because the episode portrays him as “stupid because foreign”.. actually it’s exactly that *sigh* But Scrooge is Scrooge so he already has a clever plan.. since the gold was left on a now risen Atlantis he’s turned Atlantis into a makeshift airship, likely makeshift because he’s short on time and gyro had to rig something up fast. But it’s damn impressive and nicely wacky: Using a bunch of balloons tied to strings, a bike powered propeller and a small steering column, scrooge is floating his way to macaroon and can dump his fortune directly on the scale if he can find it. Launchpad is steering which makes perfect sense: He’s an ace pilot and in this series can steer anything especially planes, and has the best trained eyes to spot any last minute attacks by Glomgold or any sudden turbulence and adjust accordingly. Gyro is manning the bike and is near dead but the boys are supposed to swap out.. though Scrooge says their too busy working the cloud generator.. only for it to turn out their not there. Oh no! Scrooge panics and tries to get it going but it’s too late: The boys spot them on radar and after conferring with Glomgold, head out in some jets he also sneaked in to stop them.. with his logo on them. Looks like Heron isn’t the only one with issues about when and when not to use branding.  But since their taking on scrooge their heading right into the 

As for where the boys are they’ve been investigating the lost treasure of Atlantis after their bizarre absence last episode and soon realize OH CRAP WE LEFT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ON THIS AIRSHIP MADE OUT OF THE RUINS OF ATLANTIS OFF! They rush off to apologize while Launchpad bemoans that he can’t counter attack. Gyro however naturally came prepared and has a miniture biplane hidden inside a briefcase, iron man style It’s neat even if it sadly is too slow for Launchpad to do anything.  We then get .. this scene. The boys go to scrooge to apologize and explain themselves but Scrooge rather than hear it or understand their you know, ten year old or younger boys who just made a mistake, as big as it was and were still trying to help, berates them, refuses to hear it and tells them he thought they’d take up after him one day but probably not anymore. It’s just an unnecessarily cruel and harsh bit from him and I’ve started to notice that pattern of this scrooge being colder and meaner to people, and it’s not an isolated thing. I’d forgotten just how many episodes hinged on him firing or threatening to fire launchpad. This Scrooge isn’t bad, but the best scrooge stories hinge on a nice balance between his more jackass qualities and his underlying goodness. He is supposed to be gruff, mean and stingy, but not you know.. needlessly cruel with no regret shown at all till the very end after they already helped him. It would’ve worked better if the episode had just one bit of him regretting it before the boys proved to be useful. Both episodes now he’s been cruel to people, even if they’ve screwed up he’s gone beyond it and only turned around when they proved useful> This is the badly written scrooge of the comics, even under masters like rosa and barks, I get annoyed with: the one whose just cruel, mean and selfish and isn’t charismatic or interesting enough to override that.  However the obvious solution, the boys popping the Ballons, fails, as Gyro steelbelted them.. somehow. I’ve learned not to ask at this point. But it’s clever and he also likely altitude protected them given how high up there are but that’s just as likely toon physics. Either way it’s neat. Glomgold has the boys do a plan b: anchor the island with some hooks and pull it in the wrong direction. While Gyro struggles to stop them, the boys decide to redeem themselves with an idea by Louie.. but since there’s no c4 or knives aboard he’ll have to go with his second plan which is improvise a slingshot and knock a rock into the hook freeing it and sending the beagles spinning. Naturally though this can’t go easy for them and the sudden jolt from the island being freed causes gyro’s bike to break off the hinges and knock him and scrooge off the island to what the boys assume is their deaths because their apparently both clever this episode and really really dumb. Launchpad catches them but accidently disengages the plane into a breif case, but luckily gyro, after a funny gag where he pulls out random stuff as they fall, always a classic, finds some napkins that turn into parachutes and the three float to the ground safety.  Back on Atlantis, I do not get to say that enough, the boys decide to carry on and make sure Scrooge wins since it’s what he’d want and start steering the island into Macaroon. The Beagles land as a last ditch effort, Glomgold is pisseeeed and Scrooge is relieved and comes up with a clever way to mark where to drop the loot: he politely asks for some firefly fruit and makes a landing strip. It’d be a nice contrast moment with Glomgold if Scrooge wasn’t such a dick to everyone and thing except when it benefits him. But the episode frames it like some big character difference and not scrooge just being polite for one second to get what he wants. But the boys start dumping the cash by releasing some balloons, with the beagles doing the same with some others to dump it in glomgold’s pile, but the boys are able to do the trick one more time and thus the fortune’s are tied. Scrooge however cleverly wins for the moment by using his number one dime to tip the scales.  Naturally though Glomgold is one step ahead, and has a dump truck full of money ready. Guess we know who made Kamp Krusty. 

And now has more with only a minute left though the Kishke being good for this at least refuses to call it and the boys naturally decide to hunt for the lost treasure of atlantis. The beagles naturally follow, leading to the human chain moment above, but the boys find the fish, trick the beagles into coming down so they can get to the other fish, and dump all the money right onto scrooge’s side. And after four LONNNNNG episodes of adventure and stupidity, Scrooge wins. It’s also revealed the dumptruck was mostly lead bricks to the suprise of no one. Scrooge has won, he reconciles with the boys thanking them having leanred nothing, and the Kishke picks up the unfunny coat gag one last time while everyone laughs, at last, mercefully the end. 

Final Thoughts on this one episode:  This was a decent finale. Scrooge was a bit cruel to the boys but understandably enough that while it bothered me , didn’t make the episode actively worse like last time, they just laid it on a bit too thick is all. But the action is great and the pacing, minus the utterly grating Kishke bits, is top notch, with a tense flight to get to the kishke, tons of fun twists to it and the final push itslef being really thrilling as the boys dangle and then use the chekovs gun to win. It feels earned and it was a nice subversion with the dime bit which itself would’ve been a fine ending. It’s a thrilling and fun episode.. it’s just dragged down from excellent to decent by the utterly loathsome racist characture that is the Kishke who has I covered up top, is far more present here and far more stereotype and far less tolerable. It drags down the pacing and what’s otherwise a fun well paced episode and a good climax to a not so great 4 parter. Speaking of which.  Final Thoughts on Catch as Cash Can: 

This four parter was pretty lackluster all things considered. While it started off hot with “A Drain on the Economy” easily one of the best 87 Ducktales episodes i’ve seen, it quickly wore out it’s good will with the enjoyably bad “A Whale of A Bad Time”, Sea Monster Ate My Ice Cream Scene notwithstanding, the utterly dreadful “Aqua Ducks”, and the thrilling but also annoyingly racist “Working for Scales”. It started fine but it’s clear they didn’t have enough material for four full episodes here as the latter three ALL suffer from padding and it’s very noticable, with Whale of a Bad Time at least covering it up better with it’s convoluted plot. This plot REALLY didn’t need to be this long and would’ve been better, if still annoyingly racist, with just two, just having another expiation for the air ship which was awesome. Instead it’s just an overpadded mess with one excellent episode and one utterly masterful scene, and some good action in the last half and I can easily see why they only did serials for big events from then on out. It was a good idea to have more serials they just executed it really badly and it’s better this was the ONLY mid-season one from then on out if this was the best they can do. Truly disapointing. 

Well that closes the book on Catch as Cash Can. I’d like to thank @weirdkev27​ for commissioning these. While it wasn’t a fun sit sadly, I did get some good material out of them and it was a pleasure to dive into the original series and I plan to again some day. If you liked this review follow me for more as I review a new ducktales episode every monday and plan to still do at least one a week once the hiatus kicks in again, as well as loud house whenever new episodes come out and I can watch them and new amphibia when it comes back next year, as well as scattered reviews throughout the week. If you’d like to comission your own review, simply send me an ask or personal message or send an ask for my discord and we can get started. IT’s 5 dollars for one episode, 15 for movies and 5 dollars off when you order 3 or more. Until we meet again check your house for gary buseys and stay safe!

[snazzamazing]

Most of you have noticed already but there has been a huge lack of me posting recently. I have been having one of the most toughest artist times for a while. I've in this mood where I would be having major art block bit lots of motivation at the same time. When those two moods combine into one, it just makes one big mess of chaotic emotions. It's been going on for a long time. I'm stuck with my art at the moment. I'm just going to come clean and say it but doing art lately has been feeling like a tight and complicated stressful schedule for me. For months and months I've been having a mindset where I feel like I NEED to be posting constantly because I fear that if I dont, people would leave me. I fear that my account would just die and that my content wouldn't be relevant anymore. I hate that feeling. My art has been seeming like it's only meant to be posted to show that I'm active. My text posts or me answering questions now made me realize that I'm not even doing those for fun anymore! I'm only posting them to let people know that I'm still here. It really does seem like I'm working for some big company and that I have to post my work constantly and have to make sure it's all coming out perfectly, and its stressful. Now this is nobody's fault, this is just how I feel now.

I like to look back at some really old posts/art of mine to remember what it was like to feel more free. I miss the feeling of not caring about people's opinions on my interests. I miss the feeling of posting whatever I wanted and posting whenever I wanted. I want to go back to that and I am for sure going to work hard on getting back to that. I've honestly have been so scared to post art now. I miss posting about ships I like, about stupid comics, about my silly fnaf ideas, about my other interests but people's judgments and opinions all of a sudden matter to me now. It has started being that way ever since my account started getting bigger and bigger. I would get attacked for bringing up a thing I like or a thing I'm into and it really scared me and made me not want to share my opinions or interests ever again. I absolutely despised constantly having that feeling. That all ends now. I want to be down to earth with everyone because ya know, I'm human too.

Okay now let's talk about what I wanna do with my art. My art has been feeling repetitive and bland to me. I dont want that. For the past time I would mention stuff like "posting this soon!" Or "get ready for a new post Tomorrow!" And then never post it ever. Why? Because plans dont work out all the time. I only post art I'm satisfied with so if my art takes forever to post or just gets cancelled on posting then that's that. I do feel bad, but I'd rather have art up that makes me happy too. The fnaf 2 art I said that I was gonna post? Yeah, not happening. It's not turning out as I wanted so sorry for missing out on the fnaf 2 anniversary:(

Speaking of fnaf, I am still going to continue drawing it. But I've been wanting to draw other content too for the longest time. The reason why I dont post other content more is because nobody is interested in it. It doesnt get as much attention as my fnaf art. That used to not bother me but the thing is I cant keep doing fnaf content forever so I care now. I want to post more about my ocs and their wacky world. I want to post about other fandoms, even fandoms that I'm not even into! I have been dging to post overwatch but held back on that because the whole blizzard controversy happened and I was scared that people would hate me to post overwatch at such a bad timing like that. I've been into overwatch for years and have been wanting to post art about it but didnt because I was very self conscious on my human style. But now that I figured it out, things went all over the place. For those of you who dont know, I've also had an overwatch blog years ago but deleted it later cause I didnt like how the blog turned out. I am going to post overwatch art in the future cause ive enjoyed the game for years now. What blizzard did was terrible and I'm not on board with it so please dont hate me, I just really like the OW characters. ANYWAY, I WAS HAVING A PANIC ATTACK AND RANTED OFF TRACK BUT YEAH. I WANT TO EXPAND MY ART A LITTLE.

And last thing. I've said it before, but I HATE feeling like my art has to be on a schedule where theres deadlines and where I have to post constantly. I'm having mini burnouts. So to all those people who sent messages about me not posting anymore or about my account dying, I want to let you know that my account is still alive and will have posts. Please understand that if I am taking forever to post something new, I am trying to figure things out. I am trying to figure out time management for school and art. I am trying to figure out things on my art style. I am trying to figure out new ideas for big projects I wanna do. I am trying to figure myself out and I dont need to be rushed. I am an artist and I am free to do what I want and post whenever I want. Art is for fun and for stressing myself out.

THERE, THERE I FINALLY RANTED IT ALL OUT. It was an extremely long rant, but I really needed to get it off my chest. Again, nobody is at fault here and nobody is forcing my wack behavior to be like this, it's just some thoughts I need to get out of my head. You are all important and matter to me so I have to be honest with everyone. I cant keep hiding away. I'm just some teen wacko girl that wants to draw characters and be friends with you cool weirdos :)

Love you all💖

Edit: I am so sorry if my rant made no sense and is all over the place or if it somehow upset people, that wasnt my intent. Its 2am and I'm all panicky so I had to rant sO THAT I CAN SLEEP

[jackdawyt]

In a recent blog post on BioWare's website, Casey Hudson posted a summer update sharing some of the things the studio has been up to! 

Mentioning Anthem, and it's latest Cataclysm event, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, with a DLC set to launch this Fall.

However, the piece of cake here is the "other stuff going on" at BioWare, Casey says as followed:

"We have several other big projects in the works.  I wish I could tell you more about them, but they’re mostly super-secret right now.  I can say however that one of our projects has a large and growing team in Edmonton working through pre-production, and based on the progress I’m seeing, I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises."

Before we delve straight into the Dragon Age 4 hot takes, let's talk about those "several other big projects in the works", surely one of them has to be Mass Effect 4 right? Based on the news in April, we know the series is "warming back up" and  Casey Hudson is super excited to share more on possible Mass Effect games.

So Mass Effect must be among other games at BioWare that are currently in the works, same as Dragon Age 4, other than those two franchises, potentially BioWare could be working on something Star Wars related considering their history with creating truly amazing games with the Old Republic franchise.

Or, even further than that, perhaps they could be working on a follow up to Jade Empire, as we've heard rumours in the past that the studio would LOVE to crack into the franchise again.

Anyhow, as we understand at the moment, BioWare are currently working on several projects, and the largest of these right now is Dragon Age 4 as it's accordingly working through its pre-production stages, seemingly looking good as Casey indicates.

Although this is great news, and I've seen plenty of mainstream outlets coming out of the woodwork and actually declaring that Dragon Age 4 seems like it's going to be alright then. The hitch for the fans is, I guess we all thought the game was coming sooner, I mean, I've extensively reported on plenty of news pieces that indicated the game was in deep development stages, and pre-production seemed complete.

We had Fernando Melo leave the company just last month, his role within the studio was quintessential to the pre-production stages, he spoke on leaving at the perfect time that would best for him and the development of Dragon Age 4. Maybe, they're nearing the end of pre-production?  

I'm curious how much of the game has actually been developed. You see, pre-production is the planning phase of the project where developers focus on concept development along with the writing of initial design documents. Game design documents have to be precise and descriptive, outlining the work ahead.

Key processes during the pre-production stages include:

Concept Art

Storyboarding

Level Design

Mechanic Design

Internal Marketing

Interestingly, BioWare is hiring many new job hires that relate to pre-production stages like concept artist, animation manager, game designer and many other design-focused jobs. So it certainly seems like these core stages are currently crafting away at BioWare, with project prototyping and working on the basic mechanics.

We found out back in April that Dragon Age 4 will use Anthem's codebase, which will ease elements of the development process because the foundation has already been created. At the point, we assumed the game had been in deep development, however, what if prototyping, coding and many of the essential pre-production stages were just beginning at that point.

Project Joplin was scrapped in 2017, with a lot of the production reworked into Project Morrison, has the studio been in pre-production for two years?

As we know, the Frostbite engine has been a nightmare for BioWare in the past, so if have spent two years on just crafting the essentials of Dragon Age 4, mastering the Frostbite engine and laying the groundwork, then I have no bother waiting until this game is perfect.

As we know, both Anthem and Andromeda needed way more time in its vital early stages. So, here's hoping Dragon Age 4 will have that. The only thing we need is for EA to not press BioWare into a ridiculous deadline, so the developers can create this game at their own pace. Otherwise, Dragon Age 4 could come at as a rushed potato, so EA don't rush them!

Of course, if Dragon Age 4 is still in the pre-production stages, then that means the release window is going to be further than we thought. Judging by previous Casey Hudson statements, it was assumed Dragon Age 4 would have a 2021 - 2022 release window.

Based on the current development now, I'd say 2023 - 2024, on top of that, BioWare generally start to market their games two years before release, so we could be seeing Dragon Age 4 at the bare minimum in 2021/2022?

Even though it's a long wait, I do see this as a good thing, more time spent on Dragon Age 4, the better the game will be, period.

Wrapping up, with the potential release window in mind - do you think they revealed the game teaser too early? A 2018 teaser trailer for a game coming out in hypothetically 2024, that's a six-year wait from the first trailer, not to mention ten years since the previous Dragon Age game.

No wonder the studio plans on releasing books, comics and other tie-in's, we're going to be waiting a while guys, but hey, I'll always be here covering BioWare content as my main focus. I may try other games, just because we are waiting for ages until the next glimpse of Dragon Age 4, but I'll always be creating BioWare content. Needn't fear about that.

[silyabeeodess]

Hey, all!

Just want to let everyone know that I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet or anything: A combination of different stuff has kinda just hit all at once--namely work, the holidays, and feeling really under the weather lately. Nothing serious, I think I’ve just worn myself down and my terrible schedule hasn’t helped things. I’m trying to get a bunch of art done and have stretched myself thin as a result.  As such, I might hold off posting any art or writing until after 2020.  So you know where I am on some of my different projects, I’ll give kind of some brief updates below:

Although it’s probably not one of the main projects people on here follow me for, I want to cover Origins first since it’s one of the main reasons I’ve gone MIA. For those of you that don’t know, over a year or so ago, I lost a lot of work on the second volume and had to go back and redo it.  While it’s still not done, I’ve finally been able to catch up--even correcting the story in places.  As such, you might see some small updates to older pages I’ve already posted--but don’t worry, nothing in a way that would really impact the course of the story. I can’t make any promises right now when the physical volume when be released, but right now I’m hoping to start updating again in maybe early February depending on how quickly I can finish the last part of the volume.

I’ve seen some of my PGL followers pop up recently as well.  Our team is working hard at that, but I can’t say much else on the subject.  Just know that, like with our previous episodes, this next one will have an update in quality: We always try to showcase our best work and find ways to improve on what we’ve already done. As for the next chapter of Book 4, however, I don’t know when I’ll be able to update it just yet since the audio drama has priority right now as well as--or me personally--my workload. 

I’ve already started writing the next chapter of The Black Frost, so once I’m ready to sit down and really tackle it again, that should be out quick. Following the act structure I’ve been using for all of my big AHIT fics so far, it’s been easier for me to plan them and break them down.  The Black Frost has largely been the same, the main struggle being that I do want to make sure I dedicate plenty of time to all of the characters it focuses on without rushing things.  

The next chapter of the FusionFall fancomic is still in-progress and will be released as a whole like last time.  However, both the sketches and script are complete and I’m currently working on the lineart for it in my spare time, so it is in it’s last couple of phases. For a small previews, here’s a wip of one of the panels:

Again, I don’t see it coming out before 2020 ends and it’s been on the backburner since I’ve had to focus so much time into Origins, but in the very least I’m hoping it won’t be a full year since I started this.  If worst comes, I might start doing page updates instead of full chapters to help solve the issues of these long periods when I can work on the third chapter.  

As a small side note, you might notice that I’m taking a bit of a different direction with the fusion lairs.  Most of them were more generic in-game, so I’d like to add more detail and make them area specific.  As such, you’ll see me take some liberties with their layouts.  

And finally, requests, which I feel the worst about.  Thankfully, there’s only two left, and I will get on those: Again, I’m just really drained and overloaded right now with work and holidays. 

Thank you all for being patient with me and sticking with my stories and comics.  I know it’s mostly fanart, but I’ve dealt with a lot of issues in the past on some of my older projects with “fans” that were very demanding/entitled over free work.  I won’t go on a tangent about it, because most of you probably understand or have even experienced this yourself, but I will say that it only ever adds to an artist’s or writer’s stress when the main feedback they get is about updates and rarely on the content itself.  Of course, not everyone means it in a negative way, but it can tell a creative that they’re not working fast enough to satisfy even if that workload truly is beyond their limits. As I’ve gotten older and have started to work more professionally, it’s only gotten harder to the point where I’ve effectively had to do what I never wanted by dropping some of these older projects.  (Still, my advice to any other creatives out there is that, when it comes to fanworks in-particular, it is a lot healthier to focus on them for fun and making something that makes you happy and that you can be proud of rather than focus on an audience who may not even give you so much as a thumb’s up for the work you put in.)  I’ve really been trying to get my original stories out there, and there’s some things planned for the following year with some harder deadlines I’m trying to meet.  I’m having to dedicate more time to those original pieces than ever before. Still, I hope I can keep making work that you all can enjoy.  

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!  Let’s hope we can have a great new year! :) 

[lovinmcu]

New life in Cali, ch. 8

Chapter 8

Pairings; Chris Evans x reader, Sebastian Stan x reader

Warnings; overthinking

A/N; I’m breaking this up as best i can. 

Monday’s day at work is moving by so slowly. You are busy finishing up details on Frozen 2. Details are time-consuming, and all over encompassing. By the time you look up from your computer your phone is lite up with texts and missed calls. It was only 12, you could have sworn you missed lunch you’d been so busy.

Chris 8:40 am “Hey, headed out of town today. Can you help Seb with Dodger?”

9:00 am “If it not, no biggy. I hope you had fun at the party. Sorry, we haven’t talked.”

9:10 am “Hope you aren’t ignoring me, let me know.”

Chris missed call, 9:50 am

Seb 10:00 am “Chris said you hadn’t been answering, everything ok?”

10:15 am “Y/N?!?”

11:00 am “Lunch?!?! 12:30 is when we’ll break.”

They were obviously worried about you. You smile at the thought of having someone care about you this much in Cali, unlock your phone and call Seb. No answer. You sign, turn your phone off silent and turn back to answer some emails that were sent while you engrossed in your work. Five minutes later Sebastian calls you back.

“Hey, everything ok?” Seb says as soon as you answer.

“Yeah, just busy meeting these deadlines. Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you and Chris.”

“It’s ok, it’s just not like you, but we understand deadlines more than most. So, lunch?”

“OH, yes please, I’m starving!” You look down at your half-eaten breakfast, and cold coffee, and think “wow, I HAVE been in the zone”

“I’ll head that way now, see you soon,” you say before hanging up, you hit save, and head out the door. You need to come back to reality, your brain is in a fog from concentrating for so long. As you pass your coworker in the hall, they also notice your zombie-like state and tell you to get some air. That was a good idea, so you walk to the studio. On your walk, you make a conscious effort to not think about work. Then you panicked, you’re first date with Sebastian is tonight! What are you going to wear? Where is he taking you?

You grab your phone and send a quick text to Brittney on your way. “Hey girl, you had a crazy weekend, huh?” “Date with Seb tonight, what should I wear?” You arrive at the gate to show your id, as soon as you speak to the guard none other than Sebastian Stan himself pulls up in a golf cart to drive you over to lunch.

“Hey Doll!” Sebastian greets you with a hug.

“Hey,” you hug him back as the butterflies start to flutter. You think, Chris might be cute, and a lot of fun, but he never makes you have these butterflies. You smile at Seb and grab his hand he has obviously placed in between us not trying to make a move. He smiles back at you as you both arrive at the circle of trailers you recognize. Chris and Dodger run up to greet you, you accept all the kisses from Dodger and hug and peck on the cheek from Chris.

“He gets more action than both of us!” Sebastian smirks.

“Only because she hasn’t had some Mackie lovin’,” Anthony comments as he puts his arm around you, attempting to be cute. You draw him into a hug.

“Hey, Anthony.” You say.

“His NAME is Mackie,” Robert Downing Jr. says walking up to you all. You try to remain calm but it’s freaking RDJ! Maybe not on your celebrity crush list but absolutely one of your favorite actors. “This must be y/n, that I’ve heard you all talking about.” He shakes your hand and draws you in for a hug. You do everything to play it cool, but your 100% sure you came out looking like a giant geek. “They’ve been going on and on about this pool party I missed and I also overheard someone’s taking you out on a date tonight.” You instantly go red, even your ears burn. RDJ smirks, realizing how much he’s embarrassed you and hides you with another hug. “Sorry” he whispers.

“It’s ok!” You smile back at him.

“Well, let’s eat!” RDJ announces as he so nicely changes the subjects and takes you to the head of the food line.

You grab food and take a seat. Chris directs you where to sit and takes the seat next to you. You wonder to yourself where Sebastian is, but Chris answers as if you asked it out loud. “He’s gone to change.” “So, he asked if I was fine if he took you out tonight.” You could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“Yeah, not sure what he has planned. But I should probably ask what to wear.” You reply. “So, you and Brittney were having a lot of fun Saturday.”

“Oh, yeah it was a lot of fun, ya know, till she got sick.” He chuckles and continues to eat.

“Was she feeling ok when she left?”

“Yeah, a lot better. She left not long after you did. Nothing happened.” You were curious as to why he felt the need to add that last part. About then Sebastian sat on your other side. Plate full of food. “Worked hard this morning I see!” You comment about the amount of food in front of him.

“He didn’t do anything but make snarky comments all morning, not even sure how he calls this a job,” Mackie said while taking the place across from all of you.

“I hate you,” Sebastian says with an evil grin on his face, with all of us knowing he’s taking a line from Bucky. He quietly says, “Maybe it's nervous eating,” as he winks.

Lunch went on with a lot of stories and attempting to do their own stunts, and stupid inside jokes they all had and tried to explain to you. As lunch was wrapping up Sebastian was called away to get ready for his next scene and to get back into his prosthetic.

You and Chris go back to his trailer and talk about the trip he’s leaving for tonight, a comic con in Chicago. He asked you to make sure Dodger gets enough love because in his words “he likes you more than me anyway.”

“Jealous much?”

“About what?” Chris replies.

“About Dodger liking me more!” You give him a big smile as Dodger jumps into your lap. Proving your point.

“Just a little.”

You sense something more in his answers, “Are you ok with Sebastian and I going out?”

“Not sure, hate that I missed my chance with you.” He replies shyly while lowering his gaze.

“Chris? I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say, I had no clue you felt that way.” You pause.

“Yes, you’re on my celebrity crush list, well, look at you, of course, you are. And for a moment I thought there might be something, but there are far too many things we disagree on. Can you tell me that wouldn’t be a problem?” You say what’s on your heart, but your heart is breaking thinking of how much Chris is hurt. You move over toward him and pulling him into a hug, he tries to resist but you win. The two of you stand there hugging, for what seemed like forever and he strokes your hair. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, “Please don’t hate me, I need you.”

You two finally part ways and look into one another eyes. “Really?” He responds.

“Yes, you’re making California start to fill like home.” You stand up on your toes to kiss him on the cheek. You pull back and look up at him again. And at that moment he leans down and crashes his lips into yours, taking the air out of your lungs. You instinctually pull back, praying no one was about to walk in unannounced. “CHRIS!” To escape, you rush to the bedroom with tears streaming down your face.

You sit on the end of the bed, trying hard to grasp what just happened. More tears flow. How can things be this complicated 10 days after meeting someone? Having Chris in your life made you happier than you’ve been in a long time, you weren’t lying when you told him, he made California feel more like home.

You send a quick text to the secretary at work, you were already late getting back, “going to need some personal time this afternoon. No worries I’m way ahead of schedule.” Chris knocks on the door and peeks in. “I have to go back. Take all the time you need. Text me when you’re ready.” He shuts the door and then you hear the door to his trailer shut and lock.

You collapse onto the bed, trying to figure any other this out. Why did things have to get so complicated? Sure, Chris is fucking sexy but so is Sebastian. Both have eyes you could stare at forever. But, Chris takes things a little too seriously, delete the twitter rants already. Seb was much more chill, but now, all of this drama. You weren’t even sure if you could go out tonight with Sebastian. You didn’t want to compromise their relationship or the relationships you had with them.

A headache is starting from all the stress and crying, you close your eyes to make it go away. And you drift off to sleep.

Tag List

@melannie77  @thejemersoninferno  @thummbelina​ 

[yeahyeahbaby]

Finished my first game and game jam!

Link to my game Ahh, Crabs! I realized that I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I would write about finishing my first game and game jam, and what my next plans are.  Get ready for a fucking novel lol. 

I entered the I Can't Draw But Want To Make A Game (Again)  game jam because I wanted to make a game. Before starting the jam, I’d thought about game development and 3D modeling on and off for about a year, but hadn’t started any projects. Last summer, I’d watched BlenderGuru’s series and made a render of a doughnut which was cool and did a few tutorials on the Unity learn site, but I didn’t do anything with those newly developed skills and eventually forgot most of what I’d learned.  I’m currently 24, going to be 25 in August, and I think a lot about how I spend my time, am I on the right path, what do I want out of life, etc. All of the big existential anxiety inducing questions. I work as a front-end web developer, its a great job, but I know that I don’t want to do web development forever.  Anyway, I’d recently started thinking about game development, and wanted to try committing myself again. Game development presents the opportunity for me to create something that combines all of my interests. Art, music, technology, story telling, world building, animation, etc. It’s also appealing to me because being an indie developer means being an entrepreneur. I know that I want a life where I’m my own boss. I want to decide what projects I work on and what takes priority. I want to build a creative life where I can support myself financially from my work.  I thought about how this time could be different from a year ago where I tried to get into game development, but never committed. I started off slow by creating small assets with MagicaVoxel while I tried to come up with ideas. This is when I remembered that game jams were a thing.  I found the game jam (not going to keep typing the name cuz its long as hell lol) on itch.io and was hesitant to enter. I was afraid of starting and committing to something only to let myself down when I didn’t finish.  I’d recently started journaling and was writing about this fear that I had. I realized as I was writing that I was stopping myself from trying something because of fear. That’s when I decided to commit to entering.  The great thing about game jams is that they take place over a set period of time and you’re usually given some kind of parameters. This was EXTREMELY helpful to me because I was able to quickly come up with an idea for the game. I knew that I only had two weeks to finish. Not two full weeks because of course I work full time and have other home chores to do. Plus ya girl likes to relax and watch anime ( I think at the time I was actually reading Hana Yori Dango aka Boys Over Flowers uwu).  So being given a set time period helped me to plan a semi-realistic scope for the game.  So I started to work on the game! I had a lot of fun making silly art and music. Because the mechanics of my game were also SUPER simple, I could easily find tutorials for everything that I wanted to implement. Even with the tutorials, I still had small hiccups as I worked my way around Unity and C#, but I was never stuck for more than a few hours.  Things were going great! And then.... I stopped working on the game.  I think I didn’t work on the game for like 4-5 days?? I got off track because of some personal stuff that I had to deal with. Once it was handled, I didn’t immediately get back to work. I wasn’t really motivated anymore and I was running out of time. I felt like I had wasted time already, I wasn’t going to make the deadline so why FUCKING TRY *sobs*.  BUT! Once again, journaling saved the day again lol.  I was writing about these feelings and saw how stupid I sounded. Why TF am I giving up before the jam ends???? BITCH!!!  So I got back to work.  I think at this point I had like 3-4 days left?? Something like that. I worked my butt off , literally until the deadline. I was rushing like crazy, super determined to finish. I was keeping up with a Trello board of things I wanted to add to the game, but a lot of things had to get cut. For example, the help button, a pause game function, cleaning up the mechanics, also wanted to add some pre-game comics, etc. BUT thankfully I was able to prioritize the absolute must haves to make the game playable and shippable lol.  So, the deadline was 12am CST Friday. 11:59pm CST rolled around. And I’m still waiting for my build so I can upload it. 12am came and it was too late. I didn’t make it. I was literally sobbing. I don’t remember the last time I cried so much. I was just feeling super emotional. I had a long day at work, just spent the last 8 hours crunching to finish my game to submit to the game jam, and even though it was finished, in the moment I felt like a failure because I couldn’t submit it to the jam. I know it may sound silly, like BITCH you did the thing! You made a game! You reached your goal! Buuuut I was still feeling like shit lol.  The build finished and I uploaded it it itch.io. I was sniffling around the discussion board on the jam’s page, feeling sorry for myself, and decided to post a link to my game and let everyone know that Hey! I finished this game but couldn’t submit it in time. pls check it out *sobs* WELL! Many blessings came my way, the creator of the jam was sending unique submission links to people who missed the deadline a little! They saw my post and sent me a submission link. Of course I submitted that hoe so fucking quick lmaooo  A wave of relief washed over my exhausted shriveled body. It was time for celebration and sleep because a bitch had to go to work the next day.  I’m so thankful for this experience. I saw something that I wanted to do, I committed, almost QUIT, BUT PUSHED THROUGH AND REACHED MY GOAL!  I feel so much confidence in myself and my ability to pursue and finish my creative projects, whatever they may be.  SO WHAT’S NEXT BITCH???? Well, thank you for asking uwu I’m going to make another game! This time, not part of a jam so I have to keep myself super accountable. I want to make a game where I can learn and experiment with dialogue, camera movement, art, and sound design. I think I’ve settled on an idea but need to give it some more thought before I commit and reveal the idea.  I’m hoping for about 30-45 minutes of game play?? And I want to work on this project for 6 months, so pretty much the rest of 2020. Might as well keep myself busy while the world burns :/ If anyone is reading this and made it this far, wow, i’m impressed. I wouldn’t have read this much lol I think I’m going to make a youtube video on this topic?? I mean, if I can write a novel about it might as well talk about it on youtube. It can be my first dev-log-ish type video for the yeahyeahbaby channel (that has yet to be created lol) Okay. Bye-bye now. 

[beedalee]

Update Journal 3/31/19

Hey everyone! I know some of you guys are probably wondering how things have been on my end, and/or worrying about me/us/the moving updates since I’ve been pretty MIA all month. I’ve been meaning to post a more comprehensive update, and now that I’ve resurfaced I thought I’d, well, get on that now. 😓 It’s generally good things though, getting my bearings again! All that under the cut.

My Anthology comic entry is 100% done! More about that here and a little preview here. This was a large reason I vanished, because if I wasn’t working on fixing some of this project for printing at the last minute (which I admit was self imposed deadline, but...) I was helping with family stuff and I had next to no brain capacity for anything else except sleeping.  I’m so excited to share previews and see the final print, though-- I’m finally removed enough from the deadline rush to be able to appreciate all the work so please look forward to some sneak peeks of that! 😭

The “Part Two” of the move with Nafisah and Cait to the new apartment was a massive success. Single-handedly thanks to donations to our gofundme, we were able to comfortably relocate to the new apartment (and we got a little bit lucky on deposits, too!) There will be appropriate updates to the GFM page within the next few weeks, as it has been passed to me to moderate to help start funding for my move, which I am currently budgeting for and will provide updates on that plan of attack ASAP.

I am currently planning on making a check up appointment with both the dentist and the eye doctor soon if... possible... maybe. (nervousness goes here) I haven’t checked my teeth or updated my glasses in several years and my eyes are starting to notice the difference. Ahhh, I feel embarrassed to admit how long I neglected these, but.. I’d really like to have that caught up before I move out since I don’t know how quickly securing health care in another state will be when essentially unemployed. I’m still going back and forth about updating my prescription, ‘cause.. you can’t go backwards with lenses, and I’m rather scared of my eyesight going back super early if I keep increasing my magnification and all that, but.. It’s been like 9 years bee, you NEED to update them. I-I dunno!! We’ll see? 💦

My family situation regarding my sister and her boyfriend is relatively stable, save for a few annoying outbursts. She’s looking into affordable attorneys to help deal with their joint housing situation because the few civil routes we wanted to use seem to be gone now-- but it’s kinda murky territory so... I don’t know. I am currently feeling like I may not be able to wait until this all gets sorted out before pushing my own move forward or I won’t be leaving until the end of the year, so... yeeah. More on that later, maybe.

As a small insult to injury, our roof in the spare bedroom started to leak-- after 6 years of living here with no problem and literally right after my sister moved back in, goddammit lmao. That caused quite a bit of frustration for a while because we had to move all her stuff all over again and she was understandably upset since she was already uncomfortably uprooted in the first place. It’s relatively mild but the smell is a bit worrying so we’re looking into it more when we can afford it. For now it’s drip buckets and praying that the warmer weather will stop the leak until we can seal it on the outside.

Commissions will be resuming in April, specifically after my adoptables go up on Saturday. I will be sending out emails and notes to anyone in my queue beforehand, to check interest/give anyone the opportunity to drop their slot if financial situations have since changed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those that have been waiting patiently.

Sighs. I’m sorry, I’m so absolutely terrible about balancing real life with my online social presence. If things are chaotic IRL, I completely vanish. I keep thinking things will “ease up” eventually and then- and only then- am I allowed to go back to business as usual. But... I’m literally in the process of changing and uprooting myself in the next few months to move, so I really ought to try not thinking in such a finite way because it only proves to stress me out the more I seem to fall behind on this commission or that trip photoset. (It’s also poor timing as I am feeling an awkward  post-29th-birthday discomfort with myself which really does not help. I have had enough growing pains!! Enough!!!!)

Anyway, I’m okay. I feel awkward talking about this stuff, but... I am doing better! I’m feeling myself coming back slowly, and I will seize those moments however I can. I miss posting personal art and chatting with people even if it’s just through comments or asks, and I want to really tackle the next month as hard as I can to see some real progress. Admittedly my family can take the wind out of my sails really easily, even if I care about them a lot- I still need to build myself back up and get my own momentum going again.

So, lets see how April goes! Thanks for reading all the way to the end. ♥️

[cherryeoo]

Morning Star (Ateez Fantasy!AU) Ch 1

Summary: Two unlikely companions join together to ride the rollercoaster known as: Life. With a yin and yang balance, they soon discover that there’s not only beauty in the beast, but beast in the beauty. 

   The space was small.

   Bricks covered every wall from floor to ceiling. The sun’s rays peeking through the clouds and into the windows lined upon the walls; rainbows dancing across the wood floor. Wooden shelves carved into the walls held various books, photos and newspaper clippings from over the years.

   The smell of coffee wafted through the air from the small employee coffee shop lounge located in the back of the office where San and Saetbyeol worked. Dim lights shaped as lanterns hung from the ceiling. Work desks of various shapes, sizes and colors were scattered around the room. Gray walls sectioned off each department for the company. The two had started working for the company as interns three years ago - both completing their internship after just one year. San was 27, Saetbyeol 28, both trying to figure out their lives as they managed their lives one day at a time.

   Despite being a small company, the newspaper managed to be very popular in their area.

   San wrote for the entertainment and comic sections of the paper. He was a very easy going, down to earth type of guy. One would think he was cocky and conceited, but on the contrary - he was modest and kind.

   His chiseled chin and sharp features made women swoon and men envious. His appearance was that of a divine being; eyes a chocolate brown, but as deep as a black abyss. One could get lost in them if they stared too long. He was the typical type of guy that everyone wanted to be friends with, and even date. However, he had never shown interest in anyone or got too close to people.

   For someone that friendly and bubbly, he was very guarded and private - causing people’s minds to wonder what secrets he held locked away. To be honest, those people’s wandering minds were correct in their curiosity. He did possess secrets - ones that weighed heavy on his heart and soul. The type of secrets that meant pain and suffering if anyone where to find out.

   So that’s why he’d make sure no one would discover his truths.

   Groaning, San leaned back in his chair; outstretching his arms over his head as a yawn escaped his lips - the chair creaking under his weight. For five hours he had been glued to his workstation furiously typing up his article on the latest news; ensuring its completion before the deadline.

   Righting himself in his chair, his eyes skimmed across the laptop’s screen - the monitor illuminating his defined facial features as he proofread the article. After a few minutes, a grin spread across his face as his forefinger excitedly tapped the mouse button - finally submitting his work to his boss. Satisfied with the outcome, San released the same sigh of relief he always did with each article he completed.Stretching his back out a bit, his eyes fell upon the various award plaques resting upon his desk; the corners of his lips curling into a smile.

   San was the golden employee - forever in the boss’s favor and his articles always accumulating a surprising amount of views. In a sense, one might view him as somewhat of a celebrity amongst the company and town considering everyone knew his name. A pretty remarkable feat for a 20-something year-old.

   As he sat there, his eyes traveled to the girl sitting in the corner cubicle. Quiet and focused, he watched as she edited the paper before her. Her small frame slightly hunched over the keyboard on her desk, her fingers grazing over the keys. Gnawing on her lower lip, a look of frustration danced across her face as she tried to word the sentence just right.

   Her jet black hair fell out from behind her ear as she lowered her head slightly - slender fingers gently pushing the strands back behind her right ear. Taking a sip of her now cold green tea, she glanced back at the screen to add a few finishing touches to her article before submitting it to her boss. Heaving a silent sigh, she pushed herself back against the body of her office chair; twisting her neck from side-to-side as she rubbed the muscles in her left shoulder.

   Unaware of the pair of eyes that watched her, she quietly rested her chin in her palm; the same lifeless expression she had always worn still strewn across her face. San watched as she began gnawing the flesh of her bottom lip again - her eyes fixated upon the monitor before her as she scrolled through a different news site. Feeling his eyes begin to sting from staring too long, he broke his gaze and ran a hand through his dark hair. Most coworkers would talk to one another and while San had always been intrigued by her, he kept his distance.

   Saetbyeol chose to keep to herself. She was cold and standoffish;  never associating herself with anyone at the company - especially men. Fortunately for her their boss was a woman by the name of Ms.Kim - chief editor of the Seoulstitution News.

   Come to think of it and gender aside, San had never seen Saetbyeol with anyone other than the occasional girl that came to walk home with her every day. San presumed her to be a friend of Saetbyeol’s, but he wasn’t completely certain. He had yet to see the two exchange a single word while in the presence of others; an action that was contrary to that seen in normal friendships.

   Companionships aside, Saetbyeol was a hard worker - one of the most driven at the company, actually. She consistently kept up with the tasks required - often turning her work in significantly earlier to the deadline. Her issues weren’t necessarily task-related, but rather coworker-oriented in that no one particularly liked her at the office.

   People would make fun of her and talk about about her, regardless of whether she heard them or not. It made San’s heart ache, but what could he do? He wasn’t one to focus on physical images or social statuses - he found them redundant, really, and had a tendency to stand up for the mistreated.

   Not when it came to Saetbyeol, however.

   It’s not that he hadn’t tried or didn’t want to, but rather, she didn’t allow it. The one time he had tried to comfort her, she shot him a death gaze and told him to mind his own business. Since he wasn’t one to argue, he let it go and went on with his days.

   The major difference between Saetbyeol and San was that she was a much more private person. So much so that no one knew a single thing about her other than her job and work ethic. Rumors were spread within the company stating that she was an orphan and then later on, a gang member because of her rough appearance and tone. Another rumor stated that even her family disowned her because she was a measly news reporter instead of the lawyer her parents had always wanted her to be.

   But her past was a lot darker than that, for she held secrets as well - secrets that weighed just as heavy on her as San’s did him.

   Hearing her phone buzzing on the table next to her, she startled upright - immediately picking up the phone. Glancing at the message on her phone, she furrowed her brows. Apparently a strange discovery was made in a nearby cave on the outskirts of the town. Since Saetbyeol was on the news committee and in charge of any breaking news, she knew she would have no choice but to investigate the scene rather than enjoy a nice lunch like she had planned.

   At this point in her career, however, she was used to it. In a city where there was never a dull moment, Saetbyeol always found herself rushing out to investigate the next story. It was, quite honestly, a miracle that she had ever found the time to sleep.

   Rising from her chair, she shrugged on her jacket and grabbed her belongings. As she began racing to the door, Saetbyeol passed by San; seeing him reorganizing his desk for the fifth time that day. Deciding not to dwell on him too much, she shoved the door open and ran to the company car parked nearby as she prepared to drive off to the caves.

[loopy777]

Since you are asking Lok type questions decided to ask one. Ozai was a villain that had potential (Shishio's Mantra comes to mind) but overtime his depth came across as a flat piece of Cardboard with a tape recorder attached. Thanks The Search. Flash forward to LoK we have Unalaq that retreaded similar territory. This is where my question comes in. What would you have done with him, what motivations would you give, and what sort of relationship would you have given him to Korra and the cast?

I’ve been delaying answering this Ask because when I normally do these kinds of ‘rewrites,’ I try to hone in on what it seems like the story was trying to do, and see if I can reconfigure or streamline the ideas in play to create something clearer and more impactful. That’s a lot easier than what the original storytellers had to do- start from scratch and build something from the ground up. I’m essentially doing another draft of their work, with the benefit of having experienced their vision and knowing what worked for me and what didn’t.

But wow, it is hard to do that when nothing worked for me and I’m just left confused about what the original intention was, or if there was an intention at all.

OH HAI BOOK SPIRITS.

You bring up Ozai as a fairly flat character, and I agree, but I never expected more of him. (Whether the comics could or should have added something to the character is an open question, and not one I’ll get into here.) He is a symbol of the bad parts of the Fire Nation, cast in the form of the ‘evil warlord’ archetype that’s so prevalent in the Wuxia genre that AtLA draws from.

Similarly, the villains of LoK all represent something, but they add some complexity of character to things (although of course some were more successful than others). Amon is intolerance and weaponized blame, but coming from a terrible childhood that created a self-loathing he couldn’t grow past. Zaheer is anarchy and ideological extremism, but he has that intriguing affability that alone of all villains lets him sit down with the protagonist and make some good points in conversation. Kuvira is dictatorship and nationalism, coming from the lack of identity she developed as a result of being orphaned.

And then we have Unalaq and Book Spirits.

And I just don’t know what’s going on in that season.

There are several different subplots in play - the Water Tribe Civil War, Varrick’s takeover of Asami’s business, the rise of the dark spirits, Korra and Mako’s romance, whatever is going on with Tenzin’s family, and the little movie about Avatar Wan - but none of them work together. They don’t share themes. They don’t advance each other’s events. They mess with each other’s pacing. They separate the cast before a sustainable dynamic has been developed. It’s just a mess.

Varrick gets the closest to working, because at least I understand some of his motivations. He’s doing bad things to try to help his Tribe in the war with the Northern Tribe, which is sympathetic, while serving as a flawed mentor to Bolin. But then he’s also sabotaging efforts to get weapons to the Southern Tribe so that he can bankrupt and buy out Asami’s company, which directly contributed to his Tribe losing the war. It’s a mess, and the story never reconciles these two contradictory aspects of his character.

Varrick could have been fixed by either eliminating one of these subplots (either make him a patriot driven to doing bad things, or make him a greedy jerk who’s exploiting his Tribe’s troubles to steal Asami’s company), or making the contradiction the point of his character. His flaw could be his greed, and he fails to balance it with his patriotism, to the point where he defeats himself. I don’t think this is what the cartoon was trying to do, because there’s no payoff to this flaw in the story. Varrick never shows such greed in his later appearances, and there’s no point in Book Spirits anyone seems to even be aware that he sabotaged himself.

But then there’s Unalaq. And I- I just don’t know what’s going on with this guy.

He’s introduced as something like a religious fundamentalist. He’s down on celebrating a spiritual festival with a carnival. He offers teachings to Korra that contain secrets even Tenzin and the White Lotus don’t know. He’s friends spirits to the point where they’re acting as his informants. And his ultimate goal is to release Vaatu and bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS. There’s a possible cautionary tale there about religious extremism and fundamentalism, that it turns people into misanthropes and forms a path to violence and oppression.

But, unfortunately, there’s more to Unalaq. His backstory includes manipulating his brother and enemies of their Tribe to destroy a sacred forest so that he could be made crown prince. He takes over the Southern Tribe for seemingly no reason, oppressing it just to further antagonize his brother, directly trying to kill his brother, and manipulating Korra into doing his dirty work- all eventually leading Korra to cut ties with him and become his enemy.

But Korra is the key to his whole plan to bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS!

So, we have another self-sabotaging villain. Maybe that’s the point? But what is this story saying? That religious extremists are really just flawed hypocrites, despite their posturing? But the story continues on from there, and Unalaq actually succeeds in getting Korra to redeem the plot coupons that free Vaatu. So his flaws didn’t ultimately matter to the story. Korra isn’t even able to successfully rally any opposition to Unalaq, thanks to Varrick and her conflict with Mako. So, again, what’s the message? That religious extremists are really flawed jerks, but the people who oppose them are also flawed jerks, so it’s all a wash? But then Korra gets new magic powers that ultimately let her defeat Unalaq, so what does that add to the message?

I guess it’s saying that we’re all doomed to TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS by our flaws, but it’s okay because a Higher Power will just come along and fix things for us?

Yeah, I don’t think that’s the intended message of Book Spirits. :P

But we all know Book Spirits stunk. We all know it was rushed in development. The original plan was to just do the story of a Water Tribe Civil War, and then when additional writers were brought on to help meet production deadlines, the whole Spirit World subplot was added. The result is a mess that’s infamous in the fandom. LoK would recover in the next season, and we now laugh at Unalaq.

Well, I’m going over all that to explain why I’m not sure how to 'fix’ Unalaq. I can’t identify a goal for him, or for any of the characters.

So on a whim, I’m going to try to base him on my favorite (neglected) subplot in LoK as a whole, the lack of spirituality in the modern world.

It was established in the very first episode of Book Air that Republic City is flawed. The city that Aang built is riddled with organized crime. The people are all mean. Equalists are a growing movement, and they might possibly have a point about the power imbalance between Benders and Nonbenders. The leadership is all either corrupt or ineffective, and also mostly jerks. Tenzin says, “I have done my best to guide Republic City towards the dream my father had for it, but you are right. It has fallen out of balance since he passed.” Korra soon after promises the people, “Look, all I know is Avatar Aang meant for this city to be the center of peace and balance in the world, and I believe we can make his dream a reality.”

So I think Unalaq has the most potential as someone focused on the same goal as her, restoring balance and spirituality to a world that has gotten lost in its own modernization. I’d cut out his conflict with his brother Tonraq; in my version, Unalaq never manipulated his brother into getting exiled. Tonraq did that on his own. Unalaq’s oppression of the Southern Tribe doesn’t extend beyond imposing his own religious fundamentalism on them. Maybe he even tries to butter Tonraq up to get his brother on his side, and to keep Korra as a willing ally.

And, most importantly, I wouldn’t give Unalaq any hidden agenda. He’s not plotting to unleash TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS. He doesn’t even know about Vaatu when the story starts. He puts his plan of taking over the Southern Tribe into action simply because he learns of Korra’s mission, and is overjoyed that he finally has a powerful ally who sees the corruption in the modern world. Perhaps he previously considered Tenzin as a possible ally, but Tenzin was turned off by Unalaq’s extremism. (Which is the first warning sign for the audience. Tenzin thinks this guy is too down on modern society?!) We can keep the part where Korra cuts ties with Tenzin because of the revelations about her past, going along with Unalaq despite her misgivings.

So Korra learns super spiritualism from Unalaq for a while. He shows her how to destroy dark spirits. (Neither of them know what’s up with the dark spirits, just that it’s suddenly a problem.) They work together to decry modern corruption. They make the Southern Tribe go to church once a week under penalty of law. Perhaps they go up to Republic City to try asking the citizenry if they’ve considered letting the light of balance into their lives, check out these pamphlets, etc.

They discover that the Dark Spirits are a result of the modern world’s corruption. Just like Hei Bai was turned into a monster by his anger at his forest being burned down, and the Painted Lady was nearly destroyed by her lake being polluted, the Dark Spirits are nothing more than injured, crazed, dying spirits. The Southern Water Tribe is drilling for oil and disrupting the environment. Oceans are being polluted. Forests are being cut down. The big new cities are producing enough waste to poison the land around them. People don’t commune or talk to the spirits anymore; there’s a shortage of sages around the world. The spirits are being driven violently insane even as they’re being wiped out.

So Korra and Unalaq become environmental terrorists.

Perhaps we can fit in a conflict between Mako and Korra at this point. He’s not really into her new course, and they break up. Perhaps he drifts back towards Asami before the official breakup, leading to both girls kicking him to the curb. We definitely won’t do anything with Korra getting amnesia and maybe forgetting that they broke up. That was pointless and just created more problems for the subplot. As a bonus, this can be an excuse for Asami to maybe bond directly with Korra.

Mako angrily confronts Korra about her tactics, but he just winds up antagonizing her and accomplishing nothing. Asami, on the other hand, demonstrates a more deft touch, and reaches out to Korra in a way that works. Asami gets Korra to see the damage being done, and the ineffectiveness of the tactics. Asami is sympathetic to Korra’s cause and wants to help, but can’t if Korra just wants to wipe everything out.

And that’s the key. Korra and Unalaq are failing, partially because of their extreme tactics, but also because it’s just impossible to turn the clock back. They make no dent in Republic City’s lack of balance. Unalaq is horrified. Korra, too, but Unalaq is really crazed by this. He wonders if humanity is even worth saving. Korra backs away from that, partially because of Asami’s influence; of course humanity is worth saving, she’s seen the good in people, etc.

And during this conflict between them, they learn of Avatar Wan’s history, and the whole story of Raava and Vaatu.

And this is where Unalaq falls. In his extremism, he sees that Vaatu has the power to destroy everything and start it all fresh. So he sets out to free Vaatu, become a Dark Avatar, bring about TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS, yadda yadda. Unalaq falls from grace because of his uncompromising vision. Extremism has poisoned him.

Korra is nearly defeated by him, but as in the cartoon, it is Jinora who somehow provides a key to winning. In this case, though, Jinora is a not a Magic Fairy Princess who’s always been able to see spirits. She represents the best of the new generation and the modern era. Jinora is spiritual, even more so than Tenzin, but she’s also someone who loves Probending and getting into a little trouble in Republic City and terrible modern cooking. Jinora, perhaps along with Ikki and Meelo, are symbolic of the balance that can be achieved. So Korra defeats Unalaq, and does something with Spiritual Energies that create a new generation of spirits living in the modern cities. Korra also sets out to find compromises so that the lands are no longer being polluted so much, to help preserve the old spirits. And, to everyone’s surprise, Airbending is discovered to have spontaneously returned to the world, perhaps the start of new respect for balance and the elements, and a new calling that the people will answer…

Which will be explored in Book Change.

So, that’s my idea. It requires ditching the whole Water Tribe Civil War, and all the shenanigans with Varrick and Bolin. I’m honestly not sure if Varrick can be worked into this storyline. I love the character because he’s hugely entertaining, but none of what he did in Book Spirits is worth preserving. Perhaps he could be tied in to the corruption of the old spirits, that he’s using them as batteries like with Kuvira in Book Balance. His can be a symbolic defeat, that his loss and exile is a tangible sign of respecting the environment. As a symbolic victory, we can also show Asami rolling out some environmentally-friendly reforms with Korra’s help, further building up their friendship, and establishing a partnership.

(Varrick is later hired by Suyin, and later Kuvira, in a kind of Operation Paperclip deal. They’re fine with his awful sciences. But Varrick is slowly influenced into abandoning his ways, and by the end of Book Balance, goes to work for Asami.)

As I’ve previously posted, I’m not crazy about Tenzin’s family troubles, so I’d like to just cut that. Bumi and Kya can still show up, but I think Tenzin’s subplot should be questioning if, as Korra and Unalaq fight their crusade, he’s really living up to Aang’s ideals. He spends time with his family, until Korra arrives with news of Unalaq’s plan to unleash and bond with Vaatu. He tries to help, Jinora proves to be more help, the journey to the Spirit World to chase Unalaq happens, but they can’t stop him, and during the fight Jinora is seemingly destroyed, but really sent to the Fog of Lost Souls to be rescued by her father. And we still get our Zhao cameo. Booyah!

I have no idea what to do with Bolin in all this. But then, neither did the cartoon, so that’s fine. His subplot in Book Spirits was the most confused, and that’s really saying something. Maybe he goes into exile with Varrick, and they both pop up in Zaofu as established members of the leadership there? Perhaps Bolin and Opal are already a thing, and Opal being an Airbender leads him to reconcile with Korra and the others. I don’t know, Bolin’s character never did anything for me.

Eska and Desna can be Unalaq’s minions. They have misgivings when Korra breaks ties with him, but continue to try to help their father and maybe moderate his darker tendencies. They fail, and wind up having to help the good guys. There’s no romance with Bolin and Eska.

So, that’s my take. There’s a lot of rewriting here, in pursuit of finding some message. I just focused on character arcs, and I’m not sure what the final battle would look like. (Hopefully not an episode of Ultraman.) I’d still like Korra’s connection with her past lives to be destroyed, as I think that really works as a character moment and low point for her. I’m not sure how to accomplish it, because I prefer the power of the Avatar State to be the actual accumulated power and minds of the past lives, rather than Raava. I also eliminated everything to do with the Spirit Portals, because they never made sense to me, what with AtLA showing spirits going back and forth between the worlds without any trouble. Vaatu can just be unleashed in a more mundane way. Maybe Wan Shi Tong knows and tells Unalaq, getting that cameo back in. And I really have no idea what Bumi and Kya are doing here, besides hanging out with Tenzin. But we know I have difficulty with their subplot.

I’m not if this would actually be better, but it’s more streamlined, at least. And Unalaq becomes, I hope, someone who is understandable. We don’t sympathize with his methods, but can at least see where he started with a reasonable hope but went very, very wrong. And, as a bonus, we’ve avoided another case of childhood trauma causing someone to become evil!

Score!