#can teach me the art of smithing

[edenfoxi]

About to learn to blacksmith and sew so I can make a replica of Techno's crown and cape and give it to Tommyinnit or smth.

It is my dream project.

[sansaorgana]

— FOREVER BOUND

PAIRING — Sauron x fem!Maia!Reader

SUMMARY — You and Mairon were created together by Eru and ever since you remained nearly inseparable. He chose to follow Melkor but you stayed loyal to your gods. Even though he was believed to be slain, you meet your soulmate once again many years later in Númenor where you serve the Valar by helping Tar-Míriel with your counsel.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — I started writing this fic like two weeks ago but I got distracted in the meantime with different ideas 🤧 (Y/N) is used here as the Reader's "real" name, therefore I gave her human form in Númenor a name and that is Maneth, which apparently means Departed Spirit. The dynamic between Sauron and the Reader is lowkey inspired by that quote from Wuthering Heights – He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. Also, I was very fixated on making the short prologue of this fic sound like it was taken from The Silmarillion but it was a challenge, especially when English is not my first language, so yeah, I have to admit I used "the chat" a bit to help me in the beginning (and only there) 🙈. It didn't write even a single sentence for me, though, it only helped me with reshaping the phrases to sound more like the way I wanted them to be. I have never used AI to help me write my fics, so I feel a bit weird with it but I think the prologue sounds great now, so I decided to keep it this way. However, I wanted to admit to it here because I would feel bad otherwise. Once more – "the chat" did not write even a single sentence for me. I only needed its help with finding better sounding phrases to express what I have already written all by myself and it was only for the short prologue of the story. I didn't put any warnings but I think that – if you squint – it can have a bit of a twincest vibe...? 😳 At least I thought so while writing some scenes but maybe it's just my messed up mind going into such places 🙈 The fic is quite long but I didn't want to divide this one into two parts.

WORD COUNT — 7,930

ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE.

FOREVER BOUND

Together were they fashioned by the thought of Eru Ilúvatar, Mairon and (Y/N), kindred spirits among the Maiar, and thus were their fates entwined. Mairon was drawn to Aulë the Smith, whose lore of crafting and forging he learned with eager mind, while (Y/N) was taken under the care of Varda Elentári, the Queen of Stars, and to her was revealed the mysteries of light and the heavens.

In those days of ancient bliss, when the first flowers were made to bloom, Mairon would gather their blossoms for (Y/N), and together they would abide for hours in fields unmarred by shadow. Often, he would craft jewels of wondrous beauty, offering them to her in token of his affection. Yet his most treasured gift to her was a ring, fair and unmarred, crafted in the purity of his early days, before his spirit turned to darker counsel.

It is said that (Y/N) wore that ring ever upon her hand, and that when Varda revealed to her the art of setting stars in the firmament, she bestowed the first star of her own making with the name «Mairon», that his light might endure forever.

In the later days, when Mairon fell to the shadow and allied himself with Melkor, he sought ever to draw (Y/N) to his side, weaving words of guile and repentance. Many times did he deceive her, and she, moved by their bond, hoped he might yet be redeemed. Yet she held fast to the Valar, and her faith remained unbroken.

Mairon's descent brought sorrow unending to (Y/N), and often she pleaded with the Valar to grant him mercy. Yet Varda would have her no longer as a disciple, for the brightness of her spirit had dimmed, and her heart clung still to one who had been corrupted. Then Nienna, She Who Weeps, took pity upon (Y/N) and took her into her care, teaching her of endurance and grief. And it was Nienna who spoke in favour of Mairon when Melkor, feigning humility, sought pardon from the Valar, for she understood well the love that bound (Y/N) to him.

Yet no reunion came to pass, for Mairon fled from the wrath of the Valar, and he vanished into the shadows of the world, so that some claimed him slain. The star that bore his name faded from the heavens, and it is told that (Y/N) wept until her tears filled a lake in The Southlands, and thus was the dark and bitter Lake Núrnen brought into being, a testament to her sorrow.

You were sent to Númenor to aid the Queen Regent with your counsel. Míriel suspected that you were no ordinary human being but she knew better than to ask too many questions. Very quickly you were promoted in her council, which was visibly making Ar-Pharazôn uneasy and suspicious of you because you had shown up out of nowhere one day, posing to be a noble Lady from Middle-earth… but who truly knew where you were coming from? 

The fate of this beautiful island given to the ancestors of these people was uncertain, though. It was teetering between glory and ruin. You were there to make sure they would choose the right path when the time of difficult decisions would come.

When you heard that one of the captains brought a She-Elf to Númenor that he had found in an open sea, you knew immediately that it was no coincidence. It was surely the very beginning of something new. Something exciting and worrying, too.

The time you had already spent in Númenor was enough for you to fall in love with the island and its people. The Queen Regent was truly your friend and you hoped for nothing else but for this realm’s happiness.

You were standing next to Míriel when Captain Elendil walked two castaways inside the hall. She-Elf you recognised immediately because it was Lady Galadriel. She, however, could not recognise you because of your disguise. At the sight of a dirty, ragged common man walking beside her, you felt an odd shiver going down your spine.

You looked down, nervously, when he looked up to meet your gaze. Your fingers busied themselves with a ring that decorated your finger for long centuries now – it would never leave you, no matter what form you were in.

You could not understand why some random human was making you feel such odd sensations as if the air between you two vibrated and caused disruption inside the room.

“No one kneels in Númenor,” the Queen Regent announced to Lady Galadriel and her new friend when they attempted to do so.

Out of curiosity that you seemed not to be able to stop, you looked up again when the man did the same. Your eyes met and you could barely contain yourself because the soul trapped inside the form you were in was about to explode.

He was no ordinary human being and you wondered if Lady Galadriel knew about it.

Who could it be, though? The Valar would not send any help for you here without warning you beforehand. Even if they would, no other Maia was able to make you feel this extraordinary way. 

No other Maia except for one.

The fingers fidgeting with your ring squeezed it tighter at the memory of Mairon. He had been long gone now and all that seemed to be left of him was that ring. Not even his star shone bright in the night sky anymore.

The only part of Mairon that still remained was not that ring, though. It was you – he would forever live inside of you like you had lived inside of him and like part of you had died the day he had been slain.

“Speak, Elf. Name thyself,” Míriel ordered Lady Galadriel and Galadriel’s eyes found yours. She tilted her head but decided not to comment although now you were certain that she could sense what kind of spirit you were.

“Galadriel of the Noldor,” she introduced herself. “Daughter of the Golden House of Finarfin. Commander of the Northern Armies of High King Gil-Galad.”

The man she came with looked at her with furrowed brows before deciding to introduce himself as well.

“Halbrand,” he said. “Of The Southlands,” he added.

“A man and an Elf, together?” You asked as you approached the Queen Regent.

“Circumstances arose that–” The man named Halbrand began but Galadriel did not allow him to finish.

“We are companions by chance. Met on the open sea. Your captain here, delivered us from certain death,” she looked at Elendil. “All we ask is that Númenor continue his mercy and grant us ship’s passage to Middle-earth.”

The crowd gathered inside the hall began to chatter between each other. It was uncommon to see an Elf in Númenor these days and Galadriel was far from humble. Her demands were not making anyone here happy and you could sense that.

The only man whose aura you could not sense was him again – the filthy commoner.

Míriel exchanged a meaningful look with Ar-Pharazôn before her cousin spoke.

“It’s been generations since a ship of Númenor was permitted to make such a journey on an Elf’s behalf,” he told the Elf, harshly.

You wondered how Galadriel would accept the fact that here, in Númenor, she was not an authority to anyone and her presence was barely intimidating. You knew her heart was of a pure kind but it was no mystery amongst the Valar, the Maiar and the Elves that she also needed to be humbled very often but such occasions were quite rare.

“It is because of the Elves that you were given this island,” she reminded but such words only worsened her situation. “Surely you can spare a few planks and a rudder.”

Míriel looked behind to stare at your face, visibly searching for your counsel. You shook your head slightly to let her know that you did not think following Galadriel’s orders was a good idea. It did not escape Ar-Pharazôn’s eye as he shot you a deadly glance. He hated the influence you had over his cousin.

“Our ancestors were not given anything,” the Queen Regent smiled softly at Galadriel as she walked down the stairs to approach the Elf and her human companion. “They paid for this isle with the blood of their kin.”

“What the Elf means–” Halbrand tried to save the situation.

“Then if blood be the price of passage, I will pay it,” Galadriel interrupted him again and you sighed softly. “But one way or another, I will depart.”

One of your tasks in Númenor was to help rebuild the friendship between the humans of this island and the Elves. Lady Galadriel was definitely not helping you.

“I welcome you to try,” Míriel nodded.

“I have no need of your welcome,” Galadriel continued with her rude remarks and Halbrand looked at her with panic in his eyes before looking back at the guards by the doors.

“And you are quickly wearing out yours,” the Queen Regent warned Galadriel. “Guards,” she called for them.

“My friends!” Halbrand exclaimed, getting everyone’s attention and you despised it.

You despised it because your weak human form struggled once more to contain your trembling spirit. You were scared that you would be this island’s doom yourself any given moment if you suddenly erupted as if you were a volcano. Your fingers began to tremble and you lowered your gaze, pretending to be humble.

“It seems to me that our leaving presents some complications,” Halbrand pointed out. “Perhaps it’d be better if we stayed–”

“Stayed?!” Galadriel barked at him.

“Long enough, good Queen, to give you and your advisors adequate time to weigh our request,” he looked up at you.

You were holding your gaze lowered but you knew somehow that he was staring at you. You could feel his eyes piercing you through because the way he was staring was not of an ordinary kind. He was not glancing at your flesh but at your soul. You felt as if you were naked in front of him and as if there was nobody else inside this palace except for you two.

The ring around your finger seemed to get heavier all of the sudden as it reminded you one more about the only creature in this world who had known you so well and who could have made you feel similar.

“A few days, perhaps?” Halbrand looked back at Míriel and you sighed out of relief once you got free from his burning gaze.

The Queen Regent looked back at you once more and you looked up only slightly to nod at her. Ar-Pharazôn rolled his eyes but he did not disagree – at least not openly.

“Three days,” he ordered. “And the Elf is to be restricted to palace grounds.”

“I will not be made a prisoner!” Galadriel protested.

“I would sooner knee-cap a stallion than seek to imprison the mighty Commander of the Northern Armies,” Ar-Pharazôn answered ironically and the crowd laughed at her. “So, you shall be Númenor’s guest.”

You could feel the tension in the room slowly relaxing and you nodded at the Queen Regent before walking out in a hurry, feeling Halbrand’s eyes on you as you were walking out in a haste with your skirts gathered in your fists, rushing to your chambers to collect your chaotic thoughts.

You had a malicious feeling creeping up deep inside of you – no, not even a feeling. An odd, eerie certainty. And as much as you wished for it to not be true, you also wanted it to be and you felt guilty for experiencing such cursed yearning to see and touch him again. Your Mairon.

When you heard from your maid at the end of the day that the human named Halbrand ended up in jail already for starting a fight, you simply could not stop yourself from paying him a visit. You walked inside the prison area of the palace carefully as you moved quietly throughout the hall with your dress flowing behind you gently.

The man was sitting on the floor with his back leaning on the wall. He was smirking as he watched you with no reaction whatsoever. Once more you noticed that you could not sense his aura or predict his mood like you usually could with most creatures, even the noblest of the Elves.

“You are no human,” you stated as you stood right in front of his cell. Halbrand snorted at that and rolled his eyes. “Who are you?” You asked and he only shook his head.

You grabbed the bars and squeezed them tightly as the silence broke due to your ring clashing with the iron. The sound echoed and Halbrand turned his head around rapidly while he squinted his eyes at your ring.

“Are you him?” You asked, nearly desperately. “Are you my Mairon?”

Halbrand stood up finally and even though he seemed to be more serious now, he still had a playful smirk on his lips. He approached you with his arms crossed and you caught yourself staring at his tan, flexed muscles before you looked up to meet his sparkling eyes once more. Nothing but the iron bars between you two and it was you squeezing them tight although he was the imprisoned one.

“You would look like a crazy maniac if I was not,” he whispered, leaning in. He was so close that you could feel his warm breath on your face.

“You were supposed to be dead…” you whispered and closed your eyes, feeling warm tears streaming down your cheeks. You squeezed your fists even tighter around the bars as your whole soul vibrated throughout your human form.

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” Halbrand answered.

“Your star has faded away, I have cried so many tears, have been outcast by Varda because with you, some of my own light faded away, too,” you revealed in a trembling voice before opening your hazy and wet eyes. He was staring at you without playfulness now. “I know it would be better for this world if you stayed dead but I feel joy to be with you again,” you confessed.

His rough fingertips brushed the ring wrapped around your finger as he smiled sadly.

“This ring remains older than most creatures of this realm,” he pointed out.

“I have never taken it off, Mairon,” you assured him. “Nothing in this world is older than the bond between us.”

“That is quite blasphemous,” he smirked and you shook your head as you had no idea what to say to that. He was right – you should not claim such things, you were no god. But yet, whatever was between you and him – it felt so overwhelming, so overlooming. 

Your souls were entangled, made of the same stardust. You were the same spirit, the same heart, the same blood; only split in two forms and that was enough pain to be apart in that way. Spending centuries without him at all, thinking he was dead… It was like death itself.

But Mairon was back now and alongside him back was the part of you that had died with him.

“Will you tell them about me, (Y/N)?” He asked, quietly.

“I should, should I not? You are up to no good,” you sniffled your tears back and your eyes met his. You let go of the iron bars and extended your hands to cup his scratched cheeks. When you touched, you felt your whole body trembling, barely able to contain your spirit and your power.

“I am up to the greater good. You know that my path is the right one; it is the only path. My only goal is to heal,” he assured you and leaned in to place a soft kiss upon the palm of your hand as you gasped.

“Up to no good then,” you let out a small chuckle through your tears. You knew him enough already to know what it meant.

You wanted to get rid of the iron bars and to kiss him. His form differed from his previous one but it was never about his flesh – it was always about whatever it contained.

You had never really kissed, though. All those centuries you had spent with each other, you had spent it on yearning and gazing at yourselves, stealing soft pecks upon your cheeks or knuckles, giving each other gifts and talking sweet to one another.

Because you knew that the Maiar had not been created to love – not like this, at least. They had not been created to know the pleasures of the flesh or its desires. They had been created to serve the gods.

Perhaps something had gone wrong during the act of your creation. Perhaps it had not – perhaps it was that part of him living inside of you that craved to be close to him at all times just like the part of you living inside of him craved to be close to you.

“Join me, (Y/N), come with me, be my Queen,” Halbrand whispered and you froze, taking your hands away immediately.

“Not even half an hour I was given to enjoy your return for you are trying to deceive me once more,” you remarked, harshly.

He had been known to tease and tempt you countless of times but your soul remained pure no matter what.

“Melkor is no more. I am my own master now but I will never be whole without you by my side,” Halbrand was the one to wrap his hands around the iron bars now as he moved even closer while you took a step back. “Varda outcasted you? I will make sure no one in Middle-earth worships her no more for you will become their Queen of Light.”

“Revenge is not what I seek,” you shook your head. “Please, Mairon, your words are like daggers. I cannot handle them,” you turned your head around as more and more of your tears streamed down your cheeks.

“Refuse me as much as you like, (Y/N). A part of you lives inside of me and that is my lightness. A part of me lives inside of you and it is the part you consider rotten. Be careful, my dear, for the rot likes to spread,” Halbrand warned you although his voice remained sweet.

“I have never considered anything coming from you to be rotten,” you laid your eyes upon him again.

“Can you not see, my sweet? They keep us apart because together we would become so powerful that we could outcast the gods themselves,” Halbrand continued and his whisper caused a shiver to go down your spine. His words were wrong… So wrong. “Together, we could be anything we wanted. We could be forged into one flesh if we wished, forever bound.”

“If you cared so much about us being together, you would let me lure you back into the light instead of trying to tempt me to join you in darkness, Mairon,” you whispered in Quenya.

“It pains me when you keep insisting that my path is the darkness. Your blind obedience to our creators is much darker to me, my love,” he answered.

Perhaps you would go on like that – and knowing you two, you could do that for ages. But you were interrupted by Lady Galadriel, who looked you up and down with curiosity as she entered the prison.

“The most trusted advisor of the Queen Regent,” she greeted you, “but the least trusted one amongst her subjects. You come from Middle-earth, they say. A noble Lady. But I have never heard of you before,” Galadriel pointed out.

“Must Elves know all about human affairs?” You challenged her and she smiled, softly.

“Human? Yes,” Galadriel answered. “There are spirits, however, that remain out of our grasp. They are no gods but nearly like them. Sent to us by the Valar when we need aid,” she squinted her eyes.

“I shall remain out of your grasp then,” you nodded and she nodded back.

“What is going on?” Halbrand whined, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms again. Putting on an act of a common man in front of Galadriel and even though you knew you should scream into her face that he was the very darkness she had sworn to fight and defeat – you chose to stay silent. Perhaps he would redeem himself, perhaps he would realise that he might be given a second chance if only he decided to choose the right path this time.

Perhaps, before outing him to the outside world, you would try to fix his way of perceiving which path was the right one.

And you knew he had been given too many chances already but your heart would never give up on him. You would forever find excuses for him and try to make it right between you two.

“You…” Galadriel approached the iron bars as she smiled softly at Halbrand. “You do not belong on this island.”

“If there’s one of us that doesn’t belong here, Elf, it’s you,” Halbrand shook his head.

“I’m not so sure of that anymore,” Galadriel’s eyes sparkled as she briefly laid them upon you. “But one thing I am now certain. You are more than you claim,” she took a step further. “I found this in the Hall of Lore,” she handed Halbrand a scroll of paper that made you squint your eyes.

He took it, pretending to be unbothered. And when he opened it, you saw a heraldry drawing, suddenly realising he was wearing a pendant with the same mark. What was the game he was playing…?

“That’s funny. I found this on a dead man,” Halbrand winked at you before he looked at Galadriel with a smirk. “Thought the pattern suited me,” he added and sat down on a bench inside his cell.

Galadriel sighed and she glanced at you, as if she was expecting you to help her. You did not move an inch, however.

“Many ages ago, a man bearing that mark united the scattered tribes of the Southlands under one banner,” she told Halbrand. “The very banner that might unite them again today. Against the evil that now seeks to claim their lands. Your lands, Halbrand,” she emphasised and you sucked on the inside of your cheeks after realising what his clever scheme was. “Your people have no King for you are him,” Galadriel kept insisting.

Your Mairon, the great deceiver, knew very well that eagerly agreeing to all of this would not be as powerful as trying to pretend to be uninterested at first. Therefore, he looked away and chuckled.

“That’s an odd thing to say to a man in a cage,” he pointed out. 

“A cage you have landed in because you chafe under the rags of the common,” Galadriel claimed as she looked at you again. “My Lady, you must tell your Queen the truth.”

“No Elf will tell me what I must or I must not do,” you smirked as you shook your head at how arrogant she was. You had to play your role but even as your Maia self, you wanted to humble her. “I doubt one pendant proves this man’s heritage enough.”

“What about his testimony?” Galadriel was not giving up as she looked at Halbrand again. “The armour that ought to rest upon your shoulders weighs upon your soul, Halbrand.”

Long silence occurred, in which you were able to watch the master of deception performing his craft. The way he kept staring at the drawing, his face full of mixed emotions and confusion, guilt. The way he grabbed the pendant with his hands and brushed it gently with his fingertips. Everyone would believe him.

“Be careful, Elf,” he said eventually. “The heir to this mark is heir to more than just nobility,” Halbrand stood up to approach the iron bars. “For it was his ancestor who swore a blood oath to Morgoth,” he reminded her and you were in awe how he used the bits of dark truth about himself to toy with her and test the waters.

And how oblivious she was, how eager to keep following the scenario she had already prepared for this situation to go with in her head.

“I am not the hero you seek,” Halbrand shook his head.

Indeed, he was not.

“For it was my family that lost the war,” he added.

“And it was mine who started it,” Galadriel insisted. “Ours was no chance meeting,” she pointed out and looked at you again. “No fate, nor destiny, nor any other words men use to speak of the forces they lack the conviction to name. Ours was the work of something greater,” she smiled at you and you forced a smile back.

Was she thinking that it was you who caused this meeting? Gods, if she only knew…

“You must see it,” she looked back at Halbrand.

“All I see is an Elf who won’t put down her sword,” he remarked.

“Come with me to Middle-earth,” she leaned in to be closer to him and you felt an odd sting of pain inside of your heart. Was it jealousy that another woman dared to stand so close to your Mairon…? Most likely. “And together we will redeem both our bloodlines.”

“How?” Halbrand asked, looking at her intensely. “You’re stuck on this island and you’re still short an army,” he smirked.

“That is all about to change,” Galadriel smiled and turned around to walk away.

You glanced at the man one last time before hurrying after her.

“Lady Galadriel!” You called out her name once you were outside the prison.

“My Lady,” she turned around to face you and you nearly bumped into her. “I did not expect to encounter an emissary of the Valar in Númenor, I must admit,” she bowed her head slightly. “How should I address you?”

“Here, in Númenor, you must call me Lady Maneth. In Valinor you would know me as (Y/N),” you introduced yourself and Lady Galadriel’s eyes widened slightly.

“(Y/N)...” She breathed out. “You know more than anyone else how important my task is. We must stop the darkness from spreading,” she pleaded.

“No,” you shook your head. “You must stop pushing this man… Halbrand… Into whatever you are trying to push him into,” you scolded her.

“Do the Valar have different plans for him?” Galadriel wondered out loud.

“It is not about him,” you winced, not wanting to discuss Mairon any longer with her. “It is about you, Artanis. You are beginning to become the very darkness you swore once to destroy,” you warned her.

“What do you mean?” Galadriel furrowed her brow as she took a step back.

“It is still cheating when one betrays a cheater. It is still a theft when one steals from a thief. And it is still a murder when one kills a murderer. Because it is not the matter of whether one deserves it or not – it is a matter of the act itself being committed. Too many pure and good souls were lost to us, driven by the desire to do justice,” you lectured her and you could feel her anger and frustration rising, however she would never dare to lash out on an emissary of the gods.

“Pretty words, that is all you can offer, meanwhile people are dying,” she spat out.

“Do you truly care about them, Artanis, or is their suffering your excuse to pick up the sword once more?” You asked but she was walking away angrily already and all you could see was her back, disappearing in the darkness of the corridor ahead of you.

You turned around once more and sighed at the doors leading back to the prison. You decided to leave Halbrand alone for the night but you worried about what would happen next. If he was about to choose the wrong path again, you would have to reveal his true self to everyone and interfere with his scheme.

Hope was all you had as you fidgeted with the ring around your finger.

“The visions are back and worse than ever,” Míriel confessed to you. “I suspect that it all has something to do with the Elf,” she added as she was trying to read your face but you made sure not to reveal anything.

“I knew that people of Númenor despised her kin but I underestimated the delicacy of the situation,” you admitted as you moved closer to the Queen Regent. “This is beyond worrying. The future of Númenor depends on your relationship with others. It is no time to make enemies instead of friends,” you warned.

“It would be an easier task to convince them that the Elves are not our enemies if only Lady Galadriel was not so…” the Queen Regent sighed, looking for the right word.

“Insufferable?” You chuckled and she nodded with a smile. “Elves differ from humans. They are not raised to be humble.”

“You know a lot about their kin,” Míriel pointed out, trying to make you confess who you truly were once more. She would never ask openly but sometimes she was teasing you this way.

“There are quite a few in the lands I come from,” you only answered.

“The lands you come from… Are they not The Southlands?” Míriel raised her eyebrows. “Like that human man?”

You took a deep breath in. If only you had known back then that your backstory would cause problems a few years later… But it was too late to change it because it would be highly suspicious.

“Yes,” you nodded. “But he is a commoner. I was a noble,” you added.

You were interrupted by Captain Elendil leading Lady Galadriel to you. She bowed her head slightly and exchanged a meaningful look with you.

“Lady Galadriel wishes for an audience,” Captain Elendil said and the Queen Regent nodded her head.

You stood still because these days she wanted you by her side always, no matter what. You did not even have to ask if you should leave or not.

“What is it?” Míriel asked when Galadriel stood on the other side of the table, facing you. She laid out two scrolls of paper in front of you – one was the same she had shown to Halbrand on the previous day and the other one was much more worn out and dirty.

“I found this in the Hall of Lore,” Galadriel informed the Queen Regent mysteriously and you allowed Míriel to see the items with her own eyes as you kept standing there with your hands clasped behind your back.

“You vex me, Elf,” Míriel looked up at Galadriel. “I welcome you as a guest and you gallop off to our countryside to steal ancient scrolls whilst your Southlander companion assaults our citizenry.”

“He is understandably quick to temper. His people are dying,” Galadriel explained.

“His people?” The Queen Regent asked, surprised.

“I believe the man you hold in your dungeons is no common brawler, but the lost heir in exile to the throne of The Southlands,” she revealed.

Míriel turned around to look at you and you raised your eyebrows slightly. You were not sure what to say to that. Should you help Mairon or interfere with his schemes? The answer was only easy for your mind but your heart wished to never cause him any trouble.

“Lady Maneth comes from The Southlands. She would know about that,” the Queen Regent informed Galadriel and the Elf looked at you, intensely.

“I cannot be sure,” you only said. “That there was a long gone line of Kings, I have known. That there are still their living descendants, I have not been aware of. That is not impossible, though,” you explained.

“His people are scattered. Leaderless,” Galadriel looked back at Míriel. “But with your backing they might unite behind his banner. And fight.”

How oblivious she was. His banner was nothing she would want to ever see floating in the air. His banner was nothing she would want to ever see people follow.

“What do you mean backing?” Míriel asked, taken aback by Galadriel’s proposal.

“Sauron was once your people’s enemy, as much as mine,” Galadriel reminded her and you moved uncomfortably. “I call on you to finish the task left undone.”

You might have hated this name more than he hated it. It brought you nothing but pain when others would address your Mairon this way – The Abhorred.

“I shall go,” you spoke, interrupting the tension between the two women. Míriel looked at you with a slight panic in her eyes because she did not want to be left alone with Galadriel but you simply could not stand being there anymore, hearing her talk about your Mairon. “I shall question that man, Halbrand. Mayhaps I will find out if he truly is what the Elf claims,” you said and Míriel nodded at you although you could sense she still felt uneasy to be left without your counsel.

You walked past Captain Elendil and went to the prison area of the palace like on the night before. Halbrand was sitting on the bench this time, with his back leaning on the iron bars. At the sound of your footsteps, he did not even flinch nor turned his head around. He did not have to. He knew it was you coming.

“Mairon…” You crouched down in front of his cell and wrapped your fingers around the bars. “Do not follow her, resist her temptation. Stay here with me.”

Halbrand turned around slowly with a playful smile on his lips as he looked down at you. You were not on your knees but it still seemed as if you were begging him.

“Stay here with you? Are you not a grand Lady on this island?” He asked.

“I can be anything I want and so can you,” you reminded him, your whisper was nearly inaudible but you did not need to speak your words out loud at all for him to hear them anyway. “We can live a lifetime here and then change our forms once more, start all over again. Over and over for the whole eternity. Far away from the rest. If I am to ever abandon my life alongside the gods, it will not be for your darkness… But it could be for this. For us.”

Halbrand stood up and the distance between you became even bigger now as he kept looking down at you with a hint of adoration mixed with pure contempt. He had to think you were pathetic and some part of him found it adorable but the other part found it embarrassing.

“It does not have to be Númenor,” you added. “We can go anywhere.”

“Let us go to The Southlands then,” Halbrand smirked. “Be the Queen alongside me.”

“You have made your decision then, I see,” you sighed and leaned in to press your forehead to the iron bars. “Will you ever love me enough to choose me over power?”

Halbrand did not like your choice of words as his eyes darkened. He crouched down as well, slowly, in a nearly threatening way. Now you were on his eye level as he looked intensely at you.

“Will you ever love me enough to choose me over your gods?” He asked.

The sound of footsteps made you stand up quickly and fix your dress. Halbrand also moved up and sat down on the bench. It was all done right in time because the guards walked inside the prison, dragging Lady Galadriel behind them. You watched with widened eyes as she was being thrown inside one of the cells.

“Don’t tell me,” Halbrand chuckled at her. “Tavern brawl?”

“Sedition,” she answered and Halbrand laughed as you gave her a scolding look.

When you joined Míriel again, she seemed to be lost in her own thoughts, staring outside the window. She turned her head around to smile at you gently and then she went back to staring ahead of her.

“And?” She asked.

“He asked for my hand,” you informed her with a playful smirk and the Queen Regent turned her head around once more to look at you with wide eyes.

“The audacity…” She sighed.

“Why?” You asked her with a soft smile.

“For a commoner to propose such a thing to a Lady like you… Even if it was only to jest–”

“It was not to jest, “you interrupted her. “If he is what Galadriel claims, then he would be my King,” you pointed out and an odd feeling filled your whole body when you called Mairon your King. A malicious one but also honey-like warm; sweetly spreading throughout your body.

“You are above human Kings, are you not, Lady Maneth?” Míriel raised an eyebrow at you. It was the very first time she asked such a thing so openly.

“I cannot answer that, my friend,” you smiled at her mysteriously, “but if he chooses to follow the path Lady Galadriel pushes him onto, I might have to follow him.”

“And abandon Númenor?” The Queen Regent asked. “Abandon me?”

“I am sorry,” you sighed. “Following him might be a task much more important than watching over this island,” you revealed to her.

Even though you were not given direct orders from the gods, it was obvious that watching over Mairon was more important because keeping his schemes under control would only profit in the end for everyone, including the people of Númenor. Míriel could not be told all the details, therefore she would never understand and she would feel abandoned by you. It was the price you had to pay.

It was an excuse, of course. Choosing to follow Mairon to Middle-earth to make sure he would not go back to his evil ways and that he would use the position Galadriel was giving him to do good instead… It was nothing but a noble excuse to simply explain the fact you wanted to follow him.

It was different now, though. It was not one of those times when he had begged you to come with him, straight to Morgoth. No, this time there was a string of hope that he would truly redeem himself. And of course he would have a bigger chance to do so with you by his side.

“It seems so important… Everything happening in Middle-earth. More important than I suspected. But if even you are willing to leave my side to go back there, it means there are things happening there that are much bigger than me,” Míriel said. “I must rethink Lady Galadriel’s words now then,” she informed you and walked past you to walk away. “Just like you must rethink Halbrand’s proposal.”

“Yes, I must,” you nodded at her and looked outside the window yourself. The sun was slowly setting and the view was beautiful – you wished it would forever be like this; so peaceful and calm with pink and orange hues.

Like back in the day when you had been sitting in the flower fields with Mairon, staring at the skies, your bodies filled with no malice – only pure yearning for one another.

The orange skies of the evening sky always reminded you of his ginger hair from back then and how you would brush it with your fingers, staring in awe at how the sunlight seemed to sparkle upon it.

You were standing by the guards’ side as you watched them open Halbrand’s cell. They nodded at him and he nodded back. The guards left you with him alone and an awkward silence occurred between you two.

“There, you have it your way,” you finally said, quietly.

“You must have missed me terribly,” he crossed his arms and chuckled but you did not want to laugh.

Your eyes filled with tears immediately at the mention of all those centuries you had spent thinking he was gone forever. You lifted your wet, glistening eyes to lay them on his and he clenched his jaw as he moved slightly while all playfulness left his expression.

“Do you know why I could not be killed?” Halbrand approached you to cup your chin and you shook your head. “Because of the part of me still living inside of you. As long as you are alive, I cannot be slain,” he explained. “However, the part of you that lives within me had to suffer for all those centuries alongside me and there is not a day passing when I do not regret causing you such pain.”

“Oh, Mairon…” You gasped and threw your arms around his neck to pull him closer and hug him.

However, he had something else on his mind. He blinked slowly a few times and cupped your cheeks now with his rough hands as he leaned in to join your lips together.

For the first time in your immortal life, you finally found out how sweet his lips were. And gods, how good they felt… How right. Your souls intertwined at that moment, every missing piece finding its place as if you were forged into one body.

“Before we were created, we had been a piece of stardust in the abyss and we had been one flesh then, of that I am sure,” Mairon whispered after breaking the kiss. “I should have kissed you much earlier, my love, for I have never felt so whole before.”

“No,” you shook your head. “I am glad you are kissing me only now,” you added and he raised an eyebrow at you. “For if you had kissed me like that back in the day, I would have followed you into corruption straight away. I would have worn black armour forged out of iron and I would have become Morgoth’s most zealous Lieutenant by your side – only to feel your lips on mine again,” you confessed.

Just when you finished voicing out your blasphemous feelings, Halbrand’s lips kissed you once more. This time he lowered his hands to intertwine your fingers with his. You felt him smirking when he felt the ring on your finger brushing his skin.

“Let us get married. Straight away,” he breathed out. “You are wearing my ring already. You have worn it for all eternity.”

“It would be only fair if you wore something from me as well. Something to mark you as my own like I am yours,” you pointed out.

“What would it be, my sweet?” Mairon caressed your cheek and you smirked at him a little before you reached out to the back of your neck.

You had prepared your gift for him this very morning when you already knew he would be released. There was a pendant around your neck, hidden under your dress. You took it off now and handed it to him as he slightly moved away at the sight of it.

It was a beautiful pendant surely although you made sure it would not look too feminine, so he would wear it at all times. However, what it contained inside was what truly intimidated him – it was a small portion of your light that you had sacrificed to lock in there. Wearing it could save his soul, of that you were sure. But in his eyes it surely was a form of imprisonment.

“Have you not sacrificed enough of your light for me already?” Mairon asked.

“Never enough. I shall sacrifice as much of it as I can to save you, my love,” you insisted and pushed the necklace into his open hand as you closed it around the pendant.

Mairon forced a smile as he swallowed thickly and opened his hand again to stare at the necklace before slowly putting it around his neck and hiding it under his tunic.

“Thank you,” he whispered in Quenya and you smiled back at him, encouragingly.

It had been ages since you last wore armour. Lately, the Valar had been using you more as a politician than a warrior but you still remembered the wars you had taken part of. Back then you had been on the opposite side of the field from Mairon but now you were by his side, riding your horse next to his as people of Númenor were throwing flowers at you. 

You took a deep breath in when it was time for you to jump off of your mare. What you were about to do would be equal to making a final decision about your fate – leaving Númenor meant forsaking the task that had been given to you by the Valar. However, you wanted to believe that they would value your new task even more; the one you had given to yourself. To watch over Mairon and make sure no one would know him as Sauron ever again.

He helped you to get on the ship and when you held his hand tight and he grinned at you, your heart filled with love and warmth. There was, however, a hint of worry because you knew what a skilled deceiver he could be. 

To become the King and Queen of The Southlands and to erase the darkness from that long-forsaken land was your shared goal now. Or so he had been promising you. To unite the tribes of that realm and to make sure they had a bright future. And once your mortal forms would become old enough, you would abandon or transform them to start a new life somewhere else. To heal more and more lands, more kins. 

You wanted to believe the healing would be done in the right and proper way this time because now he had you by his side.

Your new husband and an old companion smirked at you and squeezed your cheek playfully before turning around to join Captain Elendil to speak to him as the ships sailed out of the harbour. Lady Galadriel stood next to you instead and she glanced at you from the corner of her eye.

“I know it is not my right to ask about the ways of the Valar and the Maiar but why would a spirit like you marry a human and abandon the task originally given to her?” She raised an eyebrow at you.

“The road goes ever winding,” you answered her. “Not even the Valar or the Maiar can see all its paths.”

“Your devotion to this cause makes me believe I was right to fight so eagerly for this to happen,” she said and you smiled to yourself. She was so desperate.

“You are right, Artanis. It is not your right to know about the ways of my kind,” you patted her shoulder and gave her a faint smile as she nodded, staring into the horizon.

You looked there, too, but your mind was absent. You were scared and unsure – some part of you nearly wanted to be as blind as Lady Galadriel because she seemed to be so certain and fearless.

You turned around and realised that he was looking at you already. And at that moment, he looked like the Maia he had been created as – so pure with that wide smile and the sun shining behind him, creating a halo around his form. He looked handsome as ever in Númenorian armour, so different from the one he had been wearing as Morgoth’s Lieutenant. 

You gave him a wide smile back, so full of love and devotion. Perhaps his star would begin to shine in the night sky once more.

MASTERLIST

[soracities]

what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds

I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.

I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)

The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)

The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)

A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )

Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)

Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems

The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.

But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:

anything by Sara Teasdale

Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver

Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti

Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr

Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)

Crush by Richard Siken

Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Selected Poems by Walt Whitman

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Collected Poems by Vasko Popa

Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,

Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef

As for individual poems:

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib

"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros

"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky

“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail

"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin

“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón

“The Flea” by John Donne

"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland

“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker

"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside

“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio

“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver

"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott

“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska

"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy

“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris

"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer

"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje

"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis

"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)

"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz

"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye

"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman

"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah

"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller

"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May

"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:

Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver

"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca

"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky

"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan

[lanadelnegan]

Tattoo

Pre-apocalypse!Negan x Reader (Negan is y/n's art teacher & also owns a tattoo shop).

Warnings: THIS IS THE FILTHIEST THING I'VE WRITTEN SO FAR and it's just going to get filthier from here on. smut, forbidden love, age-gap (reader is 18, negan is 38), angst, oral (female receiving), lots of sexual tension, slow burnnnn.(there's an actual plot this time), vaginal sex, public sex, breeding, slight daddy kink

Summary: After graduating and leaving behind the man she fell for but couldn't have, y/n decides to get a tattoo that reminds her of him. And he gives it to her.

A/n: ugh, this had me in my feels. A "hard to get" teacher Negan. basically you're negan's former student and he gives you a tattoo and things.. well - just read it.

"Well damn. I don't mean to be sentimental, but I have seriously enjoyed teaching you little shits. I hope you can take what you've learned and apply it to something. Be creative. Oh, and.. don't think about hitting me up on Instagram after this because I don't do social media. That shit is toxic. Remember that, kids."

The bell cuts Negan off before he can finish his inspirational speech. He's always had such a way with words.. should have been an English teacher instead.

Most of the students rush out like the room is on fire, with the exception of a few annoying girls that think he'll jump their bones now that school is out.

"So, Mr. Smith, since you don't have social media, can I get your number at least?" I cringe as she twirls her hair around her finger and her friends giggle obnoxiously behind her.

"Girls. Behave for once. A tip for college? Don't flirt with your professors." He warns while motioning them out the door.

I suddenly realize that my ass has been glued to my seat this entire time and I'm the only one still here. I quickly get up and throw my backpack over one shoulder. He stares at me from the doorway but I just look down as I walk towards him.

"Bye Mr. Smith."

"Nice try. Sit down." He shuts his door and walks back into the room pointing towards my chair for me to sit.

"Mr. Smith, y/n?" He mocks. "Seriously?"

I never call him that. He's always been Negan to me.

I've known him for 4 years now. He's the only art teacher at Alexandria High, and even though I have no interest in art, I've taken his class every year because I do have an interest.. in him.

What he doesn't know is that I've been making mental notes everyday for the past four years about all his interests, personal life, hobbies, you name it.

He loves the color red - because it's the only color expo marker he writes in.

His favorite lunch is two cigarettes and coke zero. I hate that he smokes.

He stopped coaching baseball last year because he said he didn't have time anymore. But I think it's actually because he's never cared for it to begin with.

He had a wife, but she passed away. Some kind of cancer. She's still his computer wallpaper, which tells me he still hasn't moved on even though it was six years ago. My heart hurts for him.

He wasn't lying - he doesn't have social media....I would have found it.

He sits at another student's desk right next to mine with his body facing me.

"You gonna tell me why the hell you look like your best fucking friend just died?"

I stare at the floor next to his shoes and try to think about anything other than fact that I'm never going to see him again.

"Look at me."

I slowly lift my eyes to his and can't stop the tear that escapes the second I see his face.

"Ah, shit." His expression turns serious when he notices my tears. "Look, kid. I -"

"Stop calling me kid." I snap.

He chuckles. "Hate to break it to ya y/n, but you are very much a kid in my eyes, which is why this thing -" he motions his hand towards me. "this.. crush you have on me - has to end today."

My eyes widen as I stare at him speechless. He seriously did not just assume I have a crush on him.

"Did you jus - You seriously think just because a few stupid girls want to get in your pants, it means everyone does?" I scoff. "Unbelievable. You're my teacher. I don't have a crush on you."

He laughs as if we both know I'm lying - which I am.

"Alright, I'm sorry I called you a kid. Now, you wanna tell me what's wrong?"

"It's just I - I'm gonna miss you." I instantly regret saying it.

He nods and looks at the floor, letting out a frustrated sigh.

"I'm sorry. I - I'm just gonna go." I get up to leave, leaving my heart with him. My stomach twists in a knot when I realize he isn't getting up to stop me.

Why would he?

Once I'm in the hall, I turn to take one last look at him. He's bent over with his hands through his hair as if his best friend just died.

Negan's POV: That fucking girl. In my twelve years of teaching, I've never cared about a student like I do her. I care about all of my students, but goddamn it, she's had me wrapped around her finger for longer than I'm comfortable to admit - And I never will. She fucking sucks at hiding her feelings. I knew from the first day she walked into my class that she wanted to jump on my dick. Hell, every girl does. But other girls bat their fake eyelashes at me and tell me how they feel. Y/n.. she's.. obsessed with me. She thinks I didn't notice her doodling my name in her notebook with little hearts. Or that I don't hear her whispering to her friends about the dreams she has about me. Or how she stares at me during lectures like she's on a different planet. And if that's not enough, the girl hates art. Yet she's chosen it as her elective every single year. She has straight A's in every class, but doesn't even try in mine. And yet.. my dumb ass still passed her with an A. Maybe because I'm obsessed with her too.

Back to Y/n's POV:

I cried on the way home that day.

While everyone else celebrated school ending with a party, I stayed in my room and cried while looking at his photo in the yearbook.

While everyone walked across the stage at graduation, my diploma came in the mail and I stayed home holding Negan's lucky baseball bat that he gave me last year.

My last day of junior year, I stayed after school to help Negan clean out his classroom so he could move into a bigger art room. That was the year he quit coaching. I replay the memory in my head more often than I should..

"Why do you have this bat just sitting in the corner?" "It brings me good luck. I hit a home run every game my senior year with that bat." "Your senior year? This bat is that old?!" "Watch it, kid." He rolls his eyes and throws some folders in a bin. "Hmm." I study the bat. "I could use some luck." "Keep it." I look at him confused. "But... it's your-" "I want you to have it." He cuts me off. "Are - Are you sure?" He sighs frustrated. "Do you not want it?" "Well, I mean, I do but -" "Then stop being stubborn and take it."

Ever since that day, his bat has been leaned up against the wall by my bed as a constant reminder of the man I want but can never have.

After a few weeks of feeling sorry for myself, my best friend tried convincing me to do something for myself since my birthday was coming up.

"Y/n, you should.. get your nails done, go buy some new clothes, do.. something. But you need to get out of that room. It's... depressing."

"I think I want a tattoo."

"Oh, okay, yeah. That's a good idea. What are you wanting to get?" She asks from the other end of the phone.

"I dunno." My eyes drift towards the bat. "Something meaningful."

The next day...

Lucille's

The tattoo shop sign reads. I swing the door open, excited for the first time in a month. The sound of tattoo guns and rock music fills the lobby.

"Hey, welcome to Lucille's. Do you have an idea of what you'd like or do you want to see some of our work?" The woman on the other side of the counter pulls out a binder.

"Oh, no, I think I know what I want already." I smile and pull up the picture on my phone before showing her.

"Okay, we can do that. Shouldn't take too long either. An hour tops. I can actually take you now in room 3." The so-called "rooms" aren't actually rooms, but rather closed off sections with tall walls on each side. From where I'm standing, I can't see the people in the tattoo chair, but I can see the top of the tattoo artists' heads if I stand on my tippy-toes.

She leads me to room 3 and I sit in the chair while she gets out the instruments.

"This your first tattoo?"

"Yeah, kinda nervous."

She smiles. "I'd tell you not to worry, but, sorry babe. It's gonna hurt."

I appreciate her honesty and just smile back at her.

"So, where do we want it?" she holds the printed off picture off of the tattoo I want.

I lean back in the chair, putting my legs up, so I'm laying down. I lift my shirt up right above my belly button and slightly pull my shorts down, revealing my pubic bone. "Right here." I point to the left side of where my panty line would be but lower.

After I confirm the placement, she presses the needle to my skin and I bite my bottom lip at the sudden pain that radiates throughout my hip.

"Breathe, babe. You got this."

After a couple seconds, she turns in her chair to load more ink into the gun.

"Y/n?" I hear from the entrance behind me.

I know that voice without turning to look. My eyes widen and the girl tattooing me looks at him.

"Hey boss, you two know each other?" She looks between the two of us.

I look back at him and see him nod at her. "I'll finish her up, Ruby. Thanks." He takes the tattoo gun from her and sits in her chair when she gets up to leave. The scent of leather and cigarettes fills the small room and I realize how much I missed it.

He pauses when he looks down at my skin and I can't tell if he's staring because of my tattoo of choice or because I'm almost completely exposed. If I didn't just shave, half of my pubic hair would be on display to him.

The way he's looking at my skin wakes the butterflies in my stomach and I have to mentally tell myself not to clench my legs together. He looks up at me through heavy eyelids and for the first time in four years, I'm unable to read him. I can't tell if he's disappointed, mad... or turned on...?

He looks back at the tattoo and shakes his head, sighing.

Okay, it's definitely a look of disappointment.

"You realize I have to finish this now that she's already started it, right?" He studies the lines already permanently marked in my skin. The faint purple lines of where the sticker was placed give away the complete outline of what the tattoo will be. "There's still time to change it though."

"What? What do you mean.. change it? I want this one."

"No." Is all he says and my eyes widen in shock at him.

"You can't tell me what to do Negan. I'm an adult, and I'm getting it."

"Why?" He snaps, frustration dripping from his tone.

He looks into my eyes for the first time since he's been in the room and the butterflies in my stomach have now gone wild.

"Because I... I want a piece of you with me always."

He closes his eyes and drops his head. My eyes start to water but I hold them back the best I can.

"Y/n." He shakes his head but to my surprise, he hesitantly places his left hand on my thigh, his fingers dangerously close to the spot I've imagined him touching a million times. The feel of his rough fingers on my bare skin ignites a flame in me I didn't know existed and all I do is stare at his hand.

"Relax." He rolls his eyes and starts the gun. He leans down closer and begins tattooing me.

I have to bite back the moan threatening to escape my lips. With Ruby.. it hurt. But with Negan, it.. almost feels good.

He glances up at me as if he can hear my thoughts and then goes back to gliding a straight line of ink across my skin.

The next few moments are spent in silence, with nothing but the sounds of the tattoo gun and music playing in the distance.

"Fuck, y/n. I'm gonna need these off so I can get to you better." He gestures at my shorts.

My eyes widen but I nod and slide them off, barely breathing now that I'm laying in front of Negan in just my underwear. The way his jaw ticks when he sees that I'm wearing red lace panties doesn't go unnoticed. His favorite color.

He places his hand back on my leg, this time with his fingers completely against my inner thigh. I slightly part my legs without thinking and he pauses to glance at me before continuing with the tattoo.

If he moved his finger half an inch upwards, he would be touching me.

"I never knew you worked at a tattoo shop." I break the silence, hoping to get my mind off his hand.

He chuckles. "I own it, darlin'. And there's a lot you don't know about me."

Another long pause happens before he speaks first this time.

"Why did you take art, y/n?"

"Uh.. I dunno, because I liked it."

He huffs out a laugh. "You liked it... or me?"

I shrug. "Both."

His face turns serious again and he stops the tattoo gun. "All done."

He backs away and motions for me to stand up and look in the mirror in the corner. I stand in front of it, but don't even notice my tattoo because my eyes catch Negan in the mirror staring at my ass. These panties don't leave much to the imagination and my cheeks redden at how much I'm exposed to him.

He suddenly looks up and makes eye contact with me in the mirror. His eyes are darker than usual and filled with lust.

"Come here." He demands and I obey, walking towards him.

Once I'm standing in front of him, he lifts his hands to grab my hips. My belly button is eye level to him and I look down, watching him intensely. His thumbs dig into my hips and he looks at the tattoo.

"Do you like it?" I ask him.

He ignores me and it makes my heart break a little more. "Lay back down, y/n." He gets up to pull the curtain over the entrance of the room.

I do as he says and he comes back, placing a clear tape bandage over the fresh tattoo.

He looks as if he's deep in thought before suddenly sliding his hands underneath my thighs and pulling me closer to him. He pushes my leg aside and rests my other foot in his lap until my legs are completely spread apart in front of him.

"You want me to touch you, y/n? Is that what you want?"

"Yes.."

"Tell me what you want, baby."

"Your mouth."

He chuckles darkly and kisses the inside of my thigh before sliding his fingers under my panties and ripping them apart.

He shoves them in the back of his jean pocket and wraps his arms around my thighs, holding my stomach down with his hands and leaning his head down closer.

"Look at this pretty pussy, baby. So wet for me you're glistening."

His eyes look up at me right before he licks me and my head falls back with pleasure.

He stops suddenly. "Eyes on me, darlin'. How many times have you imagined me between your legs? You're going to watch me eat this pussy, y/n."

I nod, looking at him and he continues. The sound of other people talking in the distance makes my senses even more heightened.

He licks me again, pressing his tongue into me harder this time. He moans as he stops at my clit and gently sucks it into his mouth. I moan and watch him as he looks like he's eating the best meal he's ever had.

"You taste even better than I imagined, baby."

"You.. imagined it?"

"Baby. You aren't the only one who daydreams in class." He says before dipping his tongue deep inside me.

He switches back and forth between licking me and sucking me until my moans get louder and faster.

"Negan, I'm gonna.."

"I know baby, give it to me." He rubs me with his tongue faster until I'm coming apart. His hand quickly covers my mouth and I cry out into his hand.

"Fuck, doll." He groans and adjusts himself through his jeans. "This pussy is about to make me cum in my pants like I'm a fucking teenager again."

"Negan.." I say out of breath. "I wanna touch you. Please."

He stands and picks up my shorts, but not before I see the huge bulge in his pants. He helps me put my shorts on and I look at him confused when he doesn't say anything.

"Nega-"

"No, y/n."

My eyes water with tears as I stand to finish pulling my shorts up. "I - I don't understand."

"This can't happen, baby. I shouldn't have touched you."

I nod. "So that's it, Negan? You get what you want and that's it.. you're just.. done with me?"

"Are you fucking serious? You think I got what I wanted? I'm standing here with a hard-on that's gonna give me a giant case of blue balls. Any other man would throw you on this table and take you right here."

"Then why don't you?!"

"Because I fucking.. I care about you. You happy now? I fucking CARE ABOUT YOU, y/n. And I'm not going to break your heart."

I wipe a tear that runs down my cheek. "You already did." I grab my purse and rush out of the room, stopping in front of Ruby on the way out and pulling out some cash.

"I'm sorry hun." She says empathetically as if she heard everything that just happened.

I cry harder and lay the cash down before leaving and walking to my car. Before I can open my car door, Negan is grabbing my arm and turning me around to face him.

"Goddamn it, listen to me!"

I don't fight him, I just stare at him, noting the hurt in his eyes. My heart hurts and I suddenly feel guilty for making him feel any ounce of pain.

"Y/n.. look.."

"No." I cut him off. "Negan, I'm sorry. This is my fault.. I put you in this situation because I was selfish.. and delusional. I'm so sorry. I'll leave, and you won't have to hear from me or see me again."

He scoffs. "You think that's what I want? I guess you don't know me the way I thought you did."

Before I can say anything else, he crashes his lips to mine and kisses me so hard and but so softly at the same time. His fingers slip through my hair and his hand rests on the back of my neck as he deepens our kiss.

"You're gonna be the death of me, kid."

I bite his lip hard when he calls me kid and our kiss goes from passionate to animalistic. He presses himself flat against me with my back against my car and I feel his hard cock straining against his jeans. His lips travel to my neck and he bites me hard, right before kissing and sucking the sensitive spot.

That's definitely going to leave a mark.

"You have no clue what you do to me, baby." He says in between kisses. His voice is raspier and deeper than usual. "Do you have any idea how many times I've left work and had to rub one out at the thought of you? Hell, sometimes even at work."

I look around the parking lot. It's nighttime but we're still clearly visible in the lights.

"Look at me, y/n. Forget where we are and just focus on me baby." His hand slips into my shorts and it takes him no time to find my soaked entrance since my panties are currently in his back pocket.

"Negan.." I breathe.

He smiles against my lips. "Baby.. You sure this is what you want? Because once I've had you, you're mine."

I nod and he puts his mouth next to my ear.

"Take your shorts off. Now." He pulls his hand from my shorts and sucks my juices off his fingers.

"But, Negan, we're-"

"I said, now y/n. You want me so bad, you're gonna get me wherever and however I say. Now, take your fucking shorts off before I rip them too."

I hesitantly slide my shorts off while looking around again. There aren't any other cars in the parking lot other than a couple of his employees. All the customers left. There's a main road up ahead but we're far enough away where they wouldn't see us unless they we're staring really hard.

"Good girl. Now take my cock out, baby."

He leans his hands against my car on either side of me, trapping me in. I waste no time reaching for the button on his jeans and unzipping him before pulling out his hard, huge cock. It's bigger than I imagined.. a lot bigger. I don't know how that thing is going to even fit in me. He's so hard that the veins in his cock look like they are about to erupt and his tip is already dripping with precum.

I can't help but run my thumb over the tip to collect some and bring it to my mouth to taste him. His eyes darken with lust at the sight of me sucking his precum off my finger.

"Taste good, doll?"

I nod and he chuckles. "There's a lot more where that came from."

He grips the back of my thigh with his hand and pulls my right leg around his waist.

The feeling of his dick rubbing against my wet pussy is enough to make my knees weak. Literally. I almost collapse at the sensation of him rubbing the head against my opening, teasing me. He presses his body closer to me in attempt to hold me up.

"Fuck, look at this dripping pussy." He looks down between us, admiring the view of his cock teasing my wet slit. "It's about to be dripping with my cum in a few minutes.. You ready for me, baby?"

"Yes, please. I need you."

He enters me completely in one swift motion, not giving me anytime to adjust. My walls are stretched further than they've ever been and it feels like the tip of him is buried up to my stomach.

He doesn't move for a moment, but instead looks into my eyes with his cock all the way inside of me. "There you go, baby. Finally getting what you wanted after all these years and taking my dick like a champ."

"Negan.." I moan. "Please.. just fuck me."

He pulls out of me almost completely before slowly pushing himself back in, agonizingly slow. Our bodies are flush against each other and he kisses me again.

"Fuck, baby." He growls. "You. Feel. So. Fucking GOOD." He says between thrusts as my mouth falls open.

I wrap my arms around his neck to hold myself up and lean against him with my lips pressed against his neck. I take the opportunity to mark him back, grabbing his skin between my teeth and sucking hard. He moans so loud that I glance around to make sure no one heard him, but we're still alone.

His thrusts get harder and faster and the sounds coming from his sexy mouth are enough alone to make me cum.

"Look at me, y/n. I want to see your face when you cum all over my cock."

His hand that was on the car behind me slides between us, instantly finding my clit. He begins rubbing circles on it with his middle finger while thrusting his hips into me faster.

I look into his eyes while my arms are still wrapped around his shoulders tightly, keeping me in place. My fingers run through his dark hair and my breathing goes erratic as I feel myself come undone around him.

"You want me to fill you up, baby? You want daddy's cum?"

I nod quickly as tears run down my cheeks from the most intense orgasm I've ever had.

"FUCK, baby." He groans and slams his mouth against mine. I kiss him back as he rides out his orgasm.

He pulls out of me slowly and softly kisses my lips one more time. I go to put my shorts on and he stops me.

"Not so fast, doll." He gets down on his knees in front of me, pushing my legs apart in front of him. "Push daddy's cum out baby. Let me see it drip out of you."

I do as he says and the feeling of his warm seed running down my legs is almost enough to send me over the edge again.

"Look. At. THAT." He swipes up some of his cum from my leg onto his finger and stands back up but not before gently kissing my new tattoo.

I think I love this man.

He rubs his finger along my lips until my mouth opens for him. I suck his fingers clean and moan at the taste of him.

"Y/n." He pushes my hair behind my ear and looks at me seriously. "I meant it when I said I care about you."

"You care about all your students."

"Yeah, but I don't go sticking my dick in them." He smirks and takes my hand, leading me back into the shop.

The others must have already left when - when.. oh.. shit.

"Negan, do you think they saw us?!"

"Well darlin', I was fucking your brains out right next to the door, so I think it's probably safe to assume so." He grins and my eyes widen with horror.

"Do you not care?"

"What can they do, doll? Fire me?" He laughs and leads me to the back where his office is.

"What are we doing in here?"

"Getting matching tattoos, of course."

I stare at him, trying to register what he just said. "You're.. going to give yourself a tattoo?"

He chuckles and hands me a tattoo gun before taking off his shirt and sitting on the couch in the corner.

"No, doll, you are."

Part 2 here

[girls--complex]

hi, love your work a lot! it manages to blend coherence with layers of esoterica, in a fun & meaningful way. do you have any big influences with your style?

Writing this as a narrative because my whimsicall mind can't seem to organize information logickally otherwise

So

When I was a child my Dad would show me a lot of comics/cartoons in all different styles/eras and so I was internalizing comic book logic from the very beginning. He really liked American comix both capes and Indie stuff but was also into franco belgian artists and let's be clear my papa has good taste so I was readying good stuff though I couldn't remember it all too reliably... Also Comics Journal, so I was reading comics & meta about comics. So basically I have like a deep archetypal brain stem dark spring of mind that spits out raw comic information like a dream that I can't place until I rediscover them, and a lot of deep unremembered imprintations that R kinda roiling around under the surface #Stupidsoldier

N then I was a deviantart kiddo and a reading manga at barnes and noble kiddo, and then I went and got a formal art education and learned about all these artists that sort of did pseudo comics or cartoons but didnt articulate it that way-- The German xpressionists are a big example of this -- and also about overall principles of like scale and hierarchy and time and presence -- and also just that I really like drawin the human figure in particular :)

I'm really grateful that my parents especially my dad were actually really supportive/invested in me being an artist even though they had very little faith in my character or overall competence. so I was always doing art activities to make me better at drawing because that was like the one redeeming quality I had, a lot of household resources went into me having art tutoring or doing community classes, and I was really strongly encouraged to get ma BFA

So 4 influences well I like things that are very stylish but very specific in how they represent figure N physiognomy... Naoki Urosawa & Jeff Smith were fascinations 2 me along this line... Arakawa is good too... I feel like this is a strength of American and British cartoonists generally but struggling to think of names

My favorite painter is tied between two commies: Siqueiros, who was a Mexican muralist and chaotic socialist, really specific markmaking and texture, pathos drenched figuration, charged epic landscapes, and Petrov-Vodkin, Russian ikonographer who became a propagandist for the USSR, semi-social-realist, semi-ikonographic compositions in which space is wrapping around itself to organize human figures according to a mythological logic, flattish, very cartoons/comics aligned, strange treatment of color but all really effective

History painting overall is everything to me it really doesn't show in Coward but I think it shows elsewhere some of my other dramatic sensibility is a lot from 00s action movie shlock which I would always enjoy to go see when I was younger and was somehow fascinated with the environment of government buildings and prisons and secret operations happeningunder the surface of every day life erupting into wet violence of men punching each other

I love the movie THE RAID redemption !!!!

I learned a lot of the logic of pacing N building pages around Tezuka's work as well as FMA N Death Note I think were big 1s to teach me that logic. Tezuka is a really good artist to look at for how to compose a page that supports the energy of the events that are happening on it, not that that's something I personally am good at. Favorite mangaka for tone and environment and visual identity are Katsuhiro Otomo, Tustomu Nihei, Suehiro Maruo, Nishioka siblings, Hideshi Hino

A lot of my sense of timing is also from news paper strips tbh. It's just a gut thing to me at this point hehe , Character design is also a gut thing for me I draw a little thing and I can either ensoul it with psychosexual fixation or I can't

I was born in the hospital Henry Darger worked at St. Joe's he's an ancestor to me but ofc inimitable by virtue of GOD being his sole audience

As for the esoterickal dimensions I feel like it's all it's own post let's just say I lack the inclination and ability for systematic and rigorous study but I am really interesting in gathering little packets of information and arranging them into dioramas and the longer I do it the more packets I accrue

I want to make a list of artists on here that I like/admire sometime too but that's too much for me rn. I also suspect a lot of people R mad at me for arbitrary reasons just as I also am mad at a lot of people for arbitrary reasons so I dont wanna bother no one ...

Oh well so I'm intentionally reorganizing how I draw right now because I sense a shift in my trajectory again so thanks for making me reflect

[emyn-arnens]

The Ruined Sight of You

@three-sentence-ficathon | AO3

A stranger will come to your city, bearing gifts of gems and jewelry such as the Noldor have not seen since the days of the Trees, and you will welcome him. You will trust him. You will revere him.

He will be teacher, master, lord. He will be comrade, friend, companion. He will draw forth greatness from you like a sculptor draws forth flesh and bone from cold stone. He will teach you the secret arts of the Valar, and you will think, I have been honored indeed.

Your cousin will come to you, her eyes clear and grave and piercing, and she will say, He is not as he seems. You will pay no heed to her words.

You will become distrustful of any who speak against him, and you will bar your cousin from the guildhouse and rebuff her warnings. She is jealous, you will think, jealous of what I have attained and she has again found barred from her.

At his bidding, you will cast her out of the city, and she will look at you with her clear, grave, piercing eyes—her brother’s eyes—and say, Thou hast become thy father truly.

At his side, you will create your greatest work. He will tell you so. He will name you as great a smith as Fëanor, and you will drink down the lie as a newborn child blindly drinks its mother’s milk.

He will leave, and you will ache. And then you will see, with the dart of deepest pain, whom you have truly placed your trust in.

And you will go to your cousin and say, I was wrong. I did not see. And she will look upon you with her eyes that see too much, that have always seen the heart of you, and she will take the ring you give her.

He will come with armies, and he will cast down all that you have built. And you will stand in defiance of him and be brought to your knees and taken in chains to his pits of torment.

He will taunt you and torment you, and you will bear it silently, wondering how you could have been so blind. At last you will buckle beneath the pain and reveal the names of the lesser rings, for they can afford to be lost.

He will grasp your chin sharply, fingers flashing with the rings you crafted together, and he will hiss of the ruin you have brought upon the Eldar and name you a traitor to your kin, a kinslayer as surely as your father and uncles, for the ruin he will bring down upon the Eldar in vengeance for your disobedience. But you will remember Nenya, gleaming like starlight upon your cousin’s finger, and Narya and Vilya safely in Lindon, and you will hold your mouth fast.

He will blind you, and you will hear his voice out of the darkness and pain, cruel and cold and merciless, and you will see what you could not before. He will flog and flay you, and you will utter no cry, for he has already pierced you more deeply than the tongue of any lash can.

And you will think, head hung low and body torn and tattered, This is my greatest work, to defy that which I have welcomed.

You will die, and he will pierce you with many arrows, and say, Behold the mighty smith of the Noldor. And he will hang your body upon a spear and bear your corpse as a banner into battle, and your kinsmen will flee before the ruined sight of you.

You will wake in Aman, and you will think, This is far more than I deserve.

And when your cousin comes on the wings of an ending age, her long watch upon your ancient enemy at last ended, you will kneel before her and say, Forgive me.

And she will draw you to your feet and say, her eyes clear and kind, Thou art already forgiven.

[kifkay]

class swapping winx and the specialists (+ trix)

currently brainrotting about an au where the girls are specialists and the boys are the magical ones.

specialist! Aisha:

the undisputed best fighter and leader

has a plasma weapon that can change forms — from a scimitar to a spear, from a spear to dual swords, etc.

is incredibly popular with the student body but could not be more unbothered by it

has ridden a dragon before (a rite of passage for all specialists), but prefers the company of the monsters of the deep ocean

specialist! Flora:

the pacifist <3

and is super jacked. as a treat. for me.

(just like in the og cartoon) Flora’s signature move is detaining/grappling her enemies, rather than explicitly harming them.

bolas is her weapon of choice:

but I can also see her using escrima sticks or a bo.

Saladin has a soft spot for Flora because she reminds him of Helia. He is also the one to introduce them to each other.

still as patient and kind with everyone as her og version, but more reserved/quiet. Flora is a bit of a mystery to her peers.

specialist! Stella:

the Red Fountain is THE nepo school of all time. all nobles worth their salt send their little trust fund cases there to get them a prestigious rank of a Specialist; no matter if their offsprings are actually suited for the lifestyle of a hero.

Stella’s parents enrolled her in RF in order to rehabilitate her image as an irresponsible party girl/failure of an heir to the Solari throne.

Stella retaliated by not giving a damn about her education — she even had to repeat a year due to her skipping practices.

her behavior began to improve once she was assigned to the Winx and became inspired by their heroism/courage/honor.

but it took the girls almost getting killed saving Stella’s ass on a mission, for her finally to start taking her training seriously.

her weapon of choice: a family relic — a sword.

Stella does become a proficient sword-fighter and a Specialist, being able to fend off a wyrm to save her father’s life (akin the scene where she gets her Enchantix in s3).

although controversy follows the blonde specialist, she earns sincere admiration of fellow Solarians for this act of heroism.

she chooses to pursue dragon-riding beyond the mandated RF course. the dragon that she bonds with is Synfire (wink wink).

specialist! Bloom:

in this AU, she is adopted by Hagen.

he teaches her the art of smithing magical weapons.

Bloom is less of a fighter and more of a tech/engineer. she creates magical artifacts/weapons for the girls, devises strategies and acts as their support.

she is also the healer of the group (or tries to be, this girl is still a clutz disaster)

Bloom is very idealistic, grown on legends foretold by Hagen and whatever remains of the Company of Light.

Bloom is probably equipped with top-notch weapons from head to toe, but always defaults to using whatever is laying around to defend herself. rusty pipes, bats, bricks, etc.

her dragon is a huge, scary and old thing everybody calls Fang. she calls him Kiko <3

specialist! Tecna:

loves to train in the simulation rooms.

actually a very good fighter: Tecna was taught her craft by the most rigorous Zenithian educational programs.

she mostly relies on her speed and agility in fighting.

her weapons of choice: tranquilliser guns and daggers.

devises strict exercise regiments for the rest of the girls.

Tecna stills handles any and all technology, but, unlike Timmy in the og cartoon, cannot stand being side-lined from battle.

a perfectionist.

specialist! Musa:

I see Musa as a ranged fighter, using guns & grenades & arrows.

she’s a wild card. high risk, high reward battle strategies are her bread and butter.

she also pursues dragon-riding. her dragon is nicknamed Pearl, a fast and furious creature.

a menace, honestly.

the boys:

Sky is a fairy of wind currents (since… y’know his name. but also because I like the irony of Sky having the ability to fly but yet feeling trapped and bound to his duties as a crown prince)

Riven is a witch of shadows/negative energy, like Darcy. he’s not evil though.

Brandon is a fairy of constructs. I picture his powers to be like the earth-benders from ATLA.

Timmy is the witch of technology.

Helia is a wizard, like his grandpops.

Nabu retains his powers but is a fairy instead of a warlock.

the Trix are fairies <3 they’re still evil, but in a whole different way: instead of revelling in their villainy, they are convinced of their own self-righteousness and purity of ideals. they try to usurp power of the Great Dragon because they believe they can make for better rulers, forgetting, of course, that would just make them dictators.

[shelandsorcery]

Etching and Acid Baths and Surrender

(this is another classic from my personal site I'm belatedly resharing on tumblr, ftr)

Friends, I just finished teaching the last third of a course on print production, and between that and the whole thing with twitter's crop changing (somewhere? not for me but somewhere?) I've found myself thinking a lot about copper etching and my relationship with the acid bath.

So, first up, copper etching is an art form where you engrave (through various means) thin grooves into a copper plate, then squeeze thick ink into those grooves, then wipe off the ink on the face of the plate, then soak paper so it's very soft, then push it all through a press.The pressure forces the paper into the ink-lined grooves of the plate, pushing the ink onto the paper, and you thus transfer the image from your copper plate to your paper. It's a magnificent art form you've certainly seen examples of, even if you didn't know! Here, a Rembrandt:

There's a lot of ways to create these grooves in the plate; Rembrandt used a steel point and scratched them in, a technique called drypoint. Later, artists used a technique where a waxy resist would coat the plate, then drew lines in the resist, then soaked the plate in acid.

This is the acid bath of which I speak.

There's a few ways to apply resist to a plate, and they give you different effects when you etch with them. First is a hard resist, which is a thick, firm wax that coats the plate and is removed by using that steel drypoint tool to create thin line work, like this Doré hatching:

You can also use soft resist, a malleable wax that allows you to press textures into it, like Barbara Smith has in her piece "Textures" here:

(my terminology might be a bit off, I'm noticing as I google, but hopefully the metaphor will still stand) 

And the third method, my fav, is aquatint; a process where you add a resist that is .. spotty. Something like a light spray, or a dusting of wax, so that the plate is covered with a rough, dithered dot pattern of resist, with exposed copper in between. Example via Wikipedia:

I decided to try out copper plate etching, also called intaglio print making, after seeing David Blackwood's work, where he works with aquatint extensively:

Aquatint lets you lay down fields of tone, which he uses in great contrast and collaboration with the linework he etches into the plate as well. It's magnificent work, but it's made all the more miraculous when you understand the whole thing with the acid bath. So, when you put a copper plate into the acid bath, anywhere on the plate that isn't protected by hard, soft or aquatint resist (also called ground) is slowly dissolved into the acid, creating little grooves. The longer it's in the bath, the deeper the grooves - kind of.

The acid is fickle, and the more copper already dissolved into it, the slower it will dissolve new copper. And that's a problem because you want to control exactly how deep those grooves go; the deeper the groove, the more ink it will hold, the darker the line will be on paper. Under-etch your plate, and your lines will be faint, hold very little ink, and be extremely hard to get ink INTO when you apply it before making a print.

But you can't know this until you take all that resist off the plate, wash it, and ink it up and print it.

OVERetch your plate, and the acid will start to eat the copper away from under your resist, widening your lines or flattening out your aquatint, so it's easy to get ink into the lines, but hard not to wipe it back out when you try and wipe ink off the un-etched face of the plate.

Again, not obvious until you go and try printing your plate.

And with intaglio, by which I mean copper plate etching, you might want lines of varying darknesses - you might want aquatint of varying darknesses - and so you will be adding and removing resists of various kinds, and etching and re-etching your plate over and over again.

And you can do various things to get the feel for the acid bath's ... acidity ... on the day you go to etch something in it, but depending on the size of your bath, you etching a large plate for a while might change the bath's acidity. Worst is if it's fresh and you didn't know.

So this whole art form, whereby people produce some of the most precise and exquisite pieces in the north western historical canon IMO, is actually an absurd collaboration with a rogue chemical that may or may not do what you want at any point in time.

And by my third year of making work like this, I had concluded that you simply had to think of the acid bath as a rogue collaborator who you handed your plate off to over and over again throughout your process. You had to just take a deep breath and accept chaos as an element.

Yes, you did your best to prepare your plate, get the right resist on it, draw the right lines where you wanted them; and yes you set a timer and kept an eye on your plate and checked the etch over and over again - but in the end you were teaming up with chaos chemistry.

And I loved it! I loved the surprises you got from acid bath, even if they went against what I had planned. I loved improvising around its unpredictability! Once I accepted that it was part of the practice, I found it exhilirating.

And for me, that's the appeal of all traditional media - I can't predict every little thing, I'm not 100% in control at all times, and artwork has to happen despite all that.

And so I expanded this concept for myself out to my larger practice. When I send a file to print? I'm collaborating with a printer; both the person, who I can maybe talk to, and the machine, that will have its own peccadillos. I prepare as best I can and still I may be surprised.I'm not saying I never threw out plates that got way out of hand, and I'm not saying I never had a print run of my work I had to send back or reprint - I'm just saying that my thought process around them has changed, so I allow for a wider range of surprises than I used to.

So when everyone was going on about the twitter crop finally changing, and I realized I didn't really care, I noticed that I had expanded this concept to publishing online as well. I prep a nice jpg and then I take a deep breath and accept twitter's chaos in collaboration.

And that's how I discovered that, to me, twitter is just another acid bath.

Read the full article

[the-blossica-fan]

Greetings!

I recently got Joe and I put him in the Wilderness since I managed to get ALL the islands and buildings from the 2.0 event.

Of course, he encountered Isolde and that got me thinking. Since players tend to pick and select people into certain teams (ex. Burn Team, Poison team, FUA team, etc...), some characters are often placed on the same team together. In this case, Joe and Isolde tend to be placed in the same team due to their Burn mechanic.

My sister and I discussed about this briefly then she whipped out this drawing:

Joe and Isolde is my sister's BROTP (since she headcannons J as AroAce). She imagined that Joe can smith an amulet that can ward of spirits as a present for Isolde since Isolde has this line:

What do you think Joe and Isolde's interactions would be like especially since they are most likely placed in the same missions by the Timekeeper?

I love the BROTP because I can imagine J calling Isolde bro and after a while, she also calls him bro, the bros 🔥🔥

BEAUTIFUL ART, I love I adore it I devour it, no crumbs left I ATE it. Shootout to your sister for being so epic.

I think Isolde and J would be very distant, mixing in the fact that Spathodea would also be in that burn team, so Isolde would not participate much in the conversations.

J would, of course, compliment and try to talk to her because he's just like that, he talks to girls a lot and means good so eventually, Isolde would start replying to his words with more enthusiasm.

She mentions to him the ghosts and how they affect her daily life and J just can't leave a bro hanging! After hearing about an amulet to ward off the ghosts, he decides to make one for Isolde to gift to her during her birthday and Isolde is ecstatic. Well, it's not noticeable but you can see it in the way her eyes sparkle and her voice trembles slightly.

The ghosts are no longer a problem thanks to J, who offers a fist bump (he had to teach her what it is)

It's quite funny because they're both close friends and drink tea together (he may drink tea but sometimes he drinks plain ol coffee), but there's this motorcycle man and a pretty dainty woman calling each other bro.

J: How's it going bro? Is the amulet working for you?

Isolde: I am doing well, your amulet has granted me peace, now I can truly rest and enjoy life... Bro?

J: BWHAHAHAHAHA YES! Bro!

Isolde is embarrassed once someone points that out because well, not very lady-like words from her, but J appreciates the effort. He did offer to take her on a ride around the wilderness, not the best idea (Nausea took over Isolde)

Now imagine him trying to help Isolde win over Kakania now that she has an amulet and is mentally stable, he gives her the most corny pick up lines while Kakania is like ._.

[renren-006]

Love Lost | Part 2: Heart Strings

Negan Smith x fem reader

plot: being in Virginia has sent your heart thumping, will you ever figure out why?

word count: 1166

a/n: hey! this is part 2 to Love Lost I hope you enjoy it!

Part 1: Atlanta- Virginia

Living in Alexandria had set your heart ablaze. You had no idea why your heart would thump away when you walked outside your shared home into the Virginia air. You had never even visited the state let alone DC. Negan always wanted to go to DC together one day and walk around the museums and act like we had never met and meet at a painting. You smiled at the sweet memory of talking about going to DC one day. That's all it was you though, just the idea and memory of him making your heart beat, but even after that it continued to be a problem. 

*

“We should go to DC once you get some time off” Negan has said from his spot on the couch. You turned your head away from the book in your lap. You were only a part time nurse at the hospital in your area, you didn't work too much but you both needed the money so you worked more hours than you should have. While Negan was teaching basketball to the highschool, even he didn't make enough to keep you two afloat. 

“What?”

“Let's go to DC when we both have some time off. Lets go to the museums”

“You want to go to DC? For the Smithsonian?” you asked him, wondering how long he held this obsession.

“Yes! Let's go and look at the art and we can do a little role play” he joked. Him and his role play, he loved when you flirted in a way where you didn't know the other, where you just so happen to fall head over heels for him instantly. 

“You and your roleplay” you laughed, “Okay! Okay! Well go I promise. Only if you take me to the natural history museum” you told him. He smiled and pulled you into his lab holding you close and kissing your cheeks. 

“Whatever you want sweetheart” he told you, kissing you hard and sweet. 

*

Throughout your time at Alexandria it never stopped and only got worse the further you left Alexandria. It wasn't until one day you realized why. 

You did your best to distract yourself from your fast heart beat. You hunted, you helped patch people up in the little hospital they had. They welcomed your help there, learning that your stitches were far neater than theirs. You worked in the hospital for two years before the world ended and then again was trapped with no other option but to patch those cops up even though they trapped you. Within the walls of the alexandria hospital you felt calm, finally being in a place that didn't hold you there and wanted your skills to help the others. You felt at peace for the first time, in a long time. 

With the rest of the group you tagged along with Sasha and with Maggie occasionally. Shasha usually asked for you to watch her back when she went out to shoot at the walkers to get her sorrows and anger out. You worried for her, as the others did, but you let her handle her grief how anyone would. You handled yourself how you see fit, including working long hours in the hospital or even taking calls to houses at night if kids were sick or something happened. 

There was a time where the integrity of Alexandria was compromised and it terrified you. You held up in the hospital watching as walkers poured in from all angles into the community. You saw people running, dying and you saw those things eating. What was worse was when Carl was brought in, the look on Rick's face was something you won't ever forget. 

“Calm down Rick! Calm down” you told him, pushing him back so you could work on Carl's eye. It was nasty and hard but you managed to save his life but not his eye. That night was the first time you charged out behind Rick and Michonne and killed your way through the dead letting yourself feel the anger you felt towards the world. You let those tears fall with no regard to people seeing and when Sasha came up behind you and saw the look of hurt in hers, the two of you continued blazing through the dead.  

The community's life changed around after that. A new group was discovered, the Hilltop. Rick had an idea to the Hilltop with their problem with a whole other group of people, but it backfired. It wasn't for a few weeks before the real repercussions came. Maggie had a problem with her baby and wanted to get to Hilltop. You offered to tag along to keep her company and help her, she smiled and warmed the journey together. Maggie was different and alike to her sister, you took that as a good sign that the two of you could become closer friends.

 This journey was interrupted at every road, blocking your way forward. You were worried for Maggie, with the way she was looking and the pain you saw behind her eyes, you didn't know how much more of this turning around she could handle. When you tried leaving the van and running, even then you were trapped. The van was driven in front of where you kneeled with the others. Your heart like before was beating fast, boom boom boom, you didn't understand, you thought it was the nerves. A man stepped out of the van, leather jacket and bold boots stepped down out of the light. There the man's face became visible to you, although a face hardened by the years of the apocalypse those eyes and those lips were still the same. 

“Negan” you said, whispering your lover's name, he looked at you and froze. The others were all staring at you and the rest of the men gathered didn't so much as move when Negan kneeled down. 

“Y/N. Is that…is that really you?” He asked, the face he had on was instantly broken and the mask fell. There he was the man you loved now looking at you. 

“Yes…”you said not wanting to say more, but desperately craving too. He didn't so much as look at the others in the group. 

“Pack it up boys, we're done here” He said, every man's voice yelled over each other cursing and bargaining to make them pay. They wanted to watch us bleed for their friends' lives that RIck and the others took.

“I said pack it up” Negan snarled, everyone stopped and everyone got in their trucks. “Tonight consider this a blessing” he said turning to Rick who for the most part was terrified and confused. Negan stood a hand outstretched for you to take so you did. You walked with him to his car, the others watching. 

“Y/N!” Maggie called, you turned back, Negans boots stopped as you did, “How..?”

“He's my husband” was all you said before you let him lead you to his car, towards his home.

[thewritetofreespeech]

Hello! Happy to see requests are open again!

Could I request the seven Obey Me brothers with an s/o who's a jewelry maker?

Obey me Brothers + jewelry maker s/o

Lucifer

He likes the concept of jewelry more than he actually likes it.

The style and fashion on how it’s made, plus the reasons why, have always fascinated Lucifer. Like any piece of art. However, he doesn’t really wear jewelry.

He has a few ceremonial pieces for balls & diplomatic occasions, and of course his chain in his demon form, but that’s about it.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a watch chain. One of interlocking silver & gold pieces to symbolize their bond, as well as something practical he could wear everyday.

Mammon

As the Avatar of Greed, of course Mammon loves jewelry.

He loves being around it. Loves touching it. Loves owning it. All the shiny, intrinsic value of it all.

He’s honestly never really cared about any of the pieces he’s owned (just hoarding them like his little ravens) until s/o gave him something. He would cherish and keep it close. It’s a real problem on photoshoots.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a new set of earrings for his ear. That way he could wear them around all the time and change out the studs with one or the other depending on his style.

Levi

He’s not a real jewelry person.

The only kind he’s ever owned his costume jewelry for his cosplay, or merch jewelry from his favorite characters. More for collectors’ value & clout than real money.

Levi thinks it’s pretty cool they can make pieces though, and commissions several for his outfits if his vision for a certain accessory doesn’t exist.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a new gaming wristlet to put on his handhelds. Of course he can’t have anything on his fingers, as it will screw up his accuracy, but he can use it to keep hold of his games and fun charms, and think of s/o while he plays.

Satan

Much like Lucifer (though he’ll never admit it) Satan appreciates jewelry for its art.

The symbolic and time period importance of a piece interests him, and he’s also read several books of smithing & traditional jewelry making to know about it.

He would like to learn as well and asks s/o to teach him. Then they have a hobby together.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a lapel pin he could wear on his jacket. Something with a flat steam so, when he’s out reading, he can also use it as a bookmark.

Asmo

Asmo as literally hundreds of pieces of jewelry. Of all kinds.

Most of them are gifts from admirers, but he’s also purchased a lot of them as fashion accessories. Every new trend needs to be owned by him.

He genuinely loves every piece he owns, but the ones from s/o are the only ones he honestly re-wears as he usually doesn’t like to repeat a look.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a ring. Something bright & flashy, and he would constantly tell people it’s their engagement ring; which annoys s/o but Asmo is so happy when he says it.

Beel

Beel doesn’t really get jewelry.

Likes it’s cool and all. Shiny and everything. But he thinks it just gets in the way of what you’re trying to do and is just another thing to worry about. Plus he’s broken a lot of it not thinking about his strength.

The only exception he makes is for his leather necklace & bracelet, and that’s because Belphie gave it to him. So he would probably make an exception for s/o’s gift as well.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a bracelet the same style as his human outfit look. It’s a strong enough metal weave that he can’t easily break it, plus it looks really strong. He’s always liked bronze more than traditional metals if he had to choose.

Belphie

Thinks jewelry is pointless. Just another thing you have to take off before you go to sleep, or it just sits in a drawer.

But anything [Y/N] does is of interest to him.

He would like to watch them make the pieces. Something about turning just ordinary pieces into something beautiful really moves him, and he can watch them for hours.

If s/o was to make him a piece of jewelry, he would want a necklace with an amethyst stone. He doesn’t have to take it off when he goes to sleep. Amethyst is said to help promote restful sleep. And purple is his favorite color. Belphie would wear it all the time.

[flanaganfilm]

Hey Mike! Can you talk about your experience going from Absentia to Oculus? That process after Absentia went on its festival run to pitching Oculus? Would love to learn about that time in your life & career!

I moved to Los Angeles in 2003, right after I graduated college. I went to Towson University in Maryland, was an EMF major (Electronic Media & Film) and had wanted nothing more than to make movies my whole life. We were a comfortable middle class military family (my dad was in the Coast Guard) and for most of my life, making movies for a living felt like an impossible dream.

When I moved to LA I took whatever work I could find. I shot and edited those local car commercials you see on TV at 2am, I was a logger and an AE for reality TV shows, and I eventually worked my way to editing.

I said I'd give myself 5 years to make it in Hollwood. By the time we shot Absentia, I'd been here for 7 years, and in that time I hadn't gotten any closer to my dream.

I've already written at length about how Absentia came along and what it was like to make that little movie, and I've recently blogged about how the Oculus premiere changed my life and birthed my career, so I won't rehash those - but I don't often talk about what went on in between.

I finished editing Absentia just before my oldest son was born in 2010, and went back to working full-time as a reality TV editor. In fact, in the months leading up to his birth, I was working double-time - I spent my days at a company called Film Garden working on a series for DIY Network, and my nights editing packages at Nash Entertainment for those true crime clip shows. Whatever it took to keep the lights on and provide as much support as I could for my son.

While this was happening, I'd submitted Absentia to a pile of film festivals. We didn't get into any of the majors - Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto all passed on the film. Our world premiere was at the Fargo Film Festival, where Tom Brandau, one of my former professors from Towson - and one of my mentors - was teaching.

(Our original festival poster, WAY better than the weird clip art that would come later)

The movie got into a fair amount of film festivals, and we traveled with it as much as we could. I have fond memories of the Phoenix Film Festival, San Luis Obispo (where I met Greg Kinnear at a party and very awkwardly asked for a picture - you can see how thrilled he is about it) and my personal favorite: the Fantastia Film Festival in Montreal.

(At one of the screenings, I believe the San Luis Obispo Film Festival)

While this was happening, the film was picked up for a tiny VOD and DVD release through Phase 4 Films.

They were a Canadian distribution company whose claim to fame was putting out Kevin Smith's Red State under a very unusual distribution model. They acquired the movie, which led to a company holiday part in Hollywood.

There, I briefly met Kevin Smith for the first time. We've met again since, and I've now had a chance to thank him for the kindness he showed me back then - I was just some starstruck kid at a party, but he was gracious and available and inspiring. I really admire the way Kevin deals with his fans, and I've tried to emulate it over the years.

So that was kind of it for Absentia. We went to a few festivals, went to a few parties, and posed for a few pictures with some people we admired. Phase 4 designed some truly godawful cover art, dropped the movie into video stores, and that was that.

($2.99 is a pretty good deal)

So Absentia had pretty much run its course. It had a passionate following of fans, but between the crappy art design and glut of low budget horror films on the market, its moment had already come and gone. I was back at work, editing a series for DIY Network called Extra Yardage, and yearning for another chance to make a movie.

Absentia might not have broken open the industry doors like I'd wanted it to, but one thing it did yield was a meeting with an entertainment attorney named Joel VanderKloot.

I had been represented a few times over the years by various managers (to be honest, they were actually Jeff Howard's managers, and they took me on because we had a co-written project together.) But those relationships hadn't gone anywhere, I'd never sold a script or booked a job, and when I suggested making Absentia they were not supportive ("You've already tried the indie thing, haven't you?") so by the time Absentia was made, I was completely unrepped.

Joel was a family friend of Jason Poh, who was one of our Absentia Kickstarter backers. He was a guy who'd just found the project online and donated a thousand bucks. He kept up with us, and loved the final movie. He told me he knew an entertainment lawyer and offered to arrange a lunch.

I left my editing job at Film Garden for a long lunch and met Joel in Santa Monica (this was a day-killing drive for me). Joel had seen the movie and really liked it. We had a good lunch, but wasn't immediately sure about taking me on - it's a lot of work to take on a new client, and there wasn't much heat on my movie. But there was something there that he liked, and he called later that day to say he would take me on as a client.

I was elated. I felt like I'd made my movie to the best of my ability, and that it had flashed in the pan and then died... no one had noticed outside of a few festival audiences and critics. But here was someone who worked in the industry and he saw something in the film that he believed in.

Joel started looking for managers while I clung to my day job. He passed the movie around and we had a few nibbles, which led to the first manager in my career who wanted to simply represent ME: Nicholas Bogner.

Bogner went about setting general meetings at production companies who specialized in horror films. There weren't a lot of takers, and not everyone was willing to watch an entire feature film in consideration of a general meeting. So it was hit or miss - I was a nobody, after all, and they get these kinds of incoming inquiries all the time.

But there were a few takers. And the very first meeting I had was with Anil Kurian at Intrepid Pictures.

Again, I took an extended lunch from my editing job and drove across town to Intrepid's offices in Santa Monica. I was beyond nervous when I sat in the waiting room. The young man working the front desk signed me in and offered me a water. And then, just before the meeting started, he leaned over and he said "I loved Absentia, by the way."

Anil was a really cool executive and we had a good general meeting. At the end of it, he introduced me to the heads of Intrepid: Marc Evans, and Trevor Macy.

We all ended up in the conference room, where posters for Intrepid's other movies - at that time, The Strangers and The Raven - were hanging. I vividly remember staring at them while I pitched all five of the ideas I had for movies.

One of them was a story about a little boy whose dreams manifested in real life, and another was a take on Stephen King's novel Gerald's Game. But at the time, none of these ideas worked. The meeting was over, and everyone was politely going about their day.

I felt a panic in me. It was my first real meeting, the door had been cracked open just an inch by Absentia, and I was about to walk away with nothing. Would my new manager want to keep me? Would my new lawyer think he was wasting his time?

I stopped in the doorway and turned back. "I've got one other thing," I said. "I made a short years ago about a haunted mirror, and I have a take for a feature."

They kind of laughed at the idea of a haunted mirror. "How do you make that scary?" Trevor asked. I said "Think of it like a portable Overlook Hotel," and the room got a little quieter.

"I'd like to see that short," Trevor said. I agreed to send it immediately.

I ran back to work, stayed a few hours late to make up the time I'd burned on my lunch hour, and went home to find a DVD copy of Oculus: The Man with the Plan.

I'd made that short in 2005. It was 20 mins long, and a lot of fun. Over the years whenever I'd get into meetings (all courtesy of Jeff Howard, who had sold scripts long before we started writing together), people would see it and ask about a feature. Every time, though, the conversation stalled because they wanted the film to be a found footage movie, or they'd balk at the idea of me directing a feature.

I sent the DVD to Intrepid and waited. About a week later, they called and asked me to come back in.

I took another long lunch (this would become quite a habit as the project advanced) and drove back down. We met again in the conference room, but this time the mood was a little different.

Trevor said "We're interested in this. How would you expand it? I know there are cameras in the room with the man and the mirror, which begs the question of found footage..."

My heart sank.

"... but we're thinking that's a mistake. It looks like all the fun is in playing with reality, and you can't do that with found footage. So how would you do it?"

And we were off.

I won't rehash the long journey between this meeting and the Oculus premiere at Toronto (scroll down to find another blog about that), but that was really the moment when things changed.

I drove back to work a little giddy. Intrepid optioned the short film, I called Jeff Howard to see if he'd still want to work on a feature with me, and we were commissioned to write the script.

It was my first Hollywood job. I was paid the bare minimum, but I was also able to join the WGA because of the deal. I still didn't quit my day job (and wouldn't for a long time, not until the movie was really shooting in Alabama the following year) but I was off to the races.

Once the script was done, Oculus would lead to my first agents (at APA, and they treated me very well) and my first "real" movie.

What's particularly neat about this time, looking back, is that I owe it all to Absentia. We'd made this tiny little movie to try to kick open the door of Hollywood and start a career. And despite the enormous pride I had in the finished film, it felt for a long time like it hadn't quite succeeded in that.

But quietly, subtly, the movie did exactly what I hoped it would. The festival screenings built up a small but confident word of mouth. The movie led directly to my attorney Joel (who still represents me to this day), which led directly to my first real representation, which led directly to Intrepid Pictures.

Trevor Macy is now my business partner and has produced every single thing I've ever made since. We run Intrepid Pictures together, and I see that same eagerness in the faces of young filmmakers who find their way to us for general meetings. I try to be as supportive and accessible to them as I possibly can, because I remember very well what it feels like to stand in their shoes.

And Trevor even ended up making those other pitches he'd rejected all those years ago - Before I Wake and Gerald's Game followed soon after Oculus was done.

Absentia did everything I could have wanted it to do, and much more. I'll always remember that period of time with great affection... but man, it was stressful. The uncertainty of those years still exists in me, I don't think it'll ever leave.

Someone told me, along the way, that there wouldn't be a moment when I realized I "made it." It would happen while I wasn't looking. That ended up being absolutely true.

[keanuquotes]

The Enduring Appeal of Keanu Reeves He battles evildoers in 'John Wick 4,' manufactures two-wheel pieces of art, and is worshiped by the internet, but Keanu Reeves swears he's just a normal guy. And he’s got the scars to prove it. Ky HendersonMar 15, 2023 9:00 AM EDT It’s easy to look cool when you’re riding a motorcycle, but it’s hard to look cooler than Keanu Reeves on a brisk, sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. He rests his left hand on his thigh and steers with his right, which gooses the throttle as he weaves around slow drivers. He wears a form-fitting black canvas motorcycle jacket that accentuates how trim he is—even more fit than he appears on-screen—and a beat-up Shoei helmet. He leaves the visor up, choosing instead to shield his eyes with sunglasses the Terminator might wear to a Hamptons garden party. Reeves looks at home and at ease on a motorcycle. He looks cool.

At a gas station stop, he suggests switching bikes. We’re each riding cruisers made by Arch, the motorcycle company Reeves co-founded with designer Gard Hollinger in 2011. The company produces high-end, highly personalized production bikes; I’m on a 1s, the company’s new $100,000+ sport cruiser. Reeves is on an older model, KRGT-1, but it’s his personal Arch, a true one-of-a-kind. It's the only Arch ever painted YK Blue, a color Reeves and Hollinger commissioned based on the ultramarine pigment famously mixed by mid-century French artist Yves Klein. Reeves says all that’s left of the paint is in a tiny can stored somewhere at Arch in case the bike’s paint ever needs touch-ups.

Which it most certainly would if, let’s say, some idiot were to put the bike down in front of a horrified Reeves while riding down the Pacific Coast Highway. Thankfully, there’ll be no lowsides today. Although the bike is beefy, with a 2,032cc V-twin powerplant, it’s easy to maneuver and comfy as a BarcaLounger.

Keanu Reeves stands in motorcycle factory holding blue mug Brian Bowen Smith

Reeves eventually leads us back to Arch’s factory building, which is nondescript from the outside but artfully decorated inside using shipping containers to separate working areas. Metal fabrication is done behind one; customer bikes are lined up in another with technicians hard at work. After Reeves dips outside for a cigarette—the 58-year-old both looks like a much younger man and smokes with the frequent abandon of one—he leads us to a small conference room.

“I like meeting people, but I’m a little reserved,” he warns as he settles into an office chair, looking far less comfortable than he did on a motorcycle. “How much of my private life do I want to talk about? I don’t know. Otherwise, let’s hang out.”

When Reeves was growing up in the Yorkville neighborhood of Toronto, he was consumed with existential thoughts. He discussed death a lot more than the average 11-year-old, for instance—but not because he wanted to die. He just wanted answers to big questions. Perhaps not entirely unrelated to his interest in mortality, he was also obsessed with the biker gangs that periodically motored into the neighborhood. It wasn't pods of dentists letting loose on weekends. It was leathers, patches, menace—the whole deal. And Reeves loved it.

“They looked exotic,” Reeves says. "They looked to me like they were free. Plus the bikes were cool and sounded great.”

Despite his childhood fascination, Reeves was in his early 20s before he first rode a motorcycle. It happened at a movie studio in Berlin—where else?—when he saw a woman on an off-road enduro bike in a parking lot. He approached her and asked if she’d teach him to ride, which she agreed to on the spot. (If you’re wondering why a woman would do that for a total stranger, search “Keanu Reeves in the 80s” in Google Images.)

Not long after he got back to Los Angeles, he bought a 1973 Mk2a Norton Commando, having long admired the classic brand. That bike currently sits in the Arch shop, which is notable for two reasons: One, few longtime riders are lucky enough to be able to hold onto their first bike. Two, over the years Reeves has…suffered some mishaps.

“Yeah, I’ve fallen off a few times,” he admits of the accidents he’s had on a variety of bikes. He takes a swig of water, then corrects himself. “Not ‘fallen off.’ Crashed. I’ve got a couple of hit-by-cars. A couple of going-too-fast. I’ve laid a couple of bikes down but I was riding in the winter, so that’s not really ‘crashing.’ That’s about it. The usual stuff.”

He’s broken ribs, knocked out teeth, sliced his leg open so deep that bone was visible. His most spectacular accident occurred in 1988, only a couple years after that day in Berlin. Reeves was riding alone at night in Malibu’s Topanga Canyon when he took one of the twisties too fast. By the time he came to a stop, he was lying on the pavement wondering if he was about to die. As you know, he didn’t—but he did fuck himself up pretty bad.

“I ruptured my spleen,” he says matter-of-factly. The widely reported version of the story goes that he needed the organ removed, but Reeves says it’s still intact. “They sutured it up and put a Band-Aid on.” He has a gnarly scar running vertically from his sternum down to his belly button, but in the right light it just ends up accentuating his abs because, well, he’s Keanu.

Reeves first met Hollinger through a mutual acquaintance about two decades after that crash, when Reeves wanted a custom sissy bar—basically, a backrest for a passenger—added to his 2005 Harley Davidson Dyna. Hollinger, who at that point was a relatively well-known, well-respected customizer with his own small LA shop, wasn’t interested.

“I knew I could build him the world’s most expensive sissy bar,” Hollinger says, “but I also knew it wouldn’t be satisfying for either of us.”

Instead, Hollinger spent the next five years completely reimagining the bike. He’d work in spurts, changing or adding something, then handing the bike back over to Reeves for months. By the time the bike was finished, Hollinger says, about the only parts of the original Dyna still remaining were the engine and the serial number on the chassis. Today that bike—a chromed-out ride fit for Mad Max—is displayed in the shop, the inspiration for what eventually became Arch.

Keanu Reeves on motorcycle wearing black canvas jacket and sunglasses Brian Bowen Smith

Eventually being the key word. When, during the long process of modding the bike, Reeves first suggested to Hollinger that the two team up to start a motorcycle company, Hollinger didn’t have to think about his answer.

“I knew what a tough business it is, what a challenge it would be—and that it would not be a great investment,” Hollinger, now 63, says with a laugh. “It was a wonderful motorcycle I built and it was wonderful getting to know Keanu, but starting a motorcycle company sounded like a horrible idea.”

Reeves didn’t relent. As the pair became better friends—and as the motorcycle continued to take shape—they’d have long conversations about the realities of starting the company. Hollinger would show up to their discussions with pages of questions written on a legal pad, but what gradually eroded his hesitation was the thoughtfulness with which Reeves described the experience of riding a motorcycle.

Finally, nearly convinced, Hollinger asked Reeves to boil everything down to one reason why they should do something as seemingly crazy as starting a motorcycle company. The actor came up with it on the spot—a reason Hollinger immediately understood, which allowed him to envision the company and its worth as an opportunity to do something meaningful and long-lasting.

“Because,” Reeves told him, channeling the mortality-obsessed 11-year-old kid gawking at dudes on motorcycles, “we’re going to die.”

Related: 2023 Arch 1s Sport Cruiser Is the American (V-twin) Dream

There have been many jokes made over the years about Reeves being a dummy, but after spending about 8 seconds with the guy it’s obvious he’s keenly intelligent. I mention that I read lots of sci-fi and fantasy books as a kid, which prompts him to ask whether I have opinions on several titles, followed by recommendations to read several others.

Thing is, his idiosyncratic public persona—which is sort of like Ted (not Bill) if Ted were a little more shy and a much better dresser—isn’t an act. Reeves isn’t trying to fool his critics or fans. And he isn’t really putting on an act in an attempt to prevent people from knowing who he is. He’s just this very singular, introspective, likable person who happened to become a pop culture icon.

All of that said? He can be pretty goofy. His physical mannerisms are sometimes at odds with what he’s saying, like he’s being controlled by feuding puppeteers. He speaks haltingly, stopping and starting and stopping again, often all in the same sentence, as he considers what exactly he wants to say or, just as likely, what he doesn’t want to say. More than once over the course of an afternoon he giggles—yes, giggles—at something he says or thinks, placing his cupped hand over his mouth like a theatrical school child hiding laughter; the gesture is as strange as it is endearing. He's somehow both laconic and verbose, calm and keyed up.

Although Reeves has long been known as “The internet’s boyfriend,” he’s currently dating—sorry, internet—acclaimed visual artist Alexandra Grant. The pair first collaborated on the 2011 book Ode to Happiness after having known each other previously; in the following years they collaborated on other projects and co-founded the small book imprint X Artists’ Books. Their romantic relationship began about five years ago but only became public knowledge two years in, when they arrived at a red carpet event together.

When asked about Grant, Reeves leans back in his chair as though trying to put both metaphorical and literal distance between himself and the idea of discussing his personal life.

So, uh, maybe it’s best to make it about bikes: What’s Grant’s opinion of Reeves’ (occasionally injurious) motorcycle fixation?

“She used to have a motorcycle, so she’s fine with it,” Reeves says. Then he pauses, as he so often does, seemingly considering whether to say anything more. “She hasn’t ridden in a while.”

Despite his lifelong love of bikes, Reeves hasn’t ridden them much in his movies. There’s a brief scene in the landmark 1991 indie film My Own Private Idaho. There’s some riding in 1996’s Chain Reaction, including one scene in which he manages to outrun an exploding hydrogen reactor. He’s technically on a bike in John Wick 3 while battling bad guys, but that was all done while stationary in front of a green screen. He has no interest in shoehorning Arches into his movies, though a couple of Arches are featured in the futuristic 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, in which he also played a major role.

Reeves says there’s a brief motorcycle scene in the upcoming John Wick 4, a movie whose eventual existence might have been laughed at when the original film debuted. Despite the series’ current status as an unstoppable franchise juggernaut, it originally wasn’t even planned as a franchise—and it certainly didn’t appear destined to be one after John Wick received a somewhat tepid theatrical reception in 2014.

“It had some success in the theater, but it really became more popular in second viewings,” Reeves says. “So the studio asked if we wanted to do another one.”

Reeves does more than just kick unbelievable amounts of ass in the movies; he’s also had a hand in plotting out the sequels. The genesis of the third and fourth installments, he says, took place while he and director Chad Stahelski were on the road promoting the second and third movies, respectively.

“Generally, Chad and I cook ’em up while we’re doing press tours,” Reeves says. “We talk about what we’d do next if the current film does well. I’m like, ‘I want to ride a horse and do a horse chase!’ And Chad says, ‘Yeah, we can do it in Central Park!’”

Reeves says he doesn’t know what comes next for him, but John Wick 5 will almost certainly be an option—if he wants to do it. He’s currently developing a TV series, and maybe he’ll make the motorcycle road movie he’s long thought about making. He’ll also no doubt continue riding bikes and growing Arch because he loves doing both.

He says he may continue BRZRKR, the comic series he co-writes. He won’t stop helping others via his philanthropy (he declines to discuss other than to say it’s “in health and the arts”). And he’ll burnish his already-glowing reputation as, in his words, “a pretty respectful and considerate person,” because that’s how he likes to treat people.

“I’m just,” Reeves says as his mouth curls into a smirk and his arms shoot out in front of him as though he’s pleading to be believed, “a normal guy.”

via keanuworld

[solar-sunnyside-up]

Hi! A sprout here. I'm hoping you can give me your thoughts on something.

Bit of background: I'm a substitute teacher, and I'm the director of the elementary DnD after school club. I am also very easily pegged as queer and liberal.

I want to start a club for kids outside of the school system. I had a brief conversation with a librarian today about my 2 ideas. She thought they sounded cool, but the lady I needed to talk to wasn't in today since it's the weekend.

My 2 ideas were: a ttrpg club (I have like 6 or 7 systems that are designed specifically for kids) Because I have so many it's not really possible to do all of them in the scope of the dnd club, if I'm even allowed to branch out and try them.

My other idea was: a scavenger hunt/art club. That one would be open to all ages. I've just gotten into books by Keri Smith, the creator of Wreck this Journal, and they are so wonderfully goblincore and they teach you to look at the world around you in a different light.

When telling my fiance about the ideas he thinks they're good ideas, but that he's worried that if parents wanted to look into me at all they could cause a lot of problems for me at work. He said that if I used my position as a substitute teacher to spread the word to kids at school parents could say it's indoctrination bc I'm so easily pegged as liberal and queer. I'm in a really small (pop. 11,000) conservative town.

Idk. I was really excited, but my fiance brought up really good points. When I told a friend she said she would also be worried if I started a club. I'm feeling a little defeated now

- @sakura-sophie

Hey there Sprout 🌱!! Wow your such a cool teachers!!!

I think this is an amazing idea and I believe you can make it work!

I do also, sadly, understand your loved ones concern for you about some ramifications of going forward with it.

But I honestly think separating your career and this post work activity would solve it. I kinda doubt given the population size you'd have one, but a Boy and Girls Club would very much help out start something like this. If there isn't one, I would go forward with the Scanager hunt one.

Given the values and ideals of the more conservative side of things, getting kids out doors, maybe doing some Agricultural based stuff, and in "fresh air" will be a lot easier for parents to justify for themselves even if you are fruity. This also would allow you to give out "home kits" potentially of "here's a list of stuff you can do solo if you can't join the group activity" and you can still be a point of contact for people. (You could even do some art gruella work in the name of geocaching maybe??)

Also separating it from the school system may also assist in a "mandated reporter" sense if your in a district that requires to give kiddos personal info to their parents. Extra curricular activities aren't held up to those laws in the same way.

If your wanting to Advertize the program to kids directly I would suggest, once the club is started, hitting up HoHs, PTAs, leaving info as posters in libraries etc... places where parents and kids might both find them and ask about it while also keeping your teaching career seperate.

I truely wish you the best of luck with this!! Be safe first and foremost, and gimme updates when you can ok??

[short-black-diamond]

Just a quick question,do you do questism fandom??

Oufffff I did not touch that webtoon in almost half a year now, gotta take it out of my masterlist.. Sorry.

I dropped a lot of webtoons, now mostly reading martial art stuff. here's the new list from earliest to most recent[Sort of]:

Lookism -(1. webtoon i read. I HAVE TO CATCH UP FJFEJIFWJOIE) Get schooled -(season two when???) Auto Hunting with my Clones -(I will either catch up or drop it) -(i will probably reread it it has been so long irfjojfiwejofewj) The greatest Estate Developer -(Funny story) -(Interesting and meme potential) Tomato can -(season two when???) -(prolly has daily pass now)

The apothecary prince -(linked to the greatest estate developer, catching up soon) -(must also reread) Ranker -(gotta catch up) I am the Queen in this Life -(i think i had a request about this once.) I was the final boss -(gotta catch up) Marionetta -(gotta catch upppp) Absolute sword sense -(one of my fav) A martial Master wakes up as a concubine -(Today, 16.11.2024 i will let that comic rest so that i can catch up to it later and read the interesting part in peace. i don't want to spoil anything, but it is a funny yet intriguing story, and i would love for everyone who sees this post to have a read on this.) We are 101 -(MC is a pretty boy) -(very short chapters, best to wait a few weeks and then read) The Interpretation of shadows -(slow updates, but storyline is interesting, give it a read!) Sisters at war -(very..uh, well, generational trauma) A spell for a smith -(catching up soon, hopefully) Iseop's Romance -(drama i guess? more like office romance and stuff, read for yourself i am not good at describing things :,{ ) Vampire family -(meme potential) Why i quit being the demon king -(gotta catch up) Return of the runebound Professor -(soul in other person's body, soul was teacher in past life and is professor in this life, too. relatively new webtoon, so this is all i will be saying about it.) The bad son -(dayum, art is cool and story is slowly forming, but i don't wanna spoil anything so see for yourself.) The last passage -(interesting concept, very philosophical regarding death and afterlife or returning back to earth and how, give it a read!) Red Spine -(MC is a traumatized cutie patootie) -("weak", has red spine sometimes to scare off genderwo's or what they are called oijrijigrejoje that's all i am telling you about) The genius Murim Fitness Trainer -(Covid influencer gaining weight, gets isekai'd into the last webtoon he read after falling asleep) -(now is protag of said webtoon and throws hands or teaches the other monks, must catch up) Boss return -(dark themes, but also well mixed with love) -(boy just wants his wifey :{ ) Absolute Regression -(MC is hella fine) The masters have subscribed -(new webtoon) -(funny) A knight with a time limit -(saw today, giving it a chance)

---

If you want to talk more about it or have questions, i will do my best ot answer you all! i am also available on instagram! I hope you are not disappointed in me, and i don't even know when anyone requested stuff, but i am sorry i made you wait. i have yet to learn for an upcoming test so that i can go to uni hopefully in the next semester, so.. yeah. but i wish you all the best, too, and i hope we can maybe talk more about these webtoons, or you introducing me to a few i may not have heard of!

-your diamond <3

[tathrin]

💚 a ship that you think deserves more love

[from this ask meme]

Okay hear me out: Celebrimbor/Narvi/Sauron.

It's a disaster! It's three incredibly talented smiths trying to one-up one another all the time; it's three creative outcasts supporting one another in their shared craft; it's three people from the most different possible backgrounds imaginable coming together to forge something greater than any one of them could have made alone.

It's beautiful! It's the heart of what the Gwaith-i-Mírdain was supposed to be about... (and only one of them knows that it's been rotten at the core all along.)

It's hopeful! It's overcoming suspicion and distrust on all sides with the power of love... (and then dying alone in the dark.) It's doomed! It's lovely! It's tragic! It's terrible!

It never could have ended well...but it could have ended better than this.

(Is Celebrimbor's grief over Narvi's mortal death part of how Annatar entices him to push further than before and make the Rings of Power? Rings that greatly extend the lifespan of whatever mortal wears them? Rings that could have kept Narvi alive and with them if they'd only been forged sooner?)

(Is Narvi's distrust of Annatar part of what pushes Celebrimbor to overlook his own suspicions of the maia? Because after all, he and Narvi were suspicious of one another at first, and now look at all they have done together! Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe Celebrimbor was the one who distrusted this ostensible emissary of the Valar, and good-hearted Narvi who urged Celebrimbor to open his heart again...)

(Is Annatar's initial dismissal of Narvi part of what first draws them all together, as Celebrimbor determines to prove to this stuffy maia that Aulë's children are just as noble and good and talented as those of Illuvatar, even as Narvi shrugs and shrugs it off because it's hardly the first time someone has looked down on a dwarf...

...but Celebrimbor won't allow anyone so smart to be stupid enough to disrespect his beloved, and he pushes and pushes and pushes until Annatar finally sees and agrees; and then when the three of them finally do put their heads together there's nothing, nothing they can't do...unfortunately for everyone.)

(Maybe Sauron did think briefly about just being Annatar; maybe he let himself toy with the idea that he could really, truly, be happy without domination; could be happy here, in Ost-in-Edhil, with them... but mortals die. Mortals die. And Annatar, even with all his necromantic arts, could not stop that. He needed more power. He needed to never, ever let that happen to anyone he cared about again. He needed the Rings...which meant that Annatar had to die too, and leave only Sauron to remain.)

(Is the strength of Narvi's heart, distilled in their thoughts as they craft the Rings, part of why the Dwarven Rings are less devastatingly corruptive than the Nine? Because they were forged with a knowledge and respect of dwarven strength, and so they can only strengthen dwarves—especially their worst aspects admittedly—rather than consume them, as Men are consumed?)

(Maybe the strength of a dwarven heart, the unshakable mountain of dwarven love, was briefly enough to hold the past at bay; to let Celebrimbor step beyond his fear of what the works of his family's hands could do, and embrace the risk of forging to the very best of his ability, because he knew that Narvi would be there to steady him...and if not for Narvi, he would never have had the courage to follow Annatar into the making of the Rings.)

(Did losing Narvi—and worse, watching Celebrimbor lose Narvi—teach Sauron some of the crucial lessons that allowed the Necromancer to bind and break mortal souls that way he does with his Rings? Or did it just convince him that mortals are weak enough to be dominated after all, given how fast they die?)

(Maybe the strength of a dwarven heart, the unshakable mountain of dwarven love, was briefly enough to hold his past at bay; to let Sauron step beyond Morgoth's shadow and shine as Annatar, as the memory of Mairon that had lain so long dormant: to make for the sake of making alone instead of in pursuit of power and domination. And then, when Narvi died, that shattered and all that was left was the comfort of command and corruption and Sauron, again, for all time; the safety of keeping a wounded heart safe behind hatred.)

(Does Sauron sometimes look at his Nine Ringwraiths and wish that he had Seven more, dwarven-strong and bright and clever, to remind him of better days in Ost-in-Edhil? Or is some small part of him glad not to have seen dwarves corrupted that far? And does he hate that little thread of weakness that his lingering affection for Narvi begets, or does he cherish it as one last reminder of what oh-so-briefly almost was?)

(Maybe they were never all three of them together at once; maybe it was Celebrimbor and Narvi first, and Annatar on the outside trying to worm his way in; not jealous of course, oh no, never jealous of a mere dwarf don't be absurd! but they were such a closed-loop, such a perfect pair and partnership, he could not help but envy them...but mortals are so momentary. Sauron knew all along that all he had to do was wait. Knew that his best entry to Celebrimbor's heart was through Narvi: that by earning Narvi's friendship he would earn Celebrimbor's trust, and then when Narvi—inevitably, as mortals do—died, then the greatest living smith of Middle-earth would be lost and vulnerable and his to mold as he desired...)

(Does jealousy of Narvi—of the fact that Celebrimbor died still loving Narvi, and hating Annatar—drive Sauron to make war on Erebor, to want to see Moria torn down to ruins, to bend all the dwarves finally, finally to his will with the Rings and promises that came so close to almost working once before?)

(Is memory of Narvi why the dwarves of Erebor are given three chances to change their minds and do Sauron's bidding before he tries to destroy them? Does he think that, like Narvi, surely they'll be clever enough to come around eventually...or does he know all along that, like Narvi, they'll be too strong and stubborn to give-in, but he gives them the chance anyway in hopes of getting those clever hands and minds pledged to his cause?)

The Rings were as great as they were because the three of them, together, were made for greatness. The Rings were terrible because love built on a lie always is.

What wonders could they have made together, if Sauron's heart was true? How could he have ever made the Rings at all, if their own hearts hadn't first been won by his lies?

How much of their love was him lying to them, and how much of what came after was him lying to himself?