#also this is the first time I’ve drawn any of the boys lol

[rainedropsart]

something something, side effects of superpowers

bonus doodle

[opiopal]

I can’t stop thinking about how the OM boys are never drawn with nipples

And so of course instead of just accepting it’s just a form of censorship, I’ve started making my own stuff up which lead me to a kind of big theory.

With the brothers it make sense, they didn’t have a mother they birthed from, so they didn’t develop like how regular babies do which would lead to them having nipples in the first place. The same deal goes for all the angels. Of course beings that just kind of popped into existences wouldn’t have the bodily function nor use of breast feeding so their bodies wouldn’t have gone ahead and given them such a feature in the womb because they didn’t even come from one.

But dia not having nipples is where it jumbles me, cause, his mother died during childbirth(if I remember correctly), so as a result he must’ve been in a womb at some point(as most babies are). And assuming demon growth in the womb is the same as humans, he should have nipples, but he doesn’t. It’s smooth. But assuming that demon pregnancy is different, then it would get more complicated. Would demonic magic understand and notice that he does not infact need to breastfeed something? Or maybe demon pregnancies are longer and thus any traces of that sort of thing would develop away? My favorite theory is that with a demon+demon childbirth is just, they do stuff, a few months go by, no visible changes, the couple is just chilling together, and POP a child is suddenly in one of their arms. Which all leads me to my next theory of I don’t think dia’s mother was a demon.

Obviously it’s weird that Dia is so full of life and so kind and considerate for a demon. But what if that’s just because he wasn’t actually a full demon? I don’t think that his mother was a human, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother was and that’s kind of where his fascination with humans came from, seeing portraits of his mother and wondering what she was like and so over time it was “what was mom like?” To “what is moms species like?” And finally to “what are humans like?” And it would totally make sense as to why she didn’t survive the birth. Maybe it may also be because a royal demon and a regular demon might be vastly different, but then again I feel as if it wouldn’t be as risky.

Solomon doesn't have nipples prolly because he blasted them off at some point like a magical idiot✨

(Obviously this isn't serious lol)

[st-eve-barnes]

Leverage (Michael Gavey x fem Reader)

Chapter 1

Summary: When your ex threatens to release some very personal videos you are left with no choice but to do what he asks: seduce the biggest nerd on campus, Michael Gavey. Will you rock his world or will he fundamentally change yours?

Word count: +2300

Warning for the entire fic: 18+ for explicit content and language. Kissing, oral sex (male receiving), dry humping, hand job, fingering, p in v sex. First kiss and loss of virginity. Experienced reader. Enemies to lovers vibes.

Fluff, smut and of course angst (my favorite combination! lol) I haven't watched Saltburn yet so all characters in this fic except for Michael are my own.

Chapter 2 will be posted next week and the plan is to post weekly, there will be 4-5 chapters (depending on how far the muse takes me)

***

All my fics are also on AO3

***

You should have known something was off the second Ben sat down in front of you in the library that morning. You two hadn’t spoken since you’d broken up, some 6 months ago now. The split had been amicable but neither of you had felt the need to pretend to remain friends afterwards. He was a stranger to you now and you preferred it that way.

You both moved in different social circles in the university these days, meaning he was living his dream as a popular fuck boy getting drunk every night and you spent most nights in your dorm room focusing on your studying.

“I need a favor,” he bluntly started the conversation.

“No,” you answered without looking up from your book.

“I think you should hear me out first.”

“Ben, we haven’t spoken in months,” you sighed,”What makes you think I would help you now?”

He leaned closer to you over the table, making you lean back to keep the distance between you two.

“The firm I’ve been dreaming of getting into is offering an internship to whoever scores highest on this upcoming test,” he explained.

“Great, you should start hitting the books then.”

“It’s no use.”

“Why not? I thought you were so smart?”

“I am so smart,” he smirked, making you roll your eyes,”But not as smart as him.”

You looked up and noticed he wasn’t looking at you anymore but his gaze was drawn to the guy sitting a few tables away. You recognized him instantly: ugly outdated shirt, even uglier beige cargo pants and big glasses on his nose, buried into his books as usual. The biggest nerd on campus and beyond: Michael Gavey.

“He’s your competition?” you snorted,”Good luck with that!”

“Luck won’t help me, that’s why I need your help.”

“What on earth am I going to do? I suck at math, you know that.”

“That’s not why I need you,” he shook his head and sighed,”A job at that firm is my dream, it’s what I’ve always wanted and worked towards for the past two years.”

“And if you pass that test you’ll get it.”

“Nobody can beat Gavey, everyone knows the guy’s a fucking genius.”

“Then he deserves the internship, don’t you think?”

”He can literally get any job he chooses, I need this one and I won’t let that freak take it from me.”

For the first time you leaned forward and looked into his eyes, indulging him and giving into your own curiosity.”What do you want from me then?”

“Look at him, I bet that guy’s never even had a girl look at him twice, especially not a pretty girl like you, that dude’s got virgin written all over him, hasn’t he?”

“How is that any of your business, Ben? Maybe he’s not even interested in girls, you ever though of that?” you opted, deliberately ignoring his compliment.

“Oh, believe me he’s interested, I’ve seen him stare when he thinks nobody’s looking. He may pretend to be above all that but the fucker is just as horny as the rest of us.”

“Speak for yourself.” You leaned back and kept your eyes on him while you crossed your arms,”You still haven’t told me what you want from me.”

“I was thinking, having a pretty girl like you pay attention to him might take his mind off all this studying, a distraction like that could kill a man’s entire focus.”

“Only a man who thinks with his dick.”

He smirked at you,”Or a man who’s never had his dick touched.”

“You’re fucking disgusting."

He lifted his hands in innocence,”I just want you to distract the guy a little, make him forget about stupid tests and internships so I can have a fighting chance.”

”You want me to fuck him,” you realized.

He gave you a lazy smirk, his gaze hardening suddenly,“I want you to do whatever it takes to ruin him.”

The words left his mouth so casually and easily it was making you nervous.

“You’re mad, there’s no way. Ask one of the whores you always hang out with, I’m sure there’s plenty…”

“I’ve asked, none of them want him.”

You sighed, annoyed.”Of course they don’t.”

“I need it to be you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only one I can convince to do this.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at that and you shook your head,”You’re out of your mind if you think I would even consider…”

He didn’t let you finish your sentence but instead shoved a photo towards you on the table.

“What is this?”

“This is what I would call leverage.”

You looked at him in confusion,”This is just a blurry picture, what am I supposed to be looking at?”

He smirked at you,”Do you remember that one night we got insanely crazy drunk and I borrowed my roommate’s camera?”

It was only then that you realized what you were watching. It was a picture of a video. A video of a night you had tried very hard to erase from your memory, a night you wished had never happened.

“You kept that?” you asked quietly, the unsettling feeling in the pit of your stomach quickly growing. 

“It never left my computer,” he said as if it was something to be proud of,”And I guess…we’d both like it to stay on there wouldn’t we? And not…get lost on the internet or around university or something, I mean…I imagine you wouldn’t want that, right?”

You looked at him in complete disbelief and your voice was shaking with your next words,”You wouldn’t…you wouldn’t do that.”

His dark eyes stayed locked on yours,”Don’t doubt that I will do whatever it takes to get what I want, sweetheart.”

You shivered at the cold determination in his tone.

“I’m sorry,” he added,” but I need you to do what I ask if you want that video to stay with me. Get to know Gavey, make him believe you’re interested, how far you take it…is entirely up to you. Just make it work.”

****

You found Michael in his same spot in the library the next day, leaning on his elbow while he was taking notes in one of his many text books. 

For a few moments you just watched him from a distance, watched how enthralled he was in his work, how focussed his eyes were on the pages in front of him, how he kept pushing up his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose in concentration. If the world around him caught on fire right now he probably wouldn’t even notice, all he had eyes for were the numbers in front of him. Ben was right to fear him, this guy’s focus was top-tier, it would take a lot more than a silly girl like yourself to break it. 

But what choice did you have? You had to try.

You stood frozen for a while, uncertain as to how you were going to proceed. You didn’t want to be here and just the thought of what you had to do made your stomach turn. But Ben had left you with no other choice. If that video ever saw the light of day it was over for you.

You swallowed your nerves and walked up to Michael’s table and took a seat opposite him, trying to act both casual and confident. But you were too nervous to pull either of those off.

You cleared your throat before you spoke,”Hey.”

Michael didn’t react, he didn’t even flinch, making you think he hadn’t heard you at all. 

You opened your mouth to speak again but he beat you to it,”What do you want?”

He was still writing and didn’t bother to look up at you.

“Michael?” you asked carefully,”Michael Gavey?”

“You know my name, congratulations, what do you want?”

Your heart sank. How were you ever going to distract this guy when he didn’t even acknowledge your presence? How were you in any position to get his attention when he wasn’t even interested enough to grant you a simple glance?

This was going to be a lot harder than you thought.

“I need a tutor,” you blurted out.

“I’m not your guy,” he answered immediately with a small shake of his head.

“So you’re not the smartest guy on campus then? Shit, I must have been misinformed,” you tried to lighten the mood and it seemed to work.

His lips curled up into the tiniest of smiles but it was gone as quickly as it appeared,”Flattery doesn’t work on me.”

“Flattery works on everyone. Come on.”

He was shaking his head again all the while still writing things down in his notebook, determined to keep up his act of ignoring you and it was starting to piss you off.

“It’s rude not to look at people when they talk to you, you know?” 

Michael just shrugged his shoulders,”Tutoring is a waste of my time, go find someone else.”

“You’re the smartest guy here.”

“I already told you, flattery will get you nowhere.”

“I can pay you,” you blurted out and just like that you had his attention. He stopped writing and put his pen down, finally looking up to meet your eyes.

“Right,” he sighed,”Because money opens every door, does it?” 

His gaze was hard and his lips pursed in a thin line, he was clearly annoyed with you.

“No, that’s not…”

”You rich pricks think money will buy you everything your little heart desires. It’s fucking pathetic.”

“That’s not what I meant…I’m not…” you sighed, defeated as you watched Michael pack up his notebooks and rise from his seat.

“Piss off, spoilt little rich girl and ask one of your rich friends to tutor you. I am not your guy.”

And that was it. You failed before you even had the chance to really try. You weren’t one to give up easily but after that interaction you had no hope of ever getting close to Michael Gavey. The guy was rude and insufferable and clearly not interested in you in any way.

You tried to carry on with your days after that but the weight of Ben’s threat was hanging over your shoulders and dragging you down, making you anxious every day. You were frustrated at the power he still held over you. And even more frustrated by the fact that there was nothing you could do about it.

Your mind was somewhere else entirely when you started your shift at the local pizza place that Thursday night. At least work gave you something to do and keep yourself busy instead of eating yourself up with worry every night. When the manager called asking if you were available for some extra shifts that week you jumped at the chance.

You were working on automatic pilot that night, making your way through the tables and taking clients orders when you arrived at his table.

“Good evening, sir, how may I help you tonight?”

It was only when you looked up and the person in front of you lowered his menu that you recognized him. Gavey.

He opened his mouth to speak but stopped when his eyes met yours, a flash of recognition running across his face.

“It’s…you,” he realized and looking at your name plate he called you by your name.

“Yes, it’s me, hi,” you sighed, trying to stay polite even though he had been so rude to you last time. God, please, don’t let him be a difficult customer, you were not in the mood for this tonight. “What can I get for you, Michael?” you asked with your best customer service smile.

Much to your surprise Michael returned your smile with one of his own, a little awkward and probably as forced as yours but at least he wasn’t calling you names or yelling at you this time. And instead of avoiding your eyes he couldn’t seem to look away from you tonight.

“You…work here?” he asked, confused,”I’ve never seen you here before.”

“I usually only work the weekends, I’m filling in for a sick colleague tonight,” you explained,”The extra money is always welcome, you know.”

“You’re not…you’re not one of them,” he realized, his voice softer than you had ever heard it.

“One of who?” 

“Those vapid rich cunts you always hang out with.”

And just like that he was making it harder to remain polite again.

“They’re just my class mates, Michael, they’re not friends. Unlike some people I am mature enough to be civilized and polite to people even if I don’t like them much. It’s called being an adult, you should try it some time.”

Michael was quiet, his eyes dropping down to the menu before he gave you his order and sank back down into his seat. You almost felt sorry for him seeing him sit there all alone while most people were out with friends tonight.

Almost. Maybe if the guy wasn’t such a dick all the time he’d have friends to have dinner with and not look like such a loser.

When you returned with his food shortly after he just gave you a polite nod and a quiet “Thank you”, which you reciprocated with a quick nod of your own.

“You didn’t spit into my food, did you?” he then asked, making you turn back around.

“No,” you sighed,”I wouldn’t do that. Not even to you.”

He smiled weakly,“Not even when I deserve it?”

You couldn’t help your lips from curling up into a little smile at his unexpected admission of guilt,”No, not even then.”

“Thanks,” he nodded quickly.

“Enjoy your food.”

When you came to his table later to clean up you found a napkin properly folded with your name written on it. You opened it to find a generous tip inside and a message: “Food was excellent, customer service needs some work”

You shook your head and rolled your eyes,”Fucking asshole.” But then you read the next line:

“PS If you still want that tutor meet me in the library tomorrow night at 8”

[thejournalisttintin]

I am also doing a few drawings of canon Tintin characters. But with schoolwork and stuff, I only have so little time…! 😩

First things first, here is my boy Chang!

I wasn’t sure how I would go about drawing him, since it’s been so long since I’ve drawn him.

Thanks to a post that @professorcalculusstanaccount made before on how to draw Chang, I was able to try my hand at drawing him. But with this one, I added my own drawing style.

So here he is!

And with a drawing, there will also be headcanons!

Headcanons for my interpretation of Chang:

After the events of Tintin in Tibet, Chang had stayed with Tintin and Haddock for a while before he eventually made the trip to London to visit his uncle. He took a train instead of a plane, as he had developed some trauma from having survived the plane crash in the Himalayas.

Several years later, Chang went to college in Bristol, where he took classes in classic English literature and world history, as well as art history.

He also took photography, as he’s always wanted to do something along the lines of Tintin’s work.

During his first semester, he befriended Hanna(my Tintin OC), who was in his art history class.

The two hit it off pretty well as friends, since Hanna thought Chang was very sweet. She was also the first person whom he opened up to about surviving alone in the Himalayas.

When Hanna told Chang about her desire to go into acting and singing, Chang thought she had a very solid goal in mind.

Chang learned much of his photography from Hanna's sister Maxine, who showed him how to operate a camera. She even showed him how to take action shots.

After some time, Hanna and Chang's friendship bloomed into a romance. They dated for about a year or so, with Chang keeping a few photo records of their time together.

Chang would frequently visit Tintin and Haddock in Brussels for about or week or two as part of a cultural exchange.

During the weeks in which he visited, Tintin began to develop a crush on Chang. Any time he visited, his feelings toward him became more obvious.

At some point, Hanna had caught on when she and Maxine were invited to Brussels, as well as Chang.

She knew Tintin often got flustered whenever Chang visited him, so she pulled him aside and told him about it. She wanted him to feel comfier with someone he truly felt happy with.

So Hanna and Chang made the decision to silently break up. Chang was worried Hanna wouldn't be able to move on, but she assured him everything would be okay.

So these are just my headcanons for Chang within my Tintin story interpretation. I might also do a fanstory about Chang visiting Tintin. Because I plan to include him in some of my future stories 😁

But this will be written, as my best strength is writing fanfics, lol...

Stay tuned for more characters and OCs to come!

[cosmitton]

seeing a cute boy outside of a restaurant at night

Johan Seong x F!Reader (foreigner)

A/N: I haven’t written in so long and this is the first thing I’ve ever written for Lookism, so I’m nervous lol. The reader in this is described to be a foreigner, but I don’t describe what she looks like, so I hope that’s okay. She’s based off of one of my Lookism OCs but I thought it’d be better to write it as a Reader instead. I also won’t be using (Y/N) or anything like that bc I think it takes away from the flow of the writing/dialogue. Also, I think this takes place a little after the God Dog arc where Johan’s on his own again.

It’s not really romantic in this, but I’m thinking of making this a sort of series of one shots with this Reader specifically. Please lmk if Johan is OOC, bc I’m not confident in writing him haha. Anyways, hope you enjoy! c:

The nights are still cold at this time of year in Seoul. Not that you can really feel it at this point from where you are, starting the process of cleaning up and closing the restaurant. After having been cooped up in the small kitchen in the back of the hole-in-the-wall building you work at, finally done cooking after several hours, the space is well and truly stuffy by now. You were even a bit sweaty, in contrast to the people you can see pass by the windows outside that are trying to stay bundled up against the wind chill.

“Alright,” your boss walks into the back to join you, “you’ve been holed up in here long enough, I’ll take care of this. You go deal with the front.”

As if it’s ingrained in his mind as instinct, he swats at your back with the hand towel he grabs before you can protest that you can do it yourself and he should rest. You laugh slightly at the older man, deciding that you’re too tired anyway to argue with him right now.

You leave behind what you were working on to go out into the front of house in order to count down the register and go about cleaning and packing up the floors and tables. You work silently, comforted by the sound of your boss cleaning in the back and the distant hum of life filtering in from behind the windows and locked door.

“Mr. Terrence,” you call as you walk toward the back doors, “I’ll take the trash out now.”

“Thanks, kid.” He replies as you grab the black bags in both hands.

It’s as you walk outside, hit by the cold and slightly regretting not grabbing your jacket first, that you see him. A slim, brown-haired boy sitting by the mouth of the alley between your workplace and the building next door. He’s curled up like he’s trying to hide, in a way, with his knees drawn up tight and facing slightly away from you. When you glance over at what he’s looking at, you see two small dogs not far from him.

You try not to stare as you pass by, but it is weird to you. There’s not usually anyone out here, especially at this time of night and in this weather – and if there is, they’re usually not here for any good reason. It’s not your business, you try to remind yourself, and you can’t afford to be getting caught up in anything bad that might be happening.

Although, that doesn’t seem right, either. This boy is just sitting alone on the ground, watching – presumably – his two dogs and still hasn’t even looked up at you. He doesn’t seem the type to be here for any salacious reason, which makes the only other conclusion that comes to your mind much more heartbreaking – he’s here because he has nowhere else to go. You could be wrong, but the way he was dressed (yes, he had a jacket, but not thick enough for this cold) and had only his dogs and a single backpack sat at his side just hit your instincts in a certain way. You couldn’t see his face, but he looked slim – probably not starving, but clearly not eating as much as you preferred for a young person to be eating. (Distantly, you think about how Mr. Terrence would make fun of you for thinking this despite the fact that you are also a “young person”.) His dogs also looked skinny, and even if you didn’t care about this boy, you couldn’t in good conscience let animals go without food.

With that thought, you made up your mind and quickly threw away the trash and made your way back into the restaurant to head straight toward the kitchen.

“Mr. Terrence,” your boss jumped as you burst back into the room again, “sorry. I was wondering if you finished packing everything up?”

“Nearly there,” the older man watched as you scuttled about the kitchen to grab a to go box from under the counter and start filling it with food. “Oh, no,” he scoffs lightly, “not another stray. If you keep feedin’ ‘em, they’ll keep comin’ back expectin’ more.”

“A stray and his strays, yeah.” You continue, ignoring his scoff because you know he could stop you if he was really that bothered by it.

“What?”

“Some guy and his dogs.”

“Ohhh~” you don’t need to look up to face him, because you can hear the smug smile in his voice, “a boy, huh~? No wonder you’re so eager.”

You resist the urge to fling some of the food at him, “shut up. You know it isn’t like that.”

He’s already stopped listening to you, having made up his mind about your intentions, “uh-huh, sure.”

You don’t bother to reply, finished with packing up the to go box now and not trying to play his games. You make your way back toward the doors, hoping the boy and his dogs hadn’t left already. He’s still there, thankfully, when you get outside – again regretting that you forgot to grab your jacket, but somehow remembered to grab the dog treats you keep in your bag for any stray you might come across – and still not looking up. You make your way over to the boy with your shoulders hiked up in a weak attempt to shield yourself against the wind, trying to walk around into his sight so that you don’t sneak up on him.

One of his dogs notices you first, a little thing with pink ears, and seems to watch your approach cautiously. The boy notices and whips his head around immediately, as if he was trying to catch you, and you pause for a moment at the way he looks at you like you might be a threat. He looks to be around your age, with a pretty face and puppy eyes, but he scowls at you in a way that makes him seem older – weathered and weary from past experience. Oof, you think as you try to figure out how best to approach him, a standoffish one, then.

“Hey,” you greet lightly, “sorry to bother you. I work at this restaurant and I was wondering if you wanted to take these leftovers off my hands so we don’t have to waste them by throwing them away.”

You don’t actually have to throw away the leftovers, of course, but you’re banking on him not knowing that because he seems like the type to not take handouts unless it’s phrased as if he’d be doing you a favor instead. Before the boy can answer, though, the dog with pink ears walks up to you first. You kneel down to its level, putting your hand out to let it sniff you before you try to pet it.

“Hi, puppy~!” You can’t help the high-pitched baby voice you use to talk to animals, it’s instinct at this point and you refuse to feel embarrassed about it.

The other white dog that’s wearing a sweater is still hanging back, looking like it’s shivering, but you can’t tell if that’s from the cold or if that’s just natural. You set the to go box down beside you, petting the pink-eared dog with one hand while you wrestle the dog treats out of your pocket with the other. The pup is fully excited now, tail wagging so hard that it’s almost throwing the dog off its feet, while you feed the treats to it, eagerly.

You realize that you pretty much forgot about the boy when his voice makes you jump, “her name is Miro.”

You look over, and he doesn’t seem to be scowling at you anymore, just watching you interact with his dog – still cautious, but not threatened.

“She’s cute,” you smile, “and your other dog?”

“He’s Eden.”

“Can I give him some treats?”

“He doesn’t like strangers much.”

“Well,” you shift slightly, waiting for permission to approach, “I’ll give them to you and you can give them to him, then.”

“Why?” He’s suspicious again - not in the same way that others here are when they see your face and know you’re an outsider - and you recognize it and it breaks your heart for him. (It seems a bit ridiculous for you to hurt for him, given that you don’t know him at all, but you do because you’ve seen it before and you know it at your core.)

“Because they deserve it. They all do.” You mean his dogs, specifically, but you also mean him and every other person like him.

He watches you for a moment more, and you let him, but he doesn’t respond verbally – just shrugs and makes the smallest movement of his head to nod. You grab the to go box again, dog treats in the other hand, and rise to move toward him. He rises too, probably more comfortable with being at eye level than sitting – just in case. Miro is following at your feet, and you stop with a bit of distance between yourself and the boy. You hand him the dog treats first, glancing at Eden shaking a bit behind him, and he stuffs them into the pocket of his jacket. You try to hand him the to go box and that’s when he becomes suspicious again – obvious when you look him in the eye.

“I know it might be an inconvenience, but it’d really help if you could take these. It just seems like such a waste if we have to toss them.” He doesn’t believe you, you know he doesn’t just by how he looks at you, but neither of you are going to say it aloud.

He stares at you for a moment again, seeming to battle in his mind over whether to take it or not, but the hunger that you’re sure he’s feeling seems to win out. He takes it from you and, despite how reluctant he was to accept it in the first place, he immediately holds it close to him and slightly away from you as if you’re going to snatch it back.

You want to say more, but you’re not sure what and you don’t really have any more reason to since you accomplished what you came out here for. You think to ask his name and give him yours, but you feel like you might be pushing him with that. So, with nothing else that you can come up with, you start to back away.

“Thanks,” you smile at him again and look down at Miro and Eden, “bye puppies~!”

You think anything else would bother him, so with one last glance at the boy – who seems to be waiting for you to leave before he goes on with whatever his plans are – you fully turn back to the restaurant and go inside. You wish you had gotten his name, or had some way of checking up on him and Eden and Miro again just to make sure they’d be okay, but you just have to accept that it’s left up to fate now.

Who knows, you might meet him again one day.

[ohmtoff]

could i request a fic of reader and nick having a friends with benefits type of relationship, reader is in love with nick but doesn’t realise nick is in love with reader too so they have a mutual pining situation?

Mutually Exclusive

Summary: You can’t handle being just friends with benefits with Nick, not when you’re in love with him.

WC: 1.6k

Contains: angst, pining, misunderstandings, friends with benefits (or is it?)

a/n: heyyy!! so sorry for taking so long to write this😭 hope it’s okay that i didnt write any smut even though it’s a FWB prompt lol i just wasnt feeling to write smut sorryyy anon. hope you like ittt <3

——————————————————————————

Your head was pillowed on Nick’s chest, your fingers skimming over Nick’s soft stomach, occasionally trailing it across his chest hair which makes him giggle, and you were trying to figure out how to tell him you’d been asked on a date. Nick was running his fingers through your hair, occasionally placing a soft kiss to your temple, and your head is racking on how to explain that this will be the last time you will ever be in bed with him. You both had just finished a particularly sweet bout of intimacy, you felt utterless boneless, and you needed to somehow tell Nick you couldn’t keep doing this.

When you had first met Nick — at a party thrown by Larray — you’d immediately been drawn to him. How could you not be; Nick was cute and soft, so handsome in a way that still somehow felt comfortable and approachable. Eyes so blue and piercing that your heart immediately fluttered at the first eye contact. And Nick had apparently been drawn to you as well, at least that was the impression you got when you both ended up making out in the corner of the party a mere hour later.

After that first time, you both just kept… hooking up. Initially, it was only at parties, both gravitating towards each other and ending the night entangled in some way. Soon, after Nick had insisted you and him exchange numbers, it morphed into scheduled hook-ups, no pretense of a party required. And then you both started hanging out afterwards, trying a new restaurant or watching a movie or just talking. You’d catch meals together and facetime each other before going to sleep.

You weren’t sure when you both transitioned from random strangers hooking up to hook-ups who occasionally hang out to inseparable friends who also happen to hook up with each other, but you didn’t want to question it. Nick was maybe the best thing to ever happen to you, and you weren’t about to complicate that with logistics.

A finger ran over your face, smoothing out the wrinkle that had appeared between your eyes, snapping you out of your thoughts and into the present. “What’s got you so stressed?”

I thought I was okay with us just being friends with benefits but someone else asked me out and I’ve realised that I don’t want to go out with someone who isn’t you but that’s not what this is and I don’t know what to do about it because this isn’t enough but I don’t want anyone else.

“Mm, nothing.” You nuzzled into Nick’s chest.

“I know you. You don’t get that little crinkle between your eyes unless you got something on your mind.” Nick kissed the area in question, featherlight and soft.

“You know that guy, Curtis?” You focused on the tattoo of Nick’s arm, smoothing over them lightly, marveling at the goosebumps he left in his wake.

“Um, I think? That one guy that’s stalking you?” Nick chuckled, and the vibrations in his chest shook you just a bit. Just enough to remind you how physically close you and him were in that moment, as if neither boy existed without the other. Something panged near your heart.

“He’s not… He’s not stalking me.”

“Oh, so he just happens to appear everywhere you are? I don’t think we’ve gone anywhere in the last month without him ‘randomly’ showing up. He’s obsessed with you.” Nick pushed back your hair from your forehead and kissed you there. “Can’t say I blame him, though.”

Your chest ached. You weren’t sure when you’d fallen in love with Nick, but you were now firmly in the throes of it and every delicate gesture from Nick, every word of affection, every tiny touch, twisted something deep in your stomach. When Nick held you like this, naked and sated and warm, and looked at you with those adoring eyes, touched you like you mattered, You found it almost impossible to hold back all that you was feeling.

“You obsessed with me, Nicolas?” You hoped the joke would defuse some of the tension, maybe make Nick believe you too could be cool and casual about all of this.

“Yeah,” Nick whispered before cupping your face like you were something precious and pulling you into a kiss, small and slow and perfect.

You wanted to cry.

You needed a moment to gather yourself after Nick pulled back, eyes closed and lips still puckered.

“What did Curtis do?” Nick’s fingers returned to your hair.

“He, uh, he…” You thought it may be less painful to pluck out his own eyelashes than continue. “He asked me out.”

You hadn’t known how you thought Nick would react, but laughter had not been anywhere on your list. But Nick did just that, laughing boisterously, shaking them both. “Oh, wow. Poor Curtis.”

Poor Curtis. What did that mean?!

You frowned and sat up, needing to somehow find a way to put space between yourself and Nick. You turned to face the wall and crossed your arms, fighting back tears.

“You don’t have to be cruel, Nick.”

“What?” Nick sat up too, placing a tentative hand on your shoulder, which you shrugged off. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant!” You looked down, concentrating on Nick’s white sheets. “Just because you don’t want to date me doesn’t mean no one else does.”

“What?! What are you talking about?!” Nick almost sounded angry, as if you were the one mocking him.

“People can like me, Nick! People can find me attractive and compelling and worthwhile.” Tears formed in the corners of your eyes.

“Babe, I know that—”

“So why did you laugh? Why did you pity Curtis for liking me?”

“What are you talking about?!” Nick sounded on the verge of tears as well, which finally made you turn to look at him.

His face was flushed red, his eyes glassy and wet, and he almost looked scared, as though your words were wounding him somehow.

“I’m worth someone liking me like that. I deserve that.” Some of your resolve was slipping at Nick’s expression, but you still managed to choke out a self-defense.

“I know that. You think I don’t know that?!” A tear slid down Nick’s cheek.

“You don’t get to cry, Nick. You’re the one insulting me.”

Another tear fell down Nick’s perfect face, splotchy and red, but still perfect. “I don’t get to cry when my boyfriend seems to be trying to break up with me by accusing me of not liking him and talking about another guy asking him out?”

“Wh–what?”

“I’m gonna cry over that, baby.” Nick’s voice was thick, his face now covered in a steady stream of tears. “I’m gonna cry over you breaking my heart.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“You have a boyfriend?” Since when did Nick have a boyfriend?

“Apparently I don’t anymore.” Nick’s voice caught at the end, a sob escaping his mouth.

“I— I’m your boyfriend?” Were you an idiot? Had you been dating Nick this whole time? You reached out to grab Nick’s face, wiping tears with the pads of your thumbs. “Nick. I am genuinely asking you: am I your boyfriend?”

Nick gaped at you. “I— yes? I thought so.”

You floundered for a moment, surveying Nick’s face for any sign of insincerity. Instead, all you found was wide-eyed hope. In lieu of any verbal response, you pulled Nick’s face to your own, kissing him with all you had, all the twisted aches in your stomach, all the blind hopes in your heart. You guided Nick back down, settling on top of him as your kiss deepened. The only thing you could think was NickNickNick.

“Mm.” Nick lightly pushed you back, separating your lips so he could talk. “You really didn’t know?”

“You never said anything. I don’t even know if you liked me like that, I thought we were just… hooking up.”

Nick stroked a thumb over your bottom lip, blowing a soft breath of laughter out of his nose. “Baby, I’m almost embarrassingly in love with you.”

“I didn’t know. You never… I didn’t know.”

“I guess I could have been clearer. But I thought when we started actually going on dates…” Nick trailed off, cheeks flushing.

You groaned and dropped your forehead to his chest. “You know damn well people now go on dates and have sex casually. How was I supposed to know we were serious? I thought we were friends who hung out all the time and then had sex.”

“Yeah, my love, that’s what dating is.” A beautiful laugh bubbled out of Nick, a bit watery from his crying, but still so lovely and bright.

“Okay, well, that makes it a lot easier to turn Curtis down.”

“I may not like that he went after my boyfriend, but without him, you may have just assumed we were platonic best friends who kiss for the rest of our lives. Our grandchildren gather round to hear our love story and you’re like ‘he’s just my friend, he doesn’t like me like that.’”

You raised your head and grinned wickedly. “Grandchildren?”

Nick smiled back, soft and glowing. “Oh yeah, we’re ride or die besties. May as well go in on one headstone, purely for financial purposes. And one last name too. Again, for financial purposes.”

“You proposing?” Just joking about it made your stomach do several backflips.

“Nah, not yet. We have to at least buy our own house first.”

You chuckled. “Hey.”

“Hm?”

“I’m embarrassingly in love with you too.”

You settled back onto Nick’s chest, resuming your skimming of his stomach, listening intently to Nick’s heart race. Despite having been in this exact position ten minutes prior, you felt lighter now, none of the trepidation and insecurity remaining.

Nick wanted you — loved you — as so much more than a friend with benefits, and you had never been happier.

[animalsalvationassociation]

who was behind that assassin?

[ DO NOT REPOST, ALL ART & CONCEPTS WERE MADE BY ME ]

Illustration Time: 7hrs 29min

Notes:

*shrug*

Reporter: " What are you wearing tonight Emma? "

Emma: " . . . blood?? "

(I love that my boy Jim is just chillin’ in the background. Ya’ll haven’t even met him yet and he’s already making headlines I can just see it now, “Breaking News! Beautiful beautiful boy just revealed his beautiful face and now everyone’s gonna be talkin’ about him!”. This was literally the first time I’ve drawn him, it does not do him justice. Just a little baby sittin’ next to the chess board! I made sure it was zoomed out because idk chess! Haha lol, okay I’ll stop.)

Referenced Post

—

Ask #2:

I had to do two, it was too good of an opportunity! This won’t always happen—but can you blame me?? I needed some funnies after drawing such a serious scene!

Illustration Time: 2hrs 40min

( @kuri-kushmia I had to text this one to my lil bro because I couldn’t stop laughing. Every time I saw him I would not shut up about it, thank you for blessing me this day. He is so annoyed with me. )

I also want to add if you’ve ever seen Creature Cases, there’s an episode where Director Scratch dissapears and Sam and Kit have to work together to figure out where she went. I’m just saying the woman is a ninja, she’d be one step ahead of any kidnapper who TRIED.

Emma is also the kind of woman that will absolutely get you kidnapped, but its okay because she’s also the woman to get you out of it . . . Can you tell this has happened several times before? If her friends aren’t sick of her, then her team DEFINITELY is! (lol)

(I will apologize now, I’m still figuring out how to simplify Emma’s colors. Because, if you don’t know, Emma is a Maned Wolf and they have such pretty shades of red and brown in their coats! I just wanna add ‘em all! One day I’ll solidify her markings so it isn’t so off. I’m not good at colors okay??? Even my Kindergarten teacher knew I didn’t like them!!! My mom had to ask her if it was okay for me NOT to do the coloring part of the homework because I thought it was so dumb! This is WHY I’m a default sketch artist! Pencils don’t have color! I HATE color theory!!! GAHHHHHH!!!!)

Thank you to @kuri-kushmia and @chaosblixer for their asks! I had a lot of fun!!!

[ This is a Octonauts AU, in no way is this canon to the OG storyline. ]

[burberrycanary]

Hi there! I am about midway through reading your story Lost Vocabularies and it is amazing!! The whole series has been so lovely, I’m obsessed with the way you write! The way that you convey the boys complicated emotions and capture all the little nuances of their dynamic has me feral!! Beyond even them the way you inject so much personality into the locations is so good, I feel like I am there!! So thank you for writing this lovely story 💕 I was wondering if you happen to have a list of all the books that Bucky and Steve read? I have been looking up a lot of them and adding them to my to read list bc they sound so interesting lol! On that same note, how did you decide what books to mention? Are they all ones that you have read or did you do research to find ones you thought they would like?

I’ve been coming back and rereading this kind and wonderful comment in my inbox over the last few weeks when way too many massive, stressful, time-sensitive things were all happening at once. 💕 But since I have a little breather between crazy periods, I get to dive in here as a treat.

Lost Vocabularies involved a lot of research, which I hope isn’t apparent because I didn’t want there to be any noticeable difference between the parts of the story that are based on places I’d been, foods I’d tried and books I’d read personally—and what was created purely based on research. Fingers crossed that the seams don't show!

In this series, we see both Steve and Bucky use art to process—helping them understand themselves and connect to the world again. Bucky is drawn to stories while Steve as an artist is much more visual, but the underlying impulse is similar. In the same way that you learn a lot by glancing through someone’s bookshelves, what characters read is interesting to me, and revealing. This version of Bucky is a very private person so these books offer a glimpse into his inner life. And as the POV character we get to experience all these things alongside Steve.

I’m not much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader so some of Bucky’s picks were a real challenge for me. But I wanted these to be grounded in the characters and the storytelling functions, not based on my own taste and opinions, though of course those always bleed through. 

Steve’s Reading List

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Bucky’s Reading List

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve included some notes and commentary on why I picked each of these works under the cut.

The Same River, Twice (The Man Is Still Left with His Hands)

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Classic post-WWII dystopian sci-fi that focuses on society collapsing after a series of catastrophes that were unintentional but very much caused by people, which leads to a lot of the population becoming blind. Thematically this work engages with the loss of identity that people, both abled and disabled, face in the process of survival and a dark look at what happens after societies break down. How this applies to Bucky is obvious, but part of the argument of this post-Endgame series is that it applies to Steve, too. 

Also, there are huge mobile carnivorous plants. 

Fun fact: the opening of this novel is said to have been the inspiration for 28 Days Later!

Still Left with the River (The Paradox of Motion)

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

Alice Neel’s portraits are extraordinary, almost unnervingly vivid. In this story, Steve is familiar with her work as a fellow New York-based artist active in communist circles in the 1930s. She also worked for the WPA, producing wonderful street scenes that documented New York neighborhoods of the era. 

To be honest, I have so many questions about what Steve was up to in the late 1930s before his war mania of the 40s hits.

One of the core themes of this series is Steve struggling with what his body is for if it’s no longer for violence. Who is he if he’s not a soldier? What is his radically changed body if it’s not a weapon? How do you come home from the war?

In this regard, Steve and Bucky have all kinds of shared life experience.

So thematically I include Neel because of her startling gift for capturing personalities and bodies through a process of frank, earnest, truthful observation of the integrated completeness of body and self: this space that’s you. 

But a book of Alice Neel’s work with her sensitive portraits and fleshy frank nudes pulls him into flipping through page after page of these personalities and bodies, not idealized: seen.

Steve isn’t ready for that when he bumps into this big “impractical” art book in a holdover Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn, not when he’s still so shook up and adrift. But he will be.

There’s such empathy and radical humanism to her pieces. “People,” as she famously said, “come first.” I stand by the conclusion that Steve would love her work.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was relatively unknown in his lifetime—he died in 1937—but his stories were published in popular fantasy pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, which is where Bucky would have come across his work. The fact that Steve recognizes Lovecraft by name means that teenage Bucky must have talked about what he was reading and the pulp stories he liked with teenage Steve, which is adorable—“this Lovecraft fellow, Steve, you wouldn’t believe the stuff he comes up with.” And Steve was paying attention enough to remember two decades and change later without the benefit of his serum-enhanced memory, which hurts my heart a little in the best possible way. 

That’s how Steve all these years and decades later is able to wordlessly toss this collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories at Bucky on a hot hazy stumbled-upon beach in northern Florida and watch Bucky’s whole face light up. 

And of course Bucky would view Lovecraft as a great beach read 😂

But this is the basis for something I’ve written into this series: Bucky excitedly sharing things he finds interesting with Steve—wanting to tell Steve first, Steve most. And although Steve is quiet, stoical and very self-contained, he’s paying a whole hell of a lot of attention.

Given that Bucky is canonically a Tolkien fan, I think the imaginativeness and ranging scope of Lovecraft’s complex, often interconnected stories would appeal to him. And, thematically, Lovecraft is distinctive for the era for having characters psychologically fragment when confronting these vast inhuman others. 

“The Call of Cthulhu” opens with:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Steve and Bucky have each voyaged out a long way.

Trauma, in a way, is a form of terrible knowledge. You can heal but you can’t unknow things. 

Not Language but a Map (The Grammar of Sensation)

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

This is the first book in the series that we see Bucky pick for himself. And, wow, he picks a doozy with themes of multiple and unstable identities, invasive surveillance, manipulation, psychosis, and how individuals can get chewed up by larger systems, falling through the cracks of society. Dick was writing based on his own troubled experiences with southern California drug culture of the early 70s, but this work gets at much more fundamental darknesses that I think would speak to some of the horrors Bucky has gone through and won’t talk about, not even with Steve. 

Within the first few pages, we get this:

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

Eggleston was an early pioneer in color photography and that fascination with color is very apparent in his work. I think this focus would grab Steve as an artist who doesn’t take seeing the full spectrum of color for granted. Even in the MCU’s thin action-film scripts, Steve comments on things that offend his aesthetic sensibilities even when that has absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand, from Stark Tower to Lang’s van.

Not even a world-ending crisis can keep Steve from going, wow, no, that’s ugly. I enjoyed running with that 😂

Steve’s view of Eggleston’s photographs shifts over the course of the series, reflecting what he’s feeling, from the fragmented and disconnected detachment—“isolated and off-kilter”— that he sees in them at the beginning that shifts to the passionate engagement in the world he finds in them later. 

Steve looks through the whole book of William Eggleston’s photographs again and at first the colors still roll over him like the shockwave of a distant explosion, all he can focus on. But gradually the subjects and compositions pull forward, too: monumentalized images of the everyday that at first seem neutral, the work of a detached observer. But the off-center framing of ordinary life is so deliberate as though everything might be important and where every detail deserves attention—that’s nothing like neutral. That’s not detached at all. You have to care a whole hell of a lot.

This mirrors the journey this post-Endgame Steve goes on. Because Steve Rogers should be a character who cares a whole hell of a lot, not what the MCU writers eventually reduced him to. And that’s what this fix-it is trying to fix. 

Lost Vocabularies that Might Express (The Memory of These Broken Impressions)

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

I love writing Bucky as a big fucking science nerd. His last night in New York and how does he want to spend the time? At a science fair with his best friend and a couple of pretty girls. So Bucky reading about quantum electrodynamics is delightful to me. The thing is, though, Bucky is a bright enough guy with a high school education. He’s not a genius—and the MCU is lousy with geniuses. But if Bucky wanted to learn a little more about all this quantum stuff he heard about in passing during some vague and very improbable sounding explanations, which by the way also allowed one of the few people still living who truly matters to him and the closest thing Bucky had left to family to fuck off to the past, well, Feynman’s QED isn’t a bad place to start in understanding some of this quantum stuff, at least. 

Feynman here is very much writing for a popular audience. His writing is conversational—the book is adapted from a set of lectures he gave—and his voice is witty, casual and surprisingly light, but at the same time Feynman is deeply invested in helping lay people understand quantum mechanics. The book opens with:

Alix Mautner was very curious about physics and often asked me to explain things to her. I would do all right, just as I do with a group of students at Caltech that come to me for an hour on Thursdays, but eventually I’d fail at what is to me the most interesting part: We would always get hung up on the crazy ideas of quantum mechanics. I told her I couldn’t explain these ideas in an hour or an evening—it would take a long time—but I promised her that someday I’d prepare a set of lectures on the subject.

I prepared some lectures, and I went to New Zealand to try them out—because New Zealand is far enough away that if they weren’t successful, it would be all right! Well, the people in New Zealand thought they were okay, so I guess they’re okay—at least for New Zealand! So here are the lectures I really prepared for Alix, but unfortunately I can’t tell them to her directly, now.

C’mon! Tell me Bucky Barnes would not be hooked by this opening. 

Thematically, and more seriously, the question of how could Steve do this? has two very different meanings. So far in this series Bucky isn’t ready to confront the harder version of that question which comes potentially with some very painful answers: how could Steve make that choice? Nope, he’s not ready for that. Instead, his brain unconsciously takes the easier way out: trying to understand quantum electrodynamics. 😂😭

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Bucky must have liked A Scanner Darkly, because he went for another Philip K. Dick novel. Today remembered mostly as the source material for Blade Runner, this bleak dystopian novel is set in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. The work has themes around empathy—who feels empathy and for what?—materialism and what really makes us human. 

I find it interesting how Sebastian Stan talks about The Winter Soldier in terms of someone who has undergone a process of total desensitization, which to varying degrees is deliberately part of the training of all soldiers. But rebuilding his core sense of empathy was one of the things Bucky chose to do as soon as he had any agency in that two-year period where he was on the run, which is remarkable. As a person who has been treated as though he wasn’t human and had his empathy forcibly stripped from him, I think Bucky would have a lot of complicated feelings about the enslaved androids who escape but are ruthlessly tracked down and killed. Some of these escaped androids are dangerous and do lack basic empathy—shown in the book by torturing and mutilating an animal—while other androids seem like ordinary people just trying to live their lives. 

I like that Bucky talks about the book with Steve later in the story, returning in my view to a very old habit of bookworm Bucky wanting to share what he’d been reading with Steve <333

“I need to find something to read next,” Bucky says after wrapping up his description of an imagined religion that involved plugging into a box to virtually suffer the existence of a man forever walking up a steep hill while struck by crashing stones. 

“Well, did the androids dream of electric sheep?” Steve asks.

“Who knows?” Bucky knocks into him gently as he takes the bowl Steve passes over. “They just wanted to be free. Though the free people just wanted to own stuff or plug into a box and suffer. So, you know, sort of a grim outlook. ”

“A little light, cheerful reading.”

“Hey, we live in a world where people write ‘Take back what’s yours’ in the streets and then smash up the windows. Dystopias don’t seem so far off the mark.”

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Another case of Bucky sticking with an author he likes! To me, this implies that Bucky has already read Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces, which explains some of the foundational basics of physics for a very broad and non-technical audience. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is also drawn from Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics, focusing here on relativity and space-time, but this work assumes a greater knowledge of math, hence the name. But as a legendary sniper Bucky must have a strong aptitude for math and anyway I just leaned into making Bucky an all-around nerd, because Bucky Barnes, nerd who grew up hot, is delightful to me. 

Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time are all on point for a post-Endgame fix-it, which I think should count as a not-so-easy piece in its own right. 

Throughout the series, we see Bucky using physical copies when he reads fiction, more or less from unconscious nostalgia: connecting back to memories of his younger self who was an avid reader of pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks. Once Steve gets him going with that first quietly tossed-over gift, Bucky always carries around a sci-fi or fantasy book in this series despite the limited space in his backpack. And this familiarity wouldn’t just be from his pre-war life since I figure Bucky would have gone for the Armed Services Editions that were distributed for free to soldiers. Bucky likely traded with other soldiers once he finished a book if he couldn’t get a new ASE distribution: trading in his finished novel for a new one is Bucky unconsciously falling back into another old habit.

But for non-fiction, Bucky is absolutely here for the Modern Marvel of being able to carry around as many books as he likes on his phone. I figure Bucky would have used public libraries during certain stages of his recovery when he was homeless and migratory since they are a place to get information that is consistently available in cities; and a warm, quiet place you can go with a minimal number of security cameras. I headcanon a middle-aged librarian who has a few streaks of gray in her dark hair—and who reminds Bucky of someone but he has no idea who—explaining what e-books are to this tall, gaunt, soft-spoken homeless guy with an eye contact problem. And this person who isn’t the Asset anymore and isn’t Bucky Barnes yet has the out-of-nowhere thought: huh, whaddaya know. That’s pretty neat.

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering by Steven H. Strogatz

Isolated systems tend to evolve towards a single equilibrium and these equilibrium points have been the focus of many-body research for centuries. But life is generally not that simple because most systems aren’t isolated. Often the dynamics of a system result from the product of multiple different interacting forces and objects in these systems can change between multiple different attractor wells over time. Or as Strogatz puts it:

As we’ve mentioned earlier, most nonlinear systems are impossible to solve analytically. Why are nonlinear systems so much harder to analyze than linear ones? The essential difference is that linear systems can be broken down into parts. Then each part can be solved separately and finally recombined to get the answer. This idea allows a fantastic simplification of complex problems, and underlies such methods as normal modes, Laplace transforms, superposition arguments, and Fourier analysis. In this sense, a linear system is precisely equal to the sum of its parts.

But many things in nature don’t act this way. Whenever parts of a system interfere, or cooperate, or compete, there are nonlinear interactions going on. Most of everyday life is nonlinear, and the principle of superposition fails spectacularly. 

You can think of nonlinear dynamics as situations in which the sum of the parts is insufficient to understand the whole. This connects to multiple themes in this story as Bucky and Steve try to understand themselves, their lives and each other. But here Bucky is also just continuing to live his best life as a nerd with a strong intuitive knack for math, a high school education, an internet connection and a growing collection of science e-books. Or as Bucky puts it:

“It’s nice, though, like this smart guy is just talking to you but doesn’t assume you’re dumb because of what you don’t know.”

It’s touched on only very lightly in the series so far, but Bucky has a lot of complex feelings about higher education that relate to class, indirectly to sexuality, and go back to the experience of being the son of upwardly mobile working-class immigrants who were very bought-in on a traditional take on the American Dream.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I picked this partly because I thought the title would grab Bucky, who has been a stranger in a strange land several times over. Thematically this midcentury sci-fi novel focuses on challenging social norms through having the main character, a human who’d been raised by Martians on Mars, come back to Earth as an adult. A best-seller in its day that was controversial for its rejection of Christianity, monogamy and the nuclear family, the work is very tied to the looming cultural changes of the 60s and 70s. 

The novel’s critical reputation has been steadily in decline for decades, but I think Bucky would find it interesting since he grew up within the traditional early 20th-century culture this novel satirizes and challenges—mores that this story’s version of Bucky didn’t unquestioningly accept but didn’t openly challenge, either.

Having Bucky pick this novel reflects the themes for the last act of this story that focus more on Steve and Bucky's different experiences as closeted queer men growing up in a deeply homophobic society. These experiences continue to shape and impact them and yet are also a past these two are coming to terms with and growing beyond. 

Fun fact: this novel coined the word “grok.”

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Of all the books featured in this series, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is my top recommendation. This is an accessible, well-written history of a topic that haunts American history: immigration. The specific focus is the waves of legislation passed in the first half of the 20th century that tried—and often succeeded—in limiting who could legally immigrate based on the racial and ethnic hierarchies that equally haunt American history, right down to the foundation. 

In this series, I wanted to pick up the themes of social justice and immigration that were so vaguely and incoherently included in TFATWS. These themes are inherent in the Snap and Return plotline except that Disney does not want to touch any of these politics with a ten-foot pole. But I remain fascinated by trying to wrap my mind around what it would mean for half the population to vanish and then return five years later, catastrophically in both cases. It’s a huge, intricate, sticky, difficult world-building problem that’s inescapably political. 

Steve isn’t quite ready to dive into facing or helping to fix the problems of the post-Return world that his actions helped to create. But here we get to see Steve’s burned-out passion and conviction slowly rekindle as he reads about the complicated and often ugly history of American immigration—and he gets mad about it. Of course, he gets mad about it! This is my answer to the ludicrous idea that Steve Rogers could quietly sit out the second half of the twentieth century. 

At the same time, I can have compassion for Steve knowing he can’t keep going but not knowing how to help himself, only to be given the cursed monkey’s paw of time travel. And he fucks up. His actions have real and lasting consequences. But that doesn’t make the situation hopeless or mean Steve can’t try to repair the relationships he damaged or work to regain the trust he lost, assuming he’s lucky enough to be given another chance by people who love him but have been hurt by his choices.

One of the greatest challenges in writing this Endgame fix-it was accepting Endgame as the starting point of the story and trying to reconcile a character I love with the choices canon has him make. Over the course of these stories, the central point isn’t Steve coming back to Bucky. It’s Steve coming back to himself. Through a slow and painful struggle, Steve finds himself again—rediscovering his stubborn endurance, his compassion for others and his drive to set wrongs right. Steve stumbled, badly, but he gets back up. Because that’s who Steve Rogers is. 

And because of who Bucky Barnes is—his innate kindness, his warm-hearted generosity and his stubborn loyalty that isn’t blind but runs deep—that’s how these two characters come back to each other, after everything.

Deliberately, this series is the first hard-fought and hopeful glimmer in a long trudging process that can get so heavy to carry forward, day after day, but is shot through with moments of beauty and joy all the same. 

I can't go on; I'll go on.

In other words, to quote one of my favorite poets: what the living do.

[dailymothanon]

omg i love ur art 🥺 have u ever drawn indiana? if not that’s fine, i just wish the midwest would get more love lol!! hoosier myself and have been exclusively fed by the crumbs of Indiana/midwest in general we get in some of the videos!! love the art keep it up ❤️❤️

I’ve been wanting to design Indiana for some time!! This one is likely to change because there’s simply something off, unless y’all really like it 🤔 I took inspiration from the native people of Indiana; did yknow thats where Garfield was made/takes place?? That’s so so baller. My girlfriend thinks he could be a train conductor cuz of the state motto, so that’s awesome sauce B)

His son boy… garden field… gougedflour… garage flayed… loves him so much. I like to think Indiana loves Garfield so much, baggy clothed king

Btw any of y’all have any Indiana design suggestions/hcs I’d love to hear cuz I know basically nothing about Indiana and I wanna work on him

Juneau is the least fan ever for words first thing in the morning.. absolutely agitates them, makes their head hurt 😠 Augusta has certainly tried gesturing and miming (very… not the best at it) to not ruffle Juneau, & Juneau probably has quite the record for grinding their teeth to not scream or hold back frustration (especially cuz of those many little rituals).

Also maybe there’s a little bit of selective mutism in Juneau. Because im clearly not projecting and I obviously have no personal experience with that 😼

Augusta part came from @crazedstoryteller and I’ve been thinking about it for awhile cuz. Cuz. Yeah. They should go camping together, it’ll be horrible

[solarwynd]

Wasn't it the comapny that gave the TXT guy (yeonjun hope that's right name) cause i remember watching a clip where he was like "I'll do my best to make the title worth" or something like that. Idk if the "IT boy" title existed before jm in kpop but what i know is he made that title relevant in kpop, he made it big and literally no one (as far now) in kpop can outdo him or even reflect half of his talents and success so the 4th gen fans fighting for IT boy for their fav is funny cause at their age jimin wasn't just getting hit tweets from stan twitter but he was making it so big that his name is the first thing that ppl remembers when they hear kpop, he's with his music since his first solo, he's got streams, big numbers, sales, recognition, brands behind him, style, artistry, like there wasn't single thing left that he wasn't rulling with so it's funny if they think their favs can have that title because they got some hit tweets on twitter cause where is everything else that jm got?? Where is the reflection of that? No where so either show it your fav getting those or shut up with that title. Nothing against any of the 4th gen idols by the way it's their fans I'm talking about. Also hybe does try to push the guy alot, they do give him alot of "spotlight" and they do want to portray him as something similar to jm but it's sadly it's not happening anywhere. Neither in perfomances nor anywhere else.

Now it's pathetic how KTHs try so hard to steal ant title they can for TH cause they kinda know he's got no relevant titles. See call me an anti or whatever but this is me being a very unbiased person but for me taehyung is the most overrated idol cause he literally is not offering anything given his status. It's only because he's good that ppl love him (same case as enwoo) cases he's neither got the voice or singing, nor the dance or perfomce, and don't get me started with his personality cause kwgsisjskshsksjskdbsjsm still can't get what "unique" the fans and members see in him. Idk maybe because he's rebellious kinda guy so they find it attractive or what but for me he's childish, immature, and a irresponsible person at many occasions so yeah. KTHs be call him main-lead dancer, lead vocalists, perfomer, IT boy (they literally have it in thier @ as if they don't know who the fandom calls it with). KTHs is nothing but stealing titles and flex the followers that reflects nowhere in his artistry cause imagine friends being his first song that surpassed 100k then 300k sales in US, having those streams, Jimin outdoing him every single time with his sales and streams whie they be flexing some magzine sales like i really find it pathetic that you got nothing to flex about his artistry so you're flexing him as some model lol

“4th gen fans fighting for IT boy for their fav is funny cause at their age jimin wasn't just getting hit tweets from stan twitter but he was making it so big that his name is the first thing that ppl remembers when they hear kpop, he's with his music since his first solo, he's got streams, big numbers, sales, recognition, brands behind him, style, artistry, like there wasn't single thing left that he wasn't rulling”

.🎯

Wouldn’t even call th “overrated” because people are very honest about exactly what his main appeal is, and that’s physicality. He’s more over praised because people have concocted that everything else he puts out somehow matches the level of his attractiveness. Which is what I’ve said before about him getting away with a lot of mediocrity because of it. No one really reveres his music because there’s nothing special or memorable about it. Some will throw in his personality like you said but it’s 👎🏾 to me. Most armys are drawn to him because he’s aloof and it makes him desirable in their eyes, but he just comes off as real pretentious and snobby.

[wayfayrr]

I first have to say that since I’ve only played Botw, some of totk, and maybe half of twilight, idk the other Links except for how people write them in fanfics and LU, so if my reason for each one doesn’t make sense, sorry!

1. Twilight - calm country boy but won’t accept being taken advantage of, also deeply cares about his friends and family (of the Links, he reminds me most of one of my best friends)

2. Four - also calm, logical, in fanfics is usually the only one holding the group’s singular brain cell lol (I’m a very logical person as opposed to emotional)

3. Sky - mother of the group, very sweet and loving (reminds me of my other best friend, but both Sky and my best friend can be a little too serious bc of this trait, I like to make jokes and mess around sometimes)

4. Tears - I think he’s a little less chaotic than Wild, I say a LITTLE lol, but idk, he can drive things so that’d help with traveling because I don’t like walking too much, but seeing scenery while flying would be pretty cool

5. Hyrule - most of the fanfics portray him as a very shy timid follower, and while I don’t want someone to dominate me in r relationship, I also don’t want to dominate, I need to have someone who can take charge but doesn’t boss me around

6. Wild - kinda already explained this one, ik he also has horses we could ride but still

7. Legend - his sense of humor being sarcasm is the same as me, I love sarcasm, I once said to someone “my sarcasm makes up for the whole population”, but while r senses of humor would be the same, I can’t see us working that well in a relationship, his abrasiveness is a lot and I’d rather have someone who’s softer and can cuddle with me w/o having to pretend it’s the worst thing ever bc eww feelings

8. Warriors - ik he has a soft side but his very flirtatious and arrogant personality would absolutely clash w me, it would turn me off immediately

Time and Wind excluded bc of age

If u want/have the time, I’d love to hear ur reasons for each one!

🐰

sorry I didn't put up the reasons on the og post, I kinda completely missed that bit 😅 but yeah there are reasons for why I've ranked them as such

1 - sky (literally no matter what au) He's insanely caring about people that he's close to, but can also be pretty snarky and rude. He and I have pretty similar senses of humor plus he's really loyal and honest to people he wants to keep close. (also I see him the most as being ace and even if I hc the others as such it just fits him the best IMO and idk if I would want to date any more allos after my experiences fbvsbfbvs)

2 - Twilight soft! country! boy!!!!! He's loyal to a T and is just so warm cuddly and oh I do love him so - I think he'd be number one for compatibility if it wasn't for my fear of dogs lmao

3 - tears I mean, besides him being like wild but more interested in technology and with more ability to cook? also I wanna help him dye his hair because that would be so fun :3

4 - wild I often get told that I'm him irl (personality and action-wise), so I hope that'd translate into us getting along? I like being outdoors and we could probably bond over eating rocks tbh

5 - hyrule soft fae boyyyyyyy, he's so sweet but I don't think I could move around as much as he does, he's none stop compared to wild.

6 - warriors So, this is more for canon and how other people see him rather than my own hcs (my hcs actually bumping him up from dead last surprisingly) he's usually shown as a playboy and knowing people in most places he goes while flirting with people to get things for reduced prices and I have pretty bad trust issues! I would wouldn't want to date him if he was showing interest in others while with me <3 also his arrogance would make me shutdown and not interact with him sdvsf

7 - four So while I don't mind being with someone shorter than me, I would like to be with someone a close height to mine whether that be a bit shorter or taller. the line is drawn when he barely makes it to my elbow when we're both standing. Plus I think our personalities simply match better to be friends rather than romantically, I could see myself being good friends with him - just no romance

8 - legend Idk I just don't think I would ever want to date him tbh, I see him as more compatible with a friend of mine and that's partly why too - I wouldn't want to nab him from her <3

[flowersbane]

Can you give us some headcanons about what kind of person Joshua would fall in love with? What character traits does the person have to have, what would he like less?

oooh, i actually haven’t really thought about this one too much before this request so i’d love to hear what other people think of this as well!

also, disclaimer: i definitely think two people can fall in love regardless of a lot of things, they just have to respect one another, communicate, and commit to working through things together. so if your vision for this answer is completely different from mine, that’s awesome!! it has its own merit! i’m not saying this is the end-all of answers, this is just what came to mind when asked this question :)

okay, enough rambling, here’s my answer:

they have to get along with the people in his life. ideally, his partner would love them as much as he does. i really can’t see him falling for someone who doesn’t get along with his brother, jill, jote, torgal, etc.

i really think he’d be attracted to people who hold/display qualities that he can admire. whether it be bravery, devotion, wisdom, honor, or anything of the sort, i think he’s very drawn to people who he can admire.

personally, i think it’s really cute when he’s with someone who can banter with him. a little teasing, a little back and forth, etc.

oooo, and i can just imagine it when they first meet. he’s so used to people being formal with him that when they meet for the first time, he’d be totally thrown off by someone who teases/banters/openly refutes him right off the bat. he’d be shocked. but he’d also kinda love it??? okay, sorry, feel like i’m going off on a tangent, lol. anywaysssss…

i definitely see him as someone who should be with a partner that’s a little more mature than him. not necessarily that they’re older, but that they’re more mature. someone who will make sure he takes his medicine and tries their darndest to get him to eat his veggies.

yeah, this boy definitely needs someone who will scold him when he isn’t taking care of himself.

that being said, i do also see him as someone who would prefer to be the “protector” over the “protectee” in a relationship. his s/o might be the caretaker, but i don’t think he’d enjoy having someone who insists on fighting his battles for him. if anything, he wouldn’t mind if they’re fighting side by side, but i also just think he’d like being the one to protect someone (for once, lol).

as for physical appearances… hmmm…

i don’t think he would be too picky. i think he would have favorite attributes of any person he was interested in, but i don’t see him as someone with set preferences.

instead, it would be something personal. if the person he’s interested in has a great smile, that becomes his favorite thing about them. great eyes, then that. great hair, then that. etc. etc.

hmm, i think that’s all i’ve got for now. if anyone has any other questions, maybe if they’re curious about anything more specific or another character or anything like that, i’d love if you shot a question my way!

thanks for your request, anon! i hope my answer was sufficient.（＾ω＾）

[chimkin-samich]

Honestly, what started your interest with these specific game characters? (Btw, I don't know if this has been asked before or not since I'm quite new to you and your comics! Amazing work btw.)

Also what peeked your guy's drawing and writing interests? It would be interesting to know how you guys got to this point. 😁

(It's also creepy how the ask thing is just like: "Go ahead, put anything." XD)

It has not actually been asked before! Your the first, so for anyone who’s interested in some Feral and Sly lore well feel free to click the read more since it’s kinda long lol

For the interest in Sun/Moon/Eclipse, Feral was honestly the first one to get drawn in, she has been a long time fan of fnaf, likes to brag about how good she was at the first few games (she is I’ve seen it lol) so her getting interested in SB was obvious, she especially like this one for it highly interactive gameplay

I on the other hand knew of fnaf but I was never in the fandoms or played any games, anything I knew about the games was either seen while scrolling thru tumblr or my little brother blasting a gameplay in our room and I didn’t mind listening in if it was YouTuber I liked as well

Feral got a bit interested in the boys after reading a few fics around last year June, she tried to catch my attention but I didn’t really bite at the time, it was around August were she caught my attention when she first drew them, saying they reminded her of me, even drew Sun with chipped rays as a little call to my SH scars but it kinda dropped off since we were in the midst of fighting with the system to let us get married lol

Around December it really kicked in for her and then me, I started delving into reading fics and searching for fan art and was like “oh shit das me” and feral ran with it saying let’s do self insert shit and I was totally down for it, it wasn’t the first time we did something we’re she put herself in and I was a character that I related to heavily

From there we started planning the storyline but decided to do little meant to be yours animatic to kick off some attention towards our stuff lol

As for what got us interested into writing and drawing? Honestly the answer is the same for both of us, we started drawing young them jumped into writing for our own little stories and ideas, we’ve both always been artistic from a young age and when we met it was one of the first things we bonded over, oh and I do also have a passion for singing as well! Which also caught her attention I used to send her audios all the time or sing on call for her

Just something about being able not only to write your own stories but create visual pieces really helps when you have extremely hyperactive minds and imagination, sometimes we yell at each other cuz someone says something cursed and cuz of how we can perfectly see the image in our mind it makes the cursed thought so much worse 😭

But yeah that’s pretty much it! Love of creativity and such started our art and writing passion and that led to us wanting to create our stuff now here with the lovely robo boys, we do have our projects of course, Feral plans on making a comic/book (2 in one kinda thing) that’s gonna be a trilogy and I have my own OC’s that I still world build with

Not to mention all our world building with OCs weve plan on making into story’s as well in the future ✨

[autisticempathydaemon]

Busybee my dear, hello from a fellow queer trans asain! i would love a matchup if its not too much trouble for you :3c

What song are you currently fixated on?

Oh my god, my friends and I have recently started making monthly playlists and it’s one of my favourite things to do; just curate a playlist over the course of a month!! currently its a load of fnaf living tombstone music BUT I’ve also been obsessed with The Distance by Cake? As a drummer, i absolutely adore the bass of this song!! Or Super Bon Bon by Soul Coughing has also some absolutely amazing drums!! Apart from that, I’m generally in love with everything Crane Wives BUT particularly for this month, the song Back to the Ground is so delicious!!I would put my fave lyrics but then i might have to transcribe the whole song lol. Just- the entire vibe and meaning of the song is so good (like most every crane wives song ill be honest)

Enneagram type?

Oof oh i havent done thay quiz in a hot minute but last i checked i was a 9w1 which definitely speaks to my lazy ass lol. I’m also an INFP?? I’m also a huge DND nerd so I have taken the alignment quiz and im chaotic good id that helps in any way HAHAH!!!

favourite Redacted audio?

100% the whole of avior and starlights playlist. absolutely devastating. i had to pause the playlist several times and lie down for a minute because i was so absolutely insane abt them. i love them so deeply. I’m definitely more drawn to the more plot heavy characters and arcs as compared to like ashers or davids which is more like cute couple moments (not that they dont have plot but its like. ashers playlist vs marcus’s ykyk) but that being said my favourite video of all time is probably elliots HBS video!! He is my favourite boy i will not lie i am so utterly obsessed with him and i would absolutely write pages upon pages abt why i love him and why his character is so my favourite for the ever.

fave platonic boy?

ASHER !! OR GUY!! I love silly dudes and they are peak silly boys. honestly i could see myself being best buds with Guy because we’re both so dirty minded and very clingy silly?? but there are also aspects where i would balance him out, like while i do love being chaotic i also understand the importance of just stfu and being silent every once in a while so i thunk there wld be times where there ARE shenanigans but also times where hes rambling my ears off and i can just sit. and listen. And I do love the hc that Guy plays DND and now i can absolutely imagine us playing dnd together OR binging dnd playthroughs. AND for asher, I feel like i wouldve had a crush on him because hes so like silly but also hes such an absolute sweetheart darling and hes so endearing that u just cant help but love him yk? but it wld be one of those friendship crushes that just means we end up being super close.

what gets the big boy a-snoozin?

anythin thay involved peoples voices. like straight up listenin to people talk absolutely sends me straight to dream land asap!! its kinda specific though like, if its a podcast? I can’t listen to those. the voice quality just sounds different from like a video of someone talking?? to me at least. And i can only fall asleep to videos of people talking (which is lowkey how. i got into boyfriend audios in the first place. amen insomnia). so now i have a sleepin playlist that consists of boyfriend (and girlfriend) audios, video essays about SCP’s and internet drama (shoutout to the right opinion) and also dnd playthroughs!

do u like long form video essays??

I LOVE VIDEO ESSAYS ABOUT SCP’S. i put them on when i cook!! I love ones that just talk abt the SCPs cause some are truly mind boggling and world shattering! I also listen to video essays abt youtuber drama because im not better then that and also a lot of them have quite impressive video editing!

Imaginary friends?

I think as someone who started watching horror movies at a very young age and is also super obsessed with horror movies/books now, i fully believe that if you had a imaginary friend as a child, you’re absolutely cursed and haunted and u need to be exorcised asap. (/j) no my parents were always super realistic with me and told me point blank that santa wasnt real, imaginary friends were only for mentally ill kids, and the only real big guy is the big boy in the sky. so. no imaginary friends BUT i did and still have a teddy bear (very creatively named bear bear) and i used to cry when i lost him.

i think thats it! i hope. thats enoigh haha. oh, some extra stuff abt me! I love cookin food, it’s very fun if not incredibly tiring, plus im perpetually broke, so tryin to cook up my favourite restaurant meals is also fun! I love drinks too (firm believer that every meal NEEDS to have a drink to accompany it) i’m a particularly huge fan of bubble tea (before it was cool ok) i did try to make my own bubble tea but it got really time consuming and not worth it. i love collecting plushies, i have about 10 in my room and yes they absolutely trigger my sinus but its so worth it. i love gamin and one of my first big boy buys was a gamin PC that i used to play Stray, Sims, Minecraft and most recently, FNAF! please pray i save up enough to get BG3. ٩( ᐛ )و

ok now thats really enough! thank you for this!! even if u dont get round to doin a matchup for me, thanks for lettin me ramble abt my interests :3 the questions are actually so fun hehe <333

Oh, I really like you. Not just because you gave me a lot of info to go on but because you and I have so much in common! Us queer, trans, Asian Type Nines have to stick together which is why I’m so pleased to pair you with Lasko.

I know I say this all the time, but it’s the perfect amount of similarities and differences that make a good pair in my opinion. I think your shared love of DnD, your introversion, your queer trans identity (because Lasko is queer and a whole allegory for a trans childhood, bless his heart) would be a great foundation for a solid relationship. Yet, it’s the differences that bring the spark like your love of horror where he would be squeamish or your chaotic good to his lawful.

I have such clear snapshots in my head of what your relationship would be like; if only I were an artist. You remind me of @itsdaifuku’s lovely piece of Dear as a guitarist and Lasko watching, starstruck, from the crowd; that would be you but as the drummer. I also love to imagine the two of you in the kitchen: you cooking, him mindlessly grading papers, an SCP video on, and Lasko looking up aghast when he finally tunes into what you’ve both been listening to.

Song:

I mean she even cooks me pancakes/ And Alka Seltzer when my tummy aches/ If that ain't love then I don't know what love is/ We even got a secret handshake/ And she loves the music that my band makes/ I know I'm young but if I had to choose her or the sun/ I'd be one nocturnal son of a gun

Sorry but not sorry, I’ve projected and given Lasko my elder emo taste in music. It’s cute, it’s iconic, and he’d know all the words- shyly, sheepishly joining in if you start rapping along with it as you cook. I like to imagine 2000’s emo music brings out a silly, karaoke-esque exuberance in Lasko, and then you could be silly together.

Runner-ups:

Milo is one of your runner-ups because (and I know I say this all the time too) it’s so fun to pair that scaredy-wolf with a horror buff. Everything he’s learned about SCPs has been against his will and because he loves you. Hudson is a runner-up because I’m obsessed with pairing musicians with DJ Anxiety; he’d love you and your drumming so much.

note: thank you so much for waiting 💕 I’m glad you had fun!

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

[thefinalboss387]

Okay so I am currently watching through Black Sails for the first time and

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE THEIR PORTRAYAL OF EDWARD “BLACKBEARD” TEACH

Gonna explain why under the cut. And also ask some questions that people who know a lot about pirates and/or are familiar with other great pirate shows/movies can hopefully answer for me!

Before I go any further, I want to preface everything by saying that I just finished season 4, episode 5 today. It’s my first time watching the show (so please don’t spoil anything beyond that episode for me), and so far I can happily say it is one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen. I’m SO impressed with the layers and depth of the story, how literally EVERY action has consequences (even the ones you don’t expect), etc. This show has all the political intrigue and power dynamics of Game of Thrones, without the noticeable decline that show unfortunately had. Season 4 has been AMAZING so far and I don’t expect the next half of the season to disappoint me. I’m genuinely starting to get a little sad that I’m so close to the end, because... NOW WHAT???

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE SHOW UP TO SEASON 4 EPISODE 5

My only real experience with pirate fiction or history at all before this show was really Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan. Even Treasure Island I’m largely unfamiliar with - I remember watching the Muppet version as a kid, I loved Treasure Planet but admittedly haven’t seen it in decades, and I barely remember either version, but yeah. I was recently in a pirate mood after that new Peter Pan movie came out on Disney+, Googled recommendations for a good pirate show, and Black Sails was the top of that list. And BOY am I glad I gave it a shot!!!

In particular, I found myself REALLY drawn to the character of Blackbeard. He showed up pretty late in the story so obviously I have a lot of other favorites as well, but he won me over VERY quickly. I’m at a point in my watch through where Teach is now dead, and unless he keeps coming back in Miranda-style visions (doubtful), I thiiiiink I’ve seen his entire story and am at a place where I can comfortably talk about his character arc?

Honestly, my only complaint is that I wish we saw more of him. He only ultimately shows up for like maybe 10 episodes, but MAN what a presence he brought with him!! As soon as he first showed up in that cabin being confronted by his ex-wife’s angry family, I was excited. He was played by the late RAY STEVENSON!!! I’ve only seen that particular actor in one other role, but he was my favorite Dexter villain BY FAR, so I knew he’d kill the role. I’m also super excited to see him in the upcoming Ahsoka show, but that’s neither here nor there lol. I feel like Teach’s overall lack of screentime hurts his chances of landing himself in my “favorite characters of all time” list, but I need time to digest the show for a bit before I decide on things like that. Because in the limited time we DO get with him, he hits all the right buttons for me!

I know Blackbeard is a super-famous real life pirate, and that he shows up a lot in popular fiction, but the only real knowledge I have of the man is what we saw in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. His portrayal in that movie was.... fine? I didn’t dislike him, but he definitely didn’t impress me either. He was a serviceable villain in a franchise that has had way better and more effective villains.

I work with kids, I serve as a mentor figure to them, and honestly my mission is to be the adult I wished I had in my life when I was a kid. Mentor/mentee, parent/child, “found family” relationships are something I LOVE to explore in fiction. Since I also tend to love villains, a lot of my FAVORITE fictional characters of all time are villains that explore a more toxic, dark side of those mentor relationships.

What I love about this portrayal of Blackbeard, primarily, is his relationship with Charles Vane. Despite how dangerous and arguably toxic both men are, their relationship was surprisingly sweet.

Blackbeard is a SCARY dude, and he very quickly establishes himself and makes it clear that he hates how soft and docile pirate society has become in his absence, and immediately goes about building a crew of hardened badasses that violently prove their worth to him. Yet, everything about his relationship with Vane is empathetic, understanding, and gentle.

Now, obviously, Vane is one of the most hardened and badass characters in the show. It’s easy to see why someone like Blackbeard would take a liking to someone like Vane. He grows to see Vane as a son, and despite the betrayals Vane puts him through, Teach never holds it against him, never lifts a finger to harm him, and even passionately seeks to avenge his death after the fact. His absence for literally half of the show’s run is because Vane betrayed him and exiled him, and in his words, he left because he would’ve had to kill Vane if he stayed.

He reveals, privately, to his lover that he is slowly dying from shrapnel in his chest, and wants to cement a legacy for himself through Vane - a fact that he never actually TELLS Vane or anyone else because he doesn’t want to manipulate or guilt him. Everything about Teach’s motivations revolved around Vane. But even beyond that, he grows something of a mentor-y dynamic with Jack Rackham after Vane’s death, and it’s implied that he took Israel Hands under his wing before Vane. He is entirely driven by his need for a son, even if that son is not biological -- after Vane’s betrayal, he laments that only God makes sons. As someone who also really wants to be a parent, and has a lot of mentor relationships instead, I really relate to that sentiment and feel the heartbreak behind it.

I genuinely love his style. A brilliant tactician, yet so ruthless and violent in a fight. I loved that he would be sword fighting people, only to randomly pull out a gun and shoot his opponents in the face. I loved his death scene and his utter defiance right until the very end. He wasn’t looking to make a statement, or inspire a riot, he just wanted to fuck with his murderer and ruin his moment.

So, I have a question for the pirate enthusiasts out there. How accurate is this version of Teach? Did he have this tendency to take people under his wing and mentor them despite his ferocity? Are there other fictional portrayals of him out there that have that quality to him? Even in Pirates of the Caribbean, he was pretty notable for the relationship he had with Angelica, who may or may not have been his daughter, but how genuine and caring that relationship was is left pretty ambiguous from both sides.

Either way, Black Sails is really sparking my interest in pirates in general! I recently purchased Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on Steam, and plan to play that very soon. I went and downloaded the shows Crossbones and Our Flag Means Death, but haven’t started watching them yet. I downloaded the anime One Piece, but am unsure when/if I want to watch it because holy crap it’s a huge commitment haha. It also occurs to me that I should probably read/watch Treasure Island, but I am fully aware that the pirate characters are two-dimensional villains without any of the complexity or nuance of Black Sails, so that’s disappointing. I know almost nothing about any of those above shows/anime/movies/games though so I’m in for a ride!!

But, my pirate enthusiast friends, another question: Any other great pirate media out there I should go consume?? I already know I’m going to miss this show when it’s over so I’m already starting to look for the next thing to watch to keep myself busy!

[seeminglydark]

i found your blog through that detention au post and binged your whole webcomic and i love it! im fairly new to webcomics and ive been trying to find some supernatural ones to read (one of the first i came across was paranatural, which is also excellent). seemingly dark is exactly the type of story ive been looking for and im so glad i found it! also if you have any recommendations for other webcomics id love to know what they are but thats not the point of this ask lol

Oh gosh thank you! I’m so excited to hear that, I’m really happy that piece brought someone to my comic, thank you for telling me, it means a lot!

Let’s see, Seemingly Dark and of course my other project Mil-Liminal is actually about the two characters in the Detention post (they are in Seemingly Dark too but ML focuses on them) it ofc has a big romance element, but will be monster of the week style after the first intro season.

I am ALWAYS happy to rec stuff though I don’t get the chance to read as much as I should.

Some of my favorites include (paranatural ofc!)

Stag Town on Webtoon, it’s REALLY good but does have some disturbing imagery but I recommend giving it a go, I’d call it supernatural horror. (Spooky town ala junji ito but not)

Black Water comic here on tumblr is AMAZING, you can easily binge it in one go, the art is perfect and the story is really engaging in my opinion (monsters, forests and mysterious boys)

Wilde Life is an ongoing one, you can google it, it’s got great art, fantastic lore and a really interesting premise (guy buys a haunted house on Craigslist, hijinks ensue)

Welcome to Wolfsgate on Webtoon, it’s on hiatus but the art is reallllly cute, the stories engaging and we love pumpkin head kids around here (Spooky ‘how did we get here’ places)

A lot of the comics I really enjoyed that inspired me are dead and gone or unfinished unforch, but I’m going to say them anyway because they deserve to be recognized. Return to Sender was insane, beautifully drawn and the premise was wild and I miss it and was sad it never finished but understand. And Hanna is not a Boys Name, which has a lot of uhhhhh lore about what happened to it and I know the artist has another comic but I haven’t gotten into that one yet.

And finally, comics people always put in the same lists as Seemingly Dark that I haven’t had a chance to read all of yet, Demon for Hire, which looks amazing, and Lies Within. Both comics I’ve read pieces of, both have phenomenal art, I just haven’t found a lot of time to binge them.

Followers, hit me with your fave supernatural comics in the comments if you want!