#bc i dont even know if this project will work out

[badscientist]

snippet sunday

for snippet sunday we dont have much of a snippet - we got the opening 1st draft of another project of mine called 'headstart', about a husband and wife (lesbian edition) that team up vigilante style to figure out the source of a contaminated blood transfusion after said husband presents with some odd symptoms. starring my ocs quinlan and eileen. this is set in the same universe as dead meat, in the year 2014, bc we all know no one wants to write the modern day.

content warnings include descriptions of illness, a mention of vomit, accidental dismemberment.

without further ado -

Quinlan washed his face vigorously and toweled off, gazing into the mirror. His face, same as it ever was. He stretched, cracking his neck and back. He'd gotten sick the other night. Badly. Hanging over the toilet for hours with chills while he vacated the contents of his stomach badly. But the blood transfusion had seemed to work. For all the frustration, the stars in his eyes had faded, and with them, the creeping sensation along his spine. For the first time in almost a year, he felt good. Behind him, Quinlan caught the reflection of Eileen passing by the bathroom door, yawning loudly. He smiled tenderly to himself. How relieved she'd be, to know he was well. Quinlan brushed his teeth and shaved. He looked himself over while he smoothed back his hair. ...Who are you? Quinlan paused and furrowed his brows. A strange feeling began to hang over him. His face was suddenly unfamiliar to him. He traced his jawline with his fingertips. ...Oh. It's only me. His reflection ceased to feel like a stranger. He blinked. Wait. He pulled his eyelid back. A fresh spread of red. When had that happened? ...Ah. Of course. Vomiting puts a lot of strain on the blood vessels. Quinlan stroked gel through his hair and exited the bathroom. Spent too long looking at his reflection. An existential moment. Nothing more. He went into the kitchen and beheld his wife. Eileen had put coffee on, sipping now at it in the warm morning light streaming in from the window. ...She's beautiful. Oh, yes. The most beautiful woman on Earth. Eileen studied him over the rim of her mug and she smiled. "You're looking better today," she said. "How are you feeling?"

Quinlan smiled in return, getting coffee for himself. He sat across from her. "Better, but even better now that I've seen you," he said. "You see me everyday," she said with amusement. "I know. It never gets old," he said, and leaned forward, placing a kiss on her cheek. They spent a lovely day together. Finally free, to be. He had taken time off and she was between projects. Quentin was off to school for the semester and obligations could fall away. A whirlwind week to themselves. He had so much energy now! How wonderful to wake and feel like a giddy young man again, falling in love with her over and over.

Despite his confusion some mornings, Quinlan had begun to adjust. Post-illness malaise, surely. He discussed things with himself more than ever. A pep talk, to orient himself. To allow himself to feel hesitant and curious again. He awoke early to groom himself and watched Eileen pass by the door with a smile. His routine. Quinlan checked under his eyelid. The red had cleared up. "Looking good today," he said to the mirror. ...As always. "Still have two more days to myself, and to her. I have to make it special." ...How do I do that when every day has been special? Make her dinner. Of course! Quinlan rarely got to cook for her anymore. They had their coffee together and went their separate ways; she holed up in her office, beginning research for her next article, and he went grocery shopping.

...Everything looks so tasty! Oh, yes. What a brilliant experience a grocery store could be. So brilliant, in fact, Quinlan wore his sunglasses to combat fluorescent lighting and brought out his gloves to mitigate the tactile experience. ...That's much better. Swiss steak. A nice salad on the side. A decadent chocolate cake for dessert. When he returned home, Eileen had put another pot of coffee on. She was sitting on the floor in her office with all of her materials sprawled out in front of her. "Coffee so late?" he asked. Eileen didn't reply. She chewed on her pen, absorbed with her business. "I'm making dinner," he said. Eileen sat upright and looked at him with a wide smile. "What?" "I'm making dinner," he repeated. "No way!" "Yes way. Swiss steak. Salad. Dessert." "What's for dessert?" "A surprise." Eileen wiggled excitedly and returned to her work while he got started with dinner. He was cutting into the head of lettuce when Eileen screamed.

"QUINLAN!" He jolted, panic flooding him. Something struck his hand, but he hardly noticed. Quinlan gripped the knife and took off to her office. "Eileen. What's wrong?!" he asked. Eileen beamed at him. Nothing was wrong. Perhaps everything was right, with that glow about her. Quinlan groaned, trying to relax. She looked at the knife in his hand and grimaced. "Oh my God," Eileen said, laughing. "Oh, baby, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you! Come here, come here! Look at this!" Eileen held her phone out to him. A video of a fluffy gray kitten, jumping around in a bumblebee costume. "Very cute," he said. "Looks like Steve when he was a baby." Eileen giggled. Then she gasped. "Oh my God, Quinlan! Your finger!" Quinlan blinked and looked at his other hand. His middle finger barely hung by a thread of flesh. Behind him, blood trailed down the hallway. "Oh. Fuck," he said. He dropped the knife. Eileen cupped her hands over her mouth. "I'm so sorry. I didn't- I didn't know you were- I-I'll call 911!" she said. "Don't," he said. "I can drive." "What?! You could go into shock! At least let ME drive!" "Okay. Can you put the vegetables away?" he asked, sounding not all there. "What?! Yeah, sure, I- honey, there's more important things-" Quinlan walked into the bathroom in a daze, rinsed his finger, applying bandages, holding it together underneath. It bled through. More bandages. His breath quickened. How could this happen. He was so careful with knives. Idiot. But what if Eileen HAD been hurt? At least she was safe. Only a stupid accident. He could go to the emergency room.

...Wait. I can fix it.

Quinlan's breath slowed. Calmer. Under the bandage, it didn't hurt anymore. He unwound it only enough to see. His finger was re-attached. Fine black thread held it together. Carefully, he tugged; a thread frayed enough to pull some away. It looked more like hair. ...Don't play with it. The thread rewound itself, pulling tighter. Eileen pounded on the door. "Quinlan, if you don't come out of there right now-" She opened the door anyway. Quinlan held his hand up. "No way. You stitched it back on?" she asked.

[re-decorate]

i need to jump into a volcano

[holy-reference-in-a-username]

Look out for magic mirrors~!

Congratulations you activated my trap card. Take a comic.

Ell: Holy shit they're idiots.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

i've gotten several asks as to how i'm doing after the update, and uh.

well refer to This Image for your answer-

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[5eyed]

some recent sprites for "on the flip side" characters (or rather the dimensional doubles of existing characters lol). ive posted characters from this universe a lot over the years, as its my oldest story that i still work on/think about, but ive never really explained who they are! if youd like to explore the setting and characters of "on the flip side" a bit, i made a carrd for it here (its still a wip but im trying to get it all finished within the month! main characters have fully written out bios & backstories, some side characters still just have basic info.) (also this all takes place in a fictional californian city and if you read this and go "wow that is definitely not how things are in california or the us" sorry i dont know shit im french.)

[thedevotionaltour]

i havent even read enough gl to justify the feelings and emotions i have about kyle i just have the lovers heart and also something wrong with me. and my projection. in my mind he's just like me. and he would have loved college vending machine frozen cheeseburger and heating it up in the microwave at 1 in the morning because he was bored and didn't want to work on a drawing assignment on 20" x 30" paper that was due tomorrow in his freshman year. he would have loved going to the club to push off finals work that's creating the worst stress known to man in his brain. and he would love to annoy the fuck out of his roommate when high and avoiding homework on a saturday.

[blueskittlesart]

In defense of the original, while I do agree the episodic vibes were a bit much at times, and it was something I kinda had to work my way through slowly rather than binging all in one...

I do kinda prefer the more gradual approach to laying out the information; getting to know both the setting and who Vash is as a person and the different facets of both, before getting the context that lets it all click into place. Plus the main quartet having ample time to grow together so that later developments have stronger emotional weight.

I will agree that Knives definitely suffered in focus, and I am interested in how Stampede handles him, but admittedly he wasn't really what I watched Trigun for in the first place. ^^;

yeah my gripe is less with the way the setting and characters were handled and more with the way the. actual plot was handled. it honest to god felt to me like they realized about halfway through their run that they didnt have enough episodes left to get the backstory in in a cohesive way so they just shoved it all into one episode and pretended that that explanation didn't create more questions than it answered. you spend 20 episodes teasing your audience like "ooooh what is vash?? clearly hes not human!! clearly there's something going on!!! don't you want to know whats going on?? keep watching and you'll totally understand whats going on!!" and then your big reveal is that. He Is Not Human. which is something that any idiot who has watched the last 20 episodes has already figured out. the question the audience ACTUALLY has at that point in the runtime is what, EXACTLY, is vash, and what the context is behind the conflict he and knives are in. the backstory episode explains that Knives Is Here, and it gives context to the setting and everything, but it pissed me off that it STILL didn't answer the actual mysteries i cared about, i.e. vash's real identity and the thing with the gun and his fucking arm and knives's motivations and everything. maybe that gets answered in the last episode that i neglected to watch but personally I prefer a story where i UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON by the time the final confrontation hits. with trigun it got to a point where vash was going out for the final battle with knives and i STILL didn't know who vash was, who knives was, where they came from, or what the hell their motivations were. that just made that final confrontation seem so wholly uninteresting to me that i didn't even feel like watching it. it was like "hey look vash is fighting a cardboard cutout that he is Afraid Of. Why? lmao idk man. probably has something to do with that weird spaceship that shows up in one whole episode before this point. not going to tell you how tho." I think some writers have this tendency to think that mystery = good writing and that not revealing anything to your audience will consistently draw them in for more, but that only works for so long. after 20 episodes of virtually net 0 information it got to feel like I was being strung along and like my questions were never going to be answered, so I gave up on the show in the final hour. Again, i'm not saying it was BAD necessarily and i understand the context in terms of writing and production that led to the show being produced that way but i think it really noticeably suffers due to the fact that it refuses to give the audience ANYTHING but crumbs of information for about 80% of it's runtime. that being said. i did genuinely like a lot of it. it has its moments. im not trying to discourage anyone from watching it or anything lol i just think stampede is a little more successful in keeping the viewer engaged in the story throughout by constantly feeding you bits of information and actually answering your questions as they become plot-relevant.

[toastsnaffler]

tried going to bed early bc ive just been sitting staring at the wall or my phone all afternoon but it's been 3 hours now and I can't stop crying. :(

[nimbus-tatze]

more people gotta learn the difference between liking someone, trusting someone, and relying on someone.

I dislike and distrust my coworker, but i know that snake can be relied on and will deliver the chart by monday if they say they will deliver it by monday. And i don't have to like them, just rely on them and they gotta be able to do the same with me. My friend who i very much like and trust is absolutely unreliable in comparison, they will cancel on me last minute or totally forget about smth we had agreed on. My neighbour who i like i don't trust bc they like to gossip and my personal stuff would not remain personal.

I mean english ain't my first or even my second language but i feel there is a very big difference and people who say 'why don't you trust them' should maybe instead ask 'why don't you rely on them'? and instead of requesting i should stop disliking someone should maybe check first if i do treat them respectfully or not.

[cables-and-wires]

ohhh my god wait. hold on what mental illness is doing this

[godsfavoritescientist]

I have a draft saved somewhere talking about my classpect headcanons for everyone, I really need to finish that sometime so people can see where I'm coming from when I say "fidds is a mage of rage". I have Ford down as a prince of light, stan as a thief of time, and bill as a lord of hope, but I think those are a liiittle bit more self explanatory

[ironmanstan]

So much work to do but im actually doing it which scares me more than the fact i have work to do and u can tell bc i keep fucking posting like this

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[sleepii-moth]

if one more thing happens to me this week im gonna have a mental breakdown

[deadchovsky]

oaughbhhdhsbaquwijala. I hate school.