#giving yourself to something so big that you’ll never know the true scope of it

[theartgremlin2]

This broke me. Legitimately. I was crying so much for him. He fought so hard and he helped pave the way for the others, only to ultimately be left behind.

Kino Loy…again

[toastlab]

The Benefits Of Wedding Shows

My dearest readers – as you well know, it is now officially 2023. The intentions have been set, the vision boards made, and the midnight kisses shared. It’s time for aligned action – and some DJ business help from yours truly.

It’s absolutely more than likely that one or a few of your intentions for this year revolved around refining your service offerings, honing in on that ideal customer, finding your ideal customer, and gaining more knowledge within the DJ space. 

The solution? Attending wedding shows. Wedding shows and expos are an extremely effective way to connect with potential customers and get inspired by your fellow DJs. 

Here’s the thing: couples will often be flanked by family and friends who will also more than likely be in the market for a wedding DJ at some point or other – and may recommend you to their family and friends should you make a positive impression. It’s an easy network to build.

Let’s get a little more granular some tips for attending a wedding show – and we’ll cover how, with the right approach, it could be a one-way ticket to your next client.

Be seriously scrupulous with event locations

First of all, you want to make sure you’re choosing your wedding show locale wisely. If the words ‘convention center’ are anywhere within the location specs of the event, you’re probably going to a pretty generalized vendor spot, which means you’ll undoubtedly encounter a race to the bottom in terms of price and quality. 

Now, this isn’t to say that these shows can’t be an opportunity to gain some great experience for the newbie, but it’s important to continually evaluate what shows you want to invest your time and energy into. Eventually, you’ll want to try to aim for invite-only vendor shows and dedicate time and effort to building relationships with high-value venues. 

Don’t just hand the pen over

Look – I get it, when the going gets tough and you’re scoping for some clients at a nice wedding show, it’s easy to want to just hand that red pen over to someone who wants to bite. Don’t do this. 

You need to have a discovery process FIRMLY in place. Even if a potential client seems too good to be true. Even if you just click! A good client will understand and respect that there needs to be a process in place, a discovery call or two, and an understanding of what exactly you’re offering.  

For example, my company Toast & Jam will never go to contract without the discovery process complete. We do that because we want to ensure that our prospects actually want what we’re selling – and to ensure that we want to work with them. 

Get that Facetime in

Put simply: the vendor shows you want to be invited to are held at the top venues for the area you want to work in. Tons of venues put on shows during the off season, and every attendee will be looking for that something special in the local area. 

This means it’s prime time for facetime. It can be hard to meet with people and connect in person – you’ll often have at least 3 schedules to work around at minimum, so this is your perfect opportunity to see if you and your prospective client click before you put in the work to set up your discovery call.

Get creative with your booth – and have fun!

We almost hate to say it, but try and keep things original with your booth – but don’t be unsustainable. 

For example, caterers have food. This is easy. Prospects can admire how they set their tables and enjoy a free sample. Photographers can put together beautiful slideshows or set out some photos to reference. Florists can give away little bouquets, and wedding dress designers can put on a mini show (or a big one, really, the sky���s the limit). You get the gist! You’ve got to showcase yourself.

For example, Toast & Jam will spin some music and our table is colorful and we give away swag and candy– it’s pretty sweet. Heh. 

Let’s head to The Lab!

Look, I love wedding shows. It might be a little competition, but isn’t that good for the spirit? If anything, you can see it as inspiration. Get out there and get your name in front of the people you want to work with!

Another way to level up this year? My DJ course, The Lab. It’s my personal DJ training program. 

I’ve created templates, worksheets, and I’ve stuffed this DJ course with super-digestible yet super-valuable info. Not a DJ? No sweat. My course is equally as useful for those starting a business outside of the DJ space – and the videos never expire. 

Ready to get started? Sign up here. 

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

hi, em! how are you doing?

i just checked your ‘about me’ post and saw that you studied english and creative writing at uni. i will be starting that career path next year, and i know it differs from one university to another, but i was hoping you could tell me a bit about it? if you feel like it, of course.

have a nice day <3

Nonnie!! That’s so wonderful to hear. 🖤 Congratulations! I loved my time at uni, and I hope you do, as well.

Now that the academic year is upon us, I've compiled a summary of thoughts on Creative Writing (and English-related) degrees for you, which you may or may not find useful. Regardless, I'm excited for you and hope your journey takes you far.

English & Creative Writing at University

I. AMBITION CAN GET YOU ANYWHERE- even the places you never intended to go

The first thing they will tell you in this path of study is that it is almost impossible to make a career out of writing. This is not true. It’s just that it is very difficult to create the career that you expect out of such a course of study.

Many young writers will go into a creative writing degree and expect to spend their entire career as a novelist. Or a travel writer. Or an editor. Only a few will actually go on to do those things.

It’s not impossible, so if any of these are your dream profession, don’t get discouraged. Ambition is never silly or naive.

Having said that, I will also tell you that the stars are just as beautiful and important as the moon. Just because you have a goal, doesn’t mean you’ll have failed if you end up somewhere entirely different. With this academic path, you're simply giving yourself direction.

It's important to remember to keep yourself open to anything. And remind yourself every once in a while that most good things in life happen by accident.

II. ALL THE TOOLS IN YOUR BELT

Secondly, I want you to think about your degree not just as a way to hone your craft—which it very much still is—but as something with a broader scope than the small yet wonderful world of writing.

When we boil down what you learn in a Literature and/or Creative Writing educational space, it’s so much more than learning How To Write or How To Read. (These'll be the things that you can put on your resume if/when you apply for non-literature-oriented positions)

In my English degree, I learned how to:

Think critically -> I rarely read or consume content and take it for face value anymore. I look for meaning. I extract purpose and truth. I analyse. I do this all automatically now, whereas before my degree, critical analysis was like doing reps at the gym. I sweated a lot and hated most of it.

Research -> I am exceedingly good at skimming articles to find important bits of information that relate to broad or very niche topics. I’m good at finding what it is I am looking for, and relating it to whatever I’m working on.

Translate -> I don’t mean this in the way that one might translate a foreign language to their native one. I mean taking complex concepts, researching and understanding them, then compacting all of the information I’ve learned into something that is digestible to the general public. This is an incredibly valuable tool in a world where most people can't be bothered to read a whole news article, much less comprehend complex areas of study.

In my Creative Writing degree, I learned how to:

Problem solve -> Writing, whether it is a short story or a novel, is a big puzzle. There are a lot of parts and each part fits with the next and some don’t fit with others at all and there is a lot of shuffling things around to make a cohesive picture.

Think creatively -> This might seem obvious, and also not that important to non-creative fields. But creative thinking, no matter what field you’re in, is vital. Without creative thinking there can be no creative ideas or solutions. My mother is an engineer and, at the time I’m writing this, she is taking an online course on Creative Thinking, because it is essential to her work. Lucky for you, this is built into your degree.

Receive and build on criticism -> This also may seem like not an important thing. But it is. So many people get discouraged by criticism, when really, it can be a gift. You’ll likely have weekly critiques in your degree. When you are both receiving and giving critiques, pay attention to the tools this practice is giving you. Notice what stands out, what works, what doesn’t—and use this to your advantage.

And of course, I learned from both of these degrees how to work efficiently on a time crunch. Which doesn't require much explanation other than my propensity towards procrastination (I do not condone or recommend this method, though I feel it is an inescapable fate for basically anyone putting themselves through uni).

III. Unfortunately, People Are Ignorant

Lastly, be prepared for the inevitable question that every student in an English-related degree gets at least once during their final year: “What the hell are you going to do with that?”

It's a rite of passage for scholars of the humanities. And yet, it can be extremely discouraging, getting that question over and over again. But know that it comes from a place of well-intentioned ignorance.

People will assume you’ll either teach or go into publishing, because they see "English" or "Writing" and think "Well, everyone can read except kids. Everyone can write except kids", and the only other job they'll be able to conceive of is one where you are making the decisions about what is or is not "Good Writing".

I definitely used the “Probably go into publishing” answer, because I knew that teaching, while admirable, definitely wasn’t for me. But retrospectively, I think the answer I should’ve used sounds a lot more like: “Anything I damn well please! Or are you not creative enough to think of ways in which an English/Creative Writing degree is useful?”

These are just some of the more general thoughts I have about my university experience, now that it is nearly half a decade behind me. If you have any more specific questions about Creative Writing and University, please feel free to ask.

Best of luck to you, nonnie! Happy writing.

–Em 🖤🗡

More Writing Tips & Advice

[donutloverxo]

How big do you think Steve is....? 👀☕

Please note that my stories are not to be stolen or reposted on any other site. Reblogs are welcome. This blog and this story is 18+. Do not read, follow or interact if you are not 18+.

I've got like a lot of feelings and thots about this but I'll just summarize them with this... smut, Steve has bde and a big🍆🍆, cumplay, this is like really filthy.

"Yes... um, Captain," Stacey bit her lip, she couldn't help herself. She knew she shouldn't be checking out her friends man but she was sure you'd forgive her. This was Captain freaking America. It would be an injustice to not appreciate his beauty. "What brings you to our little corner today?"

"Um... I'm here to see L/N," blushing a deep shade of pink and rubbing the back of his neck. The bouquet of lillies in his hand, and one of chocolates in another only making him stand out more so.

Stacy chuckled at his misery. "You call her by her last name? Hm... I actually think she'd like it better if it was the other way around."

Steve quirked a brow because he didn't understand what she meant by that. Smiling when he saw you return to your seat. "What're you doing here?" with a sweet smile on your face. Leaning up on your tippy toes to give him a small peck on his lips. "It's a nice surprise."

"Just wanted to give you these," he said as he handed the flowers and the chocolates over to you, "And to ask you to maybe have dinner at my place tonight?"

You giggled as you opened the lid of the box, mouth watering at the variety of sweets to select from, "Stevie, we're in a relationship now. You don't have to ask me out every single time." As you plopped a mint one in your mouth.

"It still feels nice to," He said before kissing you goodbye to return to his floor.

You offered some of your chocolates to Stacey, who seemed to be giving you the side eye for some reason.

"Is it true?" She asked.

"Is what true?"

"Does he have a fifteen inch long cock?"

Which made you choke on the coconut that was in your third chocolate. "What the hell?!"

"You gotta tell me. I promise I'll cover any of your shifts for you while you go on getaways with him to like Europe or something. I'll do your boring paper work. Alright, I understand you wanna keep his privacy," she nodded, bringing her hands together, "Just say when," She said as her palms started drifting apart.

"Stop that!" you swatted at her palms. "I don't know how big he is. We're taking it slow." You huffed. Going slow was his idea. He was old school in that way. You had no idea how you had resisted from climbing him like a tree for so many months.

"Listen, girl, it's just that he has major BDE. When he gives those speeches, and those clips of him fighting bad guys, you just know he has a big dick."

You did believe he had big dick energy as well. At a low moment you told him your supervisor was being an ass to you, even calling you a slut once for dating Captain America. You didn't want to burden him with your problems, which seemed to insignificant in front of his, and you didn't want him to do anything brash.

The very next day he paid your boss a visit. He didn't flaunt the fact that he was Captain America or a very powerful man. He didn't need to. He naturally had a very commanding presence. He just gave a long lecture to your boss on how to respect women, after which they never bothered you again.

You'd never admit this to Steve but you literally wanted to jump his bones them. He looked so fucking hot defending your honor like that. He was your knight in shining armor and you'd let him to anything to you.

Not to mention, you could see the outline of his probably long and thick dick in his jogging pants. That one unfortunate morning you agreed to go running with him. The only good thing that came out of it was that you got to oggle his ass and his dick.

You could feel his hands squeezing your breasts over your dress, you broke the kiss to take a look at him. Glassy eyes and cheeks flushed red, his chest heaving because you took his breath away.

"I wanna go all the way, Stevie." You demanded. "I've waited long enough for you."

"You know I could never say no to you, doll. I promise I'll make it worth your while."

Which he most definitely did. He must've spent like an hour between your legs, using his mouth and his fingers, worshipping evey inch of your body. You felt him rutting against the mattress but chose not to say anything.

"Wait, stop..." you pushed his head away, your pussy too sensitive after the third orgasm to be touch again as he pouted up at you. You sat up on your butt, "I wanna suck your cock," you said, making grabby hands for it.

"Um... you sure, doll? You don't have to," he was too shy to be naked in front of you. He still had his pants and underwear on. You were going to insist that he take it all off but you could barely handle a shirtless Steve, a completely naked one would probably turn your brain to mush.

"Yes I want it! Do you not want me?" your voice quivering just a little. You knew he wanted you, of course he did. But why can't he be vulnerable with you like you are with him?

"No no," he cupped your face, kissing your forehead, "Of course I want you. I want you more than anything else in the world. It's just that... I'm big. Before the serum it was pretty average and now... women get surprised a little."

"How big?" you sniffled.

"I guess you'll see," he said, pulling his briefs and his pants down at the same time.

You let out a loud gasp when you saw it. A literal monster cock. "Oh my god...." you breathed out, "I don't think that's gonna fit in me, Stevie.."

It was the biggest you've ever seen. Pink, long and thick, you could even make out a few veins on it, standing tall and proud against his hard abs, some blonde hair at the base of it. Pearly pre ejaculate oozing out of him, which made you salivate.

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about that, angel," he stroked your hair, "That's for me to figure out. You just have to sit there and make good on your promise. Now come on, open up," he tapped his tip on your lips and you opened as wide as you could.

He wasn't even halfway in when he hit the back of your throat, making you gag around him. He softly fucked into your mouth, which some sucking and help from you. Holding onto your head lovingly as he spoke about how good you made him feel.

"You gonna swallow it for me?" he asked, to which you eagerly nodded.

'I wouldn't let a drop escape.' You wanted to say but it came out all jumbled since your mouth was stuffed full.

Finally you felt ropes of his spend hit the back of your throat. You were naive to think you'd swallow it all. You could barely get half of it no matter how hard you tried, most of it spilled out of your mouth and onto your chest.

He finally pulled out, looking at his girl so proudly, so eager to please him.

"I'm sorry," you said, as you tried to gather as much of his cummies off your body as you could. It tasted salty, the aftertaste being just a little bit sweet. You wondered if that was because of the serum too. "I promise I'll get it all next time. I'll be more prepared."

"'is not your fault, doll. There's... a lot of it."

"I like that though," you whined up at him as you licked your fingers, "I like it. It means you love me so much you made like tons of goodies for me."

He chuckled at that, pecking your lips, "I do love you a lot."

He made you lie back to make sure you were comfortable, wrapping your legs around his hips, "You tell me if it hurts okay, baby?" he asked to which you gave him a meek nod.

Bracing yourself for the pain. Despite how wet and ready and relaxed you were, it still hurt initially. But you asked him to keep going because you wanted to make him feel good and take all of him.

After a few moments you asked him to move.

"Your dick is so beautiful, Stevie." You beamed up at him.

"Not as beautiful as you, doll." He groaned as he pulled his hips back before rutting back into you.

"Nooo," you whined. This man needed to learn how to take a compliment! "No, your dick is so pretty. It's yours, and I'm in love with it."

"I'll promise you one thing, honey. You'll be the only one who gets to see it again from now on. It's for your eyes only now."

"Forever?" you pouted.

"Yes, forever."

You looked down at where both your sexes were joined together, "Looks like we'll be seeing a lot of each other from now on, Captain," you said as you clenched around him, making him bite the crook of your neck.

"Did you just give my dick a petname?"

"Yes, do you like it?" you asked, hopefully.

Steve would rather have you call him Captain. But you seemed so excited, "Yes, of course. You can call it whatever you like, baby."

He was trying to pull out of you to come, of course you wouldn't have that so you pulled him closer to you by wrapping your legs around him.

"I'm good..." you rasped, "got an implant and everything." Which would protect you from having any super soldier babies. "Please come in me."

"How can I say no that," his thrusts became a little more rushed and erratic. You could feel his warm cum fill you up and then ooze out of you as he pulled out.

He tched as he looked at your swollen pussy, "That won't do..." he said as he tried to push his cum inside of you but it was too much for your small cute pussy.

"I've got plugs at my home we can use to keep it in..." you moaned, extra sensitive to his touch then. "Can I have some more of it, please?"

You asked as he scoped your combined juices up with his fingers before feeding it to you.

"Just for now, doll. Next time we'll try that plug idea of yours," he said as he made sure you thoroughly sucked his fingers clean.

[kyun-toast]

[ATEEZ] Mafia!San - Will You Join Me?

word count: 2.9k warnings: explicit language, gun use, violence, description of death (not explicit), sexually suggestive, gets a lil steamy summary: cupid has a bullet with your name on it a/n: Y/N a little dramatic and San annoying af. I wrote this in a two hour flash at 2am, so this might be deleted after I reread it tomorrow because I’m pretty sure a lot of this is just me chatting shit.

1. Yoon, David – 12:45 Note to self: likes donuts. probs dunkin’, maybe krispy? idk just look for a man w a paper bag.

“I’ll have to warn you though, the lift is under maintenance, so you’ll have to take the stairs.” The receptionist smiled at you sympathetically. “I can get someone to help you with your suitcase if you’d like?”

“Oh no, it’s ok, I’ll just find another place to stay. I have weak knees anyway.” You forced a laugh and hoped the lady didn’t notice the dead look in your eyes.

“I’m sorry about that, love.”

Turning away with your suitcase in tow, you headed towards the building opposite the hotel and hoped that the rooftop would be easy enough to access.

It was quite irresponsible of you not to have a backup plan. It seemed that being named the sharpest shooter in the underground world had gotten to your head a little, but you argued that a bit of spontaneity never hurt anybody. Though your target would beg to differ.

Being a public building of offices, it was all too easy for you to reach the roof of the building. You found that walking with your held head high and gaze set straight ahead would never get you questioned. Who would ever stop someone with a walk so confident?

Thankfully, the rooftop hadn’t been turned into some garden space: an air-conditioning fan over here, a water tank over there. You checked your wristwatch reading 12:40 and muttered under your breath. The damn hotel lift had taken precious minutes of your time and compromised your view.

You opened your suitcase to set up your sniper, giving your little black cat charm on the side of your gun a squish. Cute.

Sitting on the case with your stock snug against your shoulder, you peered into the scope to get a closer view of the revolving doors to the bank. Oh great, there’s a lamppost in the way.

Mr. Yoon was apparently quite the punctual man, always seen stepping into the bank doors after his lunch break at exactly quarter to one and therefore, your window of opportunity was thin.

“I want it done today or you’re getting sniped yourself, Y/N.” You heard the voice of your boss yap in your head again. Blah blah blah, same old threat. You argued that procrastinating the man’s death was actually something very considerate of you to do.

You heard a familiar clatter of metal hit the floor and you turned your scope to the rooftop opposite to see a man in overalls with his toolbox open on the floor.

“Lift maintenance guy?” You muttered to yourself and wondered if the mechanics of elevators ran all the way through to the rooftop. You made sure that you wouldn’t be in his line of vision and swivelled back to your original position, cursing the man under your breath for ruining your first choice of setup.

12:44

“Come on, Yoon. Lunch time’s almost over.” Your finger lay restless on the trigger, itching to get a glimpse of the bank teller.

20 seconds.

“Krispy or Dunkin’ what will it be today, entertain me.”

10 seconds.

You saw the man turn the corner and waited for him to get a little closer for you to shoot.

5 seconds.

“That’s it, just past the lamppost and you won’t even know what hit y- what the FU-?” You shouted and quickly clasped a hand to your mouth. Mr. Yoon hadn’t even made it past the post, and he was already laying on the pavement in a growing pool of blood.

Calculating the angle in which he was laying, you spun your vision around to the hotel rooftop and saw the maintenance man begin to pack up a sniper back into his toolbox. Taking off his cap, you noticed a flash of white in his jet-black hair and just like he knew you were watching, he turned with a smug grin on his face and shot you some finger guns.

“Oh, you little fucker.” You spat, and watched the man jump down into a hatch to disappear.

You slumped dramatically onto the floor and splayed your limbs to stare blankly at the sky. Never in your life had you ever missed a shot, let alone have it stolen by someone else, and your boss had your phone ringing to rub it in your face.

“That wasn’t you, was it?”

“Listen, what if? You know, what if that was my thirteenth reason? I just couldn’t take it anymore and that was it. No more Y/N. You wouldn’t even come to my funeral, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t because you’d be too broke to have one. You realise you’re not getting paid for this?”

“Why? He’s still dead?” You sat up in disbelief.

“Well, it turns out someone else wanted him gone too. I can’t lie to our client and say that we did it.”

“You’re oddly moral for someone that runs a hotline for hitmen.”

“I’ll call you if I find you another job.”

“Justice for freelance contract killers.” You muttered weakly as he ended the call. The faint sound of police sirens filled the air as you let out a heavy sigh and lay back on the concrete.

You pictured the man and wondered who it was that would even think to render the notorious Y/N L/N jobless. Though you did have to admit that it was a clean shot.

“Skunk-hair looking ass.”

2. Kim, Seungho – 18:00 Note to self: babysitting. easy target but kid knows NOTHING.

You were stationed by a corner window in an unfinished apartment building with a trainee by your side, setting up his kit.

Stood by the trainee, you scanned to see if everything was in the right place, checking the kid’s posture too. You had been sent by your boss to reluctantly train a young recruit and you joked if you had been demoted following your last predicament. You were never in it for the money though, you lived for the adrenaline.

The boy had potential and you saw it, he just needed to make cleaner shots because three bullets somewhat near the target’s vital organs wasn’t going to cut it.

“What’s your name again?”

“Jisung. Han Jisung.” The recruit replied, his eyes never leaving yours, in absolute awe.

“Eyes on the scope.”

“I’m sorry, nobody told me I’d be getting trained by you. The Seoul Shooter? Like wow.”

“Ew, is that what they’re calling me?”

“Yeah, well I think it’s a pretty cool name, they used to call me ‘Jitman’ in my hometown, not very creati-”

You shushed the boy and tapped his shoulder as you pointed to a small figure in the distance.

“You see him through the scope? Now keep your hand steady, never feel as if you’re being rushed. Death works to your schedule.”

“Got it.” Jisung said, following the man with his gun.

“Ok, on 3… 2… 1…”

You heard the bullet cut through the evening air and hit the target neatly through his office window.

“Bro? That was so clean? That has to be one of the sexiest shots I’ve seen in a while-” You began.

“Uhh, that wasn’t me, Y/N.”

Before you could even process what had happened, you heard the rustle of footsteps patter down the stairs behind you. Taking out your handgun, you moved towards the open door to find the same man you had seen on the hotel rooftop stop in his tracks on the landing. Clad in a fitted black sweater and jeans this time, he looked a whole lot more attractive close up.

“You again?” You exclaimed; gun still pointed at the man as he dropped his duffel bag to raise his hands.

His eyes widened, not in shock, but more with an excited glint in his eyes.

“Oh my, it’s Y/N, the Seoul Shooter.” A coy smile painted his lips as he shook his white fringe out of his eyes.

“See, everyone calls you that.” Jisung interjected from behind.

“Shut up, Han.”

“Word around town is that you’ve been unemployed for some time now,” nodding towards Han, he added, “and it looks like the rumours are true.”

“I’ve actually decided to take a break you know? Let the other kids have a chance at making a name for themselves. Bit of charity work.”

“Y/N kinda got demoted because you keep taking their shots.” Han interrupted again.

“Hey, who told you that?!” You narrowed your eyes at the boy. Han Jisung was a smart ass and you vowed then and there that you wouldn’t take on any more training sessions.

You whipped your head back around to the man eyeing your body up and down.

“My eyes are up here, sir. Unless you really wanna get shot.” You spat.

“Well, I’d die a happy man if you were the last thing I’d see.” He smirked in retaliation and studied your eyes carefully. “Well, my job here is done, I better be on my way. Got a big cheque waiting for me.” He grinned as he reached to grab his bag and carry his way on down the stairs with footsteps too light-hearted for your liking.

“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Jisung asked as you watched the man disappear into the evening.

“I don’t think killing a man for taking my shots is justified.”

“What, and sniping Mr. Kim Seungho just before he gets to feel the bliss of clocking out is?” He laughed. “Do you know what I think, Y/N?”

“What?”

“I don’t know, I’m not going to say anything.”

Han Jisung tormented you the whole drive back to the quarters.

“Y/N and Skunk Man sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes lo-”

Smack.

“Ouch, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was just kidding.” He laughed as an idea struck him, “K-I-D-D-I-N-”

Smack.

3. Park, Kiha - 10:32 Note to self: bad man. bad, bad man. but big, big cheque.

Having had your last two shots stolen, mystery Skunk Man was beginning to get on your nerves. You were seething to the point that you demanded your boss give you another job, itching to defend your title of being the finest shooter in Seoul.

Laying on the floor of a rooftop hangar, the man had the gall to pop up out of the hatch to set up his station right next to you, as if you were both on some picnic.

"Nice seeing you here today, Y/N." He said, sitting cross legged to mount a scope to the top of his sniper.

Not even bothering to take your eyes off the target, you muttered, "I got here first, you better back off." voice laced with venom.

"Well I've been promised a cheque too, we're all just trying to get fed around here."

Ignoring him, you glanced down at your watch that read 10:31. Any time now, Park Kiha would be walking through the glass bridge to get to his meeting in the twin building.

Steadying your finger against the trigger, you held your breath and counted down from three, two, o-

"I like your cat charm by the way."

You pulled the trigger only for it to stray a little to the right, still hitting your target, just a little less central than you would have accepted.

You shot up from your position to face the man laying on his side, head propped up against his hand to look at you.

"Do you have something against me? Do I even know you?" You exclaimed, carding your gloved hand through your hair.

"No uhh, but I saw your face on a bounty poster once and thought you were cute." He said, attitude too blasé. "That was a nice shot though, I was going to wait a few more seconds."

"So you saw my picture, and started following me around to antagonise me?"

"Nah, I just happened to be super lucky to have been put on the same cases as you. Big bad men have a lot of people after them I guess?"

Throwing your equipment back into your bag, you watched the man proceed to roll over onto his back with his arms behind his head to look up at the sky.

The mid-morning sun cast a golden glow over his skin and though you spent most of your life working with guns, his uniform and kit next to him looked a little different, almost attractive. They suited him a little too much and you thought that if a sleek sniper were to be personified, it would look exactly like this leather clad man.

"I should ask for your number, the way you're looking at me right now, Y/N."

"Good luck, you won't get it." You turned to step down the hatch as he propped himself up again to watch you leave.

Choi, San – 15:25 Note to self: he’s kinda hot tho :/

So, we had finally put a name to the face. As your boss handed you a folder, you were slightly taken aback at the small ID picture pinned to the top of the file.

“You might be a little happy about this one.” He said, taking a sip of coffee. “He’s been recently recruited by ATEEZ as their sniper. Quite a deadly one too. He was scouted shooting pheasants down in the Namhae countryside apparently.”

“Hmm, how much?” You questioned.

“A million dollars.”

“Excuse me? A mill-?” You choked on the air and composed yourself just as quick to nonchalantly lean against the filing cabinet and look out the window, “I don’t know, he didn’t look a million dollars-worth to me.”

“He hasn’t been in the game long, but man has he taken down some big names.”

Though you didn’t necessarily feel too attached to Choi San, you did think that you were going to miss him a little. It was nice having a friend on your level to spar with.

Who were you kidding? You thought he was hot and that it would be a shame to have to shoot him.

But on second thought, you had been itching for the adrenaline in the trigger again, and the million dollars looked a lot sexier to you than some man.

“I’ll take it.”

-

San was all too easy to find. He seemed to enjoy hiding in plain sight since no common person would recognize him in the bustling streets of Gangnam. Nestled in the corner of another rooftop, you zoned in on the recognizable black and white hair sat outside on the terrace of a café.

Once you were ready, you repositioned your finger on the trigger and focused the cross hairs on the familiar head. You were steady until San lifted his head and stared right back at you through the scope, sending you a wink.

“Shit.” You muttered, his actions throwing you off and when you repositioned your aim, he had slipped into the crowd, now lost.

“No, no, no, no, no, Choi San, ugh.” Seeing that he knew what you were up to, you got up to pace around the rooftop. Your mind worked nonstop to find an alternate solution but all you could conclude was to go home, stay low and pick another day to continue.

This man had thrown you into the worst slump of your life, but you were somewhat enjoying the chase and you hated to admit it.

The abrupt sound of a closing of a door behind you had everything clicking into place.

“You pretty motherfucker, had this planned, didn’t you?” You laughed.

Upon hearing the cocking of a gun, you turned to pull out the throwing knife strapped to your thigh and pulled his body in by his collar to reach his throat. And it just turned out that San had the same idea in pushing his handgun up underneath your chin at the same time, faces a little too close.

“I like your beret.” San said candidly, jerking his brow up at the hat on your head.

“Me, too. It’s Marine Serre.”

“Nice choice.”

“I’m going to count down from three and we’re going to drop our weapons, ok? And talk this out like adults because I for one, didn’t wanna kill you.” You bargained.

“Sure.”

“Three, two, one!” The both of you pulled away for a split second in bluff only to reposition your weapons against each other’s throats again.

“I knew it.” San smirked.

“No, for real this time. I mean it.”

“Go ahead, baby.” He smiled as his gaze dropped to your lips.

“Three, two, o-”

San cut you off by leaning into your lips, placing onto them a kiss so intense, almost mirroring the violent nature of the situation. However, what surprised you more was that you let yourself melt back into him. He let his gun clatter to the floor to walk you backwards into the wall behind, hoisting your leg up around his waist.

You broke away from the kiss for air when he smiled, “I mean, it is kinda hot, but I would appreciate it if you could stop holding that knife against my throat right now, Y/N.”

“Ugh, fine.” You muttered as San leaned back in to kiss you whilst roaming his hand around your thigh, ridding you of the rest of your knives and smirking against your lips in satisfaction.

Feeling his bulge grind between your legs, you both only grew more fervent for each other as you kissed.

“Wait, I wanna take you on a date first.” He pulled away to look you in the eye.

“Are you serious right now?”

“Mhmm, to Bar 1117.” He hummed, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck.

“Isn’t that your company’s place…?”

“Yeah, they’re gonna love you.” He whispered, peppering small kisses down your throat.

“Are you trying to recruit me or fuck me, San?”

"I mean, you can kill me now and leave for that million dollars or you can come with me for a new job and that million dollar dick."

"You're unbelievable."

“I heard you were doing freelance anyway, baby.” He looked into your eyes again, a mischievous glow blooming across his face, “So, will you join me?”

-

disclaimer: San’s pie chart hair is one of my all time faves but I also can’t stop thinking that it looks a little skunk-like. In the cutest way. a/n: I've edited this a lot since I posted it and I think I'm gonna keep it

-

Mafia AU Masterlist

[heart-of-gold-outlaw]

Welcome Home | Chapter Ten: Still Breathing

Finally—finally—, the day comes to rescue Sean. You honestly don’t know what to expect. Most of the others in camp aren’t much help, referring to Sean with a roll of their eyes and something along the lines of: “half a mind to let the bounty hunters keep him.”

They should be saying that about Micah, you think to yourself as you watch Charles and Arthur saddle their horses. Maybe then Dutch’ll kick him out.

Still, Sean is a bit of a wildcard to you. You won’t figure out what he’s really like until you meet him, and until then, you decide to keep an open mind. Worst case scenario? He’s Micah’s long-lost brother. Best case scenario? He’s… well. Maybe it’s best not to think about all the things he could be. Keep yourself on your toes.

You sit on a tree stump while the boys get ready. Taima is an absolute beauty of a horse, and you can tell by the way Charles dotes on her that she’s got a good life. Briefly, thoughts of having a horse of your own cross your mind. That appaloosa gelding is probably still for sale in Valentine. Maybe if you can get enough money, you can buy him.

Arthur and Charles take their sweet time packing more than enough ammo, which means you quickly get bored. Every scratchy detail on the tree stump bothers you, too. Hopping to your feet, you decide to get some chores done. Everyone’s been so preoccupied with the big upcoming rescue, they’ve neglected some of the finer details in camp.

The ax is in its usual spot, surrounded by whole logs that need to be chopped. You grab ahold of the handle. It feels lighter than it used to, and you realize you’re getting stronger.

Goodbye noodle arms, you think as you bring the ax down on to the first log. You don’t quite split it, but it’s getting closer than ever. And hello Jack Lumber.

A few chops in, you feel the muscles in the back of your neck tense. Someone’s behind you, and you’re not quite sure who. But soon enough, a low, sinister chuckle reaches your ears. Micah.

“Well,” he says. “Looks like the camp nuisance is finally doing some work.”

You slowly count to three before turning around. Micah stands by you, a little too close for your liking, and he’s got a smirk on his face that twists your gut something awful. You’ve started wearing a gun belt, and the hand that isn’t holding the ax inadvertently twitches toward your revolver.

“You know something, Y/N?” He takes a step toward you. “I think you’re starting to wear out your welcome.”

Fire ignites in your chest. No. No. Micah doesn’t get to do this, try and make you second-guess yourself and your place in the gang—especially not after you’ve just started feeling comfortable.

“Back off, you useless mineral,” you hiss.

Micah’s lips curl into a snarl as he takes another step toward you. This one feels infinitely more threatening, and you barely keep yourself from taking a step back. You’ll be damned if Micah wins this fight.

“Take another step,” you warn, “and I’ll jump rope with your intestines.”

Honestly, you don’t really expect him to feel threatened, but the odd choice in words is enough to throw him off. You can see him trying to process everything you said, which gives you enough time to throw the ax down and skedaddle.

Your heart thuds frantically in your chest as you hurry to Arthur and Charles. Micah won’t try anything if you’re with them; that much, you know for sure.

“We ready to go?” You ask as nonchalantly as you can. “If I chop one more piece of wood, I’ll have to start wearing flannel.”

Charles looks confused at “flannel,” but Arthur frowns as he glances over at the chopping block. His expression hardens when he sees Micah storming away.

“Micah giving you trouble?” He asks, a hint of something dangerous in his voice.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” You go to lean against the hitching post, miss, and almost topple over. Face burning, you settle for folding your arms over your chest.

Arthur and Charles exchange looks.

“If he tries anything,” Charles tells you, calm and steady, “let us know. We’ll take care of it.”

We’ll take care of it. How a statement so simple and so general can sound that dangerous, you’ll never know. You wordlessly nod, not knowing how to respond.

Charles leaves, then, to go saddle Taima. You look to Arthur, ready to follow him to Florence, who’s already tacked up and ready. But he doesn’t move.

“Micah been buggin’ you a lot?”

You shake your head. “Not really. I mean, he gave me a hard time when I was cleaning up Pearson’s wagon a while ago, but Hosea scared him off.”

Arthur turns to look at you. “And today?”

“Oh.” You think back to the confrontation. “Well, he called me the ‘camp nuisance’ and said I was starting to wear out my welcome.”

A glint of fury flashes through Arthur’s eyes as he throws a glare in Micah’s general direction. You shiver involuntarily. Thank goodness you’re not on a certain cowboy’s bad side.

“I’ve been called worse, to be honest,” you say with a shrug, and smile slightly when Arthur looks at you again. “I’m kinda used to it.”

He gives you a troubled frown instead of sharing your nonchalance. Confused, you feel your smile waver a little.

“What?” You ask.

“You…” Arthur begins, trails off, then continues: “You know it ain’t true, right?”

“What isn’t?”

“The part about being a nuisance. You ain’t wearing out your welcome, either.”

Something pulls at your heart, something strong, and you’re suddenly at a loss for words. You’ve had so many doors slammed in your face, so many people come and go, never staying, never even wanting to stay… And you couldn’t do anything but watch them leave.

“Oh,” is all you manage around a tight throat.

Arthur looks at you some more. His eyes are soft now, soft and full of what you think is understanding. He reaches out, maybe to put a hand on your shoulder, but apparently thinks better of it and instead motions for you to follow him. You trail a little behind as he walks toward Florence. You ain’t wearing out your welcome, either. Did… did Arthur really mean that? Does that mean the rest of the gang, minus Micah, feels the same way? You can’t help but shake your head in wonder. You don’t think you’ll ever understand these people.

Once you catch up, Arthur easily swings himself on top of Florence, then hauls you into the saddle behind him. You’re starting to get used to horseback. Florence may be absolutely massive, but you don’t feel so unsteady anymore. In fact, you might actually like riding.

“We’re meeting up with Javier just outside of Blackwater,” Charles says as he brings Taima over. “Trelawney thinks the bounty hunters will bring Sean upriver.”

Arthur nods and sets a steady trot out of camp. “Good. We can probably cut ‘em off when they reach the border. I think there’s a canyon that’ll give us some decent cover.”

“Any luck, we’ll take them by surprise.” Charles urges Taima into a canter, which Florence matches. “How many do you think there’ll be?”

“For Sean?” Arthur laughs, and you try not to look too enamored. “Any pair of fools could handle him. But there’ll be a lot of ‘em, no doubt.”

Charles hums in thought, but doesn’t say anything else. Much of the ride passes in comfortable silence. Although you want to focus on admiring the scenery and marvel at the lack of, well, everything, you find yourself thinking about the upcoming fight. You may not know a lot about the past, but you’ve seen enough Westerns to know bounty hunters always put up a hell of a fight. That, and they always keep coming right when you think you’ve killed them all.

Your revolver suddenly feels heavy in its holster. You bite your lip, a little unsure. Yes, you’ve used it once at Six Point Cabin, and yes, you’ve managed to hit a few bottles, but those were honestly lucky shots. And neither of them were shooting back.

Bounty hunters, though? Different story. For as much bravado as you showed Dutch during his little tirade, you have to admit that you’re a little nervous. It’ll be your first real gunfight. You’ll have Arthur and Charles looking out for you, but you can’t help the anxiety knotting deep in your gut.

If I die, I die, you think. No going back now.

///

Conversation lags for the remainder of the ride. Eventually, after crossing a small river, you’re in what Arthur tells you is West Elizabeth. It looks… well, it looks like a perfect snapshot of a history textbook. Rolling hills and open land, bison… it’s absolutely stunning.

Off in the distance, you see two people looking over the edge of a cliff. You recognize Javier, but you don’t recognize the other man, with his mustache and mischievous eyes. He smiles when he sees Arthur and Charles, then peers at you curiously.

“And who might this be?” He asks as Arthur dismounts, leaving you alone atop Florence.

Your brain goes into a blue screen of death, and before you know what you’re doing, you say: “My name is an enigma and holds all the secrets of the universe.”

“That would be Y/N,” Arthur says, exasperated. He helps you down and grabs his rifle from the saddle. “Y/N, this is Josiah Trelawney.”

Trelawney bows with a flourish. “At your service, my dear.”

You instantly decide you like him. Waving hello to Javier, you approach the edge of the cliff, crouching low like everyone else.

“Sean?” Arthur asks as he looks down the scope of his rifle.

“I think he’s in that boat over there.” Javier gestures to a small vessel upriver. “Think they’re docking to take him further inland.”

Arthur turns the scope, then gives a hum of confirmation. “That’s him alright. Giving those bounty hunters hell.”

Trelawney nods and rises before mounting his horse. Setting a slow walk, he motions for everyone to follow him. Arthur helps you on to Florence, and then you’re off once more.

“If we do this right,” Trelawney says, “we can cut them off. Remember: we’re just innocent folk out for a ride on the trail. Let’s not draw their attention just yet.”

The five of you ride toward a canyon. Ahead, you can see the boat docked at the shore, along with several well-armed, intimidating bounty hunters standing guard. They don’t look like they’re in much of a mood to negotiate. In fact, they look ready to shoot on sight.

Everyone takes cover around the bend. Trelawney, odd man that he is, seems more preoccupied with his coat than the problem at hand.

“Now ain’t the time for a fashion statement,” Arthur drawls.

“Au contraire, my dear fellow,” Trelawney says with a smile. “Bounty hunters are even more gullible than hillbillies. I have to look the part if I’m going to make the proper distraction.”

Then, before any of you can say a word otherwise, Trelawney strides confidently toward the bounty hunters. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you just know he’s spinning a tale bigger than the Grizzlies. He waves his arms in a grandiose gesture. In another situation, you would have mistaken it for part of the act. But now, along with Arthur, Charles, and Javier, you recognize it for what it is: a signal.

Arthur fires a quick shot, striking one of the bounty hunters between the eyes. From there, it’s chaos. All you can hear is the sound of gunfire and shouting. You take cover behind a rock, firing your revolver without really trying to hit anything. You don’t know if any of your bullets find their marks. Honestly? Probably not.

“Let’s push up on ‘em,” Arthur commands.

You stick close by him as you make your way up the canyon. The bounty hunters have regrouped by now, which lets them put up more of a fight. A bullet whizzes by your ear—too close for you to ignore—and you yelp and duck further into cover.

Arthur quickly lays down some cover fire, then hauls you up and pulls you behind a larger rock. You don’t even have time to tell him thank you. The firefight picks up again, bullets flying, ricocheting, sometimes hitting their targets, sometimes hitting the canyon walls. It takes nearly all your self-control to keep a level head.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Javier reloading his guns, but also just barely peeking out of cover. You look up the canyon trail. There, off in the distance, half-hidden by gun smoke and dust, you can just barely make out the silhouette of a bounty hunter—and he’s aiming right at Javier.

You steel yourself. You’re not some useless coward who needs to be protected. You’re a member of the Van Der Linde Gang—an outlaw. And one of your own is in danger.

Your anxiety flees, replaced by determination. Edging ever-so-slightly out of cover, you fire off a shot toward the bounty hunter, then duck back behind the boulder. A pained yell tells you that you hit your mark, and it’s followed by silence.

Javier looks at the fallen bounty hunter, then at you. He nods his head in thanks. Smiling, you tip your fingers in a mock-salute, then follow Arthur as he pushes further up the canyon.

It doesn’t take long for your little group to reach a clearing. Right away, you see someone dangling upside down from a tree. He’s also surrounded by vicious-looking men who you would honestly rather avoid.

Well,you think to yourself. That must be Sean.

The bounty hunters have been expecting you, and they fire several warning shots into the tree line. You duck behind the trunk of a massive pine. To your right, you see Arthur considering the situation, trying to figure out the best approach. On your left, Javier and Charles wait on a signal. You don’t know what happened to Trelawney, but you think he’s alright.

“If we can get around them,” Arthur eventually says, “we can come at them from all sides.”

Javier grins. “Like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Charles gives him a look. “Only the fish can shoot back.”

Arthur nods, then looks back toward the clearing. “Someone’s gotta get to Sean quick as they can. I got a feeling he’s gonna be bait.”

“I’ll do it,” you tell him. “There’s enough cover behind that tree he’s tied up in. I’ll be fine.”

For a long, long moment, Arthur looks uncertain. But when you give him a pleading look, silently begging him to let you prove yourself, he sighs and folds the cards.

“Alright,” he agrees. “Wait until you got a clear opening, then go for it.”

Everyone heads off in opposite directions, leaving you to prepare yourself for the sprint of the century. One by one, the boys shoot the bounty hunters, hitting each with impeccable aim. Then, almost before you’re ready, you spy the perfect opportunity.

Making a beeline for Sean, you dive behind the tree just as the bullets start flying again. You sit there for a few seconds, catching your breath. You can’t believe you’re still alive. All that time in open space, and not a single scratch on you.

“It’s over!” You hear one of the bounty hunters shout.

He sounds dangerously close to you. Peeking around the tree, you see him standing not a foot away, pointing his rifle at Sean.

Shit.

You duck back into hiding before you’re spotted. This is exactly what you didn’twant to happen, and it happened anyway. Wracking your brain for ideas, you look around for anything that could be of use.

Think think think think think think—

There’s a corpse not too far from you, and you spy a knife on its belt. Moving purely on instinct and adrenaline, you snatch it from its sheath, turn back to the bounty hunter, and shove it through his throat right in the middle of his next sentence. He stays on his feet for maybe a second longer, then collapses.

You slowly back away from him. Dimly, you realize that the fire fight is over, that everyone else is okay, but you can’t bring yourself to focus on that. All you can do is stare at the body on the ground… the man you just killed.

“You alright there, friend?” Sean asks, still upside down.

“Uh,” your voice sounds far away to your own ears, “yeah. I’m fine.”

After that, you have maybe five seconds before your stomach lurches. Doubling over, you heave violently for a while before coughing, spitting out the taste in your mouth, and wiping your lips with the back of your hand.

“Hiya Sean. I’m Y/N.”

//

Accompanying Music: Still Breathing | Green Day

Ko-Fi

[canyouimaginethatstory]

I Need You (Lucifer X Reader)

A/N: This was written for a friend that was inspired by an edit they made of Lucifer. I kinda tweeked history a bit but I think i worked. ENJOY!

Lucifer was sitting on the porch of a small little cabin that was hidden away. It was a cabin he himself had designed. True the devil didn't really need a house. He could go wherever he wanted. But after whats happened he couldn't bring himself to go anywhere else. But he also couldn't stand to go inside. The small building held good memories. It also held memories that crushed the celestial being every time he stepped inside. Especially since those events had happened just two days ago. The memories caused more pain to the fallen angel than even his punishment from his father. The day he lost the one being he had come to truly love. And to top it off she was human. Her name was Y/N and Lucifer knew for the rest of his existence he'd never love another. Lucifer snapped his fingers and a bottle of liquor appeared in his hand.

He downed a drink full as memories of her played in his mind. The archangel had met her shortly after returning from the alternate world. she was a hunter from that world. Lucifer couldn't explain it. The minute he spotted her standing in the bunker library he felt drawn to her. He remembered how confused and scared she looked. Over time Lucifer would come up with small things to say to her. To his shock unlike everyone else who glared at him or avoided him she didn't. Y/N always replied back. Always offered him a warm smile. He often found himself smiling back. Not his usual cocky, menacing smile. But a genuine smile. As time went on they spent more together. Lucifer found himself growing very fond of her.

Unknown to Y/N when she would go on hunts Lucifer always stayed close to her. She never saw him but he was determined to make sure she always returned safe and sound. During one hunt a wendigo managed to corner her. Before it could hurt her she watched as it poofed away into dust. Y/N was confused until she sensed someone standing beside her. She looked over to see Lucifer looking at her. She swore she saw worry in his eyes. He wasted no time making sure she was ok. Lucifer took notice that she was looking up at him kind of weird. He was starting to worry again when she gently grabbed his face and pulled him down enough to place a small, soft kiss on his lips. He gently wrapped his arms around her and happily kissed back. And that's when their romance was born.

In his eons of existence no one of any kind of being made him feel like Y/N did. Loved, wanted. Around Y/N Lucifer felt more like an angel than the monster most other humans and beings saw him as. He truly loved her. Every time that fact hit him he would chuckle. He had despised the human race and yet he fell hard for one of them. And this fall he enjoyed. Not to say that the relationship didn't come with worry. Y/N was a hunter after all. Lucifer knew she wouldn't give up the life. So every hunt he was secretly there with her. He smiled remembering how she always referred to him as her guardian angel. He loved how it sounded. She has had currently been on a hunt. Tracking what seemed to be a goddess of some kind. That had Lucifer on high alert. If he were to pick a being that annoyed him more than humanity it would be gods and goddesses. Y/N was slowly scoping the rundown house her lead had brought her to. When she rounded the something grabbed her and pinned her against the wall. She looked and noticed it was vines.

"Well what do we have here?" she heard a strong female voice say as a figure walked out of the shadows. The woman had long red hair with back roses braided into it and she was wearing a flowing black gown.

"Who are you?" Y/N asked.

"I go by many names," she said, "but I think your kind mostly knows me as Persephone,".

"The goddess?" she asked a little shocked. The goddess nodded.

"Why are you hurting people?" Y/N asked, "aren't you suppose to be good,".

"Oh I was," she said, "but then I was taken to hell. To be the dark princes' queen," Lucifer shuddered from the shadows he hid in. "Who knew I would actually fall in love with Hades,".

"Hades?" Y/N asked. Then her eyes widened, "You mean Lucifer?". Again the goddess nodded.

"I was given a special spell to enter his cage," she said, "but then one day he decided I needed to return to my family. I begged him to let me stay. I loved him. But he said he didn't love me,".

"So all of this for an eons broken heart?" Y/N asked.

"Oh no," Persephone stated walking closer to her, "it was to Lure you here Y/N Y/LN,".

"Why me?" Y/N asked.

"Because your the one he wants," she said coldly, "and I want my prince back,". Soon Persphone's hand was around Y/N's throat.

"Let her go Persephone," Lucifer ordered suddenly appearing.

"I will only spare her if you let her go," she said, "you belong with me Hades,".

"The hades you know is long gone," Lucifer said, "First to all of any kind Hades was a god. But I'm not a god. You gods and goddesses are lesser creatures than I. I am an archangel. We were only a thing because of one of my father's failed attempts at storytelling," Lucifer's eyes glew red, "Now let her go!".

"Fine," Persephone said, "but if I can't have you back. Have my throne in the underworld back. Then neither can she," Suddenly a bolt of light flew from her palm and hit Y/N full force. The pain through her body was so intense she couldn't even scream.

"No!" Lucifer screamed and raised the goddess up in the air by her neck. Anger fueled the angel as he slowly drained the life out of the goddess. And just let her lifeless body turn to ash in his hand. He snapped out of the state of red he was seeing when he heard Y/N gasping. Like she couldn't breathe. "It's gonna be ok," he said kneeling down beside her. He placed his hands on her and started letting his grace flow. But something was wrong. It's was like his grace was blocked. Y/N saw the fear in his eyes. He couldn't heal her. "No no come on," he muttered to himself. Trying so hard to get his angelic powers to work. "come on!" he yelled as he kept trying to heal her. Y/N gently grabbed his hands.

"Lucifer," she said to get his attention, "Just take me home,". Lucifer still determined to heal her gently picked her up in his arms and zapped to the little cabin. When things got serious between Y/N and himself he had conjured the small house so they could have a place to hide away together whenever they felt like it. He gently laid her on the bed in the small building.

"I'm gonna heal you just hold on Y/N," he assured her kissing her forehead. Again trying to get his grace to work.

"Lucifer," she said gently touching his cheek. The sadness and fear playing in his blues eyes broke her heart, but she knew for her this was it, "just sit here with me,".

"Y/N please," he tried to plead.

"There's no curing me," she said right before a small coughing fit hit, "whatever she did to me is stronger than your grace. And I can't fight it,".

"Y/N please let me try," he said. Tears clearly forming, "please hold on. I need you,".

"My guardian angel," she said placing her hand on his chest where his heart was, "you'll always have me. Right here,".

"I won't have a heart if I lose you Y/N," he said. She reached up and wiped a tear from his cheek as it slid down.

"Yes you will," she said taking a big breath of air. It was becoming harder to breathe, "I want you to do me a favor Lucifer,". He nodded. Clearly trying to hold himself together. "Don't let yourself be the monster other beings think you are," she gasped again, "be the angel I know you are,". He leaned down and kissed her softly.

"I love you," he said as he gently held her close to him.

"I love you too Lucifer," she said softly as she closed her eyes. And he knew. She was gone. She didn't witness the full blown angel meltdown. With tears freely flowing Lucifer took out his hurt and anger on the inside of the small cabin. Breaking and smashing anything in his path while letting a pain filled inhuman screech escape. And now he was sitting on the porch of that same cabin. it felt like years had passed by but had only been days since he lost her. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to give her the goodbye she deserved but what was it? Then a thought came to him. She was a hunter. Was. That word sent a bolt of fresh pain through the archangel as it reminded him that his true love was gone. Really gone. He finished the bottle of liquor and smashed it on the ground next to the countless others that he had downed before it as he stood up. He walked up the small pebble path that lead from the house to the road. And just stared at the place that for short while felt like a home. But it only felt that because he had her.

"I'm sorry," was all he whispered as he waved his hand and the cabin was soon engulfed in flames.

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[silkling]

Of Mistakes Past and Missing Home

Of Moments of Life AU

———————————————————————————————————

“You enjoy painting.”

The voice came from behind Boulder, and the unexpectedness of it made him startle. Which, in turn, made him jerk and drag his paintbrush across his canvas. The result of which was him turning a small cloud above a red and orange flower field into a streak that cut through the whole picture. Oops. That wasn’t what he’d been intending.

He turned to see who had spoken, his optics shuttering with surprise when he realized it was Dreadwing. He was quick to realize that the Seeker’s expression had quickly shifted to one of regret.

“I apologize, youngling. It seems I caused you to ruin your art.”

Boulder only smiled, shaking his helm. “It’s no big deal.” he assured. “Part is the artistic process is making mistakes and having to start over. I did it a lot, in the beginning.” He glanced at the canvas, tilting his helm. “But that doesn’t mean every mistake requires you to start over from scratch. That’s the great thing about painting.” he remarked distractedly, tilting his helm in the other direction. “Sometimes, a mistake can be turned into something new, maybe even something better.” he narrowed his optics, then they lit up with a realization. “Sometimes,” he repeated. “All you need,” he reached out, then turned the canvas around so what had once been the flower field was now at the top of the painting. “Is a new perspective.”

When he glanced back, Dreadwing didn’t seem to understand. Boulder smiled. “Let me show you.”

He picked up his paintbrush again, then lifted it and in a few short strokes he added to the stripe that sliced through the picture he’d been painting. He changed colors, adding some more careful strokes around that, and stepped back. It would need refining, but the shape and idea of what he was going for were there.

“See? It’s a feather in the sunset, now.”

Dreadwing only blinked. “I suppose, though I’m afraid I do not much understand art. I always preferred to read data pads and learn about various fields of study.” There was a pause. “Skyquake enjoyed art.” It was a quiet addition.

Boulder found his smile softening. “Yeah? You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.” he encouraged. He glanced at his canvas. “I like art. There’s no set way to do it and there’s not much penalty for making mistakes. It’s nice.”

The Seeker hummed. “Do you believe most mistakes can be fixed with a new perspective?”

Boulder blinked, frowning. There was something off in Dreadwing’s tone. The others might not pick up on it, but he was good with other bots. He always had been. “…this isn’t just about painting anymore, is it?”

Dreadwing startled, surprise making his field flare. “You are far more perceptive than your teammates.” he said after a moment.

Blades smiled, turning to fully face the flyer. “Blades gets too anxious and wrapped up in his own helm to really pick up on more subtle emotions, Chase can barley understand the complexities of his own feelings, let those of alone others, and Heatwave is too proud and headstrong to really know what to look for. They’re all good bots, and I care about them a lot, but they aren’t the most..”. he searched for the right word. “Emotionally intelligent. Blades can read others really well when he isn’t swept up in his worries, but the other two are a bit hopeless.” He wasn’t saying it to be mean or to criticize. It was just the way his friends were wired, he knew. They were naturally better than him at a lot of other things. It was just how things were.

Dreadwing nodded, acknowledging his words. “You are correct. It is not just about painting. But it is my burden to bare, and I will not trouble you with my struggles.”

Boulder chuckled. “Well that’s a bad idea.” he said lightly. “You’ve already helped us a lot. Chase told the team what you did for him. We’ve all seen what you’ve done for Blades. Why don’t you let us help too? You’re one of us now, it’s gotta be about give and take.”

Dreadwing stared. “Wise words for one so young.” he sighed. “Very well, I will share my thoughts.” he vented harshly, then stared intently at the painting Boulder had been working on. “My mistakes are many, and brutal, and not nearly as neat or benign as a misplaced streak of paint. I suppose I merely cannot see how a new perspective would fix them.” he said after a moment.

Boulder was quiet, before he lifted his gaze. “Can I offer my thoughts?” At Dreadwing’s nod, he continued. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes. You’ve done a lot of terrible things. I don’t doubt that. And I know there are a lot of Autobots who would want to see you pay for those mistakes.” he tilted his helm. “I don’t know the full scope of the War. I don’t know everything you’ve done. But I do know how bad off Cybertron was before we left it.” The Seeker shot him a startled look, and he smiled a little sadly,

“I didn’t join the Rescue Force just because I wanted to help others, Dreadwing. In fact, in the beginning, my motives were entirely selfish.” he explained. “When I got to the age where I’d be expected to work, I was told that my first shift would be at a construction site in Kaon. It scared me. I knew how dangerous construction work was and I knew that even if it didn’t kill me it would kill my spark to be forced into something I hated so much. The only escape, the only chance I had at something different, was the Rescue Force. So I signed up to the Academy, and the day I got in was the day I escaped what I would have suffered through otherwise. The others may not have been as aware of just how bad things were, but…I was from the lower castes, Dreadwing. I knew.” he said quietly.

The Seeker was surprised, his optics wide. He saw how Boulder gradually shrunk in on himself as he spoke, and it made something unpleasant twist in him. The bulldozer was usually more at ease and bright, it didn’t suit him to look so…defeated. After a moment of thought, he put a hand on Boulder’s back and stepped closer. He knew Chase would not want more than this, but Blades preferred hugs as his method of comfort. Dreadwing didn’t know what the little green bot preferred so he wanted to play it safe. His bid seemed to pay off, because Boulder shot him a faint smile.

“What I’m getting at is, I know how bad off Cybertron really was. So even if I don’t know your exact circumstance, I do have an idea of what might have pushed you over the edge. I did originally come from Nyon, after all. Granted, I came from one of its nicer quadrants, but…it was still Nyon.” Boulder sighed. Nyon, at one time, had been the cultural and religious center of Cybertron, rivaling Praxus in beauty and grandeur. But under Zeta Prime, Sentinel’s predecessor, it had fallen into near-total ruin. “You made mistakes, and some bad choices, but you only did it in the end when you were backed into a corner and had nowhere else to go. Your choice was the only one you had that would let you remain alive, and that was wrong. No one should have to choose between death and living life serving a tyrant.”

Dreadwing hadn’t explicitly said any of this, of course. But Boulder was perceptive, like the Seeker himself had said. He’d read between the lines. He had understood what Dreadwing hadn’t been saying. It was one of the reasons he’d so quickly accepted the large bot as a new fixture in their lives. In his optics, this was Dreadwing’s chance at a life he should have had to begin with.

“That doesn’t change what you did, but it adds context. And given that the War destroyed Cybertron and decimated our people…” Which had been another thing Optimus had opted not to tell them. Dreadwing had had to share that particular tidbit. “Well, the War has to end someday, and if it ends in Autobot victory then we can’t afford to lock up every ���Con. I don’t think there’s enough Cybertronians left for that.”

He realized he hadn’t yet gotten around to answering Dreadwing’s statement, and embarrassment flushed through him. “You made mistakes. That’s true. But context adds perspective. And you have a chance here to prove to anyone in the future who would want to hold your past against you that you can do better. Griffin Rock is your trial run. Heal, relearn how to live without War, and make amends while you’re here. Then, when everything comes to an end and the dust settles, it’ll be a lot harder for people to say that you never tried to make things right or that you’re unwilling to change.” he looked up to meet Dreadwing’s gaze. “Prove to yourself that you can be better than who you used to be, and when the time comes for you to face your mistakes, everyone will see that you have what it takes to make it right.”

Dreadwing was frozen, and Boulder found himself smiling at the hints of shock in his field and gaze. “I…had not considered those points.” the Seeker admitted after a long minute.

Boulder chuckled. “New perspective, remember? I just so happened to be able to provide it. That’s part of the benefit of letting yourself trust and rely on others.”

The flyer shot him an indecipherable look, and nodded. “Thank you for reminding me of that, young one. I have not been able to put such faith in another since I last saw my brother. It is good to be reminded that I do not have to handle my burdens alone.”

Boulder beamed, nodding. His somber mood was seemingly forgotten and he gestured to his painting. “Glad I could help! Now, if you don’t mind, I have sudden inspiration for this and I’d like to finish it.” he said, stepping towards the canvas.

Dreadwing let his hand drop, head tilting. “May I watch?” At Boulder’s nod, he settled on a nearby crate and watched the bulldozer work. It was oddly soothing, seeing the colors go down on the canvas, watching the patterns and shapes form into a familiar image. Into…a very familiar image.

After Boulder finished the sunset and feather, he had begun painting…the Rescue Force Headquarters. And Dreadwing picked up the longing and melancholy in the youngling’s EM field. The Seeker’s spark ached at the bulldozer’s visible grief, and he frowned. So Boulder hadn’t so easily shrugged off his earlier memories of home and his life on Cybertron. Dreadwing was not surprised to see him painting the Rescue Force HQ. From what the youngling had said, it would have been the first place he was truly free of the shackles that had threatened to bind him.

Dreadwing said nothing until Boulder finished and stepped back, and it seemed he hadn’t realized what he’d been painting until then, because when he took in the whole painting his only reaction was to let out a quiet, surprised “Oh.”

Dreadwing stepped closer, letting his own field nudge at Boulder’s, and upon finding no protest he let it curl around the youngling. Boulder’s vocalizer clicked and reset itself before he was able to speak. “I hadn’t realized…”

Dreadwing hummed softly. “You miss it.” he could tell in the aching and longing that all but swamped the bulldozer.

“I don’t know why. Like I told you, I didn’t have the happiest beginnings back on Cybertron. But I still miss it. All of it, not just the Rescue Force. Nyon, too.” he said in a whisper.

Dreadwing put a hand on his back, keeping his field soft and soothing. “It is only logical. It was your home. It shaped you and created the foundation for who you are. And I doubt all of your young life was horrible. You said you came from the better areas of Nyon.”

Boulder nodded. “Yeah.” he admitted. “The All Spark Day celebrations were always amazing. And the bots were great. We all had the same origins and the same troubles so we all just…came together. We were…like a community.” he said softly. “We all took care of each other and helped each other and even if the city wasn’t always the best, the neighborhood we lived in was actually alright, for Nyon anyway. I never starved, even if I didn’t always have the best fuel. My life wasn’t great, but…it wasn’t horrible either. I miss all the good things.”

Dreadwing bowed his head. He couldn’t fully relate. He had had no such struggles in Vos, at least not until the Senate had banned any from leaving the city, but he could understand the longing. “Cybertron is dead, but it’s children are not. And hope for our home is not gone either. Perhaps one day there will be a way to return, and even if not, we still live. Once this War ends, it will be possible to keep the life of Cybertron’s heart and culture alive, even if the planet itself cannot be repaired.” he said softly. “You did not get to know Cybertron’s death as the rest of us did, for we knew our home was dying with each day the War dragged on. We had time to come to terms with the loss. You were forced to be confronted with it in a single, harsh day. The rest of us lost Cybertron in pieces, and you lost it all at once. The loss is harder on you than it ever was on me, or any other Cybertronian involved in the War.”

He paused to let the youngling take in all he was saying, the hand on his back smoothing up and down his tightly clamped armor plating. His tone gentled. “I cannot give you back your home, and I know that reminding you of your new home here on Earth will not make the ache go away. So I will only say this: grieve as much as you want for what you lost. Mourn what you were not able to have and the things you will never get back. If you deny yourself that much, you hurt only yourself.”

Boulder was shaking faintly, his frame just a few degrees too warm from the overwhelming force of the grief was processor was buckling under, and his optics threatening to leak cooling fluid in response. He turned a wide, shining look on to the Seeker. His field probed at Dreadwing’s as if asking for comfort, and his vocalizer clicked and reset itself before he actually was able to speak. “…Blades said you give good hugs.” he said quietly, his field holding the softest undercurrent of hope.

Dreadwing only hummed, gaze softening. So that was Boulder’s preferred form of comfort. He nodded, then wrapped his arms around the shaking youngling and pulled him close to his chest.

As Boulder trembled and let himself finally mourn the loss of his home, he found only one thought on his mind.

‘He really does give good hugs.’

———————————————————————————————————

And here’s the next installment in the “of moments in life” AU! I hope everyone liked it! This was fun! I have so much inspiration for this AU you have no idea.

Boulder is the most well adjusted of all the Rescue Bots. That’s why I figured he’d be the best one to help Dreadwing with his own issues. But, even then, he’s still just a kid! A kid who woke up out of a very long nap to learn that his planet is dead and everything he’s ever known has been destroyed. He hid it well, but that shook him hard.

Dreadwing now has THREE children! All he needs now to complete the set is the fire truck! He also needs proper one-on-one bonding time with his helicopter child because their first real binding experience was with everyone watching. So there is that!

Until next time, friends!

[legionofpotatoes]

I love your art, it is very detailed in a neat way. Was wondering how you got started making it as a source of income? How did you get your first paid work, I'd love some advice on how to get started, if that's ok

Thank you. Of course it's okay, although I doubt I have enough work experience in art to really delve into this. I only went full freelance this year, and had been juggling art as a side hobby until then. If you're still interested in my somewhat narrow perspective, and are okay with my long-winded rambles, I'll give it a shot:

So to answer your question fully, I'll describe how I started and move into personal advice and learnings later on. As a disclaimer, I am a white cishet dude in my late twenties with a moderate cocktail of mental illnesses, but overall I can pass for a functioning adult so a lot I have to say may come laced with privilege I cannot fully identify.

So uhh I began drawing in around 2012? I think? Maybe halfway through 2011? And I mostly made fanart for things I enjoyed and tried to branch out in communities that felt nourishing to my style and interests (I caught a bug for alt posters and enjoyed mainstream movies so I spent a long time on posterspy early on). There were a handful of opportunities that came from there but I could only accept a couple because of primary workplace commitments. Still, it showed that networking in a focused community was definitely a good place to start; I myself have huge trouble committing to social networks and really staying socially active, but I knew it was an essential ingredient in succeeding so I tried to make myself be involved in challenges and art support trains etc. as much as I could.

In parallel to all that I also ran a few third party online stores (redbubble, teepublic) for disposable income and would sometimes, if rarely, hit around $100-150 a month from those sources combined. It is a sort of thing that requires helper accounts on other social media sites to promote it on, because the stores themselves have a huge volume of content that translates into low organic discoverability. Obviously it was never gonna be the way towards financial independence through art, and with community projects being few and far between, I opened private commissions in around uhhh 2017 I think, focusing on offering a few styles I knew I could do well, and sometimes operating in individual fandoms (it was mostly a bioware thing to be frank). But I had to close them back down after a year or so, again because of work-life conflict and how badly it was burning me out. The reason I kept trying to monetize this hobby is because I honestly hated what I did for my main job and wanted to see a way out in some shape or form in the future.

And then in 2020 I had to quit my main job altogether because of *gestures at pandemic* and deal with a mental breakdown from all the wonderful things it did to us and me specifically. I took a short break and decided to give art a shot full-time, and that was around May this year. I was planning on opening up commissions again (and I still am), but a few sudden opportunities that fell in my lap moved that timetable down and now I'm grateful to even be doing something I am getting adequately paid for.

So, with that somewhat limited perspective, here's what I've learned that I'd tell myself if I was just starting out:

1. Being a fan of something can be a shortcut towards effective networking kickoffs. Which are important evidently. If you love something and enjoy making content for it, join communities, settle into a combination of social media websites that feel right for those interests + your body of work + your inner rhythm, and try to play to content discovery as much as your mental health allows you to. Like I said, I know that I myself am incredibly bad at self-motivating to talk to people, so I found that synergizing common interests into fanart - which I enjoyed making anyway - could be a way to give myself a gentle nudge forward and build those bridges leading to community activities, which then net experience and coverage. Sometimes even freelance projects from official avenues. Again; picking the right spaces for what you're after is key. Companies roam twitter, concept art recruiters scour artstation or linkedin etc, instagram can land you private commissions and collab opportunities, so on and so forth. Find your niche and try to kick up dust. However...

2. I do not believe that any social profile can replace a good portfolio. The thing that made an immediate difference to me this year was building a coherent, simple website with my best work front and center and a contact form on top. Every single opportunity I got came from that form (maybe via twitter or instagram initially, but always sealing the decision after going through the website), so I firmly believe that showcasing your skills and portfolio in a visually arresting and user-friendly way is a big priority. I had some reservations about tackling that task but fortunately I had help from a savvy life partner and we slapped it together via wordpress in less than a day. Twitter/whatever social media is prevalent in your target groups is definitely important to get the right eyes on your shit, yes, but those eyes will then look for a second stop where your work and rates are more clear and concise. Simplicity is key imo, I cannot overstate this. So make a cute, simple portfolio!

3. Your skills and rates will grow and change as you do. Let them. Over the years I built several lasting professional relationships from my obsession over mass effect and kept getting opportunities both from bioware and their partner companies, some small and some a bit bigger. A one-off job earlier this year opened an unexpected door to another much larger commitment, and then the work I did there brought some attention from small businesses looking for commercial commissions. These were all incredibly different projects in terms of scope and budget, and I've been tackling them all on a case-by-case basis and slowly coming into my own irt my needs, rates, and SOW thresholds. It is still a work in progress (and a LOT of literal work as well), and very much a thing I struggle with in publicly marketing, which is why I felt a tad underqualified to answer your question in the first place (obviously I did not let that stop me). But what it means for me now is that I am rapidly developing into whatever my "version" of a functioning freelance artist is, and when the conditions for that guy are met, I need to be able to confidently plant myself and operate from that space despite past precedents. Do not let anyone bully you into downpricing what you yourself perceive as legitimate products of personal growth and development. Speaking of which...

4. The shitty challenge of turning envy into inspiration, and paddling outside your comfort zones in full riot gear. it is hard, but realizing that being a miserable, self-hating artist in my early days got me nothing but more misery back was the first real step I took and what truly blew the hinges off. I was just not pleasant to be around, I would badmouth my work all the time, and it all somehow made sense in my broken mind because the validation I sought was purely external and the way I sought it was through eliciting sympathy via self-victimization (even when I made something objectively nice). It all led fucking nowhere. Except perhaps to my own narcissism that I one day managed to identify and start managing. So I started looking at things that made me seethe with envy and calmly deconstruct and figure out their inner workings instead, do studies, and find nuggets of inspiration or discover new ways to approach rendering or building up specific elements. It was an application of analytical diligence to what I wanted to be a purely emotional, esoteric workflow, but that I deep down knew wasn't. Art is a discipline and a skill, and maybe it isn't a straight line, but you gotta find some line to thread nevertheless. Being self-hating was almost an identity I had to break out of, and despite it still being like, 4-5% there? I realize its cause and effect on me, my work, and those around me, so it is with a conscious choice that I gently set it aside when I work and especially when I learn. It won't always stay quiet, but the effort is the difference. Your doors towards accepting true growth and venturing into uncharted territories, art styles, and networking will really open from there. But there's a huge caveat...

5. Toolsets, accessibility, privilege, and all the good things that enable artistic expression and profitability are not given equal to all. you might do all the mental work I mentioned to be ready to rock and roll and learn and draw your way out of anything, but digital art is a fucking money pit that asks almost too much at times. I don't got a good case study here but identifying and ensuring accessibility to the tools you need to do your best work is, like, super important. The ergonomics can improve as you make money and settle into the job, but the basics have to be made available to you. And some of that might not even be under your direct control. That can be anything from pen tablets to software subscriptions to opportunities in hiring sullied by sexism or what have you. You gotta navigate all that through careful networking and money/time management. I don't do a good job of devoting specific slices of time to work/study, and my primary clutch is iPad software which went from a good deal to a nightmare scenario over the years. So all I can say here is do what I didn't; network, invest in a PC/tablet, and pick a software you'll learn that won't burn a hole in your pocket.

6. Be nice to work with? This one is hard to articulate and has landed my own ass in hot water in my early years because of how socially inept I am, but nothing is more worthwhile than being.. like. a good person to work with. That can be anything like meeting deadlines, or sometimes missing them but eloquently articulating why, being generous in early stages, being communicable and not too wordy in your emails, having a good grasp on abstract artistic concepts and how to describe them in simple terms, having a clear, laid out framework of your working rates in commercial and non-commercial projects and sticking to those guns with grace, understanding when you need to say no and saying it well, the works. Just being nice. Sometimes that might mean going headstrong with something you believe in, or simmering down and sucking up to the big man, all relative and adaptive. Part and parcel of the service provision dance that we all have to do in order to make bank. Know your lines here, obviously, and don't like. work for nazis. or uh.. *shudders* exposure. but be nice and empathetic and communicable and word will travel eventually. Skill may be in abundance these days, but good people are most certainly not, and capitalism has a way of bubbling up scarcity. Grim, but uh, them's the breaks.

I know I'm ultimately telling you to like. Have a body of work, make a portfolio, grow, and network. But that's really how I see it for now. And being nice can be a cherry on top that sets you apart, along with the inherent irreplaceable voice of your artwork. I think I rambled on enough, but if there is something specific you need my help with, even if you want to come off anon and talk in private, please feel free.

[theyreonlynoodlesmike]

OH could you do one with the boys (poly or separate) with a demon s/o pretty please?

Oh, yeah, I can definitely do this one. Just letting you know that I currently have a fic on AO3 of an OC who’s a demon, so if you’d like to check it out feel free!! Here you go!!

Poly!Lost Boys x Demon S/O

The boys knew you were different. From the moment they saw you, they could tell you weren’t human. At first, David wanted to get rid of you. He didn’t want anyone else squeezing in on their territory, especially something they didn’t recognize

He sent Paul and Marko to go scope you out, and potentially get you alone and away from the boardwalk. The minute they came up to you, you knew they weren’t human either. In fact, you were much older than all of them and you knew exactly what they were. You smirked, and decided you’d have some fun with the clueless vampires

You flirted with them for the whole night, but you refused to let them get you off the boardwalk. Marko would try to convince you with physical affection and hinting at a night alone with him. He’d would brush your hair behind your ear and offer to take you someplace more private, giving you one of his signature grins. You’d refuse, and then Paul would try. He’d hit you with the funniest pick-up lines. After winning you something from the claw machine, you’d say he had magic hands. He’d then not-so-subtly offer to show you exactly what else his hands could do, and you’d have to either laugh or roll your eyes at how shameless he was

By the end of the night, however, the pair decided that you were a good time

You looked so innocent that you could steal things from the game vendors with ease. You’d knick Paul a thing of bubbles, and he practically fell for you right then. This big himbo spent the rest of the night blowing bubbles directly into your face just so he could pop them

You matched Markos fighting energy, and you nearly ripped the head off of a random drunk surf-nazi who decided it was okay to touch you. After seeing you nearly tear him limb from limb, Marko was all heart-eyes. Paul had no chance of holding back the both of you, but the three of you quickly ran away when Big Ed came to break it up

Instead of getting you off the beach to potentially dispose of you, the pair introduced you to the rest. David wasn’t happy. They were directly disobeying orders, but Marko quickly swore, “Trust me, you’ll like them” while Dwayne and Paul distracted you. David reluctantly gave you a chance. He had to admit, it was rare when Marko liked someone new

Dwayne was the next to like you. You took an interest in him because of how quiet he was, and it surprised him a bit. People didn’t usually try to talk to him because they thought he was too intimidating, and you just walked right up to him and asked him about his jacket. Dwayne doesn’t talk much, but he will always talk about his jacket. When you complimented it and told him how cool it was, Dwayne couldn’t help his smile. Okay, so maybe you were alright

Marko and Paul are in the background watching your interaction just grinning like two idiots. Paul makes kissy faces at Dwayne behind your back, and Marko has to push him to stop before he gets your attention

David is the last one to like you. He’s still a little suspicious, and he offers to take you for a ride. You really should know better than to accept an invitation from a vampire, but you accept anyways. David falls for you when you spend the entire ride to the cave holding onto him so tight he thinks you’ll break him, screaming from a mix of delight and fear whenever he does something a little risky

Once back at the cave, all of you come clean. They know you’re not human, and you know they’re vampires. They’re shocked you were able to guess what they were, and you quickly make it up to them by revealing what you are

You show them your true form. Horns, tail, claws and all. The boys think that they were fools for even thinking of getting rid of you because damn. They thought their true forms were cool

Once you settle into a relationship, you cause trouble with them. All types of trouble

You and David play mind games on people together, and you have a running competition going of who can get the wildest reactions out of people. It never fails to make the both of you laugh, and you know well enough to just let David win. David loves it when you possess people. He thinks it’s the funniest thing ever, and it’s the easiest way to get him to really, actually laugh. David doesn’t have to worry about being too much for you, because you’re the literally personification of evil. You don’t care if he’s a bit of a dick sometimes, and he loves you for it

You steal gifts for Paul, and he LOVES them. You stole him a stuffed animal? He named it after you and now it has a special place in the cave. You stole him some alcohol? None of the other boys are allowed to drink it. You stole him a new bracelet? He’ll wear it every day. Paul thinks your true form is the definition of sexy. The minute he sees you slip back into it at the cave, he’s all over you. He didn’t realize he had a demon fetish until he met you, but now he literally cannot get enough. 

Paul is the first to try to drink from you, and the boys quickly realize that demon blood is basically like junk food to them. It tastes good and it’s satisfying, but it’s not entirely healthy for them. It also makes them hyper and gives them some extra strength, which makes them realize just how easily you probably could’ve beaten them the first night. This makes all of the boys like it more, and at least one of them will take a bite each night

You and Dwayne will have chill nights on the couch reading or talking, and he’ll sometimes ask you questions about what it’s like to be a demon or what hell’s like. He likes to hear you ramble about it, and it content to just listen to you while you put your head in his lap. He’ll play with your horns or your tail if you sit in his lap. He likes to twirl it around his fingers and he’s so gentle that you don’t mind. He’s the only one that still babies you even if you are a demon. To him, you’ll always be his little prince/princess/princex, even if you can rip apart someone with your bare hands

Marko and you will fuck with people on the daily. He’s ready to tear Santa Carla apart and set it on fire if you wanted to. He’s easily the most chaotic of the four, and demons are the definition of chaos. And fun! You two take turns scaring people on the beach, and he loves to have you reel in his meals for him. He thinks it’s so cool when your eyes turn all black, and you can feel truly comfortable in your true form around him. He likes to fly with you in his arms, even if you can fly yourself. You two are never allowed to go to the boardwalk without supervision because a fight will ensue

The boys feel as comfortable around you as they would another vampire. You’re a creature of the night, just like them. Except, well, you don’t really need to sleep. You guard them during the day, and satan forbid any nosy little frog brothers try to sneak into their den

[sokkathebluewolf]

I am chickened out from gladiator because it is this long and it keeps getting longer is it worth my time to read it ??

... Uh, well. I can’t help but wonder if you’re aware this blog is run by the actual author of the story in question? I don’t know if you expect me to give you a non-biased answer when I’ve considered the story was worth 8 years of my life xD as far as I’m concerned, it absolutely has been worth it, but I can’t speak for the whole wide world when it comes to that. If you want the opinions of readers, there’s probably other blogs run by people who have read the story and who might have critical opinions about it... that may be what you were looking for. If, however, you were deliberately hoping to get my opinion on my own story... well, yes, for me it’s clearly worth it xD Otherwise, I would’ve quit ages ago.

The story is indeed very long and it keeps getting longer, and it will keep getting longer because we’re not done yet and won’t be for a while :’D if you’re the type of reader who can’t stand it when they catch up to stories and have to wait for updates, well, feel free to give it a shot when I’m done writing it, I guess? It’ll be a while until then, but it’s up to you. If you don’t like reading really long stories, then it’s probably better for you if you don’t force yourself to read this one, I know not everyone is ready to dedicate that much time to reading something, especially if they have lots of things to do. Hence, if the length daunts you, that’s alright, it daunts me too and I’m responsible for it xD it’s fine if that deters you from reading it.

But as the way you phrased your question almost sounded like you’re challenging me to give you some sort of sales pitch to catch your attention, let’s see if I can pull it off:

Gladiator is a massive ATLA AU, not only in terms of story length but also scope: it’s a complete rewrite of the entirety of ATLA in a more mature setting, starting chapter 1 with the characters 5 years older than they were in canon. Aang’s adventures in saving the world did not take place here because of a simple enough reason: Katara didn’t accompany Sokka on his boat on the fateful day when they were meant to find Aang, which means the story as we’ve known it simply doesn’t take place. I’ve taken liberties here and there, added some changes from canon when I needed to do so, in order to ensure the story works, but the gist of the story is to set a stage where the Fire Nation marched onwards, practically unopposed, and conquered the Earth Kingdom with the power of Sozin’s Comet (just in case it needs to be clarified, without certain technological developments, Ozai’s wild plan to incinerate the whole world wouldn’t happen, and if Team Avatar isn’t assembled before the Comet shows up, said technological developments simply wouldn’t exist... :’D). I’ve had to figure out how many details would change, how much of the original story would or wouldn’t happen without Team Avatar’s involvement, I think most my choices have been solid, but it’ll be up to you to decide if you think they are or not if you read the story.

The worldbuilding of Gladiator, then, is preeeetty huge and complicated because of that starting point. There’s a lot of elements that are completely new (such as the Gladiator League and all its derivates), some OCs, some lore expansion, so you can definitely say it’s an ambitious project. In a sense, I’ve reset canon to zero, and at the same time I haven’t, which makes things complicated but, for me, really fun to develop. If you’re interested in seeing more of the Avatarverse explored, characters repurposed, with new dynamics and relationships, Gladiator may just be what you’ve been looking for :D

In my experience, the main reason why most people stumble into this fic (other than by sorting FF.net’s ATLA stories by review count and drawing blanks upon glimpsing a Sokkla story on the first page xD) is because they’ve been drawn into Sokkla, or they’re looking for stories centered around Azula or Sokka. Gladiator, evidently, features all three such elements because, obviously, those two are the protagonists and their relationship is the beating heart of the whole tale. I’ve been asked in the past who’s the real protagonist and I honestly still have no idea xD but anyways, if you’re interested in reading a story with a toooooon of Azula character development, even if it takes place across a long, long time, this story may just do the trick. I’ve done the best I could to keep her character as true to what I believed a young adult Azula might become, within the circumstances of this story. She has grown a LOT in 200 chapters, goes without saying (if she hadn’t, I’d be one heck of a failure of an author x’D), so if you’re interested in seeing a slow but effective growth arc for Azula, you’ll certainly find that in Gladiator. Same is true for Sokka, but I think most people who come to this fic for Sokka are interested in seeing him being a badass, which we have plenty of as well xD still, it’s also a long and slow process for Sokka to grow into a powerful warrior, neither him nor Azula start out in the story with all the answers, and they both bump into many hurdles as they navigate their complicated lives.

There’s a lot of humor in Gladiator, perhaps more than expected with a story that has that sort of dark premise, but it’s, on great measure, because Sokka and Azula are inevitably given to banter xD if you want to read a lot of banter between those two, well, you may not be bored in 200 chapters because, while the nature of their exchanges does vary as they both develop, their conversations are usually pretty spirited and they love trying to outsmart each other all the time.

If you are already a Sokkla shipper and the main reason you’re here is because you want more Sokkla goodness in your life... I’ll just say Gladiator has become a bit of a dream come true for me as a Sokkla shipper as well, because it’s the perfect space for me to work with virtually every idea I’ve ever had for these two. Yes, there’s drama and conflict here and there, if you’re not too given to angst there’s a few parts of the story that won’t sit so well with you, though if you love angst you’ll probably enjoy them plenty... yet what I’m most proud of, with this story, is having developed their relationship not only as best I could, but I’ve also attempted to defy typical storytelling structures for romance stories, where the lead couple can’t seem to have a stable relationship because “that would be boring”. Screw that, man: these two have been in a serious relationship together in-story by now for well over half the published chapters, and I’ve had the time of my life writing their dynamics as a couple while the plot continues to develop around them. This, however, is not everyone’s cup of tea, so if you aren’t all that given to seeing such traditional romance storytelling structures dismissed because I wanted to write my favorite ship dealing with all their external struggles while finding strength in the bond they share, Gladiator may not hold your attention long enough for you to devote yourself to reading it beyond chapter 100-ish. On the other hand, if this subversion of romance structure is what you’ve been looking for all your life, or if it’s what you always wanted and never knew you wanted it, or if you’re simply curious as to whether it works or not, Gladiator may suit your interests fairly well. Again, Sokkla is the absolute center of this story, both together and independently, so if you want to see a rewrite of ATLA with them at the core of just... everything? xD that’s absolutely what you’ll find here.

That being said, there’s things I guess you should mind about Gladiator: I have some relatively controversial takes about certain things, including interpretations of fan-favorite characters that some people have been known to take offense over. I, personally, believe my interpretations of those characters don’t deviate that much from canon or that, when they do, the setting itself explains why the deviation works as it does, but due to the fact that I work with a protagonist who was in a villainous role back in ATLA, her relationships with some characters can be more complicated than a lot of people seem to believe they should be. Hence, if you’re not particularly adverse to reading content that brings up big questions about the motivations of certain characters, or how they’d react if the story from ATLA hadn’t happened exactly as it did, you’ll have enough fun in Gladiator. If, however, you don’t particularly care to see anything that shows beloved characters in a not-so-flattering light, this story may not be for you (though, if you’re willing to humor me and allow my story to question your perception of those characters, feel free to try the story as well). 

There’s also a variety of dark themes and situations in Gladiator, something that any reader should be warned about in this day and age: I am 100% against violence for the sake of violence, to name one such subject, and I generally try to portray it with as much nuance as possible, but even if I feature my own characters criticizing their violent world and wanting to put an end to the strife caused by the Fire Nation, some of the violence in Gladiator may be a little too much for the readers who prefer the tone of the original ATLA. Hence, if that’s how it is for you, it’s another reason to approach the story with caution. I won’t pretend I’ve handled every theme and subject perfectly, but I’ve never wanted the darker moments to feel gratuitous in any way, so if you’re open to reading a darker take on the Avatarverse, this may work for you after all.

Alas! If you want to see Azula growing out of the toxic Fire Nation indoctrination, if you want to see Sokka gaining confidence and strength as a man and warrior, if you want to see a fleshed-out but still very much villainous Ozai, if you want to see Toph fulfilling her dreams of joining an all-out fighting league where she can beat people up for a living, if you want to see a myriad of secondary ATLA characters (like Song, or Shoji!) given new lives and even genuine protagonism, if you want to see Zuko discovering he’s allowed to just... be happy? xD Gladiator may prove interesting enough for you.

Furthermore, if you want to see Azula being true friends with Mai and Ty Lee, discovering a dragon, developing new firebending styles, confronting her misplaced beliefs about herself, rebelling subtly (and lately, not so subtly) against her father, growing into a great leader who could change the Fire Nation’s nefarious direction...  aaand if you want to see Sokka fighting creatively (sometimes with TWO swords!), navigating the dangerous waters of interacting with Fire Lord Ozai, staying true to his beliefs while also learning that the world is not as black-and-white as he was raised to think it was, understanding himself better and making the most of his potential as a quick learner, writing embarrassing haiku and being an unapologetic rebel who goes toe-to-toe with Heads of State just because he can... yep. Probably read it? xD

Lastly... if you want to see Sokka and Azula grow through their mistakes, learning to understand each other, fighting side by side, training together, dancing to no music, learning the underrated pleasure of proper communication in a relationship, sassing each other left and right, flirting in ridiculous ways, taunting each other in many regards, laughing at each other’s terrible jokes, protecting each other fiercely, challenging each other to a spicy ramen eating contest, discovering indirect bending, being highly inappropriate at times and places where they shouldn’t be, making long, dangerous yet fun journeys together, sneaking around to meet up when they’re not supposed to, standing by each other in their darkest moments, watching over the other when they’re sick/injured, being ready to sacrifice virtually anything for each other, and even defying and defeating even death to save each other...? Well, I don’t know if there’s any other stories where you might find all of this, but I can guarantee you’ll find it in Gladiator :)

If none of this is convincing enough... that’s a shame, but I understand. If it convinced you to give it a shot, however... I guess I’ll just hope you enjoy it enough to stick around! :) thanks for taking my story into consideration regardless of whatever you decide. Have a nice day!

[uraharashouten]

Shouten Out Loud Podcast

Episode 1: Ricardo Montalbán Part 2  [ continued from Part 1 ]

Yoruichi: Are you sure these are the right time coordinates?

Tessai: I am highly confident.

Yoruichi: Well, it sure seems like “we” aren’t here.

Past Kisuke: Oh, hey, you two are back early!

Tessai: Yes. Early. We are back early.

Yoruichi: Something came up.

Tessai: Now, where were we?

Yoruichi: Ricardo Montalbán.

Tessai: Yes. Speaking of him, please allow me to introduce Soul Society’s own venerable, world-renowned, and incredibly handsome Mexican actor. You may have seen him in such movies as Once Upon A Time In Mexico, The 13th Warrior, and Assassins! Just don’t ask him to take his shirt off—it's too sexy! Please welcome... Westly Hartford!

Yoruichi: How did you find working with Sylvester Stallone?

Westly: A-ah.. Thank you... uh... I don't remember working with Sylvester Stallone...! Haha... I’m... American…

Tessai: American? Hmm... please allow me to check my notes... [ papers shuffle ]

Tessai: Hm. Well, unfortunately, my information appears to have been incorrect. It seems you are better known as a... prognosticator of events.

Tessai: As a self-proclaimed Oracle, did you find Karakura just as you expected it?

Westly: Yes, and more! It’s perfect.

Yoruichi: [ coughs ]

Tessai: And would you say the same of the inhabitants of the Urahara Shōten?

Westly: Of course. You’re all amazing. Jinta-kun can be a little rough at times, but he’s cool.

Tessai: I think you will find us all in general agreement on that point. Is there anyone or anything that you have encountered since arriving that has defied your expectations?

Westly: Well... not really. Everyone is pretty much how I expected them to be. Strong, smart... fun. Urahara-san can be scary at times, but I think it’s because his thought process can be very unpredictable.

Yoruichi: That’s certainly one way of putting it.

Tessai: … I suppose it depends on who you are.

Yoruichi: See, I’m not the variable one around here.

Tessai: I understand your own arrival here was unpredictable enough to fluster our Tenchō. As I recall, he took considerable interest in your unique bracelet. Would you mind describing it for our listeners, and sharing its significance for you?

Westly: Oh... um, sure. It’s a replica of Ishida Uryū’s bracelet. The one his grandfather had. I connect to Uryū... so, I wear it for him. So I don’t feel so alone. It was a gift, and I’ve treasured it since.

Tessai: I see. And has Ishida-san come to appreciate that fact?

Westly: I don’t think so... when I met him, he seemed almost angry. I get that reaction a lot... so, I don’t mind it.

Tessai: Perhaps he will, in time, considering the significant role he and his father will be playing in your near future.

Past Kisuke: [ background audio ] What was that?

Yoruichi: I think that’s quite the aspirational notion.

Westly: True. But if he hates me, I’m okay with that…

Yoruichi: However... You didn’t really answer the earlier question about coming here as an American. What would you say was the biggest change you had to deal with?

Yoruichi: Was it the squat toilets?

Westly: Yeah, kinda. I don’t have very good balance and due to injuries to my back in the past, it's hard to squat down to use them!

Yoruichi: They do require a certain range of motion in the ankles. Don’t worry, even the Japanese hate them. They only persist because of economics.

Tessai: I believe Tenchō retained them as long as he did simply for the aesthetic. It is fortunate that our facilities had been upgraded by the time you arrived.

Yoruichi: I wonder who was responsible for that.

Westly: Yeah! [ soft laughter ] I wonder...

Tessai: When it comes to your prognostications, you have a self-imposed limit, do you not? Would you care to explain that?

Westly: [ sighs ] One question, one answer. One per person per day. It’s to keep everything in order and to keep myself safe. I know Aizen isn't a threat right this moment, but he still is one. Anyone with a mind like his would use my knowledge to hurt the Soul Society and the World of the Living. So I use that rule to the fullest... but hints now and then never hurt to steer everyone in a safer direction.

Tessai: Please allow me to assure you that there is no need to be as circumspect as usual. Our listeners will understand your concerns.

Yoruichi: Doesn’t this security schema rely on an assumption that minds like Aizen’s—or say, Kisuke's—can’t, Sherlock Holmes-like, reassemble the whole picture from the clues they may gain access to?

Westly: Out of all the possible outcomes, only one can come to light. So the one they think might happen may not happen, with or without my hints or answers.

Yoruichi: Well, wouldn’t the ultimate threat really be something like Tsukishima stabbing you with his Fullbring and gaining unrestricted access to your entire timeline?

Westly: I dunno if that would be possible... besides... he’s currently not that much of a threat. Now that Ginjou has been taken care of by Ichigo.

Yoruichi: [ clears her throat ]

Tessai: Hartford-san, is there a particular outcome you would hope to see avoided at all costs?

Westly: … Yes... but... if it doesn't happen... all hell could break loose and become worse...

Tessai: It is—we do not—it is beyond the scope of this podcast—

Yoruichi: I too dread and fear the possible return of New Coke.

Tessai: … The fault is mine; the question was too broad.  Perhaps instead I should ask: do you at times find yourself overburdened with the knowledge you possess? Is it tempting to divulge it all?

Westly: … Yes. It... it is...

Yoruichi: You could always write it all down and leave scattered clues leading to where it was hidden, all in... one piece.

Westly: I don’t think that would work for me, Yoruichi...

Tessai: It requires a certain flexibility of character...

Yoruichi: That’s a funny way of saying, “The price of airfare is quite high.”

Yoruichi: Maybe if somebody would pay higher wages...

Westly: I’m okay... really. [ soft laughter ] But... yeah. If I just reveal it all, I could get in big trouble... I’m just lucky I ended up here and not the Soul Society.

Tessai: If Hartford-san would appreciate a secure location where it may not be found, perhaps I could assist. If nothing else, such an archive would be invaluable to future research, I am sure.

Westly: Yeah... it probably would...

Tessai: I will leave a note to myself.

Yoruichi: Well, at least Nicholas Cage will be affordable.

Yoruichi: Here’s a question: if you could give your past-self one bit of advice, whether that was before you arrived here or immediately after, what would it be?

Westly: … Before... I’d say: “You’ll be somewhere better. Just wait. You’ll be okay.”

Past Kisuke: That's good advice regardless of circumstance. —Would someone care to explain why—

Yoruichi: And after?

Westly: … After? I’d probably say... “You're home.” But I’d say it’s for my own mental health...

Past Yoruichi: What in the hell...?

Yoruichi: I knew I should’ve brought the eyepatch. Well, time is a luxury we don’t have!

Past Kisuke: Wait, are they like, reigai?!

Tessai: Please do not ask questions, Tenchō!

Yoruichi: We’re Martians, don’t think too hard about it! [ sharp explosion sound ]

Wes: A-ah! What’s happening…!?

[ outro plays ]

[cocopineo]

I Think You're Peachy

After her mother rushs to Milan for a business trip, Dai and her sister are left to spend Christmas with Seraphina. Once their annual Christmas party comes around Dai gets nervous when she is faced to meet the greatest heros of all time.

❃ Rating: Fluff/ E for Everyone

❃ Word Count: 1300+

❃ Author's Note: This is a late Christmas fic I wanted to do. So some people like Sera and Dai together so this is like a little SerDai fic. Also from now on I think I'll post my stories here so it'll be faster and better for people to critique! I'm gonna make this cute I'm learning how to do this on tumblr. This writing is meh not the best but I hope you enjoy!~Coco

Dai Tai and Jia belong to @laylaylamode

Seraphina belongs to me

------------------------

Christmas was always a big holiday in the Wayne household. Mostly due to all the heroes Seraphina had heard on TV were there, but she always knew them. Her father was a son of Bruce Wayne after all, so seeing Flash or Superman was always a treat. This year Sera wanted to invite Dai over to meet them all since her mother had some fashion gig in Milan leaving Dai and her sister alone.

"It'll be fine Dai, I've never seen you this nervous. You're usually the one calming my nerves." Seraphina giggled as her best friend stirred in her room.

Dai's hair was sticking up and she was fidgeting with her sweater. Meeting big superhero was meh for Dai at times but members of the Justice League. She was about to have a cow, lucky her mother wasn't here she'd get a mouthful about her messing up her makeup or outfit.

"Calm I am calm. Just how do you not loose your cool in front of all of them?" Dai asked her.

Seraphina continued to wrap up gifts and just giggled at Dai. She placed a bow on the gift she finished wrapping and walked to sit with Dai on her bed.

"Well I'm always nervous in front I mean we're training as heros and they've saved the world multiple times. I've known them since I was in diapers so I have an idea of how they're are. Yet that still doesn't mean they're hard on me all of them are like mentors." Seraphina sighed and took Dai's hand.

"And this year may be more tense since I'm more in action with the League and these powers. I'm real sure I'll hear some things, nothing rude but just guidance, maybe even something about that water tower. Boy did that make a mess." Seraphina grimaced but she saw Dai give a little snicker turning into a burst of laughter.

"Ahhh yes the water tower that thing had my mom mad for weeks. But was it funny of course it was, those powers of yours may be haywire but you're doing great. And I'm surprised by you, yet coming from a caring person yourself you have a way with words at times." Dai said to her.

Mar'i and Jia stood at the door peering in on the two. Also trying to get a glimpse at presents until Dai had noticed the two skamps. They tried to scramble away but her hair had wrapped around their waist dragging them in.

"Shoot. Caught by the hair again." Jia groan struggling to loosen her grip while Mar'i squiggled around.

"Now what are you two doing trying to look at presents early." Dai let go of them and quickly shoved them into Sera's closet with her hair.

"Well we were up here scoping for something we had lost in the house. Yet dad said it's time to come down our guest will be here in awhile. You know how meticulous he is." Mar'i said to them straightening her outfit out.

Dai felt her stomach turn and her hair stand up. Until Sera had squeezed her hand tightly bring her at ease, Sera looked at her from the corner of her eye giving reassurance.

"We'll be out in a second okay we just have to finish wrapping gifts and we'll be out. Now you two need to go and not snoop anymore." Seraphina scooted the two out the door and locked it behind them. 

Mar'i and Jia stood outside the door and looked at each other puzzled.

"Should we have told them about the rabid demon rat we unleashed or-" Jia asked until Mar'i had covered her mouth.

"We'd be next years fertilizer if we did. Once Nia and Aj get here but for now maybe we should take some of the cheese from the platter." Mar'i grabbed Jia's hand and both ran off on their journey.

Soon family members and friends we're gathering around conversing and laughing over the past. Sera and Dai were still upstairs finishing the last of the gifts. Sera looked at Dai once more and saw her hair fidgeting again.

"It'll be fine Dai. You'll make a good impression just being you, your mother isn't here to do anything." Sera softly spoke to her.

Dai's hair softened back down and she didn't look at Seraphina analyzing the ground. Dai sighed and took in a deep breath trying to relieve her tension.

"If she was here she'd be screaming at me for yelling this ugly sweater your mom made. But I like it, I guess with a mother like mine I get aggravated. It's always look your best, shush or you're embarrassing me. I just want to make a good impression on your friends and family. I was always taught that and to be prim and proper, but it's never good enough for her."

Her hair started to become agitated again and her marks started to show. She didn't realize it until she looked in the mirror, this was embarrassing. Dai closed her eyes and took in a deep breathe, "Calm yourself, calm yourself." She repeatedly said in her head.

Dai stood up and straightened herself up before they were to head down stairs. Sera didn't stand up get but just looked at her for a minute. She got up without replying and went into her closet rustling for something. After a minute or two she came out with a small peach colored box with a sparkly bow.

"I was going to give this to you Christmas but maybe today is a good day. You can dazzle our guest with it." Seraphina placed the gift in Dai's hands waiting for her to open it.

Dai took off the bow and opened the box. It revealed a golden locket in the shape of a peach. The locket also came with matching peach earrings, it was absolutely adorable. Dai opened the locket to reveal a photo of her and Sera with cursive writing. She read the words "I think you're Peachy!" she fought back tears and let out a strained laugh trying to not laugh.

"This is so cheesy. And you're cheesy you goof. Dai said through tears.

"I saw it in Hearthfire Boutique and thought it would look nice on you. Also I'd know it'd be a cheesy gift, but you'd get a giggle at it. We can put it on and it'll match with your sweater." Sera giggled.

Dai looked at her perplexed and looked back at the necklace. That place was expensive how could the girl get something like that for her. Dai was ready to put the locket back in the box until Sera shut her hands on it.

"There is no need to think about how I got it Dai. I wanted to get it for you because you've done a lot for me. No questions asked now I wanna put it on you okay."

Dai smiled and gave Sera the locket to put on her. Sera sat her down at the vanity and  moved her hair and put the locket it on. Dai inspected herself in the mirror, Sera was right it did look nice on her and the earrings brought it all together. After putting on the jewelry Sera moved the gifts back in the closet closing it shut. Both her and Dai stood at the door both nervous to see everyone. Dai squeezed her hand and looked at her.

"You're perfect the way you are Dai flaws and all. You don't need to be fancy and lavished to make a good impression, I just wish your mother could see you like that. I

see you as a wonderful girl who I'm grateful to have in my life. I know I'm being mega cheesy but it's true." Seraphina gave her a smile and squeezed her hand as well.

Dai felt more tears forming but attempted to fight them, didn't want the makeup to run.

"Thank you Sera and we've got this. No mother and no problems. Now let's go I wanna try your dad's cookies before they're gone." Sera and Dai walked hand in hand together ready to seize the moment. This Christmas would be one to remember for the books. Especially after the rat fiasco.

[idontfindyouthatinteresting]

Death Stranding: A Love Letter

Death Stranding, we’ve been waiting for you for a long time and to be honest there were times where we thought, we’re never getting this game, it just isn’t going to happen. I had this game on pre-order for over 2 years. 2 YEARS! The expectation level was obviously very high, and from my perspective it firmly... delivers. 

WARNING - SPOILER ALERT - This is a review/breakdown by someone who’s finished the game, for people who have finished the game. You have been warned!

Death Stranding revels in it’s cinematic credentials constantly and with intense consistency. From panoramic mountainous vistas which you can control, to dazzling close ups of it’s digitally recreated stars, to just watching Sam go to his Private Room. It’s stunning and a testament to Kojima's cinematic knowledge with every shot. 

Not only does Death Stranding handle this beauty, and intricate world building and story telling with ease and grace; it’s concepts and emotional ideas (which I’ll go into more later) are translated so strongly that you can’t help but get swept up in it. This is the sort of experience that I’m used to getting from films, who embed this framework within their narratives so deeply, in a way it’s expected. Death Stranding hits you like a freight train. Through the power of the performances, the narrative and the fresh nature of the ideas it’s portraying. 

Death Stranding’s emotive credentials are set firmly in 2 scales, the more typical big stuff, saving the world, stopping the extinction, well trodden video game territory. But where it truly sets itself apart, embodied so perfectly when Sam walks away from Die-Hardman’s Inauguration speech, and sets to surprise is in how it handles what could be argued to be the smaller scale stuff. 

Sam’s emotional world is rich and powerful, from his Aphenphosmphobia to the fact that we see him openly weep and break down holding a crying child. This is a male lead in a video game, and as a woman I loved seeing Sam being so vulnerable, to the point where he’s physically naked in those shots (ssshhh, there are academic reasons too.) It’s fresh and poignant, and as a woman it gives me access to media rejecting the male gaze so completely. 

On the notion of the Male Gaze, there is some stuff to unpick about the game’s female characters, as much as I would have loved to have seen more, with some ethnic diversity also, it doesn’t subject it’s women to typical video game stereotypes. The creators of the network (whatever it’s true intentions) are all women, Amelie found the path through the country to place the terminals, with the hardware and software created by Mama and Lockne respectively. This network is recognized as the saviour of humanity, the only male input is Sam connecting the terminals with the Q-pid, a Q-pid created by Mama and Lockne. Fragile is the only character powerful enough to get Sam and all the other characters to where they need to go through her DOOMs. I think the shows opinion on Male Gaze is shown in the story, when Fragile is using Sam’s shower, and Sam moves to the glass, his intention is to see her timefall damaged skin, but Sam is punished for it by Fragile as he questions her motives, she’s aggressive and she puts him thoroughly in his place for it. I love love love the physical powerplay in this scene between them. 

Sam is reluctant, profoundly unhappy, arguably suicidal, and is convinced to do all of this purely to help save his friend. Sam is a constant reminder that there is so much more at play here, drilled home every time he flinches away or holds Lou in his hands. Although there is a world to save, it can be for nothing unless you save yourself too. Sam and Fragile’s final discussion brings this home. Before leaving to stop Amelie Sam is full of hope, but in losing Lou, he does a 180, he’s just a man getting to the next sun rise. Something I’m sure a lot of people can identify with. 

This narrative nuance is reflected in Cliff. Through the memories we’re shown a man just trying to save his child, not the world, not willing to sacrifice his child to be made into the activation code for a city, no matter the cause. He just wants to be a father and that is his driving force. Mads Mikkelsen was my gateway into this particular world, safe to say I have an intense soft spot for him. I can go on all damn day about how talented he is. He’s the best in the business, no one does what he can, no one else can give a performance that is so real and so raw but so full of fight. Mads can take the your most profound story line, otherworldly in it’s extreme, and he embeds it so firmly in the human experience, you’ll never be able to untangle that web. That is why his ability to do what he does can almost never be questioned. You let him get to the heart of your story and that is what he’ll do to it and that is why it works. Mads Mikkelsen could easily have been Higgs, based on early trailers we suspected he was Higgs, but he isn’t. Could not be further from it. 

Death Stranding’s narrative dichotomy in this way is resembled perfectly in the games two ‘Boss’ characters, Cliff and Higgs. Higgs represents the greater plan, the end of the world stuff, and Cliff the smaller scale human to human emotion. Sam must overcome both. 

Death Stranding has an even wider scope, an even wider message. Kojima hasn’t been shy about his message of connection being prominent and poignant in the current political climate, being from the UK I feel this so keenly, but the same is present in the US as well. Humanity driven further apart, through legislation, walls and boarders. You can see the potence of the message being translated through a video game, when alternate reality, video game violence and social media is being blamed for these things. It’s fighting back in a way. Death Stranding’s gameplay is full of positivity, from the signs that other players can leave you that replenish your stamina, make your BB happy, to the fact that if you knock a MULE out in water they have a neck float so they don’t drown and die. 

The lack of violence in this way and use of ‘non-lethal’ guns, which are described as such, were again refreshing. I’m not a first person shooter gamer, never have been, could not be less appealing to me if it tried. But Death Stranding doesn’t just have a gun aversion, to me it is explicitly anti-gun. Again another important message, particularly when the game is set in the US. One of my favourite moments in the whole game is Sam listening to Die-Hardman’s grovelling apology for his actions, his thoughts and his prayers, only for Sam to shove the gun Die-Hardman brought to the Beach back at him, warning him with disgust at his actions, by passing on the message, “that gun won’t work here” and walking away. I completed a video game without taking a single human life. It rejects the notion so fully and completely. You stop the extinction, save humanity, not with a gun but by hugging Amelie, reminding her about how valuable human life is, every human life. It’s not to be thrown away, you need to give it a chance to bloom.

In Death Stranding humanity is left cowering underground, separated by an invisible enemy in the form of BT’s, it has to learn to fight back, with literal blood, sweat and tears. If you couple the notion of the invisible enemy with Bring Me the Horizon’s ‘Ludens’ Lyrics:

Sticks and stones may break my bones but soon the sting will pass But names can dig so many graves, you won't know where to stand

I love this line. (BMTH wrote that song in 5 days to get it into the game in time, by the way!) As children we’re taught that names shouldn’t hurt us, but actually they do. In a time where the effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, all of this “name calling” are putting people in their actual graves, these lyrics should be heard more keenly. Political leaders put people in their graves with their words, through direct or indirect means. These words are the BTs of our world, invisible hands which destroy people.

Some of the criticisms of the game are based on elements of game play, like the deliveries you need to make, as slow and tiresome. Higgs himself addresses this asking whether you’re tired of the grind, begging for a “game over”? 

The game is not only acutely aware that perhaps trudging all over the US with vast cargo loads isn’t what you want to be doing, but it knows it’s what you need to do. And truly, in what way is that different from shooting your way through levels and scenarios to get to the end? Death Stranding makes you feel the sacrifice Sam is making and you experience that with him, every time you fall and drop your cargo, every time you stumble down a mountain side, every time you wreck your stamina bar climbing an incline. Video games can’t really make you feel what it’s like to kill an enemy soldier with an air strike, but hell it can make you feel frustrated at having to climb another mountain with a boat load of heavy gear. 

Death Stranding rejects the idea of a ‘game over’ and other video game staples in other ways, it mockingly calls Higgs and Cliffs narrative end “Boss fights” and when Deadman says that wiping Lou’s memories, her connection with Sam in order to make her work better than a piece of equipment is just a ‘do-over’ a reset, normal, Sam rejects that it’s not that simple and Norman’s performance brings that home acutely. It’s not just a game. 

From style, to message, to performance, to rejection of the Male Gaze, Death Stranding is an intense and beautiful game. It managed to hook me so thoroughly (as I’m sure you’ve been able to tell from my live tweeting/blogging) and I don’t imagine I’ll get the hook out of my heart for a while. It speaks to something higher and I love it for it.

Keep On Keeping On.

[inspector-montoya-fox]

#7 - The Black Chateau

Setting: this is surprisingly one of my favourite hubs from the game. this is Paris at its prime: the music, the details, the cafes in the street, the little boats, the whole aesthetic is a mood. yeah, there’s danger around every corner, but it’s still the most romantic city in the world and we get to explore it. even its nightclub aspects give it that turn of the millennium, euro club let’s do coke in the bathroom scene. the interiors in this episode give me life, honestly. stoney, candle-lit underground tunnels that are connected to the nightclub is so Scooby-Doo but also France, and the theatre-related interiors showcase a certain grandeur and stand out on their own. i’ll also remind you that this is Sly’s home. we never get a definitive reason or backstory on the gang’s switching from railroad car to that huge safehouse they couldn’t possibly pay rent for, but this new version makes an appearance in Sly 3, so it’s safe to say that this is the gang’s home (although the concept art indicates that SP had plans for something else: https://inspector-montoya-fox.tumblr.com/post/182678860237/inspector-montoya-fox-cool-concept-art-for-band). anyway, having the first proper episode take place in Paris is perfect for the tutorials because there’s the comfort of failing whilst being at home. and this is what The Black Chateau truly is: a tutorial. as jam-packed with action and bedazzlement! as it is, it’s a crash course. and it works because it’s a perfect hub for learning the ropes with Bentley and Murray gameplay. other than that, i’d like to add that Sly 2 takes a new approach with its hubs. instead of having Sly make his way to the baddies by literally blasting himself to their lairs via canons or rockets (...), the gang tries to lure the baddies outside. you’ll notice that Dimitri, Rajan, the Contessa, Jean Bison and Neyla all make appearances before their bossfights, the former 3 also coming into close contact with us within the hub (eavesdropping, following, pickpocketing). this all being said, the gang’s way of luring the baddies outside is altering the hubs and the peacock’s collapse kicks it all off majestically (we then move on to bridge bombings, shooting planes, demolishing dams, etc.). amazing stuff.

Characters: i won’t be referring to Sly and the gang like i did with Sly 1 except if they have a turning point/revelation, so the Characters section will mostly be reserved for the baddies and Neyla or Carm. nonetheless, i would like to acknowledge Matt Olsen’s voice acting because he perfectly captures Bentley’s anxiety when out in the field. and now..... Dimitri. where to fucking start? the lizard is a star. his sleazy posture, how he’s a gay heterosexual, how strongly i’m able to imagine his scent of cheap cologne and Marlboro Golds. and the crime of using a demonic, robot owl’s tailfeathers to print counterfit cash suits him perfectly. he might not be your favourite character, but you have to admit the pimp is as well fleshed out as Mz Ruby, and that’s all because of the dialogue and the voice acting. fucking perfection. the dialogue is so well written, full of his nonsensical phrases and mannerisms, he literally engraves his mark onto the player’s brain, like i can hear him talking about clocks or whatever at will. having him go first was such a good choice because he makes a lasting impression whilst keeping it very ‘neighborhood crime’ with the counterfeit, in comparison to global drug networking. as we’ll find out by the end of the game, he too played a part in the Klaww Gang’s plans, but having his own counterfeit sidegig (which he prioritised, surely) is so him. however, what never made sense to me is his power, that static shock he shoots during his bossfight? is he a mutant lizard? like, Rajan controlling lightning i get, Contessa mastering hypnosis i get, but this is..... what?? i’ll let it slide because of his sick dj mix but still..... and then there’s Neyla. she retains her mystique even if she gives us a reason behind her assistance. the whole thing hits different when you know what she’s up to because lines like ‘Now, legally I can't enter Dimitri's nightclub without a warrant... but I happened to have obtained a key to his backdoor... which a person like yourself can use however he pleases.’ come across as seductive and evil, and we watch Sly fall for it (all of it) because she knows how to pamper his ego. prior to her big reveal (the first one at least), the way with which she moves and handles herself has us think that she’s Sly’s female counterpart, and therefore competition for Carmelita (as outdated as that sounds...). Carmelita’s presence in The Black Chateau is muted, almost non-existent. she only pops up at the end cutscene and SP masterfully uses her absence in order to play up Neyla as a potential ally and girlfriend, despite my thoughts on Carmelita having a bigger presence in the Monaco extension which was scrapped.

Themes: the theme of duality, first and foremost. Dimitri is complete and utter gutter trash, but is supposedly a high-class artist as well. he’ll scream and screech but is also one heck of a host, even if the world perceives him as a washed out artist. the level’s interiors are separated into two categories: underground and non-underground. the underground parts represent Dimitri’s true nature, a sleazebag and a crook, whereas the theatre and the club present him as a pristine pimp and professional nightclub owner. the two clash because of their nature, stoney and shady rooms for crime vs grand and majestic rooms for art. duality can also be seen in the Sly and Neyla partnership, the birth of a (short-lived) alliance. Paris as a theme instead of a location, because of such a dominant presence. this is not just any city we’re in. SP respects Paris and this is further proven by the fact that it’s the beginning and the end of the game. the fact that it’s a catalyst belongs in the final episode’s analysis, but in The Black Chateau the city is also a theme because it embodies humble beginnings, the warm comfort of going through trial error whilst at home. and it’s not exaggerated and pushed into kitsch, à la Sly 3′s Holland where the cheese acted as trampolines... what i mean by Paris as a theme is the emphasis on art and charm, showcasing Europe (because Prague is also a European city but is used as a basis for the trademark spooky level). nighttime and pleasure are two that go together. nighttime is used differently in every episode, or location. you’ll notice that this is the only episode in the game where the night sky is the traditional navy, dark blue (instead of purple, green, red or baby blue as seen in later episodes). it’s a traditional night for a heist, nothing out of the ordinary. it goes together with the theme of pleasure because Dimitri’s establishment is a nightclub and defines the episode to a certain degree. pleasure is interpreted as danger disguised as oblivious fun. the nightclub isn’t the common criminal base and the funky pink walls and disco balls come into contrast with the threat of the Klaww Gang’s operation. even the gang falls for it, trusting Neyla without second thought and failing to pick up on the greater scope of things. they think of it as easy fun, joking around while on the job. lastly, the motif of lights. Paris is known as the city of lights and all of the hubs (interiors included) capture this. the opening cutscene even mentions ‘the flashing lights’. it circles back to the pleasure theme because it can be seen as a distraction and a malicious trap to fall into oblivion (yes, i’m a writer).

What I Like: i freakin love Paris. everything about the setting’s execution, its detailing, the music and the hubs. all of it. i love how the hub is a circle, allowing you to run around in an endless loop, the rat guards striped shirts and red berets, that water tower Bentley enters. everything is just so European and petite and cute, like a well constructed Playmobil set.

What I Don’t Like: hmmmm............... although i love the title’s enigma, i’d really like to fucking know what the ‘Black Chateau’ represents or is connected to??? also, i wish we could explore more of the nightclub? like while it’s open? the episode’s strength lies in its interior missions, the best of the bunch being Theater Pickpocketing, where we get to explore the stage, the balconies, backstage, the dressing rooms, etc. i fucking love that mission and wish we could get more, instead of Murray throwing rats at those annoying security alarm machines that just happen to be violet.....

Quote: either Behold the majesty of gravity and inertia! or I have no idea what you're saying. And your suit sucks or anything Dimitri says because... Dimitri

[current-mcr-news]

Carry The Fire Podcast with Gerard Way: Full Transcription

Welcome to Carry The Fire, a podcast where we explore the big questions of life through the lens of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I’m your host, Dustin Kensrue, and my hope is that through these conversations with people of diverse and divergent backgrounds and beliefs, we can glimpse the world anew through each other's unique perspectives.

Gerard: Fiction is something to a degree that you'll hide behind in a way, and it allows you to expose yourself… I always saw the characters that I've played as some aspect of myself turned up to 12... Overall, I considered The Black Parade to be a death fantasy… death and rock and roll were kind of intertwined… Every time you get onstage you have to be prepared to die.

Dustin: Hey everybody. It is episode five of Carry The Fire podcast. Today we are joined by Gerard Way who is the singer of the band My Chemical Romance as well as also having released some killer music on his own. He has spent the last few years though, spending most of his time writing comics, including the very popular Umbrella Academy comics which have recently been adapted into a great show on Netflix. In our conversation, we talk about creating worlds and inhabiting characters, we talk about the beauty and the difficulty of creative collaboration, the complexity of trying to incorporate time-travel into a story, and we also get into Gerard’s spirituality a bit, and I want to give a brief heads up for some of you regarding that.

Gerard is going to talk a bit about magick and witchcraft. While I’m no expert on either, I do know enough to know that these words in this context probably don’t mean what most of you think they do. Some of you might not bat an eye hearing them but a lot of you probably came up inside a worldview where someone who was interested in these things was considered very evil. Gerard is very far from that. If I can try to provide a new framework for you it would be this: Generally, modern practices of magick and witchcraft, while being diverse in form, incorporate various insights and rituals from animistic pagan and folk religion, as well as incorporating some psychological intuitions from different fields and traditions. Practitioners generally tend to be very concerned with the earth and our connection with it. While this is not my spiritual tradition or practice, I recognize that we all have things to learn from each other. I think especially the ideas in these traditions about finding our place within the natural world are a helpful corrective to a lot of the western traditions’ tendency to want to dominate over nature, rather than seeing ourselves as a part of an interconnected web of being. I had no idea we’d be talking about any of this going into this conversation, but in the spirit of this podcast, I was so excited to hear from another unique perspective on the good, the true, and the beautiful, and I hope you will be too. Let’s get into it.

Dustin: Thank you so much for doing this.

Gerard: No problem.

D: It's super good to see you.

G: You too!

D: I'm trying to think of the last time we even saw each other and I- it was probably on tour.

G: Was it on the arena tour?

D: That's what I'm thinking.

G: It's been a long time.

D: And we were playing a bunch of World of Warcraft.

G: Yeah! That's my strongest memory. I have a lot of great memories of you guys, obviously, but the one that sticks out in my head the most is when we're all playing Warcraft in this big room and you had to go onstage, and you literally had your rig hooked up, you had your in-ears, they weren't in yet, but you were wired up, and I believe you even had a guitar, and you were still playing. You went literally from the keyboard from the computer right on stage.

D: Dude, I got way too addicted to that game. It's your guys' fault.

G: It was our fault, yeah!

D: Oh dude, it was so fun. It was probably like, what? Eight or nine of us playing in a room.

G: Yeah!

D: I don't know if it was the tour after that or two, and I had started just dreaming in Warcraft, and I went onstage one day and I was onstage and I had this moment where I was like, "I'm done! I can't," because I had tried to wean a little bit and it wasn't working, so I was like, "I gotta go cold turkey."

G: Yeah.

D: And I got offstage and I gave someone the Warcraft and I said, "Don't give this back to me. I'm done. I deleted it." Yeah. Which is funny because I seriously hadn't played video games since then until I just bought my kids a Switch.

G: Okay!

D: And they're playing Zelda.

G: Zelda, yeah.

D: And I decided to treat myself.

G: Nice, nice.

D: That's why I got a Switch for the road because Zelda's the best.

G: Yeah, I play Zelda with my daughter and it's so big though. We're having a really hard time getting a handle on the game because it's so vast.

D: Yeah, it is crazy. 

G: I had to quit Warcraft too. I had to go cold turkey because it was still in my life when I wanted to write The Umbrella Academy.

D: Oh.

G: And I actually had this- I was at the crossroads and I had this moment where I was like, "I can either play Warcraft or I could write this comic."

D: It's a time sink.

G: Totally.

D: That game especially.

G: Yeah.

D: The social aspect, it just ends up being enormous.

G: Yeah yeah, so that was it. I quit and never looked back. 

D: So, I was gonna ask you, prompted you earlier to think about it. What was something that gave you a feeling of wonder as a kid?

G: Okay so, I have a couple really obvious-

D: Or multiple things.

G: Multiple things, yeah, I have a couple real obvious answers.

D: That's alright.

G: And I know this is such an obvious one but Star Wars was really big. It just was and I know it was for millions of people. Once I saw that, it was like the first movie my parents ever took me to see and I was really young, but the thing back then was they were running these in theaters for like three years.

D: Oh really? I don't think I realized that.

G: Yeah. So Star Wars had come out and then they just kept running it until The Empire came out. I must've been two or something and they brought me to the theater.

D: Oh wow! I think I remember, I think my first memory of going to a movie was seeing- Was Jedi '84?

G: '83, yeah. I think it was '83.

D: So I remember going to see that, standing in line with my dad.

G: Me too!

D: That's the first, I don't know, there's just those moments where you have those- I remember listening to certain records in my dad's car.

G: Yeah.

D: And he'd turn it up loud.

G: Yep. That's one of my favorite memories of my dad is him picking me up from school early and then taking me to go see Jedi.

D: Oh that's cool.

G: Yeah, we waited in big lines that wrapped around. Even back then, there were a couple people ordering pizza. That's one of my favorite memories of being with my dad.

D: That's super cool. What about Star Wars specifically created that wonder? Was it the world?

G: The world, I think. It was the world, the scope, just this world you wanted to live in, that you wish existed and there was only three movies back then, so your brain would kinda fill in the gaps like, "What is it like? What are their supermarkets like?" And your brain would kinda- and later, that would come into play when I would RPGs, which is another thing I'll bring up in a minute. There was a time where I was in college, or right before college, where we were playing a Star Wars RPG that I was running, and it's just such a rich world.

D: Like a tabletop one?

G: Tabletop, yeah. And it was a really great game and it was super epic because the one thing about it was everybody already had a sense of that world in their head.

D: Yeah, you don't have to build that already.

G: Yeah, you didn't have to build.

D: You just add onto it.

G: Yeah yeah, so they all knew the world so when you would describe something, everybody had a vivid picture in their head, and then anything you hadn't seen before, you would just describe, but people had a point of reference so they would know.

D: That's pretty cool.

G: But yeah, Star Wars was like the first one and I was just obsessed with that for my whole childhood, playing with the action figures with Mikey, and we had our own sarlacc pit which was a dirt pit, and stuff like that. And then the other thing that was really important to me were tabletop RPGs. So, I was in the 3rd grade at a new school, but I still hung out with my best friend who was still at the old school. Anyway, basically he had an older brother- his friend had an older brother in college and he was way into D&D and he would run D&D for us, and we're all 3rd graders. That was a major moment for me.

D: That's pretty cool.

G: Yeah, it was. And to have a college-aged Dungeon Master who knew the game inside out was a really amazing way to play.

D: That's pretty cool.

G: Yeah. And that really opened up a big world for me. So then I would go on to- so I never stopped playing since the 3rd grade and then I took a try at being a Dungeon Master, and even just from playing and Dungeon Mastering, I learned how to tell stories, and I was really into that. You'd learn things even about leadership if you go to become the party leader, or if you're the DM, you learn how to keep people engaged. You learn how to keep momentum, things moving.

D: That's interesting. I feel like that's something that maybe a lot of storytellers are not paying as much attention to as they used to. There's the book I brought you, it's called Invisible Ink.

G: Oh, cool!

D: This guy, Brian McDonald, who's kind of like a story guru. He consults at Pixar all the time, teaches screenwriting, he's very cool. But he grew up watching a bunch of the classic movie directors coming up in the '60s and '70s or whatever, and they all had this vision of what stories were and really paid attention to how- they thought about how the audience would react, imagined them in the theater, or whatever. And then, something he was talking about is he just feels it's dropped off, that interplay of trying to connect and let that influence how you're actually creating the story.

G: Yeah. I'm excited to read that. I'm a big fan of structure and I'm a big fan of outlines.

D: Okay.

G: Yeah.

D: You'll like this.

G: Yeah! Good! I'm a big fan of those things because the way I see it, if you know your whole story, and I always feel like you don't need to know all the details, you don't need to know all of it, but you should know kind of- you should have some kind of outline or a structure, and then you get to have fun because you do know the beats you need to hit, but all the spaces in between, you get to fill that in.

D: I think it's rare that anyone doesn't do that and does it well. Stephen King's maybe the only one that I can think of that just doesn't write that way, and somehow he just has internalized it or something, and it ends up working itself out.

G: Yeah.

D: That's cool, man. So would you say those kinds of things, these imaginary worlds, these built worlds, are the things that still bring you the most wonder and joy in a sense?

G: Yeah! And it's something that I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to build my own worlds that people could share and be a part of, and that was something I did all throughout the band was just kinda- and building all these different worlds and the people that inhabit those worlds and the details down to the stickers on the Trans Am for Danger Days, those were all planned out. So my favorite thing to do is world building. And I've done it for projects that haven't come to fruition as well. Like I was working on this sci-fi TV show for a while and I just went deep, and I just came up with- with my friend Jon Rivera, we just came up with this whole world. So world building is something I'm a big fan of. And it's something I've noticed people talk about when they're talking about either my work with Umbrella Academy or My Chemical Romance, is the world building aspect, so. World building as a job title isn't a job, but I think it's- that element is, I feel like, one of my strengths.

D: Yeah. As far as the world building, I feel like you've not only built those worlds, but with MCR, you lead in inhabiting them in a way.

G: Yeah.

D: It's fun to watch. It's scary for me a little bit, watching it. Is it scary for you or is it safe for you? To be in that character.

G: That's a good question. I think there's a bit of safety that comes with being a character, and obviously, I was looking up to my heroes when I was constructing that. I was looking at David Bowie, especially around Black Parade, that's when I was like, "I'm gonna be a character." Early Black Parade stuff was like, I had written this line out that basically said, "What if Death had a rock band?" It obviously changed from that and we all became Death in a way, the whole band, but there was a safety with inhabiting a character, and the character I was during Black Parade was fun because I think in an entertaining way or a positive way, there was this level of disdain that you would have for you audience as playing as The Black Parade. But it was, to me, a healthy kind, because you were just playing really. And I thought that was a fun aspect of that character. But then there's a lot of you in the character and it's kind of- I always saw the characters that I've played as some aspect of myself turned up to 12. It's interesting when I would meet people afterwards and stuff, they would be like, "I didn't think you were gonna be so normal when I met you," just because the way I would act onstage. And I met a lot of kids who were like, "I thought you were gonna be such a jerk."

D: That's funny.

G: Because I would play one, you know. And it was just part of the drama for me.

D: Yeah. That's cool. Have you read any Ursula K. Le Guin?

G: I love her! I just reread Earthsea, the first one.

D: I haven't read it. I've heard it's amazing.

G: Yeah, it is.

D: I just got into- I read The Left Hand Of Darkness.

G: Oh, I've not finished that, but I loved what I've read.

D: It is a very slow book, in a sense. It's not exciting, in a sense, but it's got this patient movement and by the end, I was just floored by it. It was fantastic.

G: I have to finish that one. I love her and her work, especially Left Hand Of Darkness, it does have a patient movement, I think that's the best way to describe it. And I've also loved the way that she talks about storytelling in writing, and one thing I've read from her recently that really stuck with me, this is a quote of hers, and I'm paraphrasing it, I don't know if I'm getting this exact, but she basically said, "Not every story needs to have a message. It could just be the act of telling a story. You don't have to lecture your readership or your audience, or hit them over the head with this big message. It doesn't have to have one."

D: Which is interesting because I feel like she is a very message orientated writer in a certain way, but maybe that's coming in in a very natural sense.

G: Yeah.

D: [C.S.] Lewis talked about that too, where he was like, "The last thing you wanna do is write this thing that's just trying to tell something." He's like, "Whatever truth that you actually believe, those things are coming out if you just write."

G: If you just write, I agree with that.

D: Like Narnia, apparently, started from- he had a picture in his head of a faun in a snowstorm holding a parcel with an umbrella. That's the whole world built out of that, and he loved that image, and his love for it blossomed into something.

G: Yeah! That's awesome!

D: It's super cool. So, the beginning, in the intro of Left Hand Of Darkness,  Le Guin says, "I am an artist, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor." So even when you're making music, you were talking about you're making these fictions, you're lying as it were. I was watching something the other day, you said something like, "Sometimes fiction is closer to fact," or something in that range. Is that accurate of how you feel creating, that sometimes by- you're getting at a deeper truth by telling a fiction?

G: Yeah yeah. That could happen, and I think it's kinda magical when it does happen. Black Parade especially is filled with a lot of metaphors and maybe the fiction is something to a degree that you'll hide behind in a way, and it allows you to expose yourself. Because exposing yourself is really hard and one of the- just allowing yourself to be vulnerable is really hard and one of the things that Rob Cavallo said to me when he was producing Black Parade was, "Making a record, a great record, is you're almost pulling open your insides and you're pulling all your guts out," and things like that, and it's a brutal process because of that, but I think I did that on that record a lot. There's a lot of self loathing and there's the Catholic guilt I grew up with appears in stuff like Mama and House of Wolves, how you think you're destined for Hell and things like that, but it's cool, yeah. Fiction gives you a way to express these things and make yourself vulnerable and open yourself up and that's the way I like to use it, and then sometimes, there's stuff that's just straight fiction or fantasy. Overall, I considered Black Parade to be a death fantasy. A rock and roll death fantasy because I thought death and rock and roll were kind of intertwined in a way, because I think Mick Jagger had said once, "Every time you get onstage you have to be prepared to die." 

D: That's amazing.

G: Yeah! So, it was this rock and roll death fantasy, Black Parade.

D: That's cool. I have the worst memory. So, I was preparing for this and somebody was like, "Hey, ask Gerard if he really wrote the treatment for the Image Of The Invisible video," and I was like, "Holy shit!" I totally forgot that-

G: Oh my god! 

D: That you did that.

G: Oh my god! That was so fun too! I totally forgot! I gotta rewatch that.

D: What's funny too is I watching your videos and I was like, "This is so cool, these characters. We've never really done anything like that. I guess Image Of The Invisible is kinda like that," but didn't even make the connection, but it's totally that way because you were building that world!

G: That was so much fun.

D: And I got to live in it and it was cool.

G: That's cool. Yeah, I was really honored that you asked me to conceptualize a video for you guys.

D: It was fun. I don't think we've ever had another one where it was such- well, definitely not such a developed story.

G: Right. Didn't we do something too where we had lights on their helmets?

D: Yeah.

G: Their eyes were supposed to be lights or something?

D: Yeah, maybe it was like a single eye was a red laser-y light.

G: Yeah. That was cool. I'm gonna rewatch that when we're done.

D: So you grew up with the Catholic guilt, you said. Did you ever feel like you inhabited that world, or was it something being kind of thrust on you that you didn't- I mean, it's hard as a kid.

G: Right.

D: You don't even know, but I'm curious about that and then where you'd feel like your kind of big frame worldview is now on like, "What are we all doing on this rock?"

G: Right, right. My family, my parents, they weren't super religious. I come from this Italian Catholic background though so it was the kind of thing, my grandmother would go to church sometimes, but never would push us to really go. But for Christmas or something, my mom would go with her. But I think they thought, my parents thought, "This is the right thing to do. We should raise our child with believing in God and raise them Catholic because we're good. Even though we're not always there, we're good Catholics." So, they kind of put me on that path and I think the first thing I learned from being Catholic, or just religion in general, maybe it's somewhat at times specific to Catholicism, is this fear. And this fear of Hell, that's they really instilled in us. I think I was in the 1st grade or something, really young, and there was this thing that would happen where they would talk about death and Hell and all that stuff, and there was this period which, because of these classes, these after school classes, I would have these bouts of just crying. I guess I was coming to terms with the fact that my parents wouldn't be there forever or I would lose them and they would die. But then the additional fear of, "Well, if they behave bad, they'll go to Hell, and I'll go to Hell too," and so, there was this period where it was really upsetting for me, and I channeled that. I tapped into that stuff on a couple records, and on Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, I borrowed a lot of Catholic imagery, and that second video for Helena being in a church, and things like that. So I kinda started- and in some of our merch designs too. I remember we had one with a cathedral and a rosary and all this stuff, and then that would come to a head in the song Mama on Black Parade but, yeah, my journey in terms of spirituality and where I came with that. Obviously, at some point, I was confirmed in the 5th grade, so I did that. But then after that, my parents didn't have any more requirements out of me, because it was all about baptism, communion, and confirmation. And if you did those three things, you were good, then you could go as you wanted. So they never pushed me to go. And then, over the years, obviously I got into punk rock and I didn't believe in God for the longest time, and then I just started to really need spirituality in my life as I got older. And I'm more of the sense where I believe in there being some- I don't know if it's a God, but I do believe there's something.

D: Something, yeah.

G: Yeah. There's something out there, there's some kind of reason. I also believe we come from- because we do, we come from star stuff. 

D: Yeah.

G: We come from the universe. We're birthed from the universe. I'm a believer in the fact that the universe is chaos and born out of chaos and it's uncontrollable, and there's kind of no rhyme or reason to anything, and tragedies and accidents and bad things happen and good things happen, and it's really just chaos being this constant true thing in the universe, and I came to those discoveries through my study of magick, occultism, and things like that, which I was inspired to do by my friend Grant Morrison. He's kind of like a big brother to me, mentor, he's really supportive and he's very into magick. And so I became interested and he's given me some lessons, and I actually wanted to do a podcast one day with him where I literally just sit down with him and have him talk about magick, because the way he describes it is, you would almost need it to be recorded to fully explore all the theories and things like that. So, I started to need magick, high magick, chaos magick, and eventually witchcraft, and witchcraft is something I felt more comfortable with because I always felt like, when I was reading about chaos magick, it felt like it was about making the universe bend to your will, whereas I was looking for something more that you were in service to the universe.

D: Interesting.

G: I think I got this from reading Crowley's book on magick, but basically, I don't know exactly what he said, but basically reality is your perspective. And that was kinda one of the key points of magick, your brain builds your reality.

D: Yeah.

G: And I thought that was a really great take away from all that. So, yeah, I've been interested in spirituality and things like that and studying shamanism, and all that stuff. We, with our daughter, we didn't raise her with religion, but we, Lindsey, my wife, is really spiritual too. Not like a practicing witch or anything, but she's just naturally adept at those kind of things. She's really in tune with nature, she knows a ton about herbology, a lot of the founding cornerstones of witchcraft is just kinda part of her life. And so, we do raise Bandit with- Lindsey teaches her all about herbs and plants and we have a witch's garden, and communicating with nature and trees and animals and things like that. So we're teaching our daughter that there is a kind of magick to life and magick does exist. It's not Harry Potter magic, but you know.

D: A lot of that seems like it's about an embodiment, a connectedness to everything, to other people.

G: Yeah, connectedness, for sure, yeah. And just teaching her that she's connected to the universe. And if she grows up and wants a different kind of religion, that's great too, and I know I explored those. I was looking for a religion in art school, because I had a class where we had to study all the religions, or most of them. And I kept going from each one and I was like, "I like bits of this one, but I don't like that." I couldn't find one that I landed on until I got later in life into more spiritual things like magick and witchcraft.

D: Cool. So with something like witchcraft, which for a lot of people are gonna hear it and have not at all the idea that you're talking about I think, so something like the idea of goodness in that, where does that derive from? Is that coming from the inter-connectedness? It seems like there's a moral view to it rather than morality being a decree maybe. It's something that arises out of those connections?

G: Right right, yeah! I think the positivity in it, to me, and here's the thing. I don't consider myself a practicing witch or anything like that, I just read a ton of this stuff. And that's one of the things they kinda warn you about with magick and everything, you could read all the books you want and some people spend their whole life reading books and never practice, but the thing they tell you to do is practice. And I think yeah, the goodness comes from being in service to the earth. Being connected to that and also, what I've learned about witchcraft, or at least the kind of witchcraft that I like, is it's very gray. It's not black magick, it's not totally white magick, it's just understanding that the universe and all things in it are very gray, there's no black and white to everything. And I've really liked that the most, because I get older- when I was younger, I was very black and white about a lot of things. Especially in the earlier days of My Chemical Romance, everything was really military and rigid, and black and white, and this is right and this is wrong. You kind of get older and you start to realize, "No, things aren't that simple. Not everybody's all good or all bad. There's a grayness there." 

D: Which, I think, I have a song of the latest Thrice record called The Grey and it's dealing with that idea of deconstructing the black and the white, and I think the biggest danger there is the idea that even if there was straight black, straight white, you are betting a lot on your ability to discern it at any given moment.

G: You are.

D: And then if you are actually holding to it, and you're basically betting on your ability to discern this thing and now it's of the most ultimate consequence and you filter out everything that doesn't fit into that, which is basically a bunch of yourself and a bunch of everyone around you.

G: Yeah, exactly, yeah.

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D: So I have a couple questions I’ll pepper in here from some of the Patrons. James Corvit said, “What is the purest form of goodness you’ve experienced as a human being, and how do you explain it?”

G: Purest form of goodness.

D: I don’t know, it’s deep.

G: Yeah.

D: I don’t know if that’s from someone or just internally.

G: The purest form of goodness. It’s a tough question but it’s a great question. I think the purest form of goodness is forgiveness. Or that would be something I would say is a very strong form of goodness. Even when you see people that the most terrible things happen to them, like a serial killer murders their loved one and then some of these people, not all of them, and I don’t blame the ones that don’t find forgiveness, but some of them find forgiveness and are able to forgive people for the most atrocious things, and so that feels like a really powerful form of goodness.

D: Yeah, I feel like in the middle of me deconstructing a lot of that stuff, something I was like- the idea of grace and forgiveness is something that goes deep there and I’m not willing to let go of that. Over the centuries, there’s been countless efforts to define beauty. Aristotle defines beauty as having “order, symmetry, and definiteness.”

G: Hm.

D: But it’s always struck me as a fairly anemic version of beauty. And then I saw on the cover of the My Chem single Sing, there’s a question on there that says, “Would you destroy something perfect in order to make it beautiful?”

G: Right.

D: This makes me think that you probably also take issue with that definition a bit. I wanted to ask, is there something about brokenness that’s near the heart of beauty for you?

G: Absolutely, yeah. And that, I was trying to remember that phrase a couple months ago too, that was on the cover saying, yeah, “Would you destroy something perfect to make it beautiful?” And yeah, I think beauty is way more complex than symmetry and I think there is a brokenness to beauty. I think, you look at a lot of musicians, you could arguably say from a certain perspective, if you subscribe to symmetry and things like that, a lot of musicians or front-people, men and women in bands, some of them you could say they’re not traditionally beautiful, or not what you would think is beautiful, but something about their vulnerability or their confidence and things like that, make them beautiful. And that’s in any case, even non-musicians. Like people that just go to work in the world and have normal jobs, there is something about beauty that is much deeper than just what you see visually.

D: One of the Patrons was saying that, “My Chem’s music reinforced to me and my friends that being an outcast was okay.” Was that something that you wanted people to feel? What were things growing up that made you feel like it was okay to be an outcast or a misfit?

G: I think by the time I was definitely not in elementary school- well, I didn’t have to struggle with being an outcast in elementary school. I actually went to a really cool school, it was just a normal public school, but the one thing I thought looking back that was very interesting about those years is we all got along, we were all friends, even the weirdest kids, and a lot of kids would just have these parties back then and everyone was invited. And then my first real experience with being an outsider was going to middle school, and then so, you aren’t all friends anymore, and there’s all divisions and cliques and things like that, and then I found myself to be one of these outcasts, one of these weird kids that listened to heavy metal and wore flannels. There were only a handful of us in the school that were like that. But it wasn’t until high school where I fully embraced being an outcast. The first year, freshman year was really hard because I was really an outcast and I didn’t even know where to sit at the lunch tables, because I didn’t fit in with any of these groups. And it turns out I ended up sitting with a table of metalheads because they saw me sitting by myself and they were like, “Why don’t you sit with us?” And that’s where I would learn about certain bands that they were into, like Murphy’s Law and the kind of things they were listening to back then. But it was important for me to have something that spoke to outsiders with My Chemical Romance because when I was that age, there wasn’t anything that really spoke to me like that. Or there wasn’t something so specific to being an outcast. There was lots of stuff that if you were an outcast you listened to like The Cure or The Smiths, so of course, I found all those bands. But there was nothing specifically geared to somebody that feels invisible or is an outcast or rejected and things like that, so when we started My Chem, it felt very much like we were channeling the energy of being an outcast onto whoever listened to us. And in the early days, it wasn’t a lot of kids. I mean, there weren't any kids that really listened to us. It was kinda older punk rockers, it was very interesting in the beginning. And of those older punk rockers, a lot of them were actually outcasts as well.

D: Yeah.

G: Within a scene so. And maybe they weren’t even full-on punk rockers, they were just a guy with a leather jacket at a bar who just saw something in us.

D: Yeah. That’s cool. The Patron Jonathan Clark is asking, “Do you have any rituals or practices that you do to find your center, wait for yes, get connected, see the good, the true, the beautiful in others, or let go a bit?” Basically he’s kinda asking if you have any meditative, mindfulness, something to practice.

G: Right right. I really enjoy T.M., Transcendental Meditation. Actually, I’m in an interesting spot with this though.

D: That’s where you’re chanting.

G: A mantra, yeah. You have a mantra and you kind of just repeat it in your head. It helps you, basically when you’re doing it, it releases negative energy and tension and things like that, and it’s very good. But sometimes, at least in my experience, and this is why I’ve kinda paused my practice at the moment, sometimes it could release trauma and things like that, and sometimes you end up reliving that and it makes it- and granted, your body is letting go of it, but sometimes it’s hard and I found when it would get its most intense, I would catastrophize things in my head and be- so I would be focusing on the mantra, but then things would happen like I would be thinking about the worst things that could happen to my family or my loved one, or something bad happening to them or getting hurt.

D: Is that something that happens to you? Do you tend to catastrophize in general?

G: Sometimes. I do tend to catastrophize sometimes, and it’s something I work on in therapy. I’m a big believer in talk therapy and, I don’t try to push medication on anybody, but I always just share my experience, and that it’s helped me.

D: Yeah.

G: I was somebody who was extremely imbalanced all through the years of My Chemical Romance, and go through these extreme highs and crushing lows where I wouldn’t get out of bed for like three months, but then I would be in a manic phase, and I would be up until 4am working on zines all of the sudden, and I would say to Lindsey, “I don’t need to sleep. Why do people sleep? I don’t get it.” So there was a lot of that, and then Lindsey found me a therapist and we did a lot of really hard work and I faced myself a lot, I looked inward. And at the same time, before we were able- before we explored and did the work, we stabilized my brain chemistry. That was the key. Once we were able to stabilize my brain chemistry-

D: You were able to actually…

G: Do the work, yeah. So, I am a big believer in T.M., it’s just that sometimes I struggle with it, but I know all I have to do is check in with the T.M. center and explain what I’m going through, and actually my therapist had found me this woman who’s one of the heads of, I’m not sure if it’s the David Lynch Foundation or something else, she actually said, “You should come in, I’ll talk to you, I’ll walk you through the trauma stuff and all the hard stuff.” But I’m a big believer in it because when it was cooking, and there were two months this year where it was totally changing my life until some of the negative came out. It was, I was a more productive, more focused, calmer, more engaged, more present. I’m a believer in it and a big believer in therapy and just having somebody to talk to.

D: Yeah. That’s awesome. On the drive up, I was thinking about Umbrella Academy and I really love it in general. I remember getting the comic when it came out. The show turned out so great. Are you really happy with it?

G: Yeah yeah! I’m totally happy. At the end of the day, it was somebody else’s vision and I was able to let go of that. I think I needed to. When the process first started in making it a TV show.

D: That’s gotta be hard.

G: It’s hard.

D: That’s your baby.

G: Yeah yeah! But I was really upfront when I was talking. I went in to meet with UCP and Dawn and the people there. I was with Dark Horse and they said, “What is your goal?” And I said, “My goal is to make great comics because I already went through a whole big thing with Universal trying to make this a movie and it just drained me.”

D: Oh okay.

G: And it was full of really difficult things, it took up a lot of my time, and disappointments, and I really turned my focus back to comics because I was like, that’s where you’re in charge. Nobody can- you have an editor, obviously, if you have a great editor, you’re doing great work together and you’re making changes, but it doesn’t feel like something creative is being ruled by committee, and that’s what it feels like in Hollywood. I was really upfront with Dawn and I said, “I want to make great comics so you guys have good material to make a good show.” I ended up being more involved than that. The extent of my involvement is giving notes, especially about things like wardrobe, costumes, the look and feel of the world, the fact that it’s kind of an alternate reality, and I give notes on scripts and I give notes on edits and things like that, so I am involved for sure. But I was able to realize this is somebody else’s baby and I’m happy with the results for sure. My whole thing is the proof is in the fact that everybody loves it.

D: I like Klaus a lot and I can’t remember, because I read the comics so long ago, how true to the book that character is.

G: Right.

D: Do you feel like it’s capturing what you were trying to get out with it? G: It is capturing, yeah. It’s capturing, to me, what Robert who plays Klaus, he’s capturing this kind of sadness and tragedy to the character. Also obviously, the humor. In the comic, Klaus is a little bit more of what I call a dry goth. He’s very nihilistic in some ways.

D: Not quite as whimsical, maybe.

G: Yeah, not quite as whimsical as what Robert ended up doing. But the way Robert approached the character really ended up working and he adds a lot of humanity to the character, that maybe there’s not so much of it, or you don’t see it very often in the comic with Klaus. Klaus just does bad things and makes bad decisions and obviously, a lot of that is coming from a place of trauma that he experienced as a child, and in the show, it’s cool because the drug use is there to help him quiet the voices in his head. They explored that a lot deeper and I thought that that was really cool.

D: Is that less of a focus in the comic?

G: A little bit. I never really explored the fact that he’s constantly seeing and hearing and talking to ghosts, and so these drugs kind of quiet his mind. I’d never explored that really deeply.

D: Which is cool because you, it’s another evidence of you’re building a world and someone else was living in it, and then they were like, “Well yeah.”

G: Yeah!

D: “Of course he’s like that,” and you’re like, “Well dang.”

G: Yeah! That’s a cool thing. They’re able to point at things you weren’t seeing because sometimes when I’m doing stuff like creating a world like Umbrella Academy, a lot of it is running off the subconscious. A lot of it is, some things you don’t realize you’re putting in there. And when they look at making a TV show or a movie, they really kinda deconstruct it and look at it and say, “Well, this makes sense because of this.”

D: Some of the beauty with the comic is that the concise kind of form makes it to where you don’t always have to trace down all of these rabbit trails, but when you're trying to blow it up into something else, you’ve gotta figure out how to make sense of it all.

G: Mhm. And to bring it back to the question of a sense of wonder. That was the other thing I thought about this morning when you asked me the question was, “what do I get a sense of wonder from,” and comics were a big one. Because to me- and then I would later reinforce these feelings when I started making them and writing them. You could do anything in them and that’s really what’s beautiful about them. I also love the mechanics of them, because there’s definitely things you could do in comics that you can’t do in film and TV and I love that. So I’ve really learned to embrace the medium when I’m writing them. I think I’m writing comics that are definitely comics, and they’re not just a TV show playing out in a comic.

D: Yeah. How much do you draw your own stuff just to get your ideas going? Or is it more conceptual?

G: Quite a bit. No, I do- well especially for something like, less so on Doom Patrol but Umbrella Academy, Gabriel Ba, the artist and I have this really cool relationship and I think the ideas kinda need to start with me, and I’ll do a sketch and then Gabriel will completely reinterpret that and kinda make it much cooler and much better.

D: That's because that’s your complete world from scratch, whereas with Doom Patrol you’re reinventing something?

G: In the beginning, Umbrella was definitely my complete world from scratch and I had this idea, but Gabriel, especially even in the early days, he helped build that world. I was able to give him a couple references and I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe it’s the ‘60s, maybe it’s the ‘70s. People are dressed like the ‘60s and cars look like they’re from the ‘60s, but there's modern things too.” And he loves drawing architecture, which you don’t find a lot of in comics. A lot of people try to stay away from the buildings in the background and the architecture, but he embraces the architecture so he really built that world with me in the beginning. But we still have our process and the process usually, not always but usually is, especially if it’s a villain or something like that, I’ll do some kind of sketch, even if it’s bad, and then Gabriel will take that and make it something.

D: That’s cool. Collaboration is terrifying and super fun when it’s working.

G: Yeah! When it’s working, it’s amazing, yeah. I love collaborating, and I’ve learned to really embrace it over the years. Delegating and collaborating were two skills I really needed to get really good at, and I think I got better at collaborating after the band. Although, we were pretty good about collaborating in the band, I just got better at it though.

D: Yeah. It’s definitely for Thrice, the most fun but also the hardest thing for sure, and it causes the most tension.

G: Right. Yeah, for sure.

D: Just because you care.

G: Because you care, yeah! You care, and sometimes you do see or hear a complete vision so you want that realized.

D: I think that’s the hardest part. You’re like, “I see all this,” and you’re like, “Okay but there’s three other people.”

G: Yeah!

D: Every single time that I’m set on something, and then everyone else is like, “Dude, no,” every time by the end, I’m like, “Wait, what was I stuck on?”

G: Yeah.

D: It didn’t matter anymore.

G: Yeah!

D: It’s totally a psychological issue at that point.

G: It is!

D: “It has to be this way.” No, it could be a million ways and they’re all different and cool.

G: Yeah. And that’s what I learned too when collaborating on music, is exactly what you just said. You don’t even remember what you were hung up on.

D: Totally.

G: Because it’s just much better after everybody's worked on it.

D: It’s very similar to being super upset about something in the moment and you’re just not thinking clear, and you sleep and you wake up and you’re like, “I was real upset about that. It doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.”

G: Yeah.

D: Time travel is a big thing in Umbrella Academy.

G: Yeah.

D: Which it’s notoriously troublesome to write stories with time travel.

G: Yeah.

D: And not have it just fall apart. If you’re trying to get a specific future, you have to have a bunch of people constantly fixing these things.

G: Right right!

D: I like that way of interpreting because usually it’s, “Oh, we fixed this one thing,” and you expect it to just keep going straight, but no way.

G: Right. I really like that the show took that from the comic and really explored it. All these people making these little corrections, sometimes they’re violent corrections, but sometimes they’re very simple. But time travel is such a pain in the ass. I did not envy them when they were starting to do the writer’s room for Umbrella Academy.

D: They try to make it all work.

G: Try to make it all work. And they’d have to put up these big timeline boards and be like, “Alright, this happens this year,” and that’s what I was doing when I was writing the second volume, Dallas, because there’s not much- I don’t think there’s any real time travel, besides Number 5 coming back, there’s no real time travel in volume one, Apocalypse Suite. But Dallas is all about it, so that was the hardest volume I’ve ever had to write, because time travel is just, it’s so hard.

D: Are there any stories that you like that you feel do it really well?

G: I don’t know if I’ve read enough time travel stories. I mean, I thought Back To The Future did it really well.

D: But then I always get stuck on the idea that you have to, there’s an endless cycle of Martys that have to go back.

G: Oh right!

D: And keep- my brain breaks when I try to be like, “But what if he doesn’t? Then none of it works anymore?” It all breaks.

G: Yeah, it can break very easily, and I think almost every time travel story has the possibility of completely breaking, or at least in some person’s mind out there, it is broken.

D: Yeah.

G: So sometimes you have to take time travel stories almost at face value and be like, “Alright, this works.”

D: Yeah, you can’t- well I think part of that is on the writer or whoever’s making it to address and deflect. The Brian McDonald guy I was telling you about, he talks about that somewhere where he’s like, “You gotta spot the problem and then you just need to have some character address it, and then sweep it away,” just so that it helps whoever’s watching or whatever, it helps them be like, “Oh yeah, what about this?” And then, “Oh, they thought about it.”

G: Yep.

D: And it’s not like it’s making it perfect, right? But it gives you permission to let it go, I think.

G: Yeah yeah. And you do have to address these concerns. I realized my answer might have been possibly a little lazy about taking things at face value, but one of the things I had to do in Dallas was address every concern that I thought the reader would have. 

D: Which is great. When you do the addressing, it lets the reader or the watcher or whatever, it lets them let it go and enjoy the story.

G: Yeah, exactly. I’m about to start volume four of Umbrella Academy and I’m really happy because I don’t think it’s gonna have any time travel in it, so I think we’re a little bit away from more time travel in Umbrella Academy.

D: Alright, this is a question from Mike Morale, he says, “In his recent arc, Cliff Steele aka Robotman, regains his humanity, at least in outward form. But on Gerard’s latest, ahem, cliffhanger, Steele burns it all up after facing the painful inhumanity of someone with power to hurt him. I suppose my question is, how do we protect the precious beauty of our humanity while remaining vulnerable to those who have meaning in our lives?”

G: Oh wow. How do we protect that humanity? Well that’s a big question, because especially with given how the world is now and the toxicity out there online and things like that, how do you protect your humanity? Because toxicity, like the kind that Cliff experiences when he goes to visit his mother in that nursing home, it’s a very real thing and it’s something you have to deal with. I don’t know how you hold onto your humanity, it’s hard sometimes.

D: While being vulnerable too.

G: While being vulnerable, yeah exactly.

D: Which I guess is almost synonymous to holding onto your humanity.

G: Yeah. 

D: Because you could close off but that’s not good.

G: Yeah exactly. I know this isn’t the healthier, great answer, but I think one of the things I did was to kind of remove myself from certain social medias. But it wasn't unhealthy because what I did was I decided to look inward at that point. Instead of, and I could tell you as many harsh people are on the internet, I was much harsher on myself. I looked in and I asked myself tough questions, I really asked myself what’s right and wrong. I think about these things deeply when I’m writing, but holding onto your humanity is very hard. And Cliff, obviously, he doesn’t hold on to that humanity, and he goes back into his cage because that makes sense to Cliff.

D: His follow up question was, “And does skin make the man, or can metal reflect who we really are just as well?”

G: I believe metal can reflect who we are just as well. I think Cliff Steele is very much Cliff whether he’s a human or a robot. He’s still Cliff and I think that’s one of the things that’s great about the character and why he’s so fun to write because no matter what, he’s still Cliff.

D: I wonder if there's anything you’ve been listening to, watching, reading, that you think people should check out?

G: Let’s see. What have I been reading recently? Well, this is old but I just decided to reread Lord Of The Rings from start to finish, and I made it through the books rather quickly and they’re just such a joy to read. They’re so relaxing, but there is a real build up to Lord Of The Rings. It gets so dark at one point, and horrific, but there’s a calm and a peace to reading it. And the way Tolkien writes, you’re just thinking about the greenery and the trees and the rivers and all of those things, and so it’s a real relaxing read for as much as it ramps up. I have a hard time watching TV. I feel really trapped when I’m watching it so I tend not to watch it at all, which is interesting about having a TV show. I bring a different perspective when I’m giving notes because I don’t watch a lot of TV. And more or less the only TV I watch is edits of Umbrella Academy. But every once in a while, Lindsey will rope me into a show that she feels like I absolutely have to watch, and she did that with Breaking Bad, and I’m really grateful she did. She literally rewatched the whole thing with me, made me watch it, and it’s still one of the best I’ve ever seen. And then she got me into Cobra Kai, have you seen that?

D: No, is it good?

G: I think it’s really good, yeah. Especially the first season is really amazing.

D: I had huge doubts about if that would be good at all.

G: Yeah, watch the first season and one of the things that actually helped hook me into the show is the episodes are a half hour, so it was really cool. I didn’t feel as much of a prisoner of the television when I was watching them, because you can watch a half hour and be done.

D: But books don’t make you feel that way? They expand.

G: Books are my favorite thing, yeah. Books are- you know how a lot of people will use a television to kind of tune out and shut off and relax? I use books to do that, so there’s piles of books next to my bed.

D: Thanks so much for sitting down. It’s been so good to talk to you.

G: You too! It’s been a long time. I miss you.