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teardew · 8 months ago

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im thinking about making a patreon because i .. uh .. i cant justify drawing for myself anymore and its killing me lmao

it takes me really long to draw so any time i hav should be spent on comms... iv been trying to fight off burnout by drawing things i like inbetween commissions like that sv anatomy practice and vampire/werewolf mngling was just for me but it still ended up setting me behind schedule because i had to rest my eyes and wrist afterward. but not only that i also wanna like. make a lot more things ...

like i wanna do animal, insect, architectural, jewelry studies and fashion and character design explorations and try designing icon packs and branch out trying embroidery with mixed media and clothes making and get into making like 3d things with clay and soft sculptures. i wanna make historical fashion coloring books with việt phục and fashion zines ...

also theres a lot of stuff i dont post bc im not sure if anyone would be interested in all the design concepts and notes i had for example the homestuck dreamer outfits or the various sha hualing designs and sketches i had before getting to the thing i posted? like i hav a bunch of different sqh outfit and hair designs but theyr more clothing based and not detailed character/face art ...

idk !! it sounds like an excuse. its like, who cares just post it ! i know i shouldnt value my art by the amount of numbers i get from posting on social media and i dont mostly but its kinda unavoidable ? to me ? i know i only post fanart and ppl follow me for that and its not a bad thing ! being realistic i just dont think anybody but me would be interested in it ??

i dont know. god. i dont know what this post is about. ''i dont think anybody would be interested in the things i really wanna make'' but im thinking about making a patreon for things i really wanna make anyway because thats the only way i can justify it is if i can profit off it in some way. i dont really want to, but with my financial circumstances i dont know. i never wanted to make my livelihood off my art. i dont even consider or call myself an ''artist'' really, i just want to MAKE art

i dont know why i still cant find a steady job after 5 months applying to everything and its making me miserable. its embarassing, they say to be persistent with jobs but calling and even walking in to check on applications and watching employers awkwardly try to turn me away without just flat out telling me no even though none of them hire me is an exercise in public humiliation. how bad do you want a job? bad enough to make a fool of myself with nothing to show for it. and i want to make art for myself to cope but it takes too much time and time is money

maybe this post is about my art anxiety under capitalism. i dont know

i think im safe enough now to admit my friends gofundme i was posting about months ago about helping their friend escape their abusive household was actually my gofundme because i was worried about them finding out and preventing me from leaving or internet stalking me afterwards. i did hav a scare when i got a phone call i thought was from my brother but ended up being a police officer, whos my mother's friend ...

but anyways. me admitting this is just to give context that. i ran hundreds of miles away from financial security and everything i ever knew and im still struggling to find steady income nearly half a year later. i just dont understand what im doing wrong. is it my name? is it because im not from here? iv been working continuously ever since i could legally my resume isnt BAD. am i just stupid? should i have just tried to make peace with my lot in life?

i thought getting away from my family would let me be in a better place to create more art, thats one of the things i was so excited about but this feels just as stressful as when i was the only earner supporting my family during covid. i just want a stable job so i can make art. i dont want making art to be my Job. i dont want to be a ''starving artist'' begging for people to care about my art i just want to make art. but fuck i dont know how to sustain any of this

sorry for this mess. insurance is different out here and i havnt been able to find a psych either so its not like i can talk about this in therapy instead of venting on my art blog. all my life i wanted to make things without the fear of it all being destroyed. the main reason i havnt branched out from illustrations is because its entirety can be saved digitally even if its physically ruined. my sketchbooks were thrown away or ripped apart by my family either from carelessness or anger to hurt me but now that im finally enough safe to have them again or make something i can hold in my hands without the fear that someone will come in break it and make me clean up its corpse i cant afford it

i dont know what to do. is it worth it? is making art worth it? i mean. its worth the rent this month. and i still love drawing god this is probably bad for business because i dont want people to feel bad for commissioning me or anything but not to be dramatic why does it feel like im fucking dying

#long post #i keep trying but idk why tumblr wont let me put this under a read more im sorry

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greenbirdtrash · 1 year ago

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Decided to post some of my clothing analysis of the musical Once-ler. Most of my takes here are outdated (since i didn't had a chance to get acquainted with the script back then, but now i've got a better understanding of some things and the exact timeline, so lots of updated info and the contexts will be added when needed), but some of the listed speculations here are still pretty interesting to think about. It's actually kinda crazy how i came to that, building my own imaginary character profile and the timeline without the chance to watch the entire show, but just from analysing the available photos and the reviews. And the fun thing is..some of my speculations actually fit the story quite well. So..

Part one: Introduction.

[July, 23]

"Again, my conclusions may be wrong because of the fact that I only saw the fragments and photos from this musical, I cannot be completely sure that the slight difference in some of details and elements is present due to a certain story arc or the fact that the "test show" was performed in a different place and with slightly different props, but it's hard not to notice that during the course of events, the clothes of our beloved problematic capitalist change, maybe not as drastically as in the 2012 movie, for example, but this undoubtedly plays an important role in his development as a character (especially considering that we are looking at a stage adaptation with its own nuances, but more on that later) and reflects a certain kind of changes that he goes through in the process. Why is this so important? I'll try to explain.

Working with perception through colors and shapes is one of the most basic things in design that always works, and even being in some cases comically exaggerated, it remains effective because a person somehow always builds a certain association based on the things they saw. Like, we look at the warm green color, and it immediately reminds us of leaves, etc, etc.. Long story short, the aspect of different clothing, colors and patterns on a character who's going through different phases will be very important here. I saw someone else pointing the same thing out in one of the reviews, can't remember which one tho. Anyway, my huge thanks to Rob Howell for giving us all these amazing designs.

What I always loved in stage performances of all kinds and the theater as a whole concept, is the fact that you won't find there such thing as "narrow cinematic frame" in which you can just remove or cut out everything that simply "does not fit" into it, oh no.

In stage performances and musicals, the whole color extravaganza of the stage and the carefully carved environment will talk to you (yes, talk!), and actors are required to do much more than just show a certain face at a certain moment. Nope, it's completely different here, and most of the theatre actors are just built different as well. Spent some of my best years near them, that was an amazing experience. Anyway-

Being able to play simply with with your voice and face is not enough to be a good actor here, especially considering that even if you're lucky to have the most magnificent facial expressions......they are not particularly visible even from the middle rows. Even though most projects and plays are recorded with professional equipment from the close range (mostly for archive purposes), and for some plays you can even get the binoculars with no problem, it is impossible to rely solely on facial expressions.

And here's where costumes and choreography come into play.

So, the costumes...

From what I saw and read, I would say, we are introduced to this Onceler in a pretty interesting way.

At the time of his departure from home in search of a better fate, we are looking at a very ambitious young dreamer who just.. let's say, he doesn't fit into his original environment, neither by his character traits, nor by his ideas about inventions, nor visually. The visual clearly emphasizes this, and I got the impression that among all the green riot of chaotic colorful prints that prevail in his family's clothes, in his tailcoat he kinda looks like a "black sheep" among them, even despite the fact that he shares the same green aesthetic, but his design is not "too much" or hard to look at. In fact, we are still able to spot him even when he's surrounded by his family. According to this adaptation's background, their family is VERY poor, and all they own is an old mill(?) on which they all work tirelessly. Not a particularly wide space for revelry and elements symbolizing prosperity or luxury (yk, tailcoats are quite expensive), so to speak. Things were not going great for them, so perhaps such an expensive thing as a tailcoat in their conditions is some kind of a reference to the guitar of the 2012 version (for which, according to some information available on the web, the 2012 Onceler has been saving up for a long time). Perhaps (and most likely this guess will be more correct) our hero slept and saw himself in a completely different society - with a much higher and richer status [UPD: This guess was partially confirmed after i saw the script, so I will take this as canon. After all, in the stageplay, the young Onceler literally devotes an entire scene to the song about his dream of getting rich on his great idea], and perhaps he also believed that "clothes make the man" and planned searching for glory in the same outfit, I can't tell you for sure, but the fact is that visually he does not fit into his environment at all, he's "an oddball" with his head hovering somewhere in the clouds, and his clothes, among other things, help us draw a imaginary line which separates him from his surroundings and giving us a subconscious signal that he is just different. Not like them. We all faced rejection in one way or another, and we know what not being able to fit feels like, and it also kinda helps us to put ourselves in his shoes, feel his ambitions, and to start sympathizing with him as a character. [UPD: It works really well within the canons of this adaptation, I couldn't remain indifferent to it, and David Greig turned him into exactly that kind of beautifully written tragic deep character that I wanted to see, and at the end of his story, it broke my heart..in a good way, of course.]

Also, there's something really silly about how he looks at the start, he spots the funky striped fingerless gloves (Not the canon long ones, but still..That's a nice touch, every Onceler needs his gloves, and also it looks like he also has a watch on his left arm? Interesting..), some kind of a vintage green fedora, very fluffy green hair, green shirt and green pants with a slightly different "cold" color, brown suspenders and even a bright green neckerchief for some reason, so his green aesthetic is pretty much complete. Idk, his whole look during this phase kinda gives me the countryside vibes, maybe it was actualy intended? Especially considering what his family does for life?[UPD: It kinda was.]

Actually, he leaves the house just because his room and his bed is suddenly rented out for some pennies [UPD: Everything turned out to be much worse and funnier at the same time, he was literally kicked out by his family (You can literally feel their low expectations for him) just for them to take in a random person with "more reasonable ideas", but despite this, all his interactions with the "Bed-stealer" during the first act made me smile and giggle a lot, Small Ed is a great character addition and a pure comedic relief], and this probably becomes his last reason in favor of collecting all of his not very vast possessions and go seek his fate in the hopes that somewhere in this world there will be a better place for him.."

#lorax musical analysis #lorax musical #onceler #the onceler #the lorax #lorax #lorax 2023

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your-god-empress-lavender · 7 months ago

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Henrow blorbo

first off, ohmyfuckinggodyouaresocoolllllllllllllllll

secondly, what ya workin' on currently? <- is deathly interested, yes please please please info dump if you have the spoons

- Ryan

Bonjour my furry friend. At the moment i'm mostly working on getting a job so that i can afford rent, but when i'm not doing that, i'm working on designing some new N-substituted 5MeO-tryptamines (in order to avoid being banned for breaking tumblr TOS, i can't say exactly what for, but if you look up 5MeO-tryptamines, you should see). So far i've only managed to make things that make me super sleepy (and maybe a tiny bit inebriated), so presumably my body is mainly metabolizing them into melatonin. I also have been working on working through the details of making a rocket engine which relies on both muon catalyzed fusion and z-pinch fusion (mostly because even though i know it's way above what i'm probably capable of, i just love space so much i desperately need to see it for myself and i figure that since rockets are so absurdly expensive, the only way i'll end up in space is if we can get a whole new generation of ultra-efficient rockets (for example, given p-N14 fusion, if we manage to get 1% or more (i don't really expect more than 0.1% max, but still) of the hydrogen fusing with nitrogen, we'd be able to put 150 tons on the moon from earth with only using about enough fuel to fill a small car (instead of needing a skyscraper sized rocket to send maybe 30 tons)). Now, if it were as easy as my calculations show it to be, i can't imagine how there are any rockets flown that aren't fusion, but seeing as i haven't even made a working proof of concept yet, i'm not in a position to criticize the thousands of aerospace engineers who are working on conventional chemical rockets. I love fusion because it's simultaneously so easy (i live pretty close to an old uranium mine where i can actually pan some uranium out of the creek near me, then use that uranium to make a neutron source (B10(α,n)) which is really just fusion between helium and boron, happening at room temperature because of how high energy the α particles released by uranium are) and so absurdly difficult (without catalysts like muons, it requires absurdly high temperatures and pressures that almost always take more energy put in than they can give out). Anyway, i've also been sorta working on studying a material that a while back i got way too excited over and may have called a room temperature superconductor (almost certainly not the case), but in an attempt to make it more pure and study it for real i've been trying to work on the exact calculations of its composition and finding a better way to heat it up to high temperatures (i might just put it in a flat-bottomed flask, especially since it finally warmed up enough for me to go back outside where the fumes released by its production won't make folks mad).

And then there's the biological experiments, currently with electroceutical tissue modifications since most of the other projects i have planned require me to have a gene printer capable of reliably printing genes thousands of base pairs long and i'm not sure when i'll be able to build that. The most recent thing i've been working on is really exciting because if it works it means that i've successfully done something that has never been done before to a human body (and given the long lasting pain in that part of my thigh, it seems very possible it is working), but i'm hesitant about sharing what the project is because i don't really want folks putting gap junction blockers, calcium channel blockers, and sodium channel blockers into open wounds without knowing how to do it safely and correctly to get the desired results and not just a really messed up wound. If/when this experiment turns out well, i might give directions in private, but i'm still somewhat hesitant due to the risks inherent in this (the biggest and most likely is literally giving yourself a form of cancer, something i'm not eager for others to risk). Soon i might try chemical dedifferentiation of skin cells (thinking on my back or upper arms) followed by some mildly dangerous experiments to test how reliably i can make it turn into other cell types. And while i haven't made good work on it in a while, i've also been trying to make something similar to shimmer from arcane (ideally not addictive or harmful to the user, but most importantly the quick energy burst, decreased pain, and increased regenerative abilities (obviously it won't be anywhere near as dramatic as in the show, so calling it shimmer may not really make sense, but it is where i got the inspiration)).

Then i suppose there's the battery project i was talking about in my last post, and i'm also trying to learn how to make alcohol under my desk (i mean, it's super easy, it just doesn't taste great). There might be a few more things i'm working on but rn i'm super eepy and have talked about a lot already. If this seems like i'm doing a lot or impressive, also note that i'm actively failing out of college (for my own pride: the material is super easy and mostly i already know it, i just can't stand wasting so much of my time doing homework that doesn't help anyone or anything) and not yet working a job, so i have a lot of time and so much free brainspace to think about and do all this. I also work very slowly on each thing because i keep bouncing back and forth between all of them and almost always end up adding new projects before i've finished the old ones and so i almost never see a project all the way through to completion (at least some of the bio projects are just sitting in my body and i am just waiting to see how they turn out in the next 2-3 months, so those necessarily will see completion, even if it's failure). I really hope i see the fusion rocket to completion because if i don't think i'll ever be able to see the earth from afar or the moon from up close.

#idk #answer to your ask #i hope this is mostly complete #also wow this is long #that's what she said #i'm kinda surprised how many projects i have #i don't often count them #but yeah here they are #i promise i'm not trying to use this for evil #also college kinda sucks because everyone assumes you know nothing and are incapable of learning #not saying you shouldn't go but just that in my experience it ain't worth it #you can learn so much more from the internet and free courses offered online (oer and mit opencourseware are good starting places)#also now that i've shared these projects i hope that makes me feel more accountable and have more need to actually finish all of them #i have so much schoolwork i gotta do and probably won't #1.37 gpa first semester was impressively bad #legitimately went into college thinking i would be challenged and enjoy it but now it's like #“wow i know all of this and yet i am required to spend 8+ hours on homework each day in order to pass even with perfect test scores”#anyway sorry that probably sounds like i'm being super annoying #these tags are getting super long #byeeeeee

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masschase · 1 year ago

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How would you describe Casey’s fashion taste!!!

Ooh what a fun question!

A phrase I say a lot in my head, at least for post-SRIV which is mainly when I draw her, is "goth but make it fashion" which really is a way of saying I draw what I find fun, haha.

Obviously all her style eras have some significance to her character at that time, but I'm trying to answer based on her "current" (2021 to at least 2024) style because otherwise this will take forever 🤣

She's able to be more herself in this era bc:

plenty of money

no pressures of being famous/being watched/running for president

Pierce indulging his fashion design side; he makes really good use of the Zin tech.

her friendship and later relationship with Matt kind of giving her someone to bounce off of like "am i doing this right?"

Anyway...

She's fond of chokers, fishnet, camo (they managed to rip that one from her circa-2012 but in 2022 IT RETURNS in her attack-the-new planet outfit), any form of cutouts or rips, showing off her waist whether that's with corsets/belts or actually exposing it, off the shoulder stuff (one or both). She prefers to wear trousers or shorts for everyday, especially high waisted skinny jeans as her waist is pretty small compared to her hips and it helps them stay on. Generally even if she has baggier pants, sweatpants etc. they will have some form of cuff on the ankle so they're not in the way.

In terms of tops she never really stops wearing baggy cropped ones but she will also wear tighter full length vests/t-shirts. She likes soft fluffy sweaters, cardigans and hoodies bc she's usually cold.

I see her occasionally wearing casual dresses when it's hot, something low-effort like a loose silk t-shirt/tunic dress or a maxi dress. But skirts not so much. She will wear really short ones for parties/nights out/seduction purposes though.

She doesn't really do the workwear looks too much anymore because she felt forced into that stuff for press releases etc.. At most she'd maybe go for skinny suit with band tee. She doesn't really have formal events by this era but when she did she generally liked fishtail/mermaid fit dresses. She would probably secretly like to try a big floofy skirt for the hell of it but it's not really suited to the presidential events etc. she used to go to.

She likes to be at least as tall as the guys so she wears heels a lot even when it's not that practical. She wore her high-heeled boots with her spacesuit and on most time travel missions for about two years but eventually one of the heels broke and she tends towards wearing her goth boots or converse after that. I like to think she'd eventually get a new pair of heeled boots. Maybe something kind of steampunky.

She's heavily pro use of the fleur-de-lis or other Saints branding which is why she likes Pierce's designs so much. She quite likes skulls too, and little metal details like zips and eyelets too.

She wears mostly black with jewel tones or bright colours; the same sort of colours she would dye her hair. She generally wears purple underwear.

#sorry i tried to organise this but it went all over the place #asks #sr boss: casey clark #saints row

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meticulac · 12 days ago

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Looking Back on a Game Jam Attempt that I Fumbled Pretty Hard

I'll just list a few things I remember from trying to make a game for the Hawktober Horrors 2024 game jam. It didn't become an entry both because I ended up slightly late to submit and because I did not have much of a game to show anyway: Feel free to download it from the link above, it's a few minutes of very glitchy Pacman-like gameplay and also you have to manually close and restart the game every time your character dies. I guess I should upload the slightly updated version I made a few days later sometime, where it at least resets on its own after a few seconds, but I'd like to make some other improvements before I do that, like adding a title screen, more than one level, and stuff like that.

I'll also want to try and fix the weird bug causing the enemy character The Decider to navigate weird, which will probably require learning GameMaker better. I'm also thinking of trying to implement the game in another system, probably LowRes NX since it's likely to fit the limitations of that anyway. However, that brings me to an issue that messed up the first part of my attempt at making this game, which was using uncertainty on what type of game to make and what tools to use leading me to procrastinate on actually making the game.

So, first, I had look up the jam and accidentally ran into a previous year's version, so I came up with an idea that didn't really fit the movie trope theme of this year's jam. I don't want to go into detail on what I came up with then, mostly because I used an idea I had for a tabletop game quest and now I figure I'll put it back to using it that way.

Anyway, after I found the right page I took a while to decide on making a heist game with Pacman-like navigation, but then I took a long time deciding what to make it with. I was toying with Bitmello recently, but, and the jam recommended making a downloadable games as preferable over web based ones, which also meant I wouldn't be using MicroStudio or plain Javascript. For a bit I considered using Amulet, but that was a bit barebones for me to teach myself and then use to throw together something for a game jam in a few weeks. After that I looked at Lowres NX and Homegirl Pro, both of which seemed promising, but I wasn't sure if making it so you need to download a separate player and use that to load the game might be too fiddly for game jam purposes.

Regardless, I think picking any of them quickly would have left me in a better position than waiting, to give me more time to learn the ins and outs of the system and actually get something made. When I did choose GameMaker, it was so long since I last used it that I didn't even know how to make tile collisions, so currently there's just a single block object for all the walls. I could have at least made them invisible and put them over tiles to make the walls look nice, but I was spending a bunch of time trying to make the movement controls working right.

Specifically, I was trying to get movement working like in Pac-Man, where if you try to turn toward a wall you're running along, you keep going forward until you reach a corner int hat direction. It can feel pretty nice to do that once you're used to it, since it lets you anticipate where you're trying to go instead of having to get your timing just right. Anyway, Game Maker is not really designed to do that, so it was a hard to get it just right to where your character deters a wall to the side of itself without just getting stuck on it.

I got it sort of working, but only if you were already on the side of the hallway you were trying to turn towards, otherwise you would turn and move a few pixels forward before hitting the opposite wall. I probably should have left it at that, because my effort to make it perfect just took so much time I ended up taking the whole thing out instead of even rolling it back and making the simplest possible collision I could just to have time to actually make the rest of the game, hastily tossing in the enemy character, collectable gems, the exit, and Game Over/Win screens. The enemy navigation is not great because I didn't get it to detect when it's in the middle of a tile, so instead I have it only turn when hitting a wall, and of course some parts of the level arbitrarily prevent it from turning in certain directions properly for reasons I still don't understand.

Maybe I should have stuck to placing a bunch of one-tile blocks instead of stretching them, I have no idea if stretched objects have weird collision or not. Anyway, it's neat that for gems I could just have them randomly tint themselves so easily, and of course I'd like to learn from all this to make a future games more diligently and with and eye to keeping on schedule, preferably using something I'm already familiar with when I decide to enter something with a time limit and not overthink things too much once I do start.

#Meticulac writings #Meticulac game dev #game dev #game dev retrospective #game development

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enteroctopusdarkysilis · 3 months ago

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✨Custom technic vehicle !✨

Something which I had never really posted on before was that, although I enjoy bricks (or Bionicle parts) a lot, I also like to mess around with Technic, when I have the occasion to.

Most of this one is a bunch of additions made on top of the 42065 set, because it's an overall really fun set, with enough space inside to cram in some additional mechanisms.

Here is a video of that thing performing :

...And the remote !

Of course, details and close ups under the cut !

So, here is the (non exhaustive) list of what I added/changed :

Colours of the middle line and addition of some decorative tubes;

A fancy blade at the front;

Plenty of lights;

A turret.

I'll discuss all of these below (except for the first point, which is quite straight forward.

The front :

So, the main plate I used for the vehicle's blade is often used in large Technic cars, mostly for roofs; but used the other way around, it has a nice shape. It's not very functional, but it's aesthetic, and inside are two of the lights I have integrated (some of the cables are visible on the right).

The side :

From here, we can see my beautiful mess of cables (I forced the top open to show it, because it's not as opened at rest). Most of the large cables here are getting power from the battery to the RC receivers; while the small cables are all lights (I might have used too many-).

You might also notice the there are some bumps on the tread pieces : these are rubber grip pieces which I stole from a Nexo Knight Fortrex (it's doing fine without them). These make the plastic less slippery when on rock, but it does a poor job on grass (because grass blades get caught in the gaps of the treads pieces) - to fix that, I would use some of the old rubber treads, but they're way to small to be used as suchs. Instead, to remedy to the problem, I changed the original motors from the default PF M to PF L, which have more power and torque (and can thus reach their max speed even with the added mass). While the two motors have the same theoretical speed, this modified model drives faster than it's standard counter part (it's funny to take over other cars, don't judge).

Back view :

Here you can see the PF M I was talking about (bottom right, the second one is at the front of the vehicle). You may also notice that I have a second mess of cables , because my two receivers are here.

Two major problems with that :

The placement of the receivers makes it so that I can't control the vehicle, unless behind it (oops 1);

Because one of the receivers (on top) had bad wiring with one of the tread motors, the turret is heavily limited in its movements (oops 2).

Turret :

So ! That's the most interesting part of it (obviously).

Now, please note that it was my first time trying to do it, and plenty of my design choices were bad, but fixed in my V2 (will probably be posted next week~).

The way it works is actually quite simple : I have a motor underneath (PF M) positioned horizontally, which is connected directly to the light gray gear (just under the trans green piece on the left) which itself connects to the black base gear on which is mounted the turret. Because of the direct motor connection, the turrets is a nightmare to aim. Not good.

As for the cannon, it's just a servo and a spring cannon. When the servo is activated, the grey technic piece presses the projectile and it flies. Surprisingly simple. (It also lights up the green lights on the side, for fun).

Anyway, this is a fun project to play with. Next week, I might post the V2, which is...Quite different. You'll see :}

And bonus cat picture !

#lego #lego moc #lego technic

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kinetic-elaboration · 8 months ago

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March 19: The Expanse 1x07

My absence from watching The Expanse has nothing to do with not wanting to watch The Expanse but just with timing and, I don’t know, me needing a spring break or something honestly. Anyway, I don’t entirely remember what’s happening, like I can’t remember why the Rocinante crew are going to Eros or who they’re looking for there, etc., so I mostly just had to follow along with this episode on its own merits. I wish the show did like a previously on’ segment because that would be really useful to me.

I’m starting to enjoy Alex a lot more. I found him sort of annoying at first but he’s growing on me. I really liked his late-night radio DJ/smooth trucker voice, like, don’t mind me boys I’m just a simple country black ops captain on a long haul down the highway… Like was the voice necessary? I don’t know, but it was fun. He feels like the most stable of all of them at this point, too.

I liked Amos in this ep, too. I feel like a lot of people want to do characters like him and then chicken out about it (I include myself in this category, ngl). He really is violent, straightforward, simple—dense but not in a dumb or negative way. Just like physically big and imposing and with a very clear, set survival mindset. He’s not malicious, but he’s not nice. He is absolutely dangerous if not controlled. And again, like, definitely not dumb, still three-dimensional, but I’d be kind of surprised if there’s some hidden depths of compassion and sweetness buried in there. And disappointed. Now we’re getting to see Amos off Naomi’s leash (he’s not your dog? Ma’am, he is.) I thought the way he interacted with the spy was interesting and a good view into his character—I think it’s that he doesn’t have an ego, in a way. He has a survival instinct, which includes avoiding pain and suffering, but no grander sense of himself in the overall design. He is not a hero and under no illusions about it. I think that’s the trait I’m trying to get at. Anyway, that was interesting but I did feel bad for the spy. But I don’t think Amos was necessarily wrong that, from their point of view, from the point of view of his crew’s survival, this guy is a huge liability and probably should be eliminated. Tough but true. He straight up has orders to black bag all of them, like… come on. And, perhaps because we never saw them so they were never really ‘real’ to me, I thought Amos kinda was objectively correct about opening fire if the Martians boarded. Like obviously the hope was that they wouldn’t board. But what if they had? What was Holden going to do about it? He, and I think the narrative with him, was so intent on this being some huge line that they just can’t cross, we are NOT going to shed innocent blood here, the Martians are our FRIENDS, we will simply take PRISONERS and then… mumble mumble mumble do something with them. Yeah, okay. The moral high ground is for people who have a viable Plan B. Maybe I’m just sort of conflating the whole moral grey area of the universe as a whole with these people in particular, and on a narrative level, they probably do need to stay spotless to be the heroes—as they are so far, within the span of the episodes themselves, basically just always in the wrong place at the wrong time and that’s it. It would not be good for the story for them to open fire on some randos. But like in universe… he wasn’t wrong?

I really liked the Montana homestead. The action within that B-plot… it was okay. I haven’t literally heard it before, the 8-parents thing is pretty unique lol, but it felt sort of…surface, familiar to me. I don’t know. I didn’t vibe with it so much. I didn’t really feel like I learned enough or that there was anything terribly shocking and I had a hard time emotionally investing for some reason. I would like to hear more details about the Holden family and their radical… I’m going to say environmentalism. Like that sort of relationship to the land in a space-travel-based future is really interesting, especially in the context of comments others have made about Earth being overly built up and ill-treated, and so I feel like there’s really something to explore there. But it wasn’t really explored so much as it was referenced. Eh. But I loved the set. I think I’ve said this before but I like how the Earth sets acknowledge that, like, it’s the future but all our old stuff is still here. Like people have expanded and developed and built more but within the landscape that we would know in the present day. So there are the familiar skylines but then more; there are houses that just look like houses but some of the tech people are using in the house is different. The Montana landscape is the same, but it has these big-ass funky-looking windmills in it. It was a little disappointing to me that they fell into the cliché of ‘paper books will be obsolete any day now’ because I feel like the world building in other respects is much better than that, but that’s just a personal pet peeve. In case anyone was wondering, digital objects and especially the cloud are not reliable long term preservation options—books aren’t perfect either but a book will outlast cloud storage!!

Anyway. Three more episodes. I hope stuff in the next one triggers me to remember roughly what’s happening, large scale. I need some more expository re-cap dialogue especially as all the characters converge.

#the year 2024 #2024: fandom thoughts #2024: the expanse

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willsnerdcorner · 11 months ago

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So, I’ve been playing D&D since 2014ish(?), and as one could guess I have created a lot of characters since then. I also love getting art of them (something I didn’t start doing until 2018/2019) as well as notable NPCs and villains. So, I’m going to post the art and talk about the characters because why not? Let’s talk about my gunslinger Kate, not my favorite but still second as well as my longest running character (3.5-4 years I believe?).

Anyway, this lovely piece drawn by my friend Veronica (ArtStation in the link) is of my high elf gunslinger Kate. Quick description of the character since this is more of a discussion of the thought process of the character:

Katelyn Evelyn Sulyvahn Van Doren was born to the Van Dorens, a noble house run by a fair family and mostly beloved by their people. When she was 60, her family were overthrown by rebels and killed off mostly. The only survivors of this massacre were her, and unknown to Kate her older sister. The people who overthrew her family enacted an old punishment so cruel most people thought it was an urban myth (more to come on that since I want to make sure I TW that section). Eventually she was freed by a man named Oberon who took her under his wing as a bounty hunter as he showed her new weapons he had stolen/replicated, guns.

She suffered through intense PTSD and it was only through Oberon she was able to go from unfunctional to functioning somewhat. A ten year process that would have felt like a flash of time for someone who would be as long lived as Kate. She wanted to kill her tormentors, but not out of a sense of vengeance. She wanted to be able to sleep at night without worry they would bring her back to these people. Eventually, Kate would meet up with the party and travel with them after a scuffle landed Oberon in hot water so they had to travel separately. Thus began her adventure…

From this point onwards I will discuss the making of her character as well as potentially upsetting things. For those in need: trigger warnings of torture, body image issues, and mental illness. You have been warned.

When I designed Kate I knew that there would be some comparison to a much more famous gunslinger, Percy from Critical Role. I’d be lying if some of his story beats didn’t form the base of this character. It’s only natural, but the key was to have the same beats differently. Percy is a character driven by vengeance that threatens to consume him. Kate I wanted to make a character that needed to kill some of these people to be left alone. Kate never really wanted vengeance but these people who tormented her were extremely present and powerful in the setting. With the main one she interacted with being one of the major antagonists of the last arc. She could not just let them be, they would always come to find her unless she could prove that was a bad idea or just remove the ones who would hunt her most of all.

This is a character colored by her traumatic past, and while I did try to include things in that made her a character versus a pizza cutter (jury is out if I did that or not) it informed a lot of her attributes so that she was only her traumatic past. When creating this character, I included a lot of little details that tried to show a softer side to this character that might not be readily apparent. A love of oranges, a desire to still be able wear dresses, finding an owl familiar she named Jareth, and eventually taking up guitar. She couldn’t be all trauma or else that would just make for a poor character.

We do need to talk about the source of her trauma if we want to discuss the character overall. During the 30 years her captors kept her imprisoned they were merciless in how they tormented her. I do not want to go into details, since outside of the DM as well as one player, I didn’t not super disclose those details to the party since I didn’t think it was needed because it was always way scarier to have them guess and also I did not think she was a character who would want it brought up. All the party knew was she was covered from her neck down in scars and magical chain tattoos that no one until one Yuan-Ti shaman later could remove as well as she been tortured by these people. The chains were the most concerning and distressing to her as they were a constant reminder of the fact that she never would be truly free of them. In the same way, I often had her in pain for long treks or needing to lean on things to rest when she had to exert herself often. The weather playing havoc when the pressure dropped and her body was in constant pain as a result.

The body scarring and tattoos did come from a slightly personal place, body image. I have a lot of them, and this sort of informed the character. Both Kate and I wear a lot of clothes to hide our skin so people can’t see it. Albeit for different reasons (her’s are the result of intensive torment), a part of her journey was slowly becoming more at peace with what she was dealing with as she looked for a way to fix the damage done to her. To at least not be freaked out whenever her clothes ripped or anyone saw her old wounds. This played a part of a person who was sort of hampered by pain that eventually managed to overcome it by the end. Overall, how she handled it was inspired by how I have hidden my own insecurities. So I don’t want to say this is a great allegory for handling body image issues overall, but the how was at least personally inspired on what I’ve had go through my head.

Kate was also special since she was the first queer PC I had ever made. It took me a long time to accept my bisexuality, and I only came out to my family in the last year or so. So, I tested the waters by making my characters LGBTQ to sort of prepare for that. Kate is a lesbian, and her story ultimately ends with her raising her niece on a nice plot of land with Oberon, a gnome named Crawshack, and her girlfriend later wife Inari (who didn’t take Kate’s last name since they would have run out of room on the marriage certificate). She gets her happy ending, with a loving souse and a family on a farm somewhere where she can live undisturbed.

A lot of folks have also asked me why a gunslinger? I was playing a lot of Red Dead 2. That’s literally it. Some things don’t have a deep reason.

Probably should stop here, but if folks like this I might write up more of my characters later. Let me know!

#dnd #dnd art #dnd character #gunslinger #high elf #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons art #dungeons and drawings #dung #character write up

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slashscreen · 2 years ago

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Concept art for a The Owl House-inspired open world RPG

Here's a bit of concept art for an Owl House-inspired open world RPG I've been cooking up in my free time.

I'm not ready to reveal a title or more detailed info although god knows I have a lot floating around inside of my brain. What I can say, however, is the Premise:

An undead scientist, attempting to build a teleporter, accidentally brings you, a human, into a grotesque but whimsical world of witches, centaurs, elves, dwarves, and demons- and where humans have been extinct for a thousand years. What starts as a simple quest to find a way home turns into an archipelago-trotting adventure with strange cults, otherworldly beings, dark secrets, and where all life on the planet is at stake.

So far I have been designing this game to have more of a focus on memorable characters and customization (read: dress-up) than strictly combat, which is something I have found lacking in other games. (I've realized I've been writing this sort of like a cartoon, so I'll lean into it and see where this goes. This means that yes, there will be a beach "episode". Tug on my balls one by one, Disney. I'm not sure how, but it will happen.)

I don't have any character/species concept art I am willing to show at the moment, because I'm currently redesigning the visual style of the game. Sorry! I'll share it soon, though.

Also, you get a grappling hook. So there's that.

Other general info:

Q) Does this take place in The Owl House universe? A) No. This is not an Owl House AU/Fan game. It's its own thing with its own rules and lore, but borrows heavily from the show. It might be helpful to this on this as like Vast Error and Homestuck.

Q) Is there actually a game being actively made? A) Yes! There's not much to see, though. It's still at the "Everything is a cube and a capsule" stage of development; I'm focusing on getting a solid foundation laid rather than making any visible progress, which is important for a large-scale game. I've made significant progress, though: I estimate I am about 75% done with the base gameplay elements and making it, you know, playable. For the technically inclined, I have done the following (from the perspective of someone familiar with the Skyrim Creation Kit): - Cell streaming (plugin) - Cross-cell persistence - Goal Orientated Action Planning for NPCs - Lua/Moonscript VM for programming AI and acting as the equivalent of Papyrus (Plugin/my own work) - Player like movement and stuff - Dialogue using the Yarn plugin - NPC inter-cell navigation (think exterior to interior. Very difficult.) - Granular world simulation using Unity's DOTS - Physical properties of items (Systems game stuff, like Breath of the Wild) - You can harvest plants! Holy shit - You can read books

Q) Can I play the game right now? A) Hell no. Not yet, anyway. I'll release an alpha demo at some point, though, which will include: - The Marrows (Right arm of island), the first of currently 8 Prefectures (Analogous to Skyrim's Holds), which itself contains 1 city, 3 towns, 4 regions (geographically distinct areas. Two of them are pictured in the art above) - 30 ish quests? - Representative gameplay - Introduction to the major characters and the antagonist (This world's Belos and Hunter)

Q) What kind of mood is this world going for? A) Mostly lighthearted with some serious moments.

Q) What other influences does this world have? A) Lots. - FLCL (Should be apparent in the combat) - The Elder Scrolls (duh) - Bloodborne - Amphibia - Hyper Light Drifter

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I can't promise I will be willing to answer them, though. But then again, I am always happy to blab on and on about the world that live inside my mind.

#the owl house #concept art #rpg #open world rpg #the elder scrolls #uh #unity3d #indie dev #toh #amphibia #what else do tumblr people put in tags #or right full sentences #im nervous about sharing this #pressure is on #mortifying ordeal of potentially being known #screw disney #i am god

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transformers-fan-continuities · 3 years ago

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Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf created by @artsy-hobbitses!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place.

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society.

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower‘s OC Missit!) is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

#long post #gore #ties that bind #spotlight #transformers #HUMANFORMERS #transformers au #tf original continuity #transformers fan continuity #transformers redesign #maccadam #i said id post this on sunday but i realize thats a holiday for lots of folks on this site :/

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aenaxes · 3 years ago

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OMG ok for the 200 follower celebration (based on your smoking post) PLZZZ write sharing a spice blunt with cross or any batcher of your choosing I would simply die 😩💅🏻❤️

vapor trails

[crosshair & hunter x f!reader] you don't really run with the fett twins' crowd, but you find yourself at one of their parties anyway (in reference to this post lol)

warnings: college!au, recreational drug use, suggestive themes, but consent is sexy & mandatory & sober babes

w/c: 3.8k

a/n: anon, you ask for one batcher, but why not two? thank you for enabling me nonnie & @mallr4ts lol (im so sorry to all the previous requests for the event, this one has just been needling in my brain all day and i had to get it out hsdfs)

event details here! requests are open until july 4th!

You don’t know much about the Fett twins.

They’re something like campus legends even though they’re only a year your senior and at the tail end of their fourth years. But as much as you’ve heard their names slung around in weekend plans and excited chatter, you’ve never once met them, much less seen them yourself. Between idling class whispers and dining hall conversations, all you can piece together from the rumors is that: one, they’re from a big family (you’ve heard anywhere from two to twelve other brothers, yikes); and two, as much as they work hard (because the venture capital and pre-professorial tracks seem rigorous enough), they play even harder.

It helps that they apparently own one of the biggest apartments off campus, one in which you find yourself hopelessly and miserably lost. And overdressed.

Great.

It hadn’t occurred to you that your roommate, who is nowhere to be seen, had been dressing up for her girlfriend, and that most people who had half a mind would wear something comfortable that could withstand a few spilled drinks and ash. So seeing the rest of the room in rumpled tees and sweats has you and your little black dress seeking out the nearest wall as you fiddle with your questionably sweet cup of margarita mixer.

You feel like a first year, and it sucks.

But for once, with everyone too busy mingling amongst themselves over the heavy thrum of some mumble rap beat, you manage to slip by unnoticed.

Every now and then, you dart your eyes around the ever shifting landscape of faces in the dim room, looking for even the vaguest familiarity that might let you feign being tipsy and join a group for the night. But every time you try, there’s no luck.

Fuck, you haven’t even seen anyone here before.

But there might be a god watching out for you yet when the crowd shifts just enough that you catch sight of the couch, and on it, someone you suspect to be one of the twins as he greets a few girls with a disinterested nod.

Emboldened, but mostly nervous that in the crowd of bodies and red solo cups you’re still helplessly alone, you push off the wall and squeeze past huddled cliques of conversation to make for the dark couch.

By the platinum bleached hair and big-name consulting group quarter zip, Crosshair—at least you think it’s him—lounges over the couch. He isn’t the only body on the suede seats, but he keeps to himself, his head dipped low as he works one hand over a small metal canister in his other palm.

If you weren’t having luck with the other nameless faces around you, maybe the Fett twin would keep you company—at least until your roommate came back to find you (if she did). And worst case, you’d just slink back to your dorm and mope until your roommate apologized to you with your favorite overpriced smoothie bowl the day after.

Mustering every ounce of courage you have, you plant your feet by the couch and finally speak.

"Is your name actually Crosshair?" you ask.

The man on the couch pauses, his motions stilling over the small metal cylinder in his palms, and he lifts his chin just enough to flick his eyes up towards the sound of your voice.

You always thought the girls in your droning 9AM gen-ed were wildly exaggerating his hype for their own devices, squealing over his (apparently) brooding charm and sharp looks to nip at his stash for free. But for all the vague haze surrounding your perception of the twins, you never thought that they were telling the truth.

If you had been in broad daylight under the incandescent glow of your creaky lecture hall lights, you might have called him cocky, almost haughty, how he meets you with an unreadable look for having interrupted him. But in the purple LEDs and heavy haze of vape juice and shitty tequila, he’s captivating, all dark eyes and perfectly lit skin, marked only by the needle-thin design tattooed over the right side of his face and a worn wooden toothpick bitten between his teeth.

You swallow down the dry lump in your throat when you catch him flick his eyes from your face, down the short length of your dress, and back up again.

"Smoke with me; maybe you'll find out," he drawls, toothpick bobbing as he speaks. He twists the cylinder once and offers you a wry smirk. And when you stay, speechless but there all the same, Crosshair scoots to the side and pats the narrow space between him and the couch arm, inviting you close.

"I've never smoked before," you admit a bit shyly as you drop down beside him. Your dress hikes up your thigh, and you shiver when your skin presses up against the soft denim of his jeans.

"Not even cigs?"

You shake your head. And you tell yourself that when he leans close and brushes his shoulder up against your arm, that he’s only doing it because someone’s boosted the bass, and you can’t hear him over the reverb.

"Well, good thing I'm here, yeah?"

He gives the metal canister a final twist and sets it down on the coffee table before you. Swapping the canister for a small brown sleeve, you watch in a daze as he pulls a semi-transparent leaflet from the folder and tears a strip of cardstock straight from its flap. He has pianist fingers, you think wistfully, neatly kept nails and slender grace, and you wonder if he’ll entertain you if you ask to compare your hand to his.

“What’s your name?”

You scrabble back to the present at the sound of his voice. “Uh, y/n,” you offer.

“Well, y/n,” he says with a soft laugh, having caught on to your daydreaming. “Step one, you fold your filter.”

You nod along absently as Crosshair artfully crimps the thick paper into a neat roll. As if there isn’t thirty-some odd people crammed into his apartment, he quietly takes you step by step, offering you the filter, the paper, then the contents of the canister (a grinder, he explains) like it’s a game of show and tell. But with every piece he places into your hands, you gravitate closer, closer, until you’re flush against his arm and practically hanging over his side to watch as he gently taps a line of bud over the paper.

“Here, let me give you a better look,” Crosshair says.

You expect him to bring the neat line of bud to you, but when nothing comes, you look up and find him waiting for you, one arm open in invitation as the other pats once on the dark denim of his thigh.

“Uh—”

“Sit,” he says as if you haven’t just met him fifteen minutes ago. “Front row seats if you want ‘em.”

On one hand, you barely know Crosshair outside of the rumors you hear on campus. On the other hand, he’s a genuinely pleasant person, careful to accommodate for your boundaries and offering a snide playfulness that’s banished your nerves from earlier in the night.

He’s also really fucking hot.

“Okay,” you murmur, and you let him wrap his arm around your waist and tug you onto his lap. And he’s right. Perched over his thighs, you see with perfect clarity (and without the strain in your neck) as he gently folds the paper over the mound of bud and carefully twists. It’s the prettiest joint you’ve ever seen—though it might be because it’s the only one you’ve seen.

"Final touch," Crosshair's voice rumbles over your back, shooting straight into your core as he lifts the paper's vellum edge to your lips. “Lick it for me.”

Since you sat down with him, you’ve only been the passenger, nodding along as Crosshair’s long, nimble fingers creased over filter paper and patiently pointed out things like the stray pistils in his baggie and the keef gathered at the bottom of his grinder for if you really want to get fucked up. And even though you aren’t doing much (because licking paper doesn’t really seem too crazy), it’s a step forward from the comfortable rhythm that had settled between you, and you twist around in his lap to shoot him an uncertain glance.

“Just,” Crosshair flicks his tongue over his lower lip, flashing a brief glimpse of a ball piercing towards your wide eyes. And if you weren’t so flustered, you might have recognized the coy playfulness in his gaze. “Give it a lick, right over the edge.”

“I—uh, what if I—” you stammer.

“You’re not gonna mess this up, darling,” Crosshair chuckles. If his hand squeezing brief over your waist wasn’t enough to bring heat searing over the tops of your ears, his next words, crooned low and breathy into your ear, certainly do. “You’re a smart girl. You can do it.”

"My brother giving you trouble?"

Another voice cuts through the din of the party, sparing you your stammering nerves as you whip your head up in its general direction. You’re greeted with the sight of his brother, peering down on you as he takes a sip from his cup.

“You’re such a killjoy,” Crosshair mutters, drawing his arm tighter around your waist as he jabs the half-rolled joint to where Hunter sprawls down onto the couch beside him. “No, I’m not being a creep. I’m teaching our pretty underclassman here how to roll.”

Oh.

Heat rushes over your cheeks, and you can’t decide whether you want to shrink into yourself or bask in it and beg for more.

He called you pretty.

“With her in your lap,” Hunter snorts into his cup.

“It was your idea to invite your entire fucking rugby team. Where else would we do it?”

“I’m so sorry he’s like this,” Hunter laughs, tilting his head and looking up at you through his (unfairly) long lashes. Where you thought Crosshair’s tattoo was bold, Hunter’s practically blows him out of the water, a well-worn swath of ink on the left half of his face, curving into neatly stylized teeth right at the edge of his lips. “I’m Hunter.”

Huh, maybe you do have a thing for tattoos.

“Y/n,” you squeak. “It’s, um—it’s nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, sweetheart,” he says as he offers you an easy smile. “Has my baby brother been treating you right?”

“God, two fucking minutes,” Crosshair snaps. You hear the embarrassment seeping from the vitriol, and it strikes you like a shot to the head that he’s trying to play cool in front of you. “I come out two minutes after you and—”

“We’re fraternal, and I got all the oxygen in the womb. Explains why he has awful people skills,” Hunter fake-whispers loud enough for Crosshair to hear, and you giggle as the other man groans from behind you.

“No, he’s been really nice,” you say softly once you realize that you’ve been laughing a little too loud. “He’s teaching me about weed.” It sounds juvenile when you say it, awkward and clumsy on your tongue. It’s a dead giveaway that has Hunter’s smile mellowing into something soft.

“Your first time?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, Cross here’s high as shit at least four hours every day. Says it helps him do the math. I hate to say it, but you’re in good hands.”

“You try running a nonlinear regression sober,” Crosshair snorts. “Anyways, we were just finishing up this joint before you decided to kill the vibe.”

Crosshair lifts the half-rolled joint back up to your chin, and this time, he leans forward and presses his chest close against your back as the playful snark leaves his tone, in its wake, something patient and calm as his voice rumbles by your ear.

“You gonna help me finish the job, sweet girl?”

You surprise yourself when the initial trepidation vanishes as you tip your chin down and stick out your tongue. Maybe you’re showboating now that you have an audience, feeling Hunter’s dark eyes on your lips when you touch the tip of your tongue out over the edge.

Whether it’s your lip gloss or the fine crumbs of bud stuck to the roll paper that fills your mouth with something earthy and sweet, you can’t say. All you know is they’re both following you with that intense intent, the bass and blend of voices faded out around you; just you in Crosshair’s lap and Hunter pretending to care about the drink in his hand as you lift your tongue off the far corner of the paper and close your lips.

“Good job,” Hunter muses, and you’re pretty certain he’s not talking about the joint when you feel his gaze boring into you alone.

The smell of smoke pulls you out of Hunter’s gravity, and you look back in front of you to see Crosshair snap a scuffed metal lighter shut and toss it onto the coffee table. He brings the joint back down in front of you, blowing a neat stream of whitish gray smoke past your ear.

“You know how to pull?” Crosshair asks, and his chin brushes over your bare shoulder as he speaks. He’s so close. You can smell the burn, acrid and sour, but it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t smell like some bubblegum vape when you feel his breaths curling over your skin. You just want more.

Mutely, you shake your head.

“Mm, you know how to shotgun?” Hunter offers, and you hear Crosshair huff laugher from behind you. “Might be easier for your first try.”

You shake your head again.

“It’s,” Hunter pauses, and his brows knit close as he thinks for a moment. “It’s kind of like a kiss. But not really. I take a hit and you catch my smoke. That sound okay?”

You don’t think it matters that someone’s hit shuffle on the playlist, filling the room with a hard electronic beat that might have otherwise drowned out all sound. All you hear is your heart pounding in your ears as you nod and watch Hunter lift the filter to his lips and inhale deep, then pass the joint back to Crosshair.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, white trails of smoke curling over his upper lip as he lifts one hand to cup over the base of your neck.

“Open,” Crosshair whispers.

Wordlessly, you obey. Your lips part just as Hunter pulls close, so close you feel the heat of his skin spreading warm over your cheeks, and blows a soft stream of bitter smoke into your mouth. It can’t be more than a few seconds, but all the while, you can’t seem to tear your eyes from his.

“Breathe in, deep,” you hear Crosshair instruct as he begins to rub one thumb over the curve of your hip.

The smoke is thick, sluicing down your throat and filling your lungs like nothing you’ve ever felt before. It’s not bad, just new, and pressed between the twins over the couch, you think it just might have been worth being ditched by your roommate earlier in the night. But your lungs ache, and you slowly exhale, watching as your vision fogs with a loose cloud of smoke until your chest feels clear again.

“And you didn’t even cough,” Hunter smiles. His calloused fingertips follow the slope of your neck, lingering one moment more before he pulls away. And you aren’t sure if the low buzzing in your fingertips is the weed or their combined warmth as Hunter rubs over your knee and Crosshair leans his head against your neck. “Good girl.”

“Wanna do it again,” you whisper as the buzz begins to crawl up your neck, fizzling around your temples as you lean your cheek over where Crosshair nuzzles into your shoulder.

“With him or me?” Crosshair murmurs, his lips brushing over your skin.

“You,” you say dreamily, and Hunter laughs, a sound that suddenly seems so far away as you tip your head and press close against Crosshair’s silver hair.

Crosshair leans into your touch, pressing his cheek up against your neck one last time before he’s lifting his head and bringing the joint to his lips. You hear the hiss of his inhale, smoke curling up through the narrow body of the joint as the charred end glows warm beside you.

And instead of Hunter’s approach, level with you, Crosshair looms above you, meeting your wide eyes with something of a fond smile. Dragging his hand up your chest, he follows the line of your neck and holds snug over your chin. He squeezes softly, and your jaw falls slack, lips parted in a soft ‘o’ as he dips low. He's closer than Hunter as you feel his mouth just brush over yours and breathe smoke over your tongue.

This time, it’s easier.

You swallow down the smoke and hold, just a beat longer than before. But both Crosshair and Hunter notice as your lips stay parted, and they share a soft laugh that has you exhaling smoke and pride all at once when you finally relax your diaphragm and breathe out.

“Fast learner,” Crosshair muses, nosing up under your jaw as you sink back against his chest.

You mumble incoherently, chasing his touch as the high creeps heavy and warm from your chest to your collar and settles at the back of your throat. It anchors you, molding you up against Crosshair who feels nothing short of perfect as he circles his arms loose over your waist.

You turn your head to thank Hunter when you distantly register him pressing a cool cup into your hand (water, you think you hear him say), but the words slip back down into your throat, your eyelids suddenly unbearably heavy and coarse over your blurry vision.

“You wanna lay down?” Hunter offers, and his voice comes to you like you’re underwater, warped and bubbling past the din of the party around you.

You're pretty sure you nod.

For a few moments, you catch traces of an unintelligible exchange between the twins, only aware of the rumble of Crosshair’s voice at your back, and then you’re being lifted up off the couch, the music and raucous laughter fading behind you.

A door opens, squeaking half-shut, and you wince as a light clicks on beside you. Whoever was carrying you sets you down on something soft and cool, and you sway as the light dims and you settle into your seat.

You’re on a bed, you think.

Crosshair’s, judging by the shock of light hair that you can make out through your lashes. He helps you into a worn tee that reaches past the short hem of your dress, and you wiggle into it with a soft whine, holding it tight.

But where you expect a familiar weight to dip down next to you and pull you close, your eyes fly open when you see his figure turn away from you and towards the neon lights of the party outside.

“You aren’t staying?” It's the most coherent you've been through your first high.

“Not tonight,” Crosshair says softly. He turns back towards you and reaches up to fix the strap of your dress as you sit on his bed. “Baby’s first tokes got you all dopey. Right now, what you need is this,” and he presses a plastic bottle of vitamin water he’s seemingly produced out of nowhere into your palm. “This,” he adds, pressing your phone into your other hand. “And a good night’s sleep.”

“And what if I say I need you, too?” you pout.

Some part of you—the conscious part locked away in the back of your skull—bangs up against the hazy high at the crown of your head because when you’re good and sober and when Crosshair inevitably turns you down, you won’t be able to look at yourself in the mirror for the next semester.

But he breaks into a smile that crinkles at the corners of his eyes before he leans down to press his lips to your forehead. It’s just a split-second of warm, chapstick-soft lips on your skin, but it floods you with an indescribable good from the top of your head all the way down to your toes.

And as high as you are right now, you have a hell of a hunch that the flutter in your chest is going to stay, even when the room stops wobbling around you.

“When you’re all sobered up in the morning, we’ll make you breakfast, and we’ll figure it out from there,” Crosshair says after he’s pulled back, reaching up to smooth his palm over your hair. “Sound like a plan?”

You nod, probably with a little too much enthusiasm, but you’re rewarded with another low chuckle that’s practically music to your ears. His hand gentle and firm over your shoulder, Crosshair guides you down onto the bed and pulls the covers up to your chin.

“Now text your roomie so she doesn’t call the cops on us, get some sleep, and drink all of that, okay?”

“Okay,” you respond.

“Good girl.”

And when the lights click out, you curl into Crosshair’s pillow, breathing in cold, fresh notes of his cologne, and then you’re asleep.

You climb out of bed the next morning, your minidress rumpled under a long shirt. It's not like a hangover, no, you just find yourself a bit lightheaded and throat parched, and the disorientation makes your head spin as you’re greeted with the smell of fresh coffee and something savory—

Your roommate doesn’t wake up earlier than you, and she can’t cook for shit. And why were your sheets grey? Whose shirt were you—

Oh.

Fuck.

You practically burst out of Crosshair’s bedroom, and you’re not sure what you expected, but somehow you hadn’t expected to see Hunter sipping mildly on a mug of coffee while Crosshair pushes something around in a pan over their kitchen range.

“Mornin,’” Hunter offers you a small wave, and reaches for a third mug on the countertop. “Wasn’t sure how you liked your coffee so we just made it black.”

“What happened last night?” you gasp. If you weren’t so panicked, you’re certain the sight of them sporting nothing but grey sweats would have been your only concern, but you’ve just woken up with foggy memories and the slimy dread of anxiety that follows a blackout night.

“Easy, easy,” Crosshair assures you as he steps away from the stovetop. “Nothing happened after we smoked. You took, like, two hits, and you were so hazy you couldn’t remember your dorm number, so we put you to bed, and I slept out in the living room. Fetts are wild but we’re not scumbags, promise.”

And judging from the throw blanket sliding off the edge of the couch cushions, you’re fairly certain you can believe him. Relief floods your chest.

“Oh thank God,” you sigh, and your shoulders sag as the weight of panic sloughs off your back.

They both laugh softly, the sudden tension lifting from the bright morning light, and you can’t help but join in. And when that rosy relief gives way to silence again, it’s Crosshair who speaks next.

“So, you staying for breakfast?”

“Can I borrow some actual clothes first?”

“Done deal.”

#fun fact: my signature party trick is flirting with a guy and then stealing his blunt ✌️😗#thinking about how schlorbe n i agreed crosshair listens to souncloud mumble rap :/#its ok i kiss him anyways #hc that crosshair’s an econ/finance bro and hunter’s a history major hehe #sequel series: crosshair goes venture capital (gross)#tech's probably at like the space equivalent of mit or something #and i will Die on the hill that wrecker's super smart with kinesiology #crosshair x reader #hunter x reader #sergeant hunter x reader #the bad batch x reader #anon #yaej.writes

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

Note

Sufficiently strong emotionally-charged moments of physical contact can occasionally forge long-term telepathic bonds between cultivators. These bonds are usually based on positive emotions like familial or romantic love, or deep feelings of friendship, but the emotions don’t necessarily have to be positive to forge a bond. Wei Wuxian is very upset to find out that punching Jin Zixuan in the face apparently counts as a sufficiently strong emotionally-charged moment of physical contact.

on ao3

Wei Wuxian had been obsessed with the idea of a resonant bond ever since he first learned about it.

Sure, it was a rarity. It was easier for a cultivator to find a friend, a lover, or even a soulmate than it was for them to create a resonant bond, which required not merely liking or understanding or even love but rather a single moment in time in which two cultivators were on exactly the same wavelength.

Their cultivation strength, their frame of mind, the state of their bodies, the exact way in which they touched – in that one moment, everything would be exactly the same, and the Heavens would forget for that brief moment to see the two as separate, like two separate raindrops merging into one before the moment passed, some difference introduced, and they were broken apart into separate beings again. Yet even after they separated, they would irrevocably retain some aspects of the other, a connection that generally manifested, it was said, as a mental bond that could not be broken, a tie that would keep them bound together no matter the distance.

Such a thing could not be worked towards, only hoped for; it was a matter of luck.

Wei Wuxian had never wanted anything more in his life.

The thought of never being alone again – it enticed him, it excited him. Jiang Cheng could wrinkle his nose in distaste at the idea that he might not be alone in his mind anymore, that someone would see all the stupid or terrible things he sometimes thought, but to Wei Wuxian that was the best part: that someone would see you and know you and you would see and know them, too. To have someone to accompany you through the best and worst moments of your life, always at your side…

To never fear abandonment, to never need to worry about someone going out only for a little and then never coming back.

It would be amazing.

That was what Wei Wuxian thought.

Well, that was what he thought right up until he punched Jin Zixuan in the face for insulting his shijie, his whole heart burning at the unfairness of adults who didn’t understand, at other boys who didn’t appreciate what they had, at everything all around them and at his own weakness in not being able to do more, and something just –

Clicked.

“Hey, wake up! Wake up! Are you all right?”

Wei Wuxian opened his eyes, only to be assaulted with what felt like double vision. Above him were Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang, hovering and looking anxious, and from the corner of his eye he could see Lan Wangji, who he so enjoyed teasing, was sweeping over to them with a grim expression – and yet at the same time he thought he could perceive different faces above him as well.

Three young men and two women, all looking down at him with smiles like sharks, ready to devour. Each one of them draped in the gold they lusted to take from his hands –

What the fuck? Wei Wuxian thought groggily. How did I end up on the ground?

Good question. I didn’t think I got punched that hard.

Wait, Wei Wuxian thought. Hold up, I got punched? I didn’t even see the peacock lift his fists!

…Wei Wuxian? Is that – you?

Wei Wuxian’s eyes went wide when he realized he hadn’t said any of that out loud, that to judge from Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang’s chatter they hadn’t heard either him nor the other voice. Which meant that the voice had to be...in his head. Is this – this is a resonant bond. We formed a resonant bond!

Shit, Jin Zixuan thought, because it was Jin Zixuan, wasn’t it? Shit, shit, shit. Please don’t say anything about this to anyone!

What? Why?

Please!

Wei Wuxian hadn’t even known that the peacock knew that word.

Fine, he said, feeling generous on account of the whole bond business. I won’t tell. For now.

“Wei-xiong?” Nie Huaisang asked, looking worriedly fretful. “Are you all right? You haven’t said anything.”

“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing his head and trying to think of a lie to explain why he fell over like that. “I think the peacock must’ve had a talisman or a defensive weapon or something. Whatever it is, I’m fine now.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re all right,” Jiang Cheng said, looking deeply relieved. And then, a moment later – “Because I’m going to kill you - !”

There wasn’t too much time to talk after that. Wei Wuxian was sentenced to kneeling, and then his Uncle Jiang arrived and Sect Leader Jin arrived – oh no, oh no, oh no, I fucked up, Jin Zixuan thought hopelessly, and Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but feel a bit of the same – and the next thing Wei Wuxian knew, the engagement between Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli was broken and he was being sent to pack up his things, to be taken home at once.

Jin Zixuan was swept away by his father, too.

“A pity about the engagement,” Sect Leader Jin remarked idly as they walked together. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have said such a thing. Your mother will be disappointed.”

Wei Wuxian could feel the way that that jabbed at Jin Zixuan’s heart like a stab with a sword.

“Still, it’s no harm,” the man continued, indifferently ignoring the impact his words had had on his son. “One could even call it a gain! You won’t be burdened down with that shrew’s daughter anymore.”

That what?!

Tune out of this conversation, please, Jin Zixuan said, his thoughts dull and sluggish and resigned. It’s going to get worse from here on out.

It did.

Sect Leader Jin commented at some great length about his views on Madame Yu’s many faults – her temper, her strength, her nosiness, her thought that she was worth anything other than a pair of legs and an inheritance – and contrasted it with some salacious comments on her positive traits – mostly the legs, with a few comments on the upper half as well – and then he started speculating about Jiang Yanli, too, in a way that made Wei Wuxian’s blood boil.

It’s not about her, Jin Zixuan told him, his voice a little desperate in a familiar way – he was used to having to defend his father, and just as obviously didn’t want to. He’s building up a defense.

What?

For my mother. She’ll be angry at him for agreeing to break the engagement, so he’ll say that it was my idea, say all this stuff, and then she’ll be angry at me for believing it, instead, even though I don’t. This isn’t what I wanted at all.

Wei Wuxian frowned. You wanted to marry my shijie? You sure didn’t show it!

No, I just didn’t want to marry anybody, Jin Zixuan said, and…okay, fine, that was a pretty respectable position. Wei Wuxian didn’t particularly want to marry anyone yet, either. I just got angry when everyone was talking about how it was a done deal, that’s all. Just one more thing that got picked for me.

Wei Wuxian had heard Jiang Cheng complain about similar enough things – how much of his life was selected in advance, how much was organized for the benefit of his sect rather than his own interests, how little choice he got. How even if he’d been as good as Wei Wuxian, or even better, he still wouldn’t have been able to go out and hunt pheasants all day the way Wei Wuxian did.

He refused to feel sympathy. Well, you shouldn’t have taken it out on my shijie!

Probably not. Jin Zixuan was silent for a moment. It probably doesn’t help, but I’m sorry for my rudeness.

Wei Wuxian hated it when people were reasonable. It made it so much harder to stay angry at them.

Are you going to tell me why I can’t tell people about this bond yet? he asked. You’d better have a good reason, I had to put up with an entire scolding from Jiang Cheng because I didn’t have a good excuse!

Later tonight. I promise.

That night, Wei Wuxian excused himself early and hid himself in his room on the boat. He knew that he was giving both Uncle Jiang and Jiang Cheng the impression that he was feeling deeply guilty about having broken the engagement, thereby making them feel bad about it, which he didn’t intend, but he really wanted to hear the reason. If it wasn’t good enough, he’d really break Jin Zixuan’s nose this time!

It really is a good reason!

Well, then? If it’s so good, don’t keep me in suspense!

Jin Zixuan sighed. Wei Wuxian felt it like an exhalation on his cheek, as if Jin Zixuan were right there beside him. You know how a resonant bond is supposed to be equal?

What do you mean ‘supposed to be’? Wei Wuxian asked, and felt something cold in his belly.

There are forbidden techniques, ancient ones, that are designed to manipulate a resonant bond into an unequal state. To make one side the master and the other the slave.

That’s disgusting!

If we told anyone, my father would find a way to get one, Jin Zixuan said, and he wasn’t guessing. His voice was utterly certain. There’s very little money can’t buy, and he wouldn’t be able to resist the idea of having a spy in the very heart of the Jiang clan.

Well, then just don’t tell him!

Just like I didn’t tell him about what I said about your shijie?

Wei Wuxian got tripped up by that. It was true, Jin Zixuan hadn’t said a word about what had happened, and yet his father had already known every last detail. How..?

One of my ‘friends’ told him, of course. Probably more than one, actually – I wouldn’t be surprised if they all passed it along. It’s what he pays them for.

He pays for your friends to spy on you?!

I already told you that there’s little money can’t buy. Why not friends?

I wouldn’t be friends with people who accepted money to spy on me. Why do you?

If it’s not this set, it’ll be another, and it’s all the same. If they won’t be bought, then I can’t be friends with them…anyway, I’ve gotten used to these ones.

All of them? Wei Wuxian asked. Even Mianmian? She didn’t seem the type…

Her name is Luo Qingyang, and yes. Her parents are sick and my father’s paying for the treatment; if she doesn’t tell him everything, he’ll cut off funds…she told me about it, though. Said that if there was ever a time that I wanted her to ‘forget’ to report something, she could do that. That’s more than most would do, and probably about as much as anyone can expect –

Have you ever had a friend that wasn’t bought? Wei Wuxian asked. I mean…ever?

Jin Zixuan was silent.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

Well, I guess you have me now, Wei Wuxian thought, with only a tiny amount of self-pity for the stupidity of agreeing to be friends with Jin Zixuan. Still, if he’d survived his efforts at being Lan Wangji’s friend, he could survive anything. No one’s going to buy me!

But –

Nope! No take-backs! We have a resonant bond, peacock. You think I’m going to waste a gift from the Heavens like this just because it’s with you? You’ve got another thing coming!

…can you at least stop calling me a peacock?!

Madame Yu made her displeasure clear enough when Wei Wuxian returned, ordering him to kneel all night and do every available chore and things like that, but Wei Wuxian didn’t take it to heart – he never did, really.

Like Jiang Cheng, Madame Yu’s bark was worse than her bite: for all that she hissed and spat and punished him with kneeling or holding up weights, she’d never denied him resources, kept him back from training, or even denied him the spot of head disciple to promote another less qualified in his place, which she very well might have if she were a bit pettier.

So he didn’t take it personally, even if Jin Zixuan seemed indignant on his behalf – you were defending her daughter! You’d think she’d give you some leeway for that, at least! – and at any rate it was better than Jin Zixuan’s slow meandering way home, with his father disappearing every night into a brothel or the bedroom of some innkeeper’s daughter or something like that.

It was better than Jin Zixuan’s mother’s reaction, too, which was to scream and shout and say vicious nasty things, to smash plates and vases against the walls right over his head, and then to pull him into her arms and make him promise over and over again that he would never betray her.

I think I suffered more in terms of physical exertion, but you get full points for all the emotional devastation, Wei Wuxian said after Jin Zixuan returned to hide in his bedroom. Does she do that a lot?

All the time, Jin Zixuan said. All the fucking time.

After a moment, he added, guiltily, It’s only that she loves me –

Ugh, don’t even start with that, Wei Wuxian said. Complaining about awful parent-related trauma is boring, I get enough of it from Jiang Cheng. Help me figure out what I should do tomorrow: flying kites, swimming, or hunting pheasants? Oh, or fishing!

…seriously? Do you spend any time cultivating?

Oh, come on. It’s my first day back!

That just means you have more you need to catch up on!

Your shijie is really nice.

I told you!

You didn’t! You just hit me!

Wei Wuxian loved having a resonant bond.

Sure, it wasn’t with someone useful like Jiang Cheng or even wonderful like Lan Wangji – I can hear you, you know – but it was kind of nice to have someone to complain to when it would be awkward to put it onto Jiang Cheng or Jiang Yanli.

The other half being Jin Zixuan was also not as bad as he had first thought it would be. Sure, he was just as spoiled, arrogant, vain, and deeply cynical about human nature as Wei Wuxian had thought – I can still hear you! – but he was also an awkward introvert with no social skills and an over-active guilt complex – fuck you too, Wei Wuxian – and, in the sum total of things, surprisingly tolerable. Thanks? I think?

It’d certainly made the indoctrination camp more tolerable, even if it did mean having two people talking in his ear about how he needed to think more about the consequences of his actions and how it might reflect on his sect, and certainly having Jin Zixuan confirming that the other disciples had made it out of the cave and were moving at full speed to try to get help made the days he was waiting with Lan Wangji a lot less stressful, and their ensuing rescue a lot easier.

But sometimes –

This is a terrible idea! You can’t do it!

You don’t get a say! Wei Wuxian snarled. This is my decision.

Fuck you, Jin Zixuan said. A moment later, quieter: Is this because I couldn’t make it to you in time to help?

Wei Wuxian swallowed, feeling his eyes burn. The Wen attack was a surprise to everyone, he said. Even if you were able to convince your father to let you go help with everyone you had, it wouldn’t – you wouldn’t have made it in time to do anything.

After his father had refused, Jin Zixuan had snuck out of Jinlin Tower through what he’d thought was a secret passage and tried to go anyway, only to be caught and dragged back. Wei Wuxian appreciated the effort, even if it didn’t make a difference in the end.

When they were on the run from the Wen sect, after, Jin Zixuan had encouraged Wei Wuxian to head to Lanling, swearing that he wouldn’t allow anyone to turn them over to the Wen sect, but they hadn’t gotten that far.

And now…

It’s my choice, Wei Wuxian said. You don’t get a say.

Fuck you, Jin Zixuan said again, but his voice was softer. Fine. But I’m here for you.

Wei Wuxian smiled, just a little bit, and told to Wen Qing to start.

I’m going to murder my father, Jin Zixuan said, conversationally. And then go to the hell reserved for patricides and be reborn as a chicken right before slaughter.

For shame, Wei Wuxian said. Not even a lamb or a goat?

No, I want to be able to bite someone and mean it, and chickens are better at that than goats.

Wei Wuxian giggled, a little hysterically. It’s fine, he said, looking around the Burial Mounds. It’s fine that he won’t let you come to my rescue immediately. Not like I’m going anywhere.

He’d thought – they’d both thought – that the resonant bond would break or maybe transfer to Jiang Cheng along with Wei Wuxian’s golden core, but it hadn’t.

Wei Wuxian had been depressingly grateful for it, for the by now familiar Lanling cadence of Jin Zixuan in his head. It made the horrible quiet empty of the Burial Mounds a little more tolerable, a little less awful.

Anyway, he said briskly, shaking off his terror at being here alone but for the voice in his head. I have an idea…

I feel like if I knew Chifeng-zun looked like that I would’ve made befriending Nie Huaisang more of a priority when I was younger.

I know, right? Wei Wuxian thought back. Just…wow.

A moment later, he added, a little irritably, I thought you were into my shijie again?

I am! I’m allowed to have eyes, okay?

Not if you’re surnamed Jin you aren’t.

Fuck you.

Nope. And Chifeng-zun isn’t going to, either.

He could feel Jin Zixuan rolling his eyes. I don’t even want him to, I was really just looking. Anyway, how’s Lan Wangji doing?

Lan Zhan? He’s – well, he’s always bothering me about going back to Gusu with him, talking about how my demonic cultivation is dangerous to me, but oh, you should have seen him when he joins us to fight..! You can forgive anything, really, just to watch him move – Wei Wuxian paused. Wait, why are you asking?

No reason.

Jin Zixuan! You tell me this instant -

Jin Zixuan was locking Wei Wuxian out of his head again.

It was a technique they’d worked on developing together – with some assistance from Wei Wuxian’s brilliance and Jin Zixuan’s ability to find and purchase extremely rare reference texts, whether on resonant bonds or just more generally, including when Wei Wuxian had needed some help figuring out some things about demonic cultivation while trapped on the Burial Mounds – as it had become moderately urgent following Jin Zixuan’s first spring dream involving Jiang Yanli, and even more so once he’d decided that he really did want to marry her, actually, if she’d be willing to have him.

There were some things Wei Wuxian did not need to know about his shijie.

Still, it was unusual for him to block him during the day. One might even call it suspicious.

I’m sorry, Jin Zixuan said abruptly. It had to be done, and you weren’t going to do it.

Huh? What are you talking about…?

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng shouted, and Wei Wuxian turned, surprised. His shidi’s eyes were red as if he’d been crying, and he ran up and pulled him into his arms. “Wei Wuxian…!”

“What?” he asked, puzzled. “What’s this about…?”

“How could you?!” Jiang Cheng demanded, weeping into his neck. “You should have told me – you had no right to – to give me – Wei Wuxian!”

Wei Wuxian’s back went stiff. You didn’t!

It was the truth or you getting kicked out of your sect! He needed to know!

Fuck you! It wasn’t your choice to make!

I’m not going to stand by and let you get schemed against, Jin Zixuan said. Certainly not by my own father. I won’t!

I’m going to make you pay for this, Wei Wuxian said darkly, then looked down at Jiang Cheng in his arms. And possibly thank you for it. But I’m definitely going to make you pay!

This may sound weird, Jin Zixuan said. But I think I’m being poisoned.

Based on what I know about Lanling Jin sect and its politics, it’s not weird at all, Wei Wuxian said instinctively, then frowned. Are you serious? It’s not just baby fatigue or something?

That’s what I thought at first, too. But now I’m not so sure. He was silent for a moment. I don’t want to sound like my mother, but…

You think it’s Lianfeng-zun? I’m not saying he doesn’t have the most motive for it, but do you really think..? He seems so nice.

He is, most of the time. Jin Zixuan sighed. Maybe I really am just tired.

Wei Wuxian didn’t think so. He’d had a half-dozen years of listening to the backstabbing, vicious world of Jinlin Tower under his belt by now – had fought bitterly in the war only to fight even more bitterly for something like the right to attend his own shijie’s wedding, something that ought to have been his by right – had nearly suffered an ambush when he tried to attend Jin Ling’s first month party, with Jin Zixun attacking him and Wen Ning going unexpectedly crazy and Jin Zixuan rushing over as fast as he could to make them all stop. If he hadn’t already known about Jin Zixuan not knowing about this, if he hadn’t felt something go wrong and thrown himself in between them without thinking, Jin Zixuan might’ve died there and then on the Qiongqi path.

If Jin Zixuan thought he was being poisoned, he was probably being poisoned.

I’ll come visit you and look into it, Wei Wuxian said. We can pretend that I’m there to visit shijie.

They’d long ago confessed the truth to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, of course. For some reason, neither had looked all that surprised.

With your reputation, even if you figured something out, who’d believe you? Jin Zixuan asked. Ask Hanguang-jun if he’ll come, his reputation will bear up.

Lan Zhan? Sure! I’m always happy to work with him. But you know, he’s been ignoring me recently…I don’t know why…

Tell him about the resonant bond.

What? I thought we were still keeping it a secret.

Tell him. He doesn’t tell anyone anything.

Good point, I guess. You think that’ll help him stop ignoring me?

Yes.

Wei Wuxian generally trusted Jin Zixuan’s reading of people, now that he was mature enough not to let his personal feelings cloud his judgment. All right, I will. Can you tell me why?

You’ll find out when you tell him.

Unhelpful.

Noted and ignored.

Fuck you.

Yeah, you too. See you soon.

Jin Zixuan?

Yeah?

Thank you for my love life, but also, FUCK YOU.

#mdzs #wei wuxian #jin zixuan #my fic #my fics #resonant bond #this one is set in the untamed but only barely #lesbianjinzixuan

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apollo41writes · 2 years ago

Text

Goodnight prompt 16/∞

Fandom: Detroit: Become Human Ship: RK900/Gavin Reed AUs/Tropes: Demon/angel (but in a futuristic steampunk dystopian setting), Enemies to friends to lovers Prompt: When one of the Angels tries to infiltrate the Demons, Gavin finds himself forced to help the Angel, even if he'll probably end up dead anyway by the time this damn Angel is done with his mission.

Extra details: Oh boi, get ready because for this one I have lots of setting things to talk about. Last night I wasn't sleepy at all and my brain decided to work overtime. Suffice to say, I haven't slept much.

First of all, like I mentioned, this one is a bit of a futuristic dystopia, but with a very steampunk kind of technology. So basically there was one big event in the past that corrupted the planet so much that only a small number of people aren't corrupted/sick/mutated because of the toxic fumes or whatever (don't know if it was because of chemical warfare or radiation or some kind of pandemic or even just something natural like a big underground volcano exploding and messing up completely the climate). Following this event, human society is basically split based on how "corrupted" someone became because of the fumes.

-There's The Pure, those that had enough money and technological knowledge to live under protected environments where marvelous cities are built that are basically just huge bubbles floating mid-air. These people are completely human looking, but used technology to improve their body to lengthen their lifespan. Usually these people are inventors, politician, but also second, third and forth generations Pure that at this point are no longer the brilliant geniuses that designed these cities, but a lazy "nobility" that spends most of their time drunk, on drugs and generally enjoying their privileged lives.

-Then there's The Touched, mostly those that weren't rich or smart enough to be granted to live in the protected environments right after the event, but showed very little signs of contagion. There are lost of people that fall under this category: - the farmers, that take care of the special greenhouses built to grown safely crops and are usually the less sick to prevent possible contamination to the food. They live under the domes that protect the greenhouses for this reason; - the workers, that build everything that the Pure need and if they were corrupted by the fumes are lucky enough to just have mutations that help them be more productive. They live on the ground, but still in somewhat protected cities where there are laws to follow and police that take care of people making problems; - the law, which are usually people that used to be of some relevance in the world previous to the event, and despite being touched by the corruption still look mostly human. These people are the ones that make sure order is maintained both in these protected ground cites and the greenhouses; - the help, which serve the Pure inside their protected bubbles. Mostly these people are Pure that after the first generation showed some kind of mutation that implied the corruption touched them. They still live inside the bubbles, and some actually run shops and such inside the floating cities. But the Pure usually treat them just like they would people from the ground cities.

-A little lower in the caste there's The Fallen, those that at some point lost the privilege to live under the bubbles and now live on the ground cities. They must have done something very bad to be cast out of The Pure, mostly things like endangering the safety of the safe environments or allowing people from the ground level to enter safe area and risking a contagion of some kind. Despite being cast away they still have enough money and sway that they own buildings and shops inside those cities. The Touched tend to despise them for being stupid enough to squander their chance to live a safe and comfy life and still being lucky enough to be healthy and free of mutations. At the same time, they are very sought after people for having children, since there is a better chance of having kids that are not corrupted or that have mutations so subtle that it can be hidden with technology and they have a chance, if they show potential, to be "adopted" by a family from the Pure.

-At the very bottom there's The Foul, which is basically anyone with major mutations. They live on the remnants of cities from before the event, and while there is somewhat of a social order, it's so complicated and in a permanent cycle of unending change, that calling it anything other than anarchy is difficult. Here people still look like humanoids, but most are so corrupted that they are more akin to the classic imagery of devils and demons than anything else (so, horns like protrusions, tails, skin in unnatural shade or covered in blemishes of all kinds, eyes and scleras in unnatural colors depending on how contaminated the air is in that specific area and on and on and on). Some are unlucky and die very young either to sickness or killed by those more powerful. Those that got stronger and stronger with each generations of mutations, are usually the ones that look less human and are more adaptable to the new world they live in. These people in particular are known as The Demons. Some of them use their power to try and instill some sense of order because they crave to return to the golden days of the past before the event, others go the other way and create empires built on fear, terror and chaos. In other places it's just straight out open war every single day.

-Last but not least important, The Angels. Which is mostly a nickname given to them by people and that stuck despite their inventors doing their best to correct this mistake. They are Automatons, without freewill of their own, unable to feel emotions and mostly built to follow orders of either their builder or the person that buys/rent them. Most of them are tasked to do those jobs that are in between the safe ground cities and the safe environments in the sky. But since the Pure are starting to notice how much more powerful the Foul are getting thanks to their mutations, some of them are built to look like The Demons so that they can infiltrate their society and destroy them from the inside out, preventing organization against the system that keeps the Pure safe. The one thing that granted these automatons their nickname is the pair of wings hidden inside their chests and that allow them to move back and forth from the various places all over the globe. Some look almost human like, others are very obviously automatons with their inner working showing, and others, like I just said, look like the Foul to be as inconspicuous as possible when on the ground.

After all of those setting details, back to the actual "plot". So, like I hinted, Gavin is one of The Demons. He's not particularly important, but he's strong enough and "mutant" enough to be called so. Usually he stays out of shit, but every now and then he's called for help in dealing with troublemakers in one of the cities that as of lately are more or less organized under a group of Demons. RK900 is an Angel, sent to the ground to try and infiltrate inside this specific city to destroy it from the inside out, since the more organized a city is, the more it's likely that they will attack safe ground cities. Gavin, being a loner, is a lucky person for the Angel to capture and convince to help him if he wants to survive their encounter. From there I imagine Gavin sassying RK900 a lot, doing his best to be useful enough that RK900 still wants him alive, but useless enough that RK900 won't have an easy win. Until they both realize they work well together when they are forced to fight against a common enemy: a different group of demons from outside the city, trying to create random chaos and kill as many as possible. I think they slowly build to lovers only after, during their "investigation" they found out that RK900 isn't the first Angel to be sent down to the ground and that there are many other automatons hidden in the middle of the Foul. That they weren't destroyed like the Pure thought, but they found out that they actually have free will, and started helping the Foul in building up slowly into a more functioning society. Basically, some of the Demons that rule the most successful cities are half actual Demons, and half Angels. RK900 at first wants to go back to report this to the Pure, but he's stopped by other Angels and kept prisoner. Which is when Gavin finds out he's in love and he does his best to make RK900 get free from his programming.

And that is as far as I got last night. Lost of details still missing, this is basically just a skeleton, and even then, everything can be changed. It would for sure be an interesting read, but, like many of my more complicated ideas, I for sure feel like this isn't something I would be able to write.

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