#black sheep series

[eskildit]

i think a lot about hot sauce and jeannemary. two young girls so ready to kill and to die. a comparison made all the worse when you recall that hot sauce lost all her family to the cohort, that she can specifically recall fourth style necromancy (using corpses as bombs). a fourteen and thirteen year old that could easily have been on opposite sides of the same front line. 

[ritzcuit]

ppl who follow me are tired of me saying this, but if i could address the aa fandom directly... i rly would just ask that people like, stop being mean about dd and soj. like thats all i want.

im not even IN the fandom anymore, so i have no reach. i draw fanart and make my little ship posts but thats all. and thats bc the wider fandom ... is so fucking mean sometimes. omg. like its just not fun!!

but really, specifically, its about the dd and soj thing. the "play ace attorney we have so many games and [MOST OF THEM] are good!" thing. like, its fine if you dont LIKE dd and soj, obviously!! im not saying you HAVE to!

but "i dont like these games" and "these games are objectively bad and no one likes them" are entirely different statements.

plenty of people like dd and soj, even have them as their favorite games. i know this bc my soj fanart gets notes 😭 i have ppl in my tags excited and happy when i draw dhurke and datz. bc we like these characters!! and like to think about them and the story they come from!

...just bc YOU dont like soj, doesnt mean a lot of ppl dont like soj! so i really dont understand the drive to constantly talk down and insult these games?! like ... why be negative. u could be nicer. its possible and easy and then doesnt drive ppl away from the fandom bc their favorite games are being trashtalked all the time.

a lot of ppl find the space family dd interesting! they LIKE the phantom and his concept as a character! they LIKE soj and all of the political settings! it doesnt rly matter that they are, by and large, A Little Flop, bc people still LIKE them and like making content for them and thinking abt them and playing in the space and...!! like. why hate that? why constantly put us down for enjoying smth you didnt?

just dont need to constantly make slights at how "bad" and supposedly unenjoyable dd and soj are. cus not only is it mean, and makes the fandom hostile, but its literally untrue. i dont even consider myself in the fandom anymore bc all the fun is taken out of it when i have to brace myself for shitty comments like this whenever i read a post abt the series!

and i rly wish i could just Not Care what other ppl say. a lot of my friends dont care. but soj is like.....ive spent the past 5 years loving that stupid ass mediocre game. like its deeply important to me. and i just feel like a lot of ppl would have some fun with it if they werent constantly told how bad and skippable it is. im sure dd fans feel the same way.

its very cliquey. its very "the popular opinion is correct and if you dont agree, you dont get to play with us". it just sucksssss

[carmensandiegosupremacy]

twins separated at birth, no doubt😌

[broken-clover]

Regularly frustrated by the fact that most of my fixations aren't mainstream enough to have much in the way of official merch, but for the sake of both my sanity and my wallet, that's probably a good thing

[shitpostingkats]

Okay okay okay, since you are at the start of season 2. I need to ask something rq.

What do you think about Soulburner and Flame so far? Soulburner is my favorite personally from the entirety from Vrains, but I also love Flame. So I am very curious to hear what you think about them so far!! SORRY I AM JUST EXCITED GO HEAR PEOPLE'S OPINIONS OF STUFF I LIKE-

Excitement is always welcome in this house, bestie.

I'm having a BLAST with Soulburner, in exactly the way you sometimes look at characters that seems almost suspiciously tailor made to your character tastes. What do you MEAN he's a happy love filled shonen boy with fire and explosions???? AND he's an awkward socially blunt weirdo by day???? Who leaked the file of Spk's Favorite Character Types and decided to throw that into a blender????

LOOK AT THIS SCARF.

How much in-game currency do you think he paid for an animated accessory with a custom particle trail? I'm obsessed.

He's got such a good dynamic with Yusaku, both capable of laser focusing on the task at hand, but Theo does it in such a different font. The only bad thing I can say about him is that I am not capable of following the rapid fire flow of information that is Salamangreats, and my word association brain finds it very weird that the archetype has yet to show me a single salamander monster. What do you MEAN this isn't an archetype based on lizards???

(Literally my only complaint. I understand that it's silly but I really like lizards okay. Kagetokage was peak and I miss him every day. But I am coming around to salads.)

Flame is such a delight as well. Instead of the passionate idiot that you'd normally associate with Fire (Soulburner has that base covered), we've got this cool and collected british dude who you think has it put together until he opens his mouth and you realize he's a little bit insane actually. I just met a certain little green fella and am slowly coming to realize that all the ignis are just Like This. And it's GREAT. And totally makes sense for the weird road to personhood these lil guys had, but mostly I just love that they're all unhinged and slightly wrong in the head. Icons, the lot of them.

But most importantly, the thing that absolutely endears Flame and Soulburner to me is their dynamic together. Friend shaped cheerful shonen boy who just wants friends but also lights himself on fire on the reg, and his six inch tall little weirdguy whose snippy and sarcastic but gives friendship speeches to his human buddy because he openly shows that he would burn down the whole world for this guy. Just like Ai and Yusaku, they've got this ever-so-slightly-unhealthy trauma bond going on. (Which is great. Again, praise be to the writing that this show makes such a complicated dynamic come across even while not directly addressing it, just in little day-to-day conversations and incidental remarks.) But unlike the other two, they're also so openly affectionate and casually ride-or-die. They laugh at each others jokes! They gas up each others bits and have honest conversations! They're freaking besties and it's so funny when they're standing next to Mx. Yusaku "I have never learned what a normal healthy social interaction is in my life" Fujiki and Mr. A "I grew up on the internet and have a weird understanding of social norms so I just make jokes and think that constitutes a friendship" i.

I knew I'd love them when Theo sat down and tried to explain human social rituals to Flame through their shared special interest, I knew I ADORED them when Soulburner asked "Why are you acting like we're going to lose?" and Flame replied "For dramaaa~"

[wolfwrathinshleepsclothing]

RULER OF THE UNDERWORLD

[waitineedaname]

you are ENSNARING me where do i read svss... very curious now after that latest drawing with the hand to the heart explosion

I'M SO PLEASED. you can read it here or download it here or find it at your public library!

[mantisgodsdomain]

Playing 3DS games after having seen the overall fandom response to release and long-term impact and the way it's looked back on and such is... bizarre, honestly? Like, maybe it's just because we got our introduction to gaming in the 3DS era, but it's incredibly strange to know that games we knew and loved and would have considered relatively mainstream just... didn't stick in people's minds.

Like, take the Gen 6 Pokemon games. Those were great games! One of the single things about X/Y/OR/AS that we don't see people talking about but that stuck in our mind was how the developers made an effort to make it so that every single Pokemon in the games prior was spread between just those four games! We remember that just the sheer variety of potential Pokemon available was enough to get us a start into challenge runs simply by virtue of how much variety could be added to a playthrough by the sheer amount of potential on offer!

We remember spending hours just... hunting around the region to figure out where those last Pokemon we needed to fill the 'dex were, wandering around to try and find Hidden Ability pokemon from Horde battles, getting to actually interact with our Pokemon in Pokemon Amie.

Yeah, there were more obscure games out there, and yeah, they impacted us as well - Pocket Card Jockey stands out in this regard, as an extremely fun game that we're pretty sure was played by maybe three people, maximum, but it's not quite the same. These were games that we played ourself! These were games we saw other people playing, that we played with people over the internet, that felt like they were well-known! We were under the impression that these were mainstream interests, not Niche! it feels... singularly bizarre to realize that, for the majority of people out there, this game was a forgettable disappointment.

[misterivy]

[livingfandomly]

Y’all Ares is so fucking stoopid cause he just got soooo turned around by three literal kids and he still has to get his ass handed to him by his 12 year old cousin brother HAHAHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHHAHAJAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

[goldeneyedgirl]

day 125 asking for home again please i'm begging u i don't mind if you have a new chapter an idea or just rambling randomly about this fic i'm only asking for crumbs i hope it will touch your heart

Anon, you moved me. I'm so sorry I forgot your request. I have a memory like swiss cheese.

The rewrite has temporarily stalled, only because I have four chapter fics going, three one-shots needing to be finished, and I'm plotting out Whumptober, Nanowrimo, and Ficmas. Plus I have uni work which involves planning and writing a manuscript in 2025. Soo rewrites have escaped me for the time being.

But I do have plans to add a couple of fics to that series. The next fic I was going to publish was second chronologically - Cynthia's wedding. So this takes place maybe eight weeks after Home Again, so everything is kind of new and Jasper gets to experience Alice's family nonsense and how the insanely rich live.

Other fics I was messing with in this universe (the file for these has disappeared, so I have to do a deep dive on my harddrive to see where it was filed but it's totally gone at the moment) includes Alice's father showing up in Mexico for a surprise visit at a very inopportune time; the Brandons deciding to have a pre-Christmas gathering at Alice's house so that Alice's mom can get a bunch of photos for social media; Alice and Jasper in Seattle (I mean, we need to have Maria show up at some point - I love writing Maria); plus drama around the rest of the family - Edward and Bella having a baby, Peter and Charlotte getting married, and just other wholesome nonsense.

I might also drag the OG drafts for celebrity Alice out of the archives for Ficmas because, listen, the original Vision was very different. I think there were three different versions in 24 hours, lol.

Anyway, here is some of the draft of Cynthia's Wedding/the Spectacle.

jasper.

Flowers.

That was Jasper’s first thought.

He’d never seen so many flowers in one place before.

Or ribbons.

Or people.

“Breathe.” Alice was standing beside him, looking much more at ease than he felt. She looked beautiful but almost foreign on his arm; she’d had hair and make-up people in their suite early, and had emerged with an artfully messy updo and an almost porcelain-doll appearance.

She didn’t seem entirely real, honestly.

None of this did.

They’d arrived in New York City the afternoon before and this had been the most eye-opening twenty-four hours of his life.

First of all, the chauffeur that had picked them up from the airport had swept them to one of the most expensive hotels in the city - he knew Alice had vetoed the Plaza, where Cynthia was getting married, citing a complete lack of privacy - and they had been quickly and efficiently swept up to a suite that was, frankly, nicer than his Seattle apartment. A perfectly tailored suit and Alice’s dress for the wedding had been waiting for them, along with a handwritten schedule and half a dozen floral arrangements - as well as a bottle of champagne and a ‘good luck’ note from Carmen, which made Alice snort.

There had been a dinner reservation made at the hotel restaurant with Alice’s godmother - a pinched woman who downed three martinis and left citing a need for a cigarette before they’d even received their entrees. Alice had laughed at his total bewilderment - “I’ve known her my whole life, Jas, and I’ve never seen her eat anything more substantial than a martini olive - or stay at an event longer than thirty minutes.”

The next morning, Alice had disappeared to spa treatments, hair, and makeup after breakfast, and returned to the room looking rather blank and popped two pain pills on a relatively empty stomach but had reassured him that she was fine. He’d even gone out to get her something to eat, but she’d only picked at it and blamed nerves about being in front of the camera.

And now they were at the wedding.

Alice’s dress was beautiful - dark plum lace tailored close to her body with a high neck and buttons running down her spine. The hem brushed the floor, concealing the fact that she had insisted on nearly four inch heels despite the pain they caused her. A small fortune of diamonds hung from her ears and around her wrist that Alice claimed belonged to the family trust, from a long-dead family member. The suit Carmen had arranged for him was tailored so perfectly that it was one of the most comfortable things he’d ever worn - and one of the nicest, far and away nicer than what he'd worn at his own wedding.

That made him a little nervous - first class flights to New York, the hotel room, the suit… Alice had convinced him that as her date, she was going to cover everything. He was doing her a favour, after all - Cynthia wouldn’t have allowed her to attend without a plus-one. But this whole weekend was costing more than his entire life, and that made him somewhat uncomfortable.

“This is…”

“A lot, I know.” Alice’s smile is pasted on her face, and doesn’t look quite right. “Just look like you’re happy to be here and no one will notice.”

“I’m happy to be here with you, this is just terrifying,” he murmured in her ear and for a moment, Alice’s mask dropped and she gave him a genuine, albeit bashful, smile.

The entrance had an actual red - well, gold - carpet at the entrance, against a wall of white roses. Various photographers were lined up, snapping away. It took him several moments to place a few of the other guests dotted along the carpet - models, celebrities, singers… It was surreal.

Ignoring people calling out to her, Alice carefully guided him inside the hotel.

—

The ceremony room was all gold and white, adored in hundreds of white candles, and masses of flowers in whites, pinks, and lemons. It was dizzying and oddly hypnotic, like standing in a secret garden but knowing that something wasn't quite right about it.

Gold chairs draped in silky fabric were arranged for the guests - rows and rows of them, negating Alice’s assumption that this was planned to be an intimate wedding. A white and gold bar was set up at the back of the room, where numerous people were clustered around - people Jasper had only ever seen on TV.

“You’ll be seated in the front row,” the perky attendant said, escorting them down the aisle, gesturing to two seats.

//

Securing a glass of champagne for Alice and a gin-and-tonic for himself, Jasper immediately returned to where Alice was seated - where a man was looming over her. He wearing a well-worn, rumpled suit, clutching a drink like it was a lifeline, and looked like he needed a shave and a good night's sleep. He wasn't anyone that Jasper recognised, but the way he was scrutinizing Alice made Jasper feel oddly protective of her.

"Mary, Mary," the man said in a rough voice that sounded almost mocking to Jasper's ears as he handed Alice her champagne.

“Alistair,” the fake smile is back but Alice doesn’t rise, merely nods at him. “How are you?”

Alistair, the former fiancé - a long-time associate of Alice’s father and not someone Alice has spoken of fondly. He didn’t know the details of the break up - or even the engagement - and he couldn’t bring himself to google search his own ... what? Girlfriend? Either way, it felt very disloyal to google things Alice didn't really want to talk about.

“You look better than I expected,” Alistair is frank, and is inspecting Alice like a piece of meat. “The way your family has carried on, I expected...”

"To be at death's door?" Alice offers sweetly.

"You not to be here," Alistair chuckles, before looking Jasper up and down.

//

Mr Platt is exactly what Jasper expected; an imposing man with salt and pepper hair and generic movie star looks. He doesn’t acknowledge anyone around him, firmly focused on his phone. There’s a haughty looking woman next to him in a shimmering dark blue dress and smooth red hair that Jasper suspects is his wife, even if she isn’t old enough to be Alice’s mother.

“Fourth wife, former assistant,” Alice murmurs to him from behind her champagne glass. “Mother of two daughters, and she’s very upset that neither of them were boys.”

[flippityflaps]

Am I the only one who thinks that this series shouldn't be cataloged for children?

[carmensandiegosupremacy]

I proudly share nationality with this goddess🇦🇷🛐

[fatecanberewritten-writer]

Black Sheep | Chapter One: The Light

Stars Series | Black Sheep

For the very first time in all his memory, the only sound that he could hear was the lulling ebb and flow of the sea. The wind still howled past his ears, the seabirds still called, and if he really tried to listen, he could still hear the distant but ever-present noise of his rowdy brothers - but louder than them all was the sea. He had never felt more at peace.

Percy Weasley was only five years old, but already he found himself to be happier when he was separated from the rest of his family. He loved them, of course, but as the third of now seven children, there were moments when he just had to get away from them.

The days were starting to get colder as summer came to an end, but in this mid-day, he was still able to find a patch of warm sand to sit on. He leaned back into it now, his small, pale hands sinking into the soft sand behind his back. His face was turned toward the sun, his already-bespeckled eyes gently closed. He timed his breathing with the breath of the waves.

He could have fallen asleep like that, and he would have had a shadow not fallen over him. Scrunching his eyebrows together, the young boy opened his eyes.

“Not going to join your brothers in the water?”

“Aunt Tessie!” Percy exclaimed, as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

The old witch’s wrinkled face curved into a small smile at the young boy’s reaction. He must have expected to be scolded, but Letessa Cuffaro wasn’t the scolding type. Percy watched in awe as the hundred-and-one year old witch gracefully sat beside him in the sand.

For a while there was silence, Letessa squinting against the sun to keep an eye on the other four boys down at the shore, while Percy watched her with wide eyes, taking in every detail of her old but beautiful face. She had a very memorable face, and while it would change drastically in the next twelve years before her death, Percy would always remember it this way, with pronounced cheekbones, a sharp nose, and eyes that matched the color of the sea at high noon. If the five year old knew what the word meant, he would call her elegant.

“So, how are you liking Shell Cottage, my boy?” Letessa asked him, a couple of grey hairs escaping from her updo with the breeze.

Percy readjusted himself, looking out across the beach. Bill, Charlie and the twins were all down at the shore, their pant legs cuffed to their mid-calves, though they all still got soaked as they kicked around in the water. Further up the beach, he could see, not too far away, his Aunt Tessie’s Shell Cottage, planted firmly on the edge of one of the cliffs looking out to the sea. It looked like it could be in a painting. He wondered if anyone had ever painted it before.

“I think it’s my favorite place in the whole world,” he finally said, and nodding his head, he confirmed, “Yes, it is my favorite place in the whole world.”

Letessa chuckled, her face brightening. Percy noticed the happy lines that formed in the corners of her eyes when she smiled like that. “I’m very glad to hear that, Percy.” As she said his name, her smile changed a bit. “Do you know, Percy, that you’re named after your great-grandfather?” 

Percy looked up at her with a tender curiosity in his eyes, and for a moment, to Letessa, it felt like she was looking at her brother instead of her great-great-nephew. The young boy looked remarkably like his namesake, and she wondered if he would grow to look even more like him. With a darkening thought, she wondered if he would even get the chance. 

In her life, Letessa had seen many, many dark times. She had lived through the Great Muggle War, seen its atrocities and inhumanities, and saw how it only increased with a second World War decades later. She had seen the rise and fall of the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, and had buried her beloved husband because of it. She didn’t think it could get any worse than that, but what she and her family were going through now made that all feel like child’s play. 

Never had there been a greater threat than the dark wizard she only dared to call He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He was the embodiment of the wrath of all the century-long built up tension in the world, and not a single person was left unaffected. Just four months ago she had helped her dearest Molly bury her brothers, and now she took in her great-niece and her children, as it wasn’t safe for them at home anymore. They couldn’t see a single shred of light in this dark tunnel.

But as she looked at this young boy, and out at his brothers at the shore, she knew this wasn’t true. They were the light. Letessa smiled. “This was his favorite place, too. It was all of ours. That’s why my husband and I built that cottage - so we’d never have to leave it.”

Percy almost said aloud that he wished he didn’t have to leave it either, but he quickly stopped himself. As much as he loved it here, he missed his home, with all its oddities and chaos. What he missed the most was having all of his family together again - to see them all happy again.

“Your brothers and I are going to go on a walk along the beach,” Letessa spoke up, “would you like to join us?”

Though what she offered was only the illusion of a choice, as he was only five, it made all the difference to him that she had asked. Now, though he enjoyed the peace that came with being apart from them, he chose to rejoin his family.

[wolfwrathinshleepsclothing]

@usps-first-class I am so sorry

[abookforeverymood]

Polling For Next Read

currently re-reading The Elementals by Michael McDowell, but polling for what to put at the top of the list next