#because those simple little workings have been pretty effective for me
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Hate Is A Funny Thing
Pairing: Eris Vanserra x F!Reader
Kinktober 2024: Hate Sex
Description: You and Eris have been at each other's throats ever since you've first met, but today your night ends a little differently.
Warnings: Smut, vaginal sex, semi-public sex, some dirty talk
Word Count: 1,7k
Rating: 18+ MDNI
Kinktober 2024 Masterlist
Hate is a funny thing. It can consume you with unbridled rage in the blink of an eye, raw anger traveling to every extremity of your body at the simple sight of someone you hate. It makes you forget yourself and everything you've worked hard for, the mask of impartiality that you strive to maintain in public disappearing as soon as your gaze meets those familiar amber eyes.
Barely restrained power bubbling right beneath the surface as he spews hateful words behind that irritatingly arrogant smirk of his, your own mouth responding in kind, not letting you fall behind. The ice in your veins begging to be let out and doused over his fire to snuff it out even though you've long since mastered your powers.
All in all, you know the effects of hate pretty well, but you can't say you ever imagined it would lead you to getting fucked within an inch of your life by the person you claim to hate so much.
Tonight hadn't been the first time he had followed after you to continue your heated conversation when you walked out of the room, usually it simply leads to more vile words and even louder voices. You had even slapped him before, pushed at his chest a few times in anger, he had set a few unsuspecting plants on fire with his temper too, but, for some reason you can't explain, today you grabbed the back of his head and his hands fell on your waist instead, lips meeting in the middle in a hungry, untamed kiss.
There were no more biting words exchanged, both of you letting your bodies speak for themselves, kissing each other's lips raw, his teeth marking your neck as your nails carved his skin, desperately feverish hands pulling at each other's clothes, only able to somewhat relax and take a breath when he finally drives his cock inside your dripping cunt, the delicious stretch silencing the world around you.
“You can close your eyes all you want,” he says, breaking you out of your thoughts, “but it's still going to be me who's fucking you.”
His voice was deeper, breathier with the effort, struggling to push out his words evenly between pants, his usually vexing amber eyes darting between where your bodies met and your own when you finally looked up at him with half lidded eyes.
“Do you ever stop talking?”
Eris chuckles, opening his mouth to say something that will likely only make you madder, and so you grab his neck and pull him down for a kiss instead, knowing that's the only way you've managed to keep him quiet ever since you've met him. Of course that was the only reason you were kissing him, not because the way his tongue moved against yours sent a tingly feeling to every nerve on your body or because you could almost taste the moans that escaped him on your tongue.
Luckily he had winnowed you to a private location in between feverish kisses, some random office in the mansion the banquet was being held at, so you didn't have to worry about anyone seeing you at least. Unfortunately, no matter how embarrassing it would be for someone else to witness this, you can't keep this secret from yourself, and from now on you will have to look at Eris knowing how his hands feel like caressing your body and how well his cock stretches you out.
If you look at him objectively, ignoring everything he is and everything he could be, you can admit that Eris is an exceptionally handsome male even though you would never say the words out loud. He's also extremely intelligent and quick-witted, easily keeping up with your jabs when you fight, and powerful, so much so that you know he will become the High Lord one day. But he will always be Eris.
He trails kisses down to your neck, hips moving incessantly against yours, making it hard to breathe let alone think. His skin felt warm against yours, it shouldn't have come as a surprise seeing as he was quite literally made of fire, but it threatened to melt the ice living under yours, the one who helped you keep an unaffected mask in place, the one you desperately needed right now to keep his name off your lips.
As if sensing your thoughts, Eris moves away from your neck and comes up to watch your face as he fucks you, thrusting into you deeper while keeping those Gods forsaken fiery eyes on yours, taking note of every breath you took and moan you attempted to bite back. Having his undivided attention becomes too much too soon and you can't help but close your eyes, trying to take comfort in the way his body moved against yours to escape how his eyes burned into you with emotions you couldn't decipher, were too scared to.
“Keep your eyes on me,” he breathes out, sounding less like an order and more like a plea. There was a softness behind his voice that you had never heard coming from him. It sounded wrong, so far detached from you, him and everything that will never be between you. Taking a steadying breath, you open your eyes, what you find swirling in his making your next words easier to find.
“What made you this needy?” You hate yourself for doing this, for being unable to see any vulnerability behind his eyes without nipping it at the bud, but you couldn't stop yourself. “Is it your father's cruelty? I hear he didn't even let your mother hold you when you were a child.”
A raging fire burns in his eyes at your vile words, his hand coming down to wrap around your neck as he thrusted harder into you. Good, this was good, familiar, you knew how to work with this. You knew he'd take any comment about his father with a cruel smile, but bringing up his mother was always going too far, it brought out that side of him that did justice to the Vanserra name.
Eris studies you for a moment, searching for something you hoped he couldn't find before that annoyingly captivating smirk of his returns to his lips, looking up at the office's door and letting out a breath, one that sounded more like a cruel laugh. You could also feel his hands warming up against your skin - maybe you truly had gone too far.
When he meets your eyes again, you expect to find the male who once burned a hole in your new dress and insults you every chance he gets, and you do but something's not quite right. What you find in his eyes is a vast ocean of unbridled rage and engulfing flames threatening to consume you whole, and yet there's more to it, more than you have ever gotten from him.
“I was going to be nice and let you cum on my cock,” he starts, his hips slowing down more and more with every word, “but you can't ever keep your mouth shut, can you?”
“Eris, don't you dare-”
He ignores your thinly veiled threat, his hips coming to a stop with his cock deep inside you, smirk only widening as your glare sours. Grabbing onto your body tightly, he winnows you once more, this time to the sofa across the room, sitting down with you still perched on his cock, the change in position driving it impossibly deeper inside you, a choked moan escaping your parted lips.
“If you want to cum, you'll have to do it yourself.”
Gods, you truly hated him, more than you could ever explain. A myriad of thoughts pass through your mind, your pride and ego begging you to walk away and leave him unsatisfied, but you knew you couldn't, and as your hips start moving you on top of him, you know there was only one possible answer from the start.
“Good girl-”
You cover his mouth before he can piss you off even further and ruin this for you, the way he smiles against your palm enough to let you know this is exactly what he wanted, that you were playing right into his hand, but you couldn't even bring yourself to care, not when he was stretching you out so deliciously, when he was hitting every pleasure spot inside you, ones you didn't even know existed, his hands falling over your thighs and helping you move along his thick cock, bodies trembling against each other.
It's only when the pleasure becomes too much, and you feel yourself right on the edge that your hands drops from his mouth, moving to his shoulder instead to find some leverage as your thighs burned with the effort of chasing that destructive orgasm you felt just out of reach, the one that would make all of this worth it.
Despite his words, Eris seemed unwilling to let you do it on your own, one of his hands traveling down your body, sending goosebumps erupting throughout your skin as it went, coming down to find your clit, rolling it with his thumb, an immediate moan of his name escaping your lips, one you can't even bring yourself to care about even though you had been trying your best to keep it down ever since he first kissed you.
Your orgasm finds you like this, washing away every thought from your brain as you shake on top of him, barely managing to keep moving long enough to feel him cumming deep inside you as well. In the midst of all the pleasure and insanity you seemed to have reached out for him, kissing him as you were coming down.
When you finally pull away to catch your breaths, he leans back against the sofa with closed eyes, chest rising and falling as his hands held onto your sides loosely, and you finally understand why he needed you to keep your eyes on him.
“Eris,” you find yourself whispering, almost sighing in relief when he meets your eyes, grabbing the back of your head gently and pulling you down for a kiss.
See, the funny thing about hate is that it can turn into something else entirely when you least expect it and leave you hopeless in the face of it all.
#eris vanserra x reader#eris x reader#eris vanserra smut#eris smut#eris vanserra x you#eris vanserra x y/n#eris x you#eris x y/n#acotar fanfiction#acotar x reader#acotar smut#acotar kinktober
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Some folks: I studied for 6 months and did a weeks worth of meditation and preparation for this spell. Here is the physical space I’ve set aside for the next four days to preform it
Me: I painted a thing and thought very hard while doing so. Magic!!!
#spoiler: both methods are valid#i just do not have the focus/memory for all the elaborate ritual some folks get into#and I’m pleased as a punch that my very basic/minimal magic system seems to also work#because those simple little workings have been pretty effective for me
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Eddie is so hardcore with the pet names and Steve doesn’t know how to handle it.
Becuase no one’s ever called him the sweet names and terms of endearment. Tbh was always his job.
It’s the morning after Steve’s stayed the night the first time, and he’s making breakfast in the tight trailer kitchen one morning and Eddie gently moves him forward with soft hands on his back, with a kiss to his shoulder as he scoots behind him to refill his coffee cup.
“ ‘Scuse me baby love” me mutters, still pretty much asleep and not really aware of the effect he’s having on Steve. (Steve is ready to scream). Steve blushes, a little light headed the rest of the time he’s cooking.
And then there’s that time Eddie offered to just change Steve’s oil for him because ‘it’s really not that hard why pay $20 when I can just do it’ and Steve insisted he’d feel too bad. So eddie countered “fine, then you can help me if that makes it better”.
And while Steve’s sitting on the porch of the trailer being absolutely fucking useless -because of corse Eddie wasn’t gonna actually let him help he wouldn’t know how to be good for shit with cars anyway- Eddie suddenly called out “hey sweetheart? Can you go grab me a glass of water?”
And of corse Steve can do that he can do literally anything eddie asks in that tone. And does sweetheart give him a head rush? Yeah. But it’s what happens after that really gets him fucked up.
“Thank you pretty boy, you’re a life saver” Eddie grins, leaning over- careful to avoid getting any oil on Steve- and pressing a kiss to his cheek. And Steve keeps playing those words in his head for weeks. Pretty boy
And then there’s the honey boy incident. Steve can never get over that one. Fucking hell, honey boy. Where does eddie get these ideas from?
And then there had been that time steve was picking up the kids from hellfire, but apparently they’d decided to go play a game of manhunt in the time since eddie cut them loose from their journey and then Steve arrived.
And fuck, no way in hell was Steve going to rush the kids. Not when they were finally relaxed and safe enough to just be kids for once. So while leaving against the Beamer he was greeted by a grinning eddie.
“Hey baby boy, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He practically fucking purred, coming in close to Steve’s personal space- Eddie’s favorite place to be. And Steve’s favorite place for Eddie to be. Eddie knew damn well Steve was getting the kids today. Like every day he spent chauffeuring the kids or Robin around. And Eddie knew damn well those kids were off in the woods being assholes. And knew damn well he had some free time to flirt with his boyfriend because Steve would never take away these kinds of memories from his kids. So yeah he wanted to lay it on thick.
But baby boy? Steve was going to explode. So simple but so overwhelming.
“You can’t keep doing this to me”. It came out way whinier than Steve had wanted it to.
“Can’t keep doing what?” “Calling me those names! It’s embarassing!”
Eddie just grinned brighter.
“Is it embarrassing? Because it seems like you like it a lot. The way you blush, the way you sit there and babble after trying to get your brain to work again-“
“I do not-“ “oh baby you always do. You love it when I call you pretty names. Just admit it and I’ll never stop”
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ROSES ARE RED, AND THIS IS BEDONKS
CAN I PRETTY PLEASE HAVE SOME PERCY AND TONKS 🌹💖
“What’s going on with Percy?”
Kingsley looks ups from his paperwork to find Amelia looming over him. Not exactly a common occurrence, since he’s well over a foot taller than her. “Brooks?”
“Merlin, don’t speak to me about Percy Brooks,” she says, pulling a face. She’s the one who brought him up! “Weasley.”
He blinks several times, rolling through Arthur’s children until he lands on the appropriate redhead. A bit uptight, considering his parentage, but Molly can fret with the best of them up until she gets fed up and settles matters with her wand. “I could get Tonks in here, if you want.”
“Do they know each other?” she asks in interest. “They were in different houses, and a couple years apart.”
How does she know that? He knew that, but it was against his will. “Tonks is dating him. Or trying? I’m not totally clear on the specifics despite her best efforts.”
He hadn’t anticipated how much work it would take for him to dodge a trainee determined to complain to him about her love life. It speaks well of her future in the field, at least. Or poorly of his own abilities, but he’s fairly confident in those, so he’s comfortable giving her the credit here.
“Great, a harassment case waiting to happen for our department,” she says dryly.
He rolls his eyes. “The only person he’s complaining about it to is Tonks. Who takes it as encouragement. Which, considering the cause and effect, it very well might be.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Amelia says. “What’s what this kid?”
Kingsley is lost again. “Can you get a little more specific?”
“Crouch’s department has become efficient, and dare I saw, effective over the last couple months. It’s certainly got nothing to do to with Crouch, since he’s been useless for nearly a decade. The only thing that’s changed is Percy. Who attends every meeting, claiming Crouch sent him to take notes, and then memos and policy get signed and sent out of Crouch’s office when I know for a fact Crouch is too busy harassing me to do his damn job.”
He tries to avoid the obvious answer because it’s the most ridiculous. “You think it’s him?”
“Who else?” she returns.
Well. “Do you… want me to arrest him?”
“What good would that do?” she demands. “The department is operating smoothly for once. I want to know what his deal is. Is he loyal to Crouch? Plotting against us? Just really passionate about bottom thickness?”
Not according to Tonks.
Uhg.
If he was alone, he’d bang his head on his desk until he’s unable to remember what Tonks’s voice sounded like and then maybe he’d know peace.
“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” he says. “You’re noticing. Maybe that’s what he’s after.”
“I’m noticing because I notice everything. He’s taking significant steps to ensure people don’t notice. How’s he supposed to get promoted that way? Or transferred?” She shakes her head. “He’s doing it for a reason. Do me a favor and find out.”
Why can’t she ask him something simple, like hiding a body or burying evidence?
Now he has to spend his lunch break listening to Tonks talk about her not-boyfriend.
#hii!#prompt answers#prompts are closed#asks#lance-with-a-chance-of-anxiety#harry potter#siat#last valentines day prompt!!#DAYS before the end of the month too!!#which is so good for me
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Blind Date with Tsukishima
Blind Date - Tsukishima x Reader
“And it’s going to be a Blind Date,” Hitoka points out. “I’m not telling you who it is. But he’ll wear a red scarf.”
“A red scarf,” you nod. “Gotcha.”
She squints at you. “You don’t wanna know more?”
“No, I’m fine.” You sigh. “Better to go in blind, right? Not like swiping on Tinder did me any good.”
She laughs heartily. “You’re too much in your head. You’re just like me! But he’ll be nice. Ah, well… he’ll be nice for you.”
It’s your turn to squint. “He’s not that nice to others?”
“He is!” She reassures you, already panicking. “I’d never say anything bad about him, he’s my friend. But he can be a bit brash at first if he doesn’t know or trust you. But he’s always respectful to authorities, I know that’s important to you.”
“Well,” you sniff before sighing. “I am too single to complain about that. Blind Date it is.”
-x-
“A Blind Date,” Kei repeats, dragging the words. “How old are you?”
Hitoka pouts. “It’s a cute idea!”
“Sure, for her. But you could tell me who it is.”
“But where’s the fun in that? Tadashi, back me up!”
“Tsukki-”
“No,” Kei shakes his head. “Don’t bother. I’m going to go along with it because you asked so nicely, but only this one time, okay? And don’t remind me that I’ve been single for too long, I know. Shush!” His hand snaps up just in time to cut off Kanji who’d just opened his mouth.
Kanji pouts but falls back again, throwing his arm around Hitoka for support.
“What is she going to wear?” Kei asks Hitoka. “A red scarf too?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “She’s got a big red hair clip that’s shaped like a flower. A Gerbera.”
“Oh, is that the exotic one?” Kanji asks, perking up.
“No, you mean Hibiscus,” Kentarou drawls before taking a sip of his beer. He rolls his eyes at the sudden attention. “What? Everyone knows those flowers.”
“Sure,” Kei drawls back, finding at least a little reprieve in the angry glare he gets in response.
-x-
Hitoka has a lot of friends, you realize, as you stalk her Instagram account.
But she’s very good at tagging all of them, be it work friends, old high school friends or all those other people she knows from dating a Volleyball Player.
You scroll back all the way to her first post in High School and come up with only three people wearing a red scarf around her.
Sure, that means nothing in the long run, but one of those people is a girl, and the other two are Asahi Azumane the Fashion Designer and someone called Tsukishima Kei, Volley Player.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that Azumane is happily married, the red scarf now tied around his wife’s neck. What a shame. He’d have been cute.
Tsukishima’s Instagram Account is private and you’re not going to embarrass yourself by sending him a follower request.
Koganegawa Kanji’s account, however, is public and he posts a lot.
From Selfies at work, Tsukishima glaring at him in the background to Group Photos at the Isekaya they seem to visit regularly, everything is there.
It doesn’t take long to find a messy video of the Gang, Tsukishima and someone with a haircut resembling a Tennisball engaged in the laziest catfight you’ve ever seen or heard.
Tennisballhead’s insults are not for the soft but Tsukishima draws back just as effectively.
So… you could be mistaken, but you’re pretty sure Tsukishima is going to be your not so blind Blind Date.
-x-
He doesn’t want to know, really. But then again, a bit of research doesn’t hurt, right?
Hitoka has only five girlfriends that she regularly mentions and posts on social media.
Two of them are taken, one is going through a complicated breakup at the moment as far as he’s aware, and the other two…
There is no Gerbera hair clip in sight. Not even a hair clip with a different flower, though he doesn’t think Hitoka would mess up something that simple.
It’s two days until the Date and he finds himself scrolling through both of their Instagrams, looking for clues, pretending he isn’t interested at all
And maybe he wouldn’t have figured it out if not for Kanji’s big mouth.
-x-
The Diner’s nice, decorated in a western style.
You start salivating just at the thought of a milkshake with fries but busy yourself with the menu instead, sipping slowly from the glass of water you’d ordered.
You’re early, the result of a surprising eagerness to meet your blind date.
Someone brushes past you and you can feel it - the giant red hair clip snagging on something. You can feel the break before you hear it, watch helplessly as the fake Gerbera adorning the clip tumbles to the floor, only to be crushed under someone’s eager foot.
Your hair now flows freely around your face, a welcome shield from the outside world as you fight against the sting of tears.
It’s nothing big, the hair clip not even of sentimental value, but you can’t help but see a sign in it.
-
Tsukishima Kei is fifteen minutes late.
You stare at Hitoka’s message on your phone, the innocent question of whether you made it to the Diner just fine. No sign that she knows he’s not showing.
Maybe he got held up at work? Does that happen to Volleyball Players?
“Have you decided yet?” Your server appears next to your table, chewing bubble gum and grinning.
Surely you’re imagining the smug curve of her smile.
“Just a minute,” you ask. “I’m waiting on someone.”
“Oh honey,” she drawls out with enough satisfaction to leave no doubt she’s enjoying this. “He’s not showing. Just accept it.”
“I-”
“Are we paying for that roast on the side or is that on the house?” A deep voice asks to your left and you both turn, surprised.
Tsukishima’s there, in the flesh, out of breath, and beads of sweat glistening on the bow of his lip. He looks like he ran here and you’re ready to believe it, no more evidence needed.
“I’m sorry Honey,” he tells you with a voice so sweet you can only call it passive-aggressive. “The train got delayed and my phone was empty. Never letting Kanji play games on it to pass the time.”
“You’re forgiven,” you tell him simply, sending a pointed glare toward your server.
She catches herself, shuffling away with an apology but that’s too little too late. You know you won’t be tipping too well tonight.
Tsukishima slips into his seat, pulling the red scarf from his neck.
“I thought you were supposed to wear a hair clip?”
“I thought you were supposed to be on time?”
He smiles, clearly enjoying that you dare to fight back.
“Missed my train. Running over was faster than waiting for the next.”
“Mhm,” you eye him. “You sure you didn’t just want to show off your stamina?”
“Maybe?” He grins. “What about the hair clip?”
“It got crushed under careless feet,” you admit, trying not to feel sorry for yourself.
“Good,” he comments. “You won’t need it any longer.”
“Excuse me?” You ask, a little perplexed.
A blush, as red as the Gerbera mentioned, rises onto his cheeks.
“No more blind dates?” He offers and you smile. “We’ll see about that.”
- Bonus -
“How did you know it was me?” You ask, your joined hands swinging in between your bodies.
His cheeks are flushed from the cold, the wine and no doubt your attention as well.
“Kanji… Hitoka’s boyfriend. He mentioned your favorite food.”
“And?” You blink, surprised that this might have led him to you.
“I might have been stalking Hitoka’s Instagram. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
“Oh,” you chuckle. “Well, you wear that red scarf a lot. Just saying.”
“You knew it was me?”
You shrug, unable to keep from smiling proudly. “Had a hunch.”
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#my writing#haikyuu x reader#haikyuu#haikyuu fluff#dira.asks#haikyuu x you#hq x reader#haikyuu!!#mha x reader#tsukishima x reader#tsukishima kei#tsukishima fluff#tsukki x reader
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Most V
Read Most here | ~5.8k words
From me: I've been waiting for this part for a REALLY long time.
Warnings: *drum roll* SMUT, semi-public, unprotected, really needy 18+ also, some pretty angsty chats (and more Lauren)
Summary: Harry has been dying for this date for three years. And all the answers it comes with. Even if he doesn't like some of them. She missed Harry. Plain and simple.
With Addie off the phone, she gazed at her reflection for a moment. The girls did an amazing job with her hair and makeup. She felt beautiful. Beautiful enough to be on a date with Harry. He was one of the only people she had ever been on a date with (as much as she did it, she didn’t consider third-wheeling with Addie and Carter actually dating; and knowing Harry was her soulmate put a damper on the memory of her dates with one of the only other guys she dated, Beau, in the ninth grade). It was simultaneously terrifying and wonderful.
The thought of him made the nerves return. Closing her eyes, she smoothed down the skirt of her dress. It was light green. Nearly matched Harry’s eyes, which was why she selected it. There was a slight V-cut at her neck and had fluttery sleeves at the top of her shoulders. Eleanor insisted it looked beautiful against her skin and the skirt cinched slightly at her waist accentuating her curves and then came to a ruffled hem that hit just above her knee. With a pair of wedged nude sandals, she tried to create the effect that her legs were longer, but she slightly felt like she was playing dress up and this was not a date she was meant to go on.
“I just need to jump,” she whispered to herself encouragingly.
The full effect had Harry’s jaw nearly unhinged to the floor as she entered the kitchen. Eleanor punched him in the arm to keep him from drooling. Sarah smiled excitedly. “You look beautiful.”
“Extremely,” Harry nodded in agreement, his eyes scanning her in a way that made her feel naked, but in a really good way. She blushed so cutely. It made Harry’s heart skip a beat. “Ready?” He asked.
She nodded. Because for the first time in ages she felt so ready to go on a date. Eager. Utterly excited to be alone with someone. “Yes,” she smiled.
*
Dinner passed in a blur. Truly, he was only thinking about the way her smile looked so nice on her lips. How soft her hair framed around her face. The way her skin practically glowed and it was only amplified by the makeup that she decidedly did not need but it looked like she was doing the products a favor by wearing them on her beautiful face. He was only pretty sure they spoke. Chatted about a variety of things but he wasn’t sure he could recall them in detail if asked because he was so overwhelmed by the fact that he was with her, on a date. After all that time.
He suspected there was stuff about work and college. He did remember he told her at least twenty stories about Mrs. Peterson and seriously worried she was one of his best friends, now. She talked about Carter and Addie. Gave an update on her mum and how she enjoyed living closer to her aunt.
But all those details disappeared. He was on a date with her. A date with the love of his life after three years of not seeing her and it was so goddamn effortless to talk to her, make her laugh, and smile with her.
It felt so good he could have cried.
“What are y’going t’do when y’finish your degree?”
“Uh,” she sighed, and Harry sensed her worry almost immediately. Wished he hadn’t made her feel uneasy even a little. Even if it was natural to feel that way.
A little anxiety about her future career was new for her. For the first time in so many years, nervousness that wasn’t because she was worried about him or her love for Harry was a bit of a curve ball. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted it badly, but didn’t know if it would pan out the way she saw it in her mind. “I’m not totally sure, actually,” she admitted. “I’ve got an online portfolio of my work, and I’ve sent it to a ton of publishers, magazines, et cetera,” she took a deep breath. “I could be really stereotypical and just continue waitressing by night and writing by day,” she shrugged. It wasn’t a bad gig. But it wasn’t what she hoped for exactly.
“Someone is going t’pick you up. You are too brilliant t’not be,” he sounded so sure—because he was. If there was anything he believed in, it was her, her dreams, and ambitions. “S’nice it can be... remote, yeah? Let you travel and visit your mum and whatnot,” stay here. With me. He thought silently to himself.
She nodded. “Yeah... I guess. But... I think I’d want to stay here.”
For three years, his heart was not inside his chest. But now it was back, the veins and arteries reconnecting to the rest of his body. Literally putting life back in him. It thudded so loudly he could barely make out the sound of the restaurant around them as he smiled at her. “Good,” he nodded. “Good,” he repeated quietly, relief heavier in his tone.
After a brief protest from her, (and for the first time since she arrived home, he didn’t even look at her as he pushed her hand away) Harry paid and signed the receipt for their meal. Once her glass was nothing but ice, he looked at her expectantly. “D’you want t’get coffee?” He asked, his voice full of hope because he didn’t want the night to end. Not even a little.
She nodded. If the night never ended, she would be glad.
Harry ushered her out of the restaurant, and she held her hand out for his. He took it eagerly and marveled at how her fingers fit the spaces between his; it felt like they were supposed to be there, and his hand was empty, not complete without hers attached to it.
They made their way toward the coffee shop up the road. Holding hands like they had done hundreds of times before. They chatted about the weather. He complimented the way her hair had lighter streaks throughout. She looked good. So good. “Louis and I have been running in the morning,” she told him with a shrug. “I think the sun hits different parts of my hair when it’s up and gives me this highlight effect.”
Harry had no idea he had been running with her. “You have?” He asked. Jealousy flooded him. It wasn’t fair to either of them. It was stupid. But the surprise was genuine.
“Yeah... the first time I went out and I saw him, I chased after him because he didn’t want to talk to me. But I buttered him up with those muffins I—”
“Holy shit, y’made the oat muffins?” He asked in shock. Forget what he said. The jealousy was real. She blushed, feeling bad she let Louis’ secret slip.
“You hate him now, don’t you?”
“Immensely,” he squeezed her hand as she giggled. “Did y’make the blueberry ones or the cranberry ones?”
“Do you actually want that answer?”
“No,” he shook his head quickly. “You’re right.”
“I’ll make some extra,” she offered.
Harry was about to ask her about breakfast tomorrow, but his phone began vibrating in his pocket. It was a great effort and made him feel awful, but he looked at it because he had to. As expected, it was his boss. “M’sorry kitten. S’work. Do y’want t’go in and order?” She smiled, nodding encouragingly. “Tell Lauren I said hi,” he said pressing the phone to his ear and stepping away from the shop a few paces.
Of course, someone was having a family emergency and without a family of his own, Harry was always the first call for overtime and help. There were still hours before he would need to go in. It wasn’t ideal, but still gave him plenty of time to finish his date.
It was well worth getting no sleep if it meant he could spend more precious time with her. It was one thing he was never going to take advantage of ever again. Time with her was the most invaluable thing he had.
“Everything okay?” She asked, holding out a cup to him.
“Thank you. Yeah... jus’... gotta do the overnight at midnight.”
“Oof,” she frowned. Then, much to his delight and surprise, she slipped her hand right back into his, like three years of nothingness didn’t stretch between them. Like they held hands for the last eleven-hundred odd days, every day. “Is that hard?”
For a moment, Harry was speechless, breathless, unable to remember what her question was asking. But then he brought himself back to reality. Harry didn’t like sleeping much. It was where he saw her most. All those dreams of what could have been... so no. It wasn’t hard to do overnights because at least when he was dead tired in the mornings after his shift, he didn’t dream. Didn’t see her. But he didn’t want to make her feel bad. “M’used to it.”
“Well, we can head home if you want to get a couple hours of sleep in before—”
“Do y’want t’go home?” He asked immediately, cutting her off, frowning at the idea of ending their night so quickly.
“No!” She answered just as immediately. Then, with a pink color painting her cheeks, she cleared her throat. “Just... want to make sure you’re... okay.”
Now he dreaded it. The couple of hours that he had seemed like nothing. There was no way he would get all the questions he wanted answered out in the open. But he had to start somewhere. “M’fine. Promise. Do y’want t’jus’ drive around for a bit?”
Silently, she nodded. “Please.”
*
Something shifted as they got back in his car. He wasn’t sure what, but it was a feeling like something had changed in the short time he was on the phone. It was in her eyes, the spiral of anxiety that was beginning to surface from inside her.
It seemed utterly unfair, and he silently hoped she wouldn’t retreat into herself. The thoughts of her leaving like she did three years ago rolled in his head so frequently now that she was home, he had a whole new set of nightmares to keep him company when he did sleep at night.
But right now, she was still in his car, and he had questions to ask.
For the time being, he pointed out new details on road signs that had been fixed and renovations to things in town she couldn’t see from the outside. She asked polite questions but really, he was just wasting time. So finally, Harry went to the next town over. He pulled into a little spot off the side of the road that fit exactly one car and gave a great view of the town. It wasn’t a mountain by any stretch, but high enough to make them feel tall and important.
He imagined it was a popular spot for teens with new licenses to make out as well.
Not that that was his intention.
There was a pause in their conversation. Comfortable and quiet. Then as Harry was about to ask her another question, she bounced in surprise at the sound of fireworks decorating the sky in front of them. “Wow,” she laughed. “All for me?” She winked at him.
He laughed and nodded. “M-hmm, had it all planned,” he watched the sky for a bit but the most beautiful thing he had the pleasure of looking at was her. So, he turned to watch her enjoy the display. She looked so pretty, her face illuminating every few seconds with a different color from the sky. He missed her so viscerally. Like even the freckles on his skin missed her. Every inch of him was plagued with wanting her even though she was right next to him.
If she went silent on him, he was going to lose his mind.
It was now, or never.
“Why did y’do it?” He whispered.
“Do what?” She asked, frowning at his quiet tone.
He closed his eyes, gripped the steering wheel tight. She had to know what he was talking about. “Why did you leave?”
Her breath caught and Harry felt bad for catching her off guard. But she had to know this needed to be said, needed to be dealt with. “Harry,” she sighed, swallowed hard. She looked out the passenger window avoiding the fireworks. “You should just... enjoy the fireworks. This isn’t—”
“Kitten, I need t’know.”
“I know,” her head knocked against the glass. He could just make out her reflection, her pained expression. It was rude of him to press. But he had to keep going. “But we—”
He pressed anyway. “You have t’tell me. Y’jus’ show up after three years of nothing. It killed me.”
“I know,” she croaked. “God, Harry, I know.”
“So tell me,” he was practically begging. “Don’t y’think I deserve t’know? You were m’whole world, kitten. S’not fair of you—”
“Harry, I fucking know!” She clenched her hands into fists in her lap. He was being unfair. In the time they were together they never fought. What did sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds have to fight about? When she left it was just sad. They never argued. So asking her to do this in his car on their first date after so many years, so many days of sadness and heartache, was completely unfair of him.
“I was so lost, kitten,” he wasn’t fighting fair at all. Coaxing her to breaking even though he had every right to know. She didn’t want the night to end and she feared it would if she told him.
“Harry—”
“Please, kitten. Baby, I just want t’understand—”
She choked out an involuntary sob the moment he said baby. “Because you deserved more than me! Okay? You deserved so much more than me and you wouldn’t have let me go so I just left, alright? You deserved more. So much more than me.”
The fireworks seemed quiet after her explosion.
But it didn’t make any more sense to Harry than the very day she first said it. “What does that even mean?”
Clearly, he broke something in her. She cried, hard. Breaking his heart further. He felt like an asshole, but he desperately needed to know. Her pretty makeup was going to be ruined thanks to him. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she covered her mouth with her hand and sobbed into the window.
At least he had an answer.
Now for the next question. “Why did y’come back?” There was no answer for that. Just her quiet sniffles filled the car. She dug into his glove compartment for a napkin to wipe her face. If Harry wasn't so upset, he would have marveled at how she knew where everything was; some things didn't change even if they had. “Kitten, tell me.”
“Harry,” she whimpered. “Please...”
But he was desperate for answers. Desperate to put his heart back together. “I needed to see...” she croaked, her voice dying part way through the sentence.
“See what?” He was exasperated.
“That you had...” she swallowed. “That you had moved on.”
He turned away from her briefly, face twisting in anguish. He shook his head then turned back to her. He put his hand on her shoulder, asking her to face him and look at him when he said the next part. “Moved on?” He repeated. The words didn’t make sense. “How was I supposed t’move on, exactly?”
She sobbed and Harry wanted nothing more than to comfort her. Hold her and kiss her. He wanted to promise it was going to be okay. The way he always did when she cried. But he couldn’t. He needed to know how she thought that it was possible to exist without her. “I thought if I—”
“You are my soulmate, kitten. You know that.”
She whimpered, cheeks flushed, and tears streamed down her face. It pained him to look at her so upset but he had to finish this. Now. “You don’t believe in soulmates,” she whispered. Almost as if she wasn’t talking to him.
“But you told me we were,” his voice was crystal clear, definitive. No room to persuade him of anything else. She was his soulmate. She believed in them, so it had to be true. He believed in her. So that was enough. Harry gripped the steering wheel for all he was worth. Gritted his teeth as he asked his next question. “Did you move on?” The question was lost to the fireworks and the sound of her cries. But she clearly caught some of it.
“...What?” She whispered, tilting her head at him at a strange angle. Like he just told her that the grass was orange and it rained flower petals.
He inhaled sharply realizing he was agonizing over the thought. How long had he been holding that question in his head? Why didn’t he ask it sooner? Well, he knew why he didn’t ask it sooner. A large part of him never wanted to know the answer. “Do you have a boyfriend? Or... a fiancé?”
“Harry,” she rubbed her hands into her eyes.
“Goddammit," he sucked in a deep breath. "Tell me!” His heart was breaking.
“I didn’t date anyone while I was gone. I told people that I, and my heart, were happily taken. It never even crossed my mind, Harry,” she looked at her lap and swallowed nervously.
The fireworks complimented their evening perfectly. He released the breath he was holding and the grip he had on the steering wheel. The feeling came back to his fingers. His knuckles returned to the right color. “You said y’were taken?” He asked, thinking of the same notion he told Mrs. Peterson whenever she wanted to set him up on a blind date. Her gaze returned to his, and she held it for a moment, still in complete silence. Then she nodded. Her sniffles subsided.
Then she snorted, shaking her head with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “A fiancé, Harry? That’s ridiculous.”
“S’not,” he didn’t smile like she did. It was so serious to him. Felt it in his bones how serious it was. “Because if y’thought I was going t’move on from you... I don’t know, kitten,” he shook his head.
“No,” she repeated. Relief flooded him further. “I couldn’t... I took this first aid class,” she swallowed. “You would be really proud of me,” she smiled more genuinely through tears that filled her lash line. “I thought about all the things you taught me yourself when you practiced first aid and whatnot. I knew so much stuff. I was the class pet—”
“Course y’were.”
“—but we practiced taping wrists and ankles and I had to work with this guy, and I thought he was going to kill me,” she sniffed but that smile never left her lips. “I flinched every time his hand touched mine. He probably thought I was in a horrible relationship and that’s why I was learning how to tape injuries. I couldn’t even tell him that it was the exact opposite because I couldn’t tell him about you.”
Harry was silent, watching the explosion of color against the dark sky.
“I thought you would have moved on,” she whispered.
“Y’got your mom t’leave. I couldn’t even ask ‘bout you. You stopped talking to all of us.”
“If it helps at all, it was really lonely. Even with Addie and Carter...” she shrugged.
It didn’t. The thought of her being sad and lonely felt about as painful as her leaving. He was so grateful she had a friend to look after her. Someone to confide in. Because she left a lot of people behind who loved her, but at least Harry had them to comfort him as best they could.
“I thought about you every day,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking about writing our story. I’ve been outlining it... reliving every memory through it. Every painful thing. I think it’ll be a series and honestly, I think it will be really good because the ending will be sad, and no one will see it coming because we didn’t see it coming and—”
“Our book?”
She paused. “You were my favorite thing to write about.”
He shook his head. He knew that. It wasn’t a conceited kind of thing. She said it all the time and he knew it. “What do you mean a sad ending?”
Another pause. She closed her eyes and sighed. “You can’t possibly want me back.”
Another long pause. Harry mulled it over and he realized just how angry he was. What had he done wrong that she didn’t feel adored by him? Where had he messed up and not made her feel safe? Did he let go of her hand like when they were on the balcony the other day? It was too much for him. His grip tightened on the steering wheel again. “What is the matter with you?” He put his head on the steering wheel against his hands as he spit the words out. He hated arguing with her. He felt pulled in two directions to have this conversation and comfort her. It seemed impossible to do them both at the same time.
“Harry,” she frowned. “I’m—”
He shook his head and smacked his hands against the wheel as he sat back. “I am never going t’stop wanting you. Don’t you get that? There is no ending with us. There can’t be. I have been waiting for three years for you t’come back t’me. You’re here and y’think I’m jus’ supposed t’have move—”
She was kissing him.
Her lips covered his in a hungry kind of way. Raw, achy, and hot. She pulled away briefly, her breath short pants. Her hand at the back of his head, her fingers pulled and tightened snuggly against locks of his hair. Poor Harry was so surprised he didn’t fully grasp what was happening and forgot to kiss her back.
He hoped she didn’t think it was too late. Or too soon, maybe, for him to agree to this kind of thing. But he only let one additional second pass before his lips were back on hers. His hands held each side of her face pulling her close to him, awkwardly around the console.
She seemed to melt into the kiss, her whole body releasing a long breath that made her shoulders fall, her body sinking forward. Harry moaned quietly into her mouth. One hand slid from her face into the back of her perfectly styled hair. Within five more seconds he started to pull her over the console separating them. He heard the clunk of one of her shoes falling onto the floor. With one hand on the small of her back, he used his free hand to push the seat back to give her more room between his body and the steering wheel.
Harry wasn’t her first kiss. But the way it felt, he may as well have been. She wished he was. There was nothing better than kissing him. There was a familiar possessiveness in the mix of their lips and breath. It was like he was saying no one else was ever going to kiss her as well as he did. Softly, his tongue slid across the seam of her lips to get her to open further.
Harry knew she didn’t like lots of tongue in her kisses. Which was fine with Harry, a quick brush of her tongue against his was plenty and not the part he cared about much anyway. The way she sucked his lower lip into her mouth and traced it with her tongue nearly made him finish in his pants. Her lips were so sweet. Just like her. It was the most natural feeling in the world to kiss her. Like he kissed her yesterday, the day before, all last year, and every other day succeeding her departure. “God,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Hmm,” he hummed. His hands touched everywhere. Roamed along her sides and around her back, up her arms and cupped the sides of her neck. He wanted to touch her everywhere. It felt so good to hold her and the way she moaned made him assume she was enjoying it just as much. It had been ages since she had been touched and that was fine because she didn’t want anyone to touch her but Harry. His hands were warm and felt so good on her back. Even through her dress. Even though it was summer and very warm, she shivered and nuzzled closer. The car was too small and the space between them was too big. “Baby, can we—”
“Yes,” she whispered. It didn’t matter what he asked. She was a yes to anything he said. He groaned into her mouth and slid his hands between them, lifting the skirt of her dress just above her hips so everything was covered but easier to access.
“Kitten,” he moaned when she reached between them as well and fiddled with the button of his jeans. Why on earth would he have a condom? The thought of being with anyone else so intimately was laughable. “I don’t have—”
“I don’t care.”
He groaned again and kissed down the length of her neck, his tongue poking out to lick at the spots he kissed. She thought she was going to pass out, but she didn’t want to miss a second of this feeling. So, she refused to pass out. “I forgot,” he was breathless as he shifted trying to make space between them so he could pull his pants down just a little more, just enough. “Forgot how much I missed this.”
“What did you miss?” She whispered just as breathlessly, her lips against his neck as he reached between the two of them, slid his fingers against her underwear and pushed it to the side. She whimpered at the light friction of his knuckle barely grazing her clit even though it wasn’t his intention.
Harry’s moans were nearly obscene. They turned her to jelly. “I missed everything, kitten. Everything.”
She shivered again at his response. When she felt him lining himself up, pressing through her folds so easily because she was already an aching wet mess for him, she cried out again. The electric feeling coursed through her and it wasn’t fair that she made him lose this feeling for three years. “Oh,” she tucked her face into his neck.
“I’m... fuck, baby,” he whispered as the head of his cock slipped deeper inside her. He didn’t want to know if she had sex while he was gone. In his mind he was the only person that got to be inside her like this—to feel her like this. His voice was raspy. Not even a whisper really. “I’m not...” his other hand that wasn’t helping her slip further down on him cupped the back of her neck. “S’not going t’last...” He couldn’t even give a time frame because he was so far gone. “S’been...”
She didn’t want to know how long it had been for him. The idea he had sex with someone else would probably make her inconsolable while he was inside her and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own. She shook her head and kissed the space just below his ear that used to drive him crazy. “I don’t mind,” she promised.
“God,” he closed his eyes and pressed his face to the front of her chest. Her dress was still in the way, but he wanted to rip it off her. He couldn’t because as much as he was enjoying this—and yes, he would have loved to feel her nipples in his mouth—he refused the risk of anyone seeing her naked like that. This was already bolder than anything they had ever done before—and the intimacy of seeing her fall apart was for him only. A possessive stance he would never let go of.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. It was too hot in the car; her skin was damp with sweat from pressing so close to Harry and the exertion of fitting in the small space between him and the steering wheel. She wanted nothing more than to stay glued to Harry like that, his dick deep inside her for as long as she lived. They really were two puzzle pieces just meant to fit together. For a brief moment she paused the way she was moving slowly up and down his cock; hoping that maybe she would just die in that car because at least this would be the last thing she ever did. Their breathing stilled, quieted. He tilted his neck back, smiled as he gazed up at her.
“You’re so beautiful, kitten,” he whispered.
It was embarrassing that she could come that quickly and that hard from just his compliment and he wasn’t even moving inside her.
She gasped so loudly. Her whines and moans releasing from her without warning. She felt distraught and whole. It was practically primal the way she started to bounce up and down again, only ever so slightly, her legs shaking to find purchase on the side of his seat near the door and dodging the seatbelt holder with her knee. It wasn’t conducive to do this here but what choice did they have when they couldn’t wait a second longer?
“Oh my God, fuck, kitten,” he groaned, wrapping his arms tight around her waist, kissing at her throat and the exposed cleavage he did have access too. He met her greedy little bounces to prolong the euphoria that was coursing through her, making her clench around his cock so hard he thought he was going to exist outside of his body. “Baby, I can’t pull out,” he warned her.
They were young, but not in high school young anymore. Getting pregnant wasn’t their worst fear anymore as it was their first go around leading to her going to the doctor and asking for birth control. In fact, getting pregnant probably didn’t even crack the top ten. But even still... “Pill,” she rasped. “Please,” she begged.
“Oh fuck,” he moaned. His hand slid beneath her dress. He pressed the tip of his finger directly on her clit and rubbed perfect little circles on it.
So perfectly, she was going to explode again. The fireworks had nothing on her. “Oh my God, please,” she cried. The plead, the feel of her squeezing around him again, the heat of her and the car... all of it was a heady combination that left Harry completely useless as he finished inside her at the exact moment that she dropped her face to his shoulder again and fluttered around him. As Harry finally released a breath, he had been holding for three years it seemed, he found she was still trying to squeeze her thighs around him to savor the pleasure. He couldn’t blame her. All he wanted to do was make her come over and over.
There were a lot of firsts they shared over their relationship, and Harry was so grateful to have another even after all the time between them. His body twitched as she stayed in place, her breathing finally slowing. Harry felt hot, too hot but didn’t dare remove her from his body. He held her to him as he shifted more, her bum bumped into the car horn. She giggled once and Harry smiled. His breathing slowed, following hers.
The car was silent except for their labored breathing. They were young when they had sex back then. They thought it was good back then. But it didn’t compare to that. She felt a wave of worry that he had practiced all while she was gone. The same worry went right through him nearly at the same time. Maybe she sensed it because he relieved her with one sentence. “I read an embarrassing number of books with scenes like the one we just reenacted.”
Harry sighed with relief; his nose pressed to her ear. His lips brushed her temple and he spoke quietly. “Send me every single page y’read, kitten.”
She giggled making her clench around him as he softened. He groaned involuntarily. He didn’t want to leave her body. Terrified it would never be like this again. As he started to move, she stopped him. “Um... Do you have a towel?” She whispered; her cheeks probably would have flushed asking the question, but it was impossible to tell with the endorphins that flooded her blood doing most of the work now.
Harry felt a little stupid at the moment, so he nodded, then shook his head. He didn’t fully understand her question but wanted to try for her.
“Uhh... here,” he reached in the backseat for a T-shirt with the station’s logo on it. As he shifted, she whimpered at the feeling of him moving inside her again. He kept a hand on her dress, right at her hip and rubbed his thumb soothingly against her.
“I can’t use this and then have you wear it around town,” she frowned.
“Baby,” he snickered. “I wouldn’t wear it... in public," he teased. She lightly hit his chest with the back of her hand.
She slowly pulled off him, falling back into the passenger seat, the T-shirt between her legs. She finger-combed her hair as best she could and checked her makeup for obvious smudges. Harry mussed with his hair quickly and then placed his hand on her knee. She held it with both hands, brought his fingers to her lips and kissed his knuckles no less than ten times.
“That was perfect,” she whispered.
Forget her writing, she was her very own poem. He smiled. “Always, kitten.”
*
Harry took the long way back to her apartment. Her grip didn’t loosen around his hand. Not even when he needed to take a turn. When he finally parked, she looked at him expectantly. “I don’t want t’go,” he whispered. “I would quit right now, if I could. I want t’talk all night and tell y’everything and know everything, kitten. M’so...” he shook his head terrified that if he left right now all the progress, everything would be gone. “I missed you so completely baby. I need t’know everything there is t’know ‘bout you and the last three years and all the thoughts y’had. S’not fair and m’so—”
“Harry,” she smiled, squeezed his hand encouragingly. She brought a hand to his chin and rested her forehead against his. “I’ll see you tomorrow; right after your shift, okay?” she kissed him gently on the lips. A soft brush of promising more.
Relief flooded him. “Yeah?” Their mouths were so close as he spoke, his lips touched hers the entire time.
“I’ll be here,” she promised. That little saying, “it was music to his ears,” never really made much sense to him. But right then it did. It made so much sense. She was music. She was the sun. She was fireworks. “Good night, Harry. Have a good shift,” she whispered and pressed her lips solidly against his once more making him feel like he could do anything.
--
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Hey! I'm David Peterson, and a few years ago, I wrote a book called Create Your Own Secret Language. It's a book that introduces middle grade readers to codes, ciphers, and elementary language creation. The age range is like 10-14, but skews a little bit older, as the work gets pretty complicated pretty quick. I think 12-13 is the best age range.
Anyway, I decided to look at the Amazon page for it a bit ago, and it's rated fairly well (4.5 at the moment), but there are some 1 star reviews, and I'm always curious about those. Usually they're way off, or thought the book was going to be something different (e.g. "This book doesn't teach you a thing about computer coding!"), but every so often there's some truth in there. (Oh, one not 1 star but lower rated review said they gave it to their 2nd grader, but they found it too complicated. I appreciate a review like that, because I am not at all surprised—I think it is too complicated for a 2nd grader—and I think a review like that is much more effective than a simple 10+ age range on the book.) The first 1 star rating I came to, though, was this:
Now calling a completely mild description of a teenage girl who has a crush on another girl controversial is something I take exception to, but I don't want to pile on this person. Instead I wanted to share how this section came to be in the book.
The book is essentially divided into four parts. The first three parts deal with different ciphers or codes that become more complicated, while the last part describes elementary language creation. The first three sections are each built around a message that the reader can decode, but with language creation, the possibilities are too numerous and too complicated, so there isn't an example to decode, or anything. It would've been too difficult.
For what the messages to decode are about, though, I could do, potentially, anything, so at first I thought to tie them into a world of anthropomorphic animals (an ongoing series of battles between cats and mice), with messages that are being intercepted and decoded. My editor rejected that. Then I redid it so that each section had an individual story that had to do with some famous work of literature. My editor rejected that as well. He explained that it needed to be something that was relevant to kids of the target age range. I was kind of at a loss, for a bit, but then I thought of a story of kids sending secret messages about their uncle who eats too many onions. I shared that, my editor loved it, and I was like, all right. I can do this.
The tough part for me in coming up with mini-stories to plan these coded messages around was coming up with a reason for them to be secret. That's the whole point of a code/cipher: A message you want to be sure no one else but the intended recipient can read in case the message is intercepted. With the first one, two kids are poking gentle fun at a family member, so they want to be sure no one else can read what they're writing. For the last one, a boy is confessing to a diary, because he feels bad that he allowed his cat to escape, but no one knows he did it (he does find the cat again). For the other, I was trying to think of plausible message-sending scenarios for a preteen/teen, and I thought of how we used to write notes in, honestly, 4th and 5th grade, but I aged it up a bit, and decided to have a story about a girl writing a note to her friend because she has a crush on another girl, and wants her friend's opinion/help.
Here's where the point of sharing this comes in. As I had originally written it, the girl's note to her friend was not just telling her friend about her crush, it was also a coming out note, and she was concerned what her parents would react poorly.
Anyway, I sent that off with the rest of my draft, and I got a bunch of comments back on the whole draft (as expected), but my editor also commented on that story, in particular. Specifically, he noted that not every LGBTQ+ story has to be a coming out story, the part about potential friction between her and her parents because of it was a little heavy for the book, and, in general, not every coming out story has to be traumatic.
That was all he said, but I immediately recognized the, in hindsight, obvious truth of all three points, and I was completely embarrassed. I changed it immediately, so that the story beats are that it's a crush, she's not sure if it'll be reciprocated, and she's also very busy with school and band and feels like this will be adding even more busy-ness to her daily life as a student/teen. Then I apologized for making such a blunder. My editor was very good about it—after all, that's what drafts and editors are for—and that was a relief, but I'm still embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.
But, of course, this is not my lived experience, not being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. This is the very reason why you have sensitivity readers—to provide a vantage point you're blind to. In this case, I was very fortunate to have an editor who was thinking ahead, and I'm very grateful that he was there to catch it. That editor, by the way, is Justin Krasner.
One reason I wanted to share this, though, is that while it always is a bit of a difficult thing to speak up, because there might be a negative reaction, sometimes there is no pushback at all. Indeed, sometimes the one being called out is grateful, because we all have blindspots due to our own lived experiences. You can't live every life. For that reason, your own experience will end up being valuable to someone at some point in time for no other reason than that you lived it and they didn't. And, by the by, this is also true for the present, because the lives we've lived cause us to see what's going on right before our eyes in different lights.
Anyway, this is a story that wouldn't have come out otherwise, so I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Justin Krasner ensured that my book was a better book. An editor's job is often silent and thankless, so on Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thank you, Justin. <3
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KNITWORTHY - JAMIE TARTT x YOU
summary: you pick up knitting and Jamie could not be more supportive.
word count: 1.4k
warnings: language
1.
The first time you made anything for Jamie, it was a plain pair of socks in a sandy beige colour. It was nothing fancy and you were certain one side was longer than the other. It had been a long time since you last knit so you were just happy to have finished something after impulsively picking up some yarn and needles again after work one day. Work had been manic and you were looking for something to help you unwind each night. Picking up the needles again just seemed right.
“I love them. Babe, these are fucking amazing,” Jamie proclaimed.
You probably would not have believed Jamie solely based on his words but his awestruck expression spoke heaps to how he felt. And, if that had not been enough, watching him proudly pull them on in the morning to wear to Nelson Road was all the proof you needed that the man was knit-worthy.
Knitted socks were not the most common sight around Nelson Road, especially not on one Jamie Tartt. Sports socks had long been his sock of choice until recently. While the beige socks had gotten a couple of curious looks, it was nothing too peculiar given how temperatures had dropped in the past week or so. It seemed a simple and effective solution to keeping warm, so effective that a few others decided to jump on the bandwagon.
“My toes feel like they’re at the beach in Chacala. I can hear the waves calling,” Dani quipped the first time he tried wearing woolly socks to training.
“Me too, boyo, it doesn’t even matter I look like I’m wearing my granddad’s socks,” Colin agreed.
2.
You had gotten hooked on knitting hats. After making yourself three in the span of a month, you were on the hunt for more heads to make beanies for. Luckily, Jamie kindly volunteered and even got involved with the process, choosing a bold, variegated yarn for his beanie. It took no time at all and within a week of casting on, Jamie was rocking his new headwear at Nelson Road.
It was definitely an unusual sight, not seeing an ICON cap atop Jamie’s head but with how chilly it had been, no one thought too much about it.
“I didn’t realise you wore beanies,” Keeley commented one day as she passed him in the hallway.
“Fuck yeh, I do now,” Jamie replied.
“Looks good,” Keeley offered and Jamie practically bounced away much to Keeley’s amusement.
He came home to tell you about how good your beanies looked and it had to be true because Keeley said so and Keeley knows all about fashion.
“Babe, babe, I think you could fucking sell these and making a fucking fortune,” Jamie continued excitedly and you laughed.
3.
Following the success of the first pair of socks, you knew another pair had to be made. It took a little while but when you chanced upon a yarn colourway called “Tart”, you were sold. Sure, it probably was not a colour in Jamie’s usual colour palette but it was a nice wine colour that you were confident he would look good in regardless.
The last pair of socks had been a real plain vanilla pair of socks and having had a little more practice now, you were ready to dive into something more textured for Jamie’s second pair of socks.
You were pretty proud of the end product and you swore Jamie lit up brighter than the New York City skyline when you handed them over. He had been eagerly awaiting their completion, watching you like a hawk each night and trying to figure out when you would have them done. One pair of woolly socks just was not enough to satisfy the man now that he had gotten a taste of toasty toes.
Jamie gave you no time or opportunity to wash the socks before he wore them. He needed these socks in his life right away and you were happy to oblige. Jamie excitedly wore his socks to Nelson Road the next day which caught a few more eyes this time. Afterall, it was even more of an unusual look for Jamie.
“Pretty sure those are hand knitted,” Bumbercatch commented from across the locker room one day as the resident knitting know-it-all.
“Yeh, his mum probably made it for him, bruv,” Issac said dismissively.
It had been a fair guess. Afterall, no one knew you existed. You were a naturally private person and you knew all that came with being Jamie’s girlfriend. What if it didn’t last and you had to then deal with all the fallout? Jamie understood and you agreed you two could go semi-public after Christmas if you guys were still together then. While Jamie had initially been disappointed, he came to really enjoy having something that was truly his. No media, no team chatter.
*
Jamie decided he had been benefitting too much from your new hobby without properly compensating you for your time and effort. Remembering that Bumbercatch was an avid knitter, Jamie stopped him one day seeking advice on tools he could get you to further your craft.
“What would you get as a present for a knitter?” Jamie asked Bumbercatch after everyone else had emptied from the locker room.
“Yarn is always good. There’s local yarn shop a few blocks away that has a good selection and they have some good tools too,” Bumbercatch offered.
With Christmas round the corner, Bumbercatch did not think much about it. Based on what he had been led to believe, Jamie was likely buying something for his mum.
4.
It had been a real labour of love. When Jamie had presented you with a beyond generous amount on a gift card and a set of fancy interchangeable needles, you knew you had to go big for his Christmas present. It had been a little hard to hide all the balls of yarn you had had to buy. It was even trickier trying not to make his present in front of him because you knew you would crack and tell him what it was the moment he gave you his big adoring eyes. But, all the late nights spent knitting out of Jamie’s sight and afternoons spent hiding in cafes to knit had been worth it.
“Babe, you fucking made this?”
You had been so excited to present him your pièce de résistance you were practically vibrating as he held up the cream cabled sweater vest. You knew it was not his usual look but it felt special making something not basic for Jamie.
“I know it’s not exactly the Jamie Tartt style but I wanted to do something more instead of just a basic knit. I would’ve made you a sweater but I didn’t want the sweater curse to come true so I thought maybe a vest would be a good loophole? You don’t have to wear it out or at a—…”
Jamie did not let you finish blabbering because he grabbed your face to plant an appreciative kiss on your lips.
“I’m fucking wearing this everywhere, love, this thing is fucking magic,” Jamie proclaimed and you were not quite sure what he meant by magic but you appreciated the thought anyway.
The first day back at training after Christmas had most buzzing. It was always nice and energizing to have a good break with loved ones, whether it was spent with their own families or Higgins’. But, when Jamie walked in in his cozy cream cabled sweater vest like he was in a hallmark movie, the whole facility stilled.
“Morning, lads,” Jamie greeted, paying no attention to way the room had quietened after his entry.
Bumbercatch nudged Colin who stood next to him, “I think Jamie has a girlfriend.”
“What’s got you thinking that, boyo?”
“That vest. It’s a recent release online by a big knitwear designer. It’s not a mum pattern. See?”
Colin and Isaac looked at the page on Bumbercatch’s phone and he was right. The vest Jamie was wearing looked almost identical to the one in the photo.
“It could—…”
Sick of all the speculations, Isaac turned and yelled out to Jamie, “BRUV!”
“Yea, man? What’s got your knickers in a twist?”
“Your vest. Who made it?”
“Oh,” Jamie paused for a moment before remembering that Christmas had passed and it was now safe for him to answer, “me girlfriend. She’s a fucking knitting genius.”
#jamie tartt fanfiction#jamie tartt#jamie tartt x you#jamie tartt x reader#jamie tartt x ofc#jamie tartt x y/n
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Tender Threads ( Homelander x OC )
chapter one: first impressions
chapter directory
summary: holding the heart of a self-proclaimed god is hard work, but someone's gotta do it. who'd have ever thought it would be some nobody, a simple street level hero-branded-vigilante, who would ascend to one of the seven coveted thrones and do just that?
tags: slow burn, hurt/comfort, fluff, spidersona as original character, original trans male character, smut, sublander
It’s a night like any other in the concrete jungle of New York City. A streak of red swings through the streets by lines of webbing, eyes peeled for anyone disrupting the peace in his friendly neighborhood. Well, not his neighborhood exactly. He was just a vigilante after all. There’s plenty of fun to pick from, but only one instance could be so special to the city’s one and only Spider-Man– to Benjamin.
It’s not the quippy banter with the thugs breaking into the back of a bodega, nor is it the amusement he gets from webbing each of the fools in one big pile on the ground that makes this night memorable. It’s the interruption, the anomaly that appears all too silently from the sky.
“And just what do we have here, hm?”
The bug turns in surprise, steeling himself against the rush of anxiety that shoots through his veins. This is no ordinary supe here to gripe about him stealing their thunder. This is a man– a god, perhaps– in a whole ‘nother league.
Ben would recognize him by voice alone because it was impossible not to hear it at least once a day. Hell, hide the costume and he’d probably still recognize that face– because it’s everywhere. Billboards, magazines, fucking cereal boxes– you name it, he’s probably there.
Before him stands The Homelander, captain of The Seven, pretty much the face of Vought International. World’s most powerful supe.
“Oh, y’know.” He gestures. “Riffraff doing what they do, and me doing what I do.”
“Nicely done,” Homelander says, professional smile etched into his face like he’d rehearsed this. “You know, good work like this is why we’ve been nipping at your heels, kiddo. Really wish you’d stop making us chase you around.”
And there it is. This was no chance meeting– as if one of the big boys from The Seven would ever be caught dead in an alley in Harlem of all places. Spidey cocks a brow behind his mask. Vought must be desperate.
See, he’s been particularly unlucky lately.
Even before he donned the mantle of Spider-Man, it was never about being in the big leagues. Benjamin mused upon the idea of it, but he could never find himself truly taken with the idea of selling himself as a hero. Not only was the mere idea of commercializing his ability to do a unique good revolting, it would strip away one of the only true freedoms he has. Of course, Vought knew nothing of his reasons– not that they’d care either way– and were ardently pursuing him to fill the now vacant seat formerly belonging to Translucent.
And now, as his luck would have it, they’ve sent their biggest dog to fetch their desired toy.
Benjamin’s sixth sense tells him nothing in the moment. No hidden danger, no tickling of warnings to bolt. A goose chase spanning two months finally coming to a titanic head as The fucking Homelander himself holds him not-quite-hostage in an alleyway.
“You’re still their top pick, you know,” Homelander says, nodding over to the webbed pile of crooks. “You play by their rules without even being on the team. A little… sloppy, but effective. Tell me, how is it you’re going to turn down a spot in the biggest of the big leagues, hm? You’ve pretty much skipped the line.” Homelander scuffs the sole of his boot against the ground, kicking a pebble to the side as he meanders closer. “What, is vigilantism more fun? You like having all those warrants? Vought could clear ‘em up. Get you set straight in the eyes of the law, make you official. Pay you for your late night troubles…”
Ben bristles as he comes closer. It’s not the proximity necessarily, it’s…
It’s like he’s looking straight through the mask.
Benjamin releases a tight breath. “My answer isn’t changing.” He says firmly, despite the anxiety cooking in his chest. He is not a confident man by any stretch. The most bravado he’ll ever know in his life comes from being Spidey. Nobody can see him– nobody knows who he is when he’s got the mask on. He can be whoever he wants. But right now he feels see through.
Pick your words carefully, he thinks to himself.
“I’m not a show pony for Vought to extort.”
Don’t cave– do not give him that satisfaction. It’s what he wants.
He wouldn’t work for Vought. He’s chosen years of barely scraping by rather than taking a tech job with them as a regular person, why the fuck would he do it as a supe? What, he’s just supposed to ignore the endless skeletons in their closet? The pain and suffering, all the people he’s seen online talking about how Vought threw money at them to not sue after some accident or another only to up and disappear?
Ben idolized heroes for so long. His powers didn’t manifest until his late teens and he grew up wanting to be just like the superheroes that made the world a better place– until he realized that those types were so few and far between that they might as well not even exist. All of his childhood heroes were NDAs and settlements, pain and suffering, all covered with media stunts and weak, lazy apologies. Posters were torn down, action figures tossed in the trash– he moved on and eventually became the hero he wished his idols would've been.
“Show pony? Pfffft,” Homelander laughs, blowing a raspberry. “Please. Look at yourself. Skin tight red and blue suit, leaving messes of webs everywhere you go. Hate to break it to you, kiddo, but you’re already there.”
“They parade you guys around like trophies,” Ben counters, trying to keep the edge off his tone. “I’m not in this to make money for some rich-fuck shareholders, y’know.”
“And? See, you told every single agent before me that you were in ‘this’ to make a difference.”
Fuck.
“You know how much fucking range you’d have in The Seven?” Homelander splays his arms wide as if to show the scale of the world. Agitation is starting to write itself on his face, leaking free in the twitches of his eye and those rapid blinks. He clearly didn’t expect to have to work for this. “You could help anyone anywhere, all you have to do is say yes.”
The worst part? That’s not technically a lie. And it’s not not tempting.
“I’m sure you’ll see reason,” Homelander smirks, sauntering just the slightest bit closer. “Benjamin.”
The bug’s heart drops to his gut, eyes going wide and glancing in the direction of the pile of webbed crooks in the hopes they neither heard nor will a last name be following.
Fuck, fuck–
They have his name.
“Don’t–”
“Don’t what?” Homelander asks innocently, lips curling even sharper. “You really thought we wouldn’t know who you are? Pff– hah! Please.”
Closer and closer, every step feeling like a lifetime.
“I can see through that mask, you know. Can see how scared you are.” Homelander tuts as he comes within arms reach. “I can hear the pitter patter of your little heart…”
Ben gulps, breaths coming heavy.
“And…” Homelander leans forward, voice a whisper. “I’m sure you understand, Mister Colyer, that I could kill you right now…” A hand falls to rest on Ben’s shoulder, gripping tight. “I really don’t like being told no.”
Ben’s voice shakes and his knees quake, totally ready to dart as soon as the words leave his mouth.
“I'm… not– I'm not doing it.”
His sixth sense doesn’t stir.
Homelander’s bluffing. But, really… So is he.
It’s like the world froze. Time stands still as they stare at one another. Benjamin can see the anger dancing in Homelander’s eyes, but nothing comes of it.
Not even when the bug backs away and that leather clad hands falls free from his shoulder.
“Look, uh… this was nice, y’know?”
Smooth, Ben. Smooth.
“But uh, just call me Randy Jackson, because it’s uhm... it's gonna be a no from me, dawg.” Terrible time for humor, but something had to break the tension. “Goodbye, Homelander.”
And with that, Ben bolts, vaulting up and off the side of a building to propel himself into the night.
Homelander remains in the alley, still stunned, a piercing ring deafening the world around him. He lingers, thoughts racing.
Turned down by the bug, huh champ?
Of course, of fucking course there would be some commentary.
“Hey big guy, you gonna let us go?”
And of course there’s some filth bold enough to interrupt him.
Homelander turns, eye twitching as he scans the pile of mud practically cocooned in webbing. They expect him to release them. After all, Spider-Man is a vigilante. None of his catches are technically official, though there’s usually enough evidence for that fact to be ignored.
“C’mon, you know we ain’t done no harm! Me and the boys were just walkin’ by is all.”
The man in question chuckles nervously at him.
Homelander saunters closer, hands behind his back. He stands over the man, inspecting every little detail. The growing fear in his eyes, the way he sweats.
Putrid. Echoes the voice in his mind. Remind them of who they’re talking to. Of the god they disrespect.
He lifts his foot, placing it dead center on the man’s chest.
“No– please, I didn’t–”
He presses down slowly, grin etching onto his face as pleas turn to tight gasps. The others in the webbing try to scramble, but they can’t escape.
They’re at his mercy. As they should be.
A crunching sound precedes his favorite part. Ribs and muscle give way and a loud squelch graces his ears and the ringing– oh the ringing stops. It's serene, knowing what power he holds. What iron fist he truly has wrapped around the neck of this world.
Attaboy.
To think they’d think him so low as to aid them. To think they’d get to live after seeing him rejected so brazenly.
Now for the rest.
As he takes care of the others, he wonders just how persuasive he'll need to be with the little spider. What threads must he pull to get his way?
#homelander#homelander x oc#homelander x omc#the boys fanfiction#homelander fanfiction#homelander x reader#antony starr#the boys
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I’m taking a big ol’ swing with this one so everyone please keep your limbs inside the vehicle until we reach our destination (let me cook)
So, what happened here? For this to go from-
Goofy ass grin <3
Summer: “Trust me..”
To this-
Raven: “The creatures of Grimm have a master named Salem. She can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.”
Raven: To Ruby with disdain, “You sound just like your mother.”
Let me lay some of my cards on the table. I’m in the “Summer is still alive” camp and I got thoughts on: if Summer is still alive, why has she not been in Yang and Ruby’s life?
Not even a peep? For 14 years?
Something BIG had to have happened to her to keep her away from them.
Now, a lot of folks will go straight to where Ruby jumped to: Summer got Grimm hound-ed by Salem
But I think that’s takes a lot of agency away from Summer and the building revelation of her character and the purpose she serves in the narrative.
If Summer has been grimmified, I posit it was by her own doing, by choice. And her choice alone.
Qrow: “You’re special the same way your mom was…The creatures of Grimm were afraid of those silver eyed warriors.”
Salem: “Do you feel it? Don’t fight it girl. It can sense your trepidation. You must make it dread you.”
How does Salem illustrate the melding of Cinders flesh with the Grimm arm and mastery over it?
In the few instances we get, how are silver eyes described in their effect on Grimm? Obliteration, yes. Resistance to their influence? Possibly (see Ruby & the apathy). But command over them? Let’s explore that.
We are working with a pretty small dataset here, so you’ll forgive me for mostly drawing from Cinder for this (separate post I think the hound is a reanimated corpse and so different from true living hybrids like Cinder (& hypothetically Summer)).
Grimm evolve and Grimm hybrids, like Cinder, adapt.
From vol4 to vol8, Cinder’s Grimm arm grows. It spreads. And she becomes more comfortable with it as time progresses.
Cinders Grimm arm has become an integral part of her and, side note, I dislike theories that revolve her hypothetical redemption around her being purified of evil (Grimm) by silver eyes.
[But that’s just me, I want the monstrous to stay monstrous rather than erased or watered down for easy digestion. Let the monster stay a monster in its appearance and still be worthy of love, and so on and so forth.]
So, we come back to Summer Rose.
Summer confronted Salem, learned something earth shattering, destroyed Raven’s faith and trust in her, and did something that prevented her from returning to her daughters for more than a decade.
What did Summer do? Agency, we’re thinking strong choices here.
Choices that are radical but in line for a character with strong convictions, an alluded to pedestal she stands upon and all the complexes that comes with, perhaps a little self destructive, and a big heart. Big enough to sympathize with the devil and do something about it.
The thing that could be preventing Summer from returning home could be as simple as:
After she learned the truth about Oz’s shadow war, she joined Salem’s side, and won’t return until she’s seen it through to the end.
But I want to put some spice on there because what if:
After learning whatever it was Salem told Summer, that turned her world upside down, Summer looked down into the pools of black and took the plunge
To understand Salem on a molecular level
To be Grimm as Salem is Grimm
To be a world changer
In the world of Remnant, that’s what the Grimm are. A force of destructive change, like hurricanes and wildfires, they shape the world through calamity. Disaster doesn’t feel any one way about you, it just is. It is devastating, but it doesn’t hate you. And it doesn’t love you either.
So, what would that make Summer?
How do you think that’s changed her, fundamentally?
Bloody evolution indeed.
And that’s why she stayed away. Summer changed, and now she looks a little more on the outside how she feels on the inside. But to the rest of the world, she is something horrifying. Unspeakable.
She didn’t want to give her girls nightmares.
Yeah, Summer was the inspiration for the Hound, and Cinder’s Grimm arm. But not in the way Ruby thinks.
#monster women#<<<33333#rwby#salem#summer rose#ruby rose#yang xiao long#raven branwen#cinder fall#the hound#I love the hound#rwby meta#rwby analysis#rwby v1#rwby v4#rwby v5#rwby v6#rwby v8#rwby v9#rwby volume 9#Grimm#creatures of grimm#silver eyes#saint’s ramblings
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Malec meet pre-canon divergent
(considering tv-show canon only, as I don't know much about the books) I personally found it a little weird that Alec and his siblings had to be briefed about the High Warlock of their territory, by Hodge. Shouldn't Alec, as the acting head, have been aware of the most prominent downworld leaders in the city his institute is in? Wouldn't Magnus have been in the institute before, for ward maintenance or things like that? Wouldn't they have had to call him to close rifts that demons were popping out of? (Not like those kinds of things were ever shown or discussed in the show, but then again, the show was very stingy where details and backgrounds were concerned.) Anyway, I would like to propose a series re-write, where Alec and Magnus get to know each other pre-canon, and Magnus has the chance to bolster Alec's self-worth and confidence a little. And then exploring what effect this might have, as Alec wouldn't be such a pushover where his siblings are concerned. (I actually just really like re-writes of given plots that explore changes to said given plot, so that personal guilty pleasure might heavily play into this prompt…. 😉 )
possible scene:
They could meet on site for rift closure, and Alec is laying down a plan of attack, because some demons have already gathered. And then Jace is trying to propose another plan (that's less tactical than Alec's was and more of a 'run in head first' kinda deal). And Alec is not confident about his own plan versus Jace's, and he is about to give in, but then Magnus is like: "I agree with the pretty boy." And Jace smirks and goes: "See, the high warlock thinks it will work." And then Magnus goes: "Oh no, I was talking about his plan. Yours sucks."
-
I think, if a relationship between them (platonic heading for romantic) exists for some time, Magnus would probably let slip about Maryse and Robert having been in the circle. Not in a malicious way. I think Magnus assumed that Alec knew. So maybe one day Magnus offers to check over the wards, and Alec accepts and wonders loudly about why his parents didn’t commission check ups for two years,
and Magnus just "Well, they have tried to limit their business with downworlders as much as possible. Which isn't surprising, seeing as many of us feel that they haven't been sufficiently punished for their crimes while they were in the circle. But it's not as if I would have refused the job. I might have overcharged them, … Alexander? You look pale, is something wrong?"
-
I just see them having lots of little conversations that help build Alec up, while not just being simple compliments. Like, when Alec doubts his leadership qualities and asks Magnus about his opinion, as Magnus has fought in a few wars and known a few figureheads. "I believe being a good leader comes down to knowing and trusting in yourself." "Shouldn’t that be 'knowing and trusting my people'?" "That, too. But it's important to know your own strengths and weaknesses. For example, I'm one of the most powerful warlocks out there with a deep and varied understanding of my craft, and I look dashing in silk. I'm also impatient, occasionally vain, and I can be quite petty. Now what about you? Let me start you off. You are afraid." "Wow, didn’t think you would start with a weakness." "I didn’t. Well, maybe a little bit. Fear can be both. But in this case, I meant it as a strength." "How?" "Think back to our first meeting. The fear of not knowing what the situation was we were walking into, made you come up with a strategy that allowed us to assess what was going on, while also ensuring minimal collateral damage. What do you think would have happened had you been as cocky as your parabatai, and stormed right in?" "… We wouldn’t have known about the circle members, or the back entrance. The perimeter wouldn’t have been secured. The teen warlock might have become a victim to a shadowhunter blade, had you not had the chance to see the enslavement collar on her." "See? You have good instincts, Alexander, and a great mind for tactical manouvers. That is something you should trust in more."
#magnus bane#alec lightwood#malec#shadowhunters tv#malec prompt#series rewrite prompt where malec meet pre-canon#canon would change due to this#butterfly effect my precious#all the change
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hi dema! i’m learning how to do digital art, would you mind sharing your coloring process? coloring (and lineart) is the hardest thing for me to do T_T… what brushes do you use for coloring and how do you not make it look muddy? i’ve been trying to follow tutorials from different artists on youtube but i find my work to look so muddy… thank u in advance >__<
Hi, and thank you for thinking about me for advice! I'm honoured to share a bit of my process, nerve-wracking as that is for my shy self, and hopefully help you out as much as I can. Forgive me if I don't express myself very clearly—I have a bit of a hard time explaining these things. Now, let's get started, shall we?
I'll be using the first panel of this artwork as an example.
My process is pretty straight-forward for most artworks. Make a sketch, draw the lineart, and follow a self-made guideline for coloring and rendering.
Sometimes I'll throw the guideline to the trash bin and start experimenting with brushes and chiaroscuro and color palettes, but that doesn't happen most of the time and, when it does, it's more a challenge than anything else, and not really what I think you're looking for.
I'll include my usual steps here, however, and like I said earlier, these steps are more like what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.
(I just realized I didn't save the sketch for this artwork. Oops)
This is the lineart!
I tend to think that details bore me and are actually pretty exhausting to do, but then I go and make things as clear and detailed as I can. Because I'm a hypocrite like that.
I did try to keep things simple here, though, mostly because I had to go through three other panels and didn't want to burn out my fuel mid-process.
Base colors! The blush (and Zuko's scar!) I draw in a different layer in case I need adjusting the brightness or saturation later.
It's time for shadows!
Pick a color depending on the atmosphere you want the artwork to have. Is it a cozy, warm scene in a honey-tinted room, or is it a moment shared under the moonlight? The color choice should come as an answer to those questions—deep red for the first one and dark blue for the second.
Choose a color and make it dark and saturated. Then, play with the layer opacity! A darker shadow means harsher light, while less opacity works best for a softer look. See the difference? It's subtle, but it's there.
Of course, this is my personal choice. The way shadows are drawn and color is chosen depends on the artist and the artwork. I choose to play with a more simple coloring style, keeping shadows from blending into each other, but you may like a more realistic approach to shadows and colors.
My best advice? Try doing it every way you can, but in the end choose what works best for you. Whatever feels more comfortable, whatever you enjoy drawing the most. And then work to improve it. Love the little proof that you've gotten better, even if it's subtle.
And talking about subtlety...
I love to play with gradients. I use them mostly to give the artwork some form of atmosphere, and make it look cohesive and whole. A light gradient in the color and direction of the shadows will help the characters blend with the background, as will another gradient in lighter colors for the light.
Get creative with gradients! Use them so the lights feel brighter and the shadows darker.
Now it's time to work with the lineart again.
The pure black lineart makes the artwork look harsher, sharper, so I tend to give it some color to soften its edges and compliment the rest of the drawing. In darker shades as the rest of the colors, growing more saturated as the light comes closer.
I love to make the characters' eyes pop and glow! It's really fun what you can do by just messing a bit with the tones of the lineart.
Finally, I play with the level correction. A high contrast will help your artwork stand out and look brighter. See the difference?
And it's done!
Sometimes I like to add other effects or details, but this is the very, very rough shape of my usual process, and thus what I thought you'd like to see.
Once again, I'd like to point out that this is what works for me, and a large part of improving as an artist is just fooling around and messing up until you find the tools and tricks you're most comfortable with.
So keep drawing those muddy shadows and colors! They're only a step of the process.
#dema answers#zutara#art advice#art process#I hope this helped you anon#Tbh I have zero idea of what I'm doing most of the time#So don't worry if you don't#Worry instead the day you feel like a drawing comes easy and poses no challenge anymore#Always strive to do better to improve to fix that lighting or find a new way to depict a scene or find other filters and effects#No artwork is ever perfect and perfection itself should never be the goal#“Don't trust a song that's flawless”#Don't give up on the strain and the frustration of struggling against your own skills#Never fall out of love with the process#That's where art is
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Systech - overdrive
"Have you ever played a pedal that stuck with you forever, even though you knew in your heart it was totally weird, and nobody famous ever used it? For me, yeah, tons of them. But if I had to pick one that best fit these criteria, this one would be it. This is the Systech Overdrive. Before we dive in, let’s talk a little about where it was made.
There was a time when, of all places, Kalamazoo Michigan was an epicenter for musically related things. Apart from being a city referenced by Looney Tunes and the hometown of Glen Miller’s gal, Kalamazoo had the Sound Factory, which was a collective of sorts that featured guitar luthiery, a recording studio and electronic gear manufacturing. The facility sat front and center on Kalamazoo Avenue, smack dab in the middle of the city, and attracted visitors from all over.
Of course, if it was some random outpost of nobodies, the name wouldn’t carry any weight. However, the Sound Factory was shored up by three relatively heavy hitters of the early ‘70s. One such was Greg Hochman, Keith Emerson’s Moog technician. He was joined by Bryce Roberson, otherwise known as Uncle Dirty of Chess Records fame and a relatively unknown person named Charlie Wicks. If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’ll recognize him as the man behind ProCo—the Ratfather.
Together, these three developed Systech, which itself was short for “Systems & Technology in Music, Inc.” That mouthful of a company was responsible for the Harmonic Energizer, a little-known yet highly influential effect that provided a deep filtered sound in addition to some crunchy drive and sharp resonant peaks. You might know it as one of Frank Zappa’s signature pieces. And while this Overdrive effect wasn’t that, it was derived from the Harmonic Energizer and shares a handful of characteristics.
Basically, if dialed in just the right way, the Harmonic Energizer will make short work of an entire speaker cabinet and anyone in the audience. This is because it was designed to provide a staggering gain of 55dB, enough to cause serious damage to your gear or hearing. The Overdrive was created to get some of those tones at non speaker-shredding levels.
If you’re thinking this unit is some kind of proto-Tube Screamer, think again. Because this was the early ‘70s, nobody had really decided exactly what “overdrive” meant. And though Maestro (coincidentally, also in Kalamazoo) had created one of almost every effect under the sun, pedal fever wasn’t quite here just yet, so Systech was essentially “winging it.” With that said, the Overdrive is actually a pretty aggressive fuzz sound. And to that end, the fuzz circuit is pretty unique. The entire affair contains two transistors—one a JFET input buffer—and one dual op-amp with a handful of other components. Even the topology is relatively simple, but the simplicity ends with the schematic.
The EQ control works unlike pretty much any EQ control you’ve ever fiddled with; as much an EQ as the whole unit is an overdrive. Instead of a simple tonal adjustment, the EQ control is actually an active bandpass filter, in the same family as a wah circuit. With a simple twist of a knob, you can adjust this filter from 122Hz to 900Hz. As you might imagine, the EQ control sounds relatively cocked-wah-esque, but the sound is much more aggressive than any wah on the market before or since. The reason has to do with the Q factor, essentially a bandwidth control. A wah’s Q is set by its 33K resistor and is much wider than that of the Overdrive, so the tone is a little more rounded. While a wah’s filter is a rubber mallet, the Systech Overdrive’s is a tack hammer. While the sound is curious, the thing really comes to life when you crank the EQ control, as it gives you a nice punch in the mids. You lose a little definition when you get to the bottom third, but man is it fun to play with.
“Distortion” is just what it sounds like, but curiously enough, “Gain” is about as close to a volume knob as you’re going to get. Much like Distortion, if you turn it all the way down it kills the entire signal, but it sits behind a final gain stage. If you have the guts to crank both Distortion and Gain, you’re richly rewarded with gobs of gooey sustain, but the flipside is that your amp is likely screaming “uncle.” Worth it? Your call. I say go for it.
Many people say Zappa used a Systech Overdrive, but alas, he did not. However, when you play it, you can definitely see the similarities between this unit and the fabled Harmonic Energizer. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s close enough for rock and roll."
cred: catalinbread.com/blogs/kulas-cabinet/systech-overdrive
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You and co-showrunner Tim Minear originally wanted Carlos (Rafael L. Silva) to become an APD detective, but you've now chosen to make him a Texas Ranger — which, it must be said, is an interesting choice, given that Carlos had been so insistent in the past on not wanting to follow in his father's footsteps. How would you respond to the criticism that being a Ranger goes against what Carlos initially set out to do?
Raisani: I think the Texas Rangers became an embodiment of Gabriel Reyes, Carlos' father. What I mean by that is … Carlos had grown up with a perception of his father, which is: "My dad is homophobic, or certainly uncomfortable with who I am. He made me feel shut out. He made me feel unloved, unvalued." Carlos' arc in Season 4 with his father was to realize, "My dad is a more complex and beautiful man than I realized, and even though it took him a minute to get there, he did get there, and we became ultimately best friends. I love and revere my father, and just in time for me to realize that, he gets killed and taken away."
I would encourage people to go back and look at that Texas Ranger episode [in Season 4] where Carlos talked about the massacre [where] the Rangers killed all those innocent people in the early 20th century. What [Carlos'] mother teaches him in that [episode] is, "Look, the Rangers, like any organization that's older than 20 years, have some blood on their hands, but they've also done a lot of good. And nobody represents the good that they have done like your father." She talks about how the diversity of the Rangers has increased, which is real. They went from being all-white to now 33% or 40% [people] of color and women. "Your father embodied that change, and now you can take that legacy and take it to the future."
To me, Carlos' arc was to realize Rangers are not just inherently evil. "Yes, they have a bad history, but just like my father who I had a bad history with, they're more complex than I was giving them credit for. And rather than just spit them out and reject them, I can be the change in that organization." So that's what Carlos is going to do, and that's the symbolic relationship that he has with the Rangers.
But in a purely plot relationship, there's no better way to solve [the mystery of] "Who killed my dad?" than to be inside that organization, because Carlos believes — and I think rightly so — that some of the cases that his father worked on may end up having something to say about who killed him. So that's what I would say to people who maybe have some doubts about that.
Carlos bumps heads with Ranger Sam Campbell (Parker Young) on a big case in the premiere, but they seem to have formed a new partnership by the end of the hour. How would you describe the evolution of their relationship this season?
Raisani: I feel like they're two brothers vying for daddy's love. The dad is the chief, the older brother is Campbell, and Carlos is this pipsqueak young brother who just got to the front of the line and now he's a Ranger. And in Campbell's mind, some of it is because, "OK, this is some nepo baby stuff. Your dad was a legend, and you just get to waltz to the front of the line." We built this little family of brothers and a father, so the first episode is really about Carlos and Campbell in a foot race with each other. And then what they realize by the end of [the premiere] is, "Boy, we're a lot more effective when we work together. And in fact, we make a pretty amazing partnership."
Moving forward into the season, we get to play just how complementary these two pieces are together. One of the things I personally love about the Rangers, which we can't do from simple 9-1-1 calls, is they can go into some much more complex, deeper investigations against much darker bad guys and much more real-world problems that are happening in Texas — cartels and with drug smuggling and stuff like that. So we'll do some cases that I think people can't believe are real. But we'd never had the opportunity [to do those stories in the past], because we didn't have that vehicle to get into these stories like we do now that Carlos is a Texas Ranger who gets to investigate the darkest, most dangerous crimes that are happening in Texas.
Carlos' investigation into Gabriel's death will certainly drive a wedge between him and T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) this season. How has Carlos and T.K.'s relationship evolved now that they've been married for almost a year?
Raisani: What I wanted to show with their relationship this season is that people can love each other with everything they've got — and everybody has challenges in their relationship. To love someone completely doesn't mean you're not going to fight all the time, and yet you can use [that conflict] to make the relationship deeper and more meaningful. We didn't want it to be happily ever after. For me, in real life, the wedding is the beginning of the story — not the end — and there are so many more deeper stories you can tell once people have that level of commitment towards each other.
We really wanted to put some pressure on that relationship. For T.K. especially, it's like, "You love Carlos. You want him to get that closure, that peace, that can come from finding out his dad's killer." But also, T.K. is a former addict who knows he's seeing signs of addiction, and Carlos is addicted to this thing, and it's clouding over and suffocating other elements of their future together because Carlos is so focused on what happened in the past. T.K., because he loves Carlos, will be patient and graceful about it, but at some point, he's going to have to put his foot down — and it's going to be very uncomfortable when he does.
#911 lone star#mentioned#ls press#ls season 5#ls 5 pr#september 2024#ls 5x01 bts#carlos reyes#tarlos
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> How to Turn your Mars On < Why Mars ain't working for you and why you getting Gecked around> Lost yo tail ya fkn lizard <
Mars is Fighting > and i notice some people could use adjustments in their kung fu jitsu
1 > Never surrender. If you surrender, you just told the other person you don't believe in what you are doing or saying. this then makes them believe you are someone easy to fight. If you want to be seen as someone who knows the art of fighting. You only fight when you are prepared to fight. 2 > Everything and Anything is a weapon. Do not let people guilt trip you, do not let people call you out. If you want to call someone out its easy as fuck to do because everyone has a few flaws and that are stapled on their faces. So if someone insults you. You can very easily insult them back. Its easy to make fun of others, and if someone makes fun of you. Its their turn 👹 3 > Everyone chooses their fights very carefully because they are insecure of not coming off strong with this in mind. If someone is willing to fight you, you must at least be aware that they fully believe they will win. If they didn't believe it, they wouldnt try it. Now let me point out that this philosophy. Is some bitch shit. You are all setting the difficulty of your game boys to easy, because you only show others your teeth when it suits you. Sometimes you will be forced to fight in situations where you cannot win. And since you've been practising life on 'easy' you are an easy kill. 4 > Fight someone good at fighting. I notice everyone likes to kill the easy kill, but everyone usually shuts the fuck up when someone notorious walks in the room. And this is all a miserable display of ego isn't it. 5 > You can never tell who is and who isn't good at fighting. Many people keep to themselves and some people are very loud and obnoxious, and they are thought to be intimidating, but I shit you not if you step on them a little bit, they will react very quickly. and far too often there is a reason the quiet one is quiet. They may be afraid of fighting. But question why they are afraid of fighting? If someone is afraid. You must realize there is a reason to be afraid. And if they show you what they saw (its not too hard to mimic) you will realize the quiet one. is always. the darkest. Quiet is displayed in many ways, quiet. is not revealing. Those who reveal. Are revealing because they are not afraid. Quiet is unrevealing. Quiet is afraid. And with a simple change in mindset the quiet one knows how to truly inspire fear. Which today seems to be the only way to fight. Have you seen anyone knocking each other out? Jail is a pretty effective incentive to stop each other from entering physical altercations. Oh and the worst part about this set up? Jail is full of physical displays of dominance. But we are afraid of doing so irl. LOL so we are all fucked if we go to jail I suppose ;p 6 > What is the price of winning? Winning requires you to be humble. No one cares for an arrogant winner. When you win it far too often feels bitter sweet because everyone else is caught up in giving you bullshit flattery, and the other half is so bitter they are biting their tongues. Do not regret losing, its honestly burden relieving. Winning should not be taken for granted nor congratulated because you stole someones happyness "Hey its okay buddy :D" type shit will piss anyone off lmao. 7 > Modern warfare is disgusting. We are mental abusers but not physical abusers. most of us restrain ourselves. We just unleash our rage through our minds because thats what society demands (some use emotions but that is a whole nother topic initself). And well with this in mind. The winner is usually the one who gave the other person the biggest reality check. And its sad. who won really? no one ever does. we just sharpened each others insult sword. kinda sad reality right :/ hey at least no one died. but we are killing their souls :D good job everybody now cmon lets insult each other like internet trolls :D
8 > Do you even know what you want? What do you even want to gain. Is the other person going to change their mind. are you looking for an apology? really assess what you want when you fight or pursue something. because far too often I notice people are pretty goalless and have not much reason to fight. So they just fight when someone steps on their little toes. Like someone pointing out the flaws in something personal always gets defensive. But ask yourself why you being defensive? Like they are probably right. We all have our reasons to live, but that comes with flaws that are stigmatized by each of our own little society's ways of conforming. Usually you are triggered by a wound, as you know how it feels to be cut their, the scar reopens. And your afraid of feeling fear. But if you show someone your not afraid of something that once scared you. Well you learned the art of war my fren 9 > Mars requires fearlessness. If we still fought each other today. with swords and shit. Would you withhold your strike? Or would you strike their weak points? Ofc this is a matter of life and death so you will kill them. But most of you dont realize their is an energy here. And the more you surrender to others whims. The more you gave others victory over you. And this causes a stifling energy of insecurity, and lack of strength / belief. So if you want to fight for something. You fight to the death. Unless you dont bvelieve in it. Then you should not be fighting. Everyone must fight for something. Nothing is more enthralling then fighting and finding something worth fighting for.
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May I see the disabled rep lore?
Absolutely!
I'll keep this to disability rep in Suit-Nami specifically, but if you want my thoughts on canon Splatoon characters and disabled representation I'd be happy to delve into my headcanons in a separate post.
This is gonna be a long one so check under the cut if you wanna read my ramblings:
As someone who is disabled/neurodivergent myself, having disabled representation is pretty important to me. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that Suit-Nami has become a way for me to represent myself, as well as simply exploring the kinds of disabilities I could imagine existing in the Splatooniverse.
I'll start off by going into more detail about Tide's physical disability that I referenced in my previous post.
#1. Developmental Deformities in Inklings/Octolings
In short: Tide has a misshapen ear due to a hiccup in his ability to shapeshift.
I always thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of the squid to kid transformation not always working as intended, and for that to be used in the context of disability.
Here's a little graph to show what I mean:
For Tide, his left ear (or fin, however you want to define it) isn't able to fully morph in his human form, so he's left with a blueish translucent fin/ear malformation.
Being an idol, as well as previous experiences with ableist discrimination, Tide opts to cover his ear by hiding it between his two hair tentacles. He's quite sensitive to having his hair being lifted or his ear being touched without permission, so doing either of those things is a big no-no.
Tide could be partially deaf in his left ear as a result, but that would really depend if you think he'd be partially deaf in squid form too. I think either interpretation is interesting.
#2. Crash and Hereditary Mutations
Similar to exploring the hiccups of shapeshifting, I also found the concept of Inklings/Octolings having disorders that affect their abilities to change colour as something that would be worth diving into. It technically has already been explored in canon too! Yoko from Ink Theory/Gold Bazookas is implied to have some sort of mutation that makes her tentacles split into different colours.
On that note, have you ever noticed that the ends of Crash's tentacles are always red? It isn't just to look cool (even though it does look very cool), Crash can't actually physically change the ends of his tentacles to any colour outside of a red to dark pink pigment.
The reason? Well I'll have to briefly explain how adaptive camoflage in real life squids actually works:
In simple terms, squids and other animals have these special skin molecules called chromophores. They are able to control the pigments of these chromophores through special multicellular organs in their bodies. Think of it as like having a second nervous system for changing the colour of your skin.
So what if the chromophores or multicellular organs were to not function in the way that they should? Like for instance, chromophores not having enough pigments to shift to certain colours. What are the implications of inkfish being unable to change colour in the context of things like Turf War?
Crash's red ends serve as a sort of base-level exploration into the idea of inkfish having some kind of hereditary complication that effects their abilities to change colour. The reason why I chose hereditary specifically is because he has another mutation that is also genetic: his heterochromia.
I think instances of discolouration in the Splatooniverse could be easily explained through how heterochromia and vitiligo occur in the body. I know for certain there are other Splatoon fans who have OCs with vitiligo or other instances of unique colouration, so maybe it would be comforting for them to know that there is theoretically a grounded explanation as to why it would exist. Not that I think representation has to necessarily be grounded in reality to justify existing.
#3. Tide and the Autism Spectrum
While Tide's lucky ear has been a pretty recent addition, what hasn't been a recent addition is the fact that he is also canonically autistic. Just as a handful of examples, he...
Sometimes misunderstands or doesn't pick up on certain social cues (namely sarcasm and flirting)
Is very passionate and knowledgeable about cats (ie: a very common special interest for people on the spectrum; including me)
Did not start speaking until he was in his preschool years (a common sign of autism in young children; also including me :P)
Has a unique speech pattern and uses a lot of uncommon phrases and words.
Stamps his feet or plays with his hair when he is in a good mood (ie: stimming)
Tide being autistic is 100% a self-indulgent decision on my part, even if I don't completely relate to his experiences. I do play up some of his quirks for jokes, but he is nonetheless an earnest representation of the fun and frustrations that come from being on the spectrum.
#4. Tide and far-sightedness
I'll keep this one short. Tide wears glasses when reading, which while it may be pretty innocuous, is still technically a disability.
I also wanted to share Tide wearing his glasses because he looks like a dork (affectionate) when he has them on.
I'd love to keep exploring disability representation in Splatoon, be it through my fan characters or through headcanons. I think with such a weird and wacky world that Splatoon exists in, it serves as a great canvas for portraying disability in a positive light, and even in ways not fully applicable to humans. If nothing else it is a ton of fun to write about. :P
Sidenote, but despite my position as a disabled person, I don't consider myself an expert in disability. So if I got anything wrong or said something misleading or offensive please let me know!
Thank you for reading ☆
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