#i have to get teeth stuff done and thats always fun!!

[mxwhore]

Hope you doin okay Mang?

Knocking on wood the rest of the week is kinder to you

yeah man... thank you

[etherealspacejelly]

why is life so unfair. everyone else gets to go through life relatively pain free but ive been gritting my teeth through pain for 21 years just so i dont bring everyone elses vibe down???

i was treated as neurotypical and forced to compensate for my autism and adhd by myself

ive been giving myself shit for not keeping on top of chores and errands as well as everyone else but they weren't fighting against their own brains and bodies every time to do it

fuck that. fuck all of that. ive ordered myself a pop-up stool because i deserve to be able to sit down when i need to even if there's no benches. im considering getting food delivery too so i dont have to walk 20 minutes to aldi and back once a week in agony. if no one else is in pain while getting food why should i have to be.

this sucks ass. chronic pain havers deserve fucking gold medals for not complaining all the time and still getting stuff done AND still somehow being criticised for not doing 'enough'!!! fuck that!!! im on day trips out compensating for sensory overload, joint pain, foot pain, masking all of my symptoms and STILL have a smile on my face so im not too much of a downer for everyone elses benefit. no wonder i cant keep on top of my fucking laundry!!! thats exhausting!!!

i always said i would drag myself over hot coals for the people i care about but it turns out thats a lot more literal than i thought it was!!! oh, you guys want to go for a walk to the park? sounds fun! let me just destroy my feet until im in agony so we can all have a good time!

what the fuck!!!

[xreaderanonaccount]

Webttore anon here... im just gonna go by 🐔 now !!! if thats ok :D sorry for sending so many requests, is it ok if i can request an akademiya Dottore smut with fem reader ? with cunnilingus n stuff :3 if not thats ok! - 🐔

Synopsis:

Tags: NSFW MINORS DNI, Afab Reader, Cunnilings, Semi-public,

A/n: Of course you can go by 🐔anon. As long as someone request Webttore I'm always happy to obliged! I do love him and he is such a cutie pootie.

You sighed as you flipped through the pages of an academic book, the house of Daena was quiet as it was very early in the morning. You need to get this research paper done before next week, and archons know that it takes forever to find a book that you need. It takes you forever to find a book you need because 10 other people are also looking for it. You leaned against the plush chair as the book you grabbed wasn’t helping you in the slightest. Why have a book with a name of a subject that you need and not have said subject in it? You shook your head as you got up from your seat. The chairs screeched against the marble floor as you sauntered over to the towering book shelf. You returned the book where you found it and looked around the nearby books. Maybe these books might have what you want. You reached over to one certain book whose title sounded interesting. As your hand touched the spine another more bigger hand engulfed yours. Your body was pressed against another and was caged against the wooden bookshelf. 

“What do we have here?” A cool voice whispered into your ear. You looked up to meet a pair of ruby red eyes staring down yours. You smiled as you placed your weight against the other body.

“Hmm, just looking for a book about Khaenri’ah technology.” You smiled as laid your head against his shoulder. You know who this man is, your dear strange lover Zandik. The taboo scholar who has a strange fascination with Ruin guards. Zandik clicked his tongue as he let go of your hand. 

“If you were looking for books about Khaenri’ah technology you should’ve asked me. I would’ve helped you.” He sighed in annoyance as crossed his arms. You smiled as you wrapped your arms around Zandik. No matter how many times people tell you to not fall in love with Zandik you couldn’t help yourself. He was weird, a mix of good and bad, and that’s what makes him charming. You felt Zandik wrap his arms around your waist hugging you back, well awkwardly but he’s trying. Zandik was guiding you back till your back softly hit the bookshelf. You look up confused on what Zandik had planned before Zandik slammed his lips against yours. It was rough but gentle as he gnawed at your lips asking for an opening. You gladly welcome him in as he shoves his tongue down your throat. You couldn’t help but moan into the kiss, Zandik hands trailed down your back before grasping your ass. You yelped in surprise, pulling away from the kiss. 

“W-what are you doing?” You stuttered avoiding Zandik’s annoyed gaze.

“Is it not obvious?” He clicked his tongue latching his teeth against your bare neck. 

“But we can’t do it here,” You proclaimed, “what if someone sees?” 

Zandik chuckled against your neck as he pulled away, cupping your cheeks making you look in his eyes.

“Well that would be a problem as I locked the door,” Zandik smiled, “and the Grand Sage is gone as well. So let's have some fun shall we?” Zandik grinded against you, you felt his hardened dick against the layer of clothing. You couldn’t help but moan as you Zandik lifted you up, connecting your lips again. You instinctively wrapped your legs around his hips as he gently placed you on top of the nearest table. He pulled away mumbling sweet nothings against your ears. You couldn’t help but smile hearing Zandik speak so gently to you. He hates PDA but when it’s just you two, oh how he would praise you more than the archons themselves. You felt his hand trail down your legs before catching the ends of your akademiya uniform. He slowly hiked your dress up till it was all scrunched up at your hips. He played with the ends of your underwear, planting a soft kiss on your lips before kneeling between your legs. He continued to praise you as he slid your underwear off you, letting it hang off your ankles. He smiled as gently blew against your clit. You shudder as he teased you with his lips, pressing gently against your exposed thigh. 

“Please Zandik.” You mumbled hooking your legs around Zandik’s shoulder drawing him in. You felt Zandik smiled against your skin before connecting his lips against your clit. You moaned before cupping your mouth preventing moans from escaping your lips. To Zandik that seemed like an insult, how dare you try to cover yourself up? How dare you try to hide your beautiful voice? Zandik continued his relentless attack against your clit, slurping, licking, biting anything to get you to moan. He gave a playful nip against your clit which caused your hands to fly to his curly blue hair. You gripped his hair so hard it earned a groan from him. He continued his attack against your clit. You couldn’t help but let moans fall out of your mouth. Zandik smiled against your clit, proud that he was able to get you to moan, especially so loudly in such a public area. Zandik slipped two fingers inside your vagina which caused a high pitch moan from you. He pumped them in and out, in and out. The sound of slurping, slapping, and moans were the only words heard inside the empty House of Daena. 

“Please, let me cum. I want to cum Zandik.” You moaned, your voice becoming louder and louder. Zandik didn’t say anything but fastened his pace. His hands pistoning in and out of your soaking hole. Zandik started flicking his tongue against your clit. Your walls clench around his two fingers.

“Ah so good, so perfect.” He mumbled against your clit, “Your vagina sucking my fingers in, so greedy aren’t you?” You gripped his hair arching your back as Zandik attacked a certain part of your clit that just makes you go crazy. Moans were falling out of your mouths, his name chanted like you were praying to the Goddess of Wisdom herself. You felt your stomach coiling up, the feeling of your climax reaching its peak. 

“Cum for me darling.” Zandik groaned against your clit. You let out a high pitch whine of his name, clamping down on his fingers. But Zandik ripped his fingers out of your vagina. You gasped at the lost feeling, but the fingers were quickly replaced by his tongue plunging into your vagina. You moaned, overstimulated but Zandik didn’t care. He lapped up all of your delicious nectar, cleaning you dry. Zandik pulled away, his ruby eyes blown with lust as he crawled up to you giving you a deep kiss. Allowing you to taste yourself. 

“Now it's time to return the favor right?” He chuckled, you smiled, giving him a soft nod. He helped you up, allowing you to kneel down infront of him. He cupped your cheek giving you a wicked smile. Before you two could do anything you heard banging coming from the closed door. Zandik sighed in frustration as he yanked you up. 

“It seems this might have to wait.” Zandik sighed as he walked towards the door, skillfully maneuvering a book to cover his hard on. You quickly adjusted your uniform and hair trying to make it look like nothing happened. You watched as Zandik opened the door, a young scholar walked in. The scholar was rambling about how he needed answer for this one question and the Akasha was not giving him the answers he needed. Zandik rolled his eyes in annoyance, he jerked his head towards the door signaling you to follow him. You sighed as you bid the scholar goodbye and followed Zandik out of the House of Daena. 

“You’re still going to give me that favor.” Zandik whispered in your ear, laughing as he watched your face turn into a deep shade of red.

A/N: divider credits: cafekitsune

[cali]

im a different anon but im just curious what advice you would give to someone whos been pillbugging it for um. over a year now

mmm i cant really answer how to stop having depression which im guessing is what u mean + i dont know how ur head works but ive been living mostly NEET-ly for more than 2 yrs now and everyday im getting a better curve at dealing with it so i can tell u what works for me.

half the time when im pillbugging hard im paralyzed by a nontangible fear and the only thing that could stop it is adressing wherever the fear is coming from but the confrontation of the topic, trying to figure out where its even coming from, is terrifying too so i dont do it and stay swimming in tar. theres a sentence people keep saying when they explain why they watch 2 hour video essays "it makes my head go quiet". thats the enemy, the thought, not the person saying it. long term i mean. when its short term anguish that can be bridged by pillbugging its fine i think but if ur "making ur head quiet" for more than a month i urge u to make it go really loud again but thats hard. the only times i can try and confront those thoughts is when i feel otherwise nice, if i got externally forced to have a fun day, hike with my papa, date day with my girlfriend, sometimes just got myself to make a nice meal and it helped, when u feel better its a little less scary and u can maybe try and think out of it a little better. also i think on those days youre generally more positively charged so u got more hope outlook. COOL. i think this is why some people do meditation. im not good at it so i dont really know but i think its a brave pasttime of tackling unpleasant ideas. i used to try and dope my way out of it with lsd cuz everytime i used it it kind of forced me to confront whatever trouble i had but ive forbad myself that cuz i didnt want to rely on it as crutch + it was just unpleasant to get hit over the head everytime. now i only do it when i feel good already (havent done it in half a year lol). sorry, drug tangent. also weed is synonymous with pillbugging 4 me.

otherwise, rituals.... mmmmm..... when therapists and whoevers say stuff like take daily walks daily exercise take daily shower i think all of those are like half about the direct benefits they give and half just about doing anything regularly. cuz it helps. during pillbug hours the point for me is kind of to have time pass as fast as possible so the timeframe to hurt is reduced which is counterproductive cuz if it flows u by rlly hard u cant really grasp onto anything to get off the ride easily. and its never going to come really easy theres no probable single action or event that is going to singlehandedly pull u out of the mire, no rapture, no healing vitamin, its always going to be slow and tedious and boring and stupid but a routine is a nice framework to start that. brushing ur teeth is nice. and when u do something daily the days start becoming more tangible again and u will be able to tell how many days ago tuesday was. maybe u can think abotu what factors motivate u and twist them to do your biddinggg. shame and dissapointment works really well for me if i tell someone i will have this done by then and i dont it usually overpowers the malaise or whatever other reason has been making me not do it prior. but this requires social bonds and i cant guarantee u have those. in summer i started doing therapy cuz in germany i need it for transgenderism and shes also a good beacon for that, if she says do something until next time we meet i dont want to dissapoint her. other than that, um idk, everyting else is just kind of part of that. take walks even if u dont want to think about things even if its scary. be brave like childrens book illustration of knight slaying dragon. and then maybe u get a princess kiss

[guavagyu]

grocery bags (k.mg)

synopsis: u come home from buying groceries, and mingyu really, REALLY missed u. so, u have some fun!

content: smut (mdni!), fluff so sweet ur teeth will rot, kitchen sex, no d/s dynamics, oral (f receiving), swearing, non!idol mingyu, established relationship, nicknames (love), afab!reader but no pronouns (im pretty sure..), SUPER domestic, tall!reader (never directly mentioned), unprotected sex (no thank u!), penetration, lmk if i missed anything! 

word count: 1,066

when you arrive home from grocery shopping, mingyu practically jumps on you. that is, of course, when he realizes what you’re trying to accomplish and helps u carry stuff in,

“hey gyu! how’ve you been?” you ask as he takes your bags and you rush out to get the rest,

“good, what about you? was everything okay today? nobody stared at you or tr-” 

“yes, gyu. nobody looked at me weirdly don’t worry love,” you laughed as he pouted from being interrupted (while simultaneously blushing at the term of endearment) before taking the last bags and setting them on the counter. once everything was settled down and taken care of, he resumed his previous antics, yanking you closer by the waist, noses touching, 

“what is up with you, hmm? something happen while i was gone?” you tuck a strand of hair behind his ear as he gazes at you before shaking his head and finally meeting your lips, soft and slow, yet eager at the same time. when he pulled away, his lips were pink and puffy, how cute,

“nothing happened, just..missed you,” his eyelashes flutter as a light blush tints his cheeks, 

“gyu, you’re so adorable,” you smiled as you kissed his nose, “well, i’m here now,” as he smiled and kissed you again, with more energy and more..horniness (you're starting to get an idea of how much he really missed you), 

“i love you,” he mumbled into your lips, almost incoherently, ears bright red,

“i love you too, so so much,” you smiled into the kiss, feeling giddy at how lucky you were to have him, especially for so long. when you saw his eyes, they’d already glossed over, softly asking if he can continue, with you muttering the go-ahead. he easily lifted you up and set you on the counter, eyes level, pushing some bags back and causing them to crinkle, but not like either of you gave a shit. mingyu slid your pants down along with your underwear and dropped them onto the floor, along with his shirt, his muscles tense as he got on his knees  and started to eat you out. you groaned as he gripped on your thighs and spread them for more room, tongue exploring everywhere all over again like it was his first time. his mouth latched onto you, eyes locked with yours the entire time. he took your hand and put in his hair, wanting you to pull when you needed. so thats what you did, especially when he nosed at your clit and tongue-fucked you like you were everything (that’s because you are everything to him, as he is to you). he’s clearly showing you just how true that was, like he’s done in the past. soon, your stomach winds up until it snaps, and a warm wave of pleasure goes through your body, mingyu moaning as you tugged on his pretty hair, swollen lips glistening,

“think you got a little more in you?” he panted, kissing your forehead,

“yeah, always, anything for you,” making him giggle at your words, before grabbing your face in his hands and crashing your lips together, kissing you for the nth time tonight. during the kiss, he took off your shirt and your bra, discarding them in the same manner as he did his pants. slowly, he slid into you, moaning at the feeling. he leaned into your shoulder as he bottomed out, sucking softly and leaving love bites. once he started moving he moved back up to kiss you once more, finally picking up the pace. sounds of skin slapping and heavy breathing echoed throughout the kitchen, the groceries long forgotten. after what seemed like no time at all, you heard mingyu mumble,

“close,”

“me too, gyu, im right with you,”

“can i-“ you didn’t care about what he was asking (even though you already knew), you just wanted to be with him right in that moment,

“yeah,” and with that, you both fell into bliss together, mingyu burying his face into your neck as you pulled him as close as you can, feeling his cum rushing through you. after a little bit, you whispered,

“wanna go wash up?” with a hum in response, before you feel yourself getting lifted up once more, laughing, “i can walk gyu,” 

“yeah, but i don’t want you to do anything you don’t have to,” your heart melted, as you said your thanks by a kiss to his jaw and delving your hands into his hair once more in a makeshift hug, embracing him as much as you could. he soon set you down once you reached the bathroom, 

“pee,” he said as he started up the shower, once you finished and washed your hands you climbed in with him. he wrapped his arms around your waist, your back to his chest, kissing your hair as the water got to the ideal temperature. once the water was warm enough, mingyu started by massaging some shampoo into your hair, getting the suds everywhere before gently washing it away. he brought the shower head down to rinse the rest of your body, making sure that most of his cum had already seeped out, gently cleaning the area. once he finished that, as well as cleansing your face, he washed his hair and the rest of his body quickly, scrubbing his face using the same cleanser with newfound vigor. the water was shut off, and your towel was wrapped around you, mingyu drying you off, before handing it over to you to dry your hair. then, he grabbed his own to roughly dry his own body, returning his focus back to you as soon as he could. you leaned back against him as he did your skincare for you, loving that he knew which products to use and in which order. soon everything was finished, and you both got into your matching puppy pajamas that mingyu had bought for your 8th month anniversary. it’d already been 2 years since that day, time passing by before you knew it. the moment you both got settled into bed, comforting yourself in mingyus arms, your head on his chest, him running his fingers through your hair, placing kisses on your face and going back to the top of your head to settle down. right before you fell asleep, you heard gyu end the night off with, 

“..marry me?” 

————

© guavagyu 2023. all rights reserved. plagiarization, reposting, translating, and/or rewriting ANY and ALL of my works is prohibited.

[russetfoxfur]

so i dont usually do liveblogs because i never show up to streams and also im not very good at reacting to stuff. However. i will make an exception because HGCZ IS OUT!! and i have seen so much hype about it that id be a fool to not at least read it. livereact will be under the cut for spoilers and. stuff.

- ok we arent even on the actual ZINE and the opening dedication?? "Of the arts, storytelling is one of the oldest: humanity weaves an endless tapestry of heart, hope, and home that continues to shape us all to this day. To tell a story is to bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow; to tell a story is to inextricably connect us all." THAT OPENING PARAGRAPH DUDE

- interesting premise. im intrigued. though i am a little concerned about the "classist violence" and "body modification" warnings. I suspect this is not all Fun and Games

- "I gotta say, "Hot"Guy, this is pretty disappointing. You can be AverageGuy. MediocreGuy." "Oh! "Guy"!" the best part is this is so in-character for them to do

- the ENTIRE EXPLANATION bit omg. joel trying to interject and comic-style getting talked over, lizzie robbing cats instead of cash... and her backstory...

- i. that sudden style shift is not in fact comical and i am now eyeing the unreality warning at the beginning of the zine with sudden alarm. should i be alarmed by this? maybe this is fine. lets say its fine

- JELLIE! hcing her supername is HotCat. she DEFINITELY needs a matching HotGuy costume. and i am somewhat more reassured!

- wait hold on. went back to that first hotguy comic to see the warnings (hidden in the title, missed them) and. WAIT WAS THAT REWRITING FUCKIN MIND CONTROL

- UNREALITY MINDCONTROL SCOPOPHOBIA AND INJURY??? WAIT HOLD ON IM REREADING THIS

- wait. WAIT THAT PANEL. THAT ONE WHERE JOEL SEES HOTGUY REWROTE THE ANIMAL CONTROL VAN TO BE A MONEY VAN. WAIT A FUCKING SECOND WE ARENT EVEN TEN PAGES INTO THE ZINE AND HOLY SHIT

- joels the only one who can SEE HES DOING THIS SO HOTGUY WRITES HIM OUT. JESUS FUCKIN CHRIST. HOTGUY??? UFHODQPHFWJPFAP AND THEN HE "GOES BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD" AND FUCKIN REWRITES REALITY TO MAKE HIMSELF SEEM COOLER. BUT REWRITTEN HOTGUY HAS THE SAME PLASTIC EXPRESSION. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS ONLY ONE COMIC I THINK YOURE LYING ABOUT HIS SUPERPOWER MUTATION WHATEVER

- ALRIGHT SWIFTLY ON. WE WILL EYE HOTGUY WITH CONCERN BUT MOVE ON NONETHELESS

- :0 cuteguy appears! doody did rlly good work on this one!

- CUTEGUY IS AWESOME!!! those WINGS... agh i love comic bubbles they just have so much personality and those icy words... and cuteguy pointing HOTGUYS OWN ARROW back at him..... you could not have made a better introduction holy shit

- and then he just flies off. awesome. we should all aspire to be the same level of cool as cuteguy.

- ren would be able to just say hotguy like that. also sidenote i am hearing all these lines in my head as im reading so writers youve all done fantastically!

- UNIONIZE! UNIONIZE! UNIONIZE!

- is pearl... a journalist? or is this the wrong gal? if she is a journalist then good for her!

- oh :( everyone hates unionizing the vigelantes. sad but realistic :(

- MUMBLR?? DID MUMBO K JUMBO BECOME THE OWNER OF TUMBLR IN THIS AU? DID HE KILL MATT PHOTOSPACE WHOEVER THE CEO OF TUMBLR IS? DID THEY FISTFIGHT TO THE DEATH? THAT HAPPENED RIGHT. THATS THE ONLY THING ILL ACCEPT AS CANON. IN THIS AU MUMBLR IS TRANS-FRIENDLY! 🎉

- sweetferaline (bahm bahm bahhh)

- ok this is incredibly funny. teeth dog ftw

- CHATTER AND M JESUS CHRIST THIS IS NOW THE BEST SEGMENT IN THE ENTIRE ZINE. AMAZING COMEBACK THIS IS SO REALISTIC

- and the reply sections are always a cesspool! glad they got that right

- PIXLRIFFS RUNNING A BLOG ON TUMBLR TO EXPLAIN HERMITOPIA. THIS IS SO IN CHARACTER

- THE MAPLE PRINCE. THE MAPLE PRINCE

- THIS ENTIRE MUMBLR DASH WAS PURE COMEDY GOLD. FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS & HATS OFF TO THE WRITER

- ARIANA GRIANDE!!!! WOOOOO <3 <3 WE LOVE YOU GRIANDE!!!!!

- and now permit office grian! we are going through so many different iterations of grian... imagine we get poultry man next

- is that GEM??? IS GEM A VILLAIN? also i dont really know who the hippies are... idk its just hard for me to recognize this artstyle ig

- WAIT. HAS GEM BEEN SPYING ON GRIAN'S DETECTIVITY? or am i just reading this all wrong? i might be reading this all wrong

- alright i might have to reread that one-- WAIT MORE MIND CONTROL. AND BODY MODIFICATION??? THE MISSING CUB... guys if this is sculk!cub im gonna maul someone

- AAAA BEHIND YOU HOTGUY (i called it)

- also love how i instantly went "oh a tibbycaps comic!"

- ok i LOVE this panel where they figure out Arson. the way both conclusions are reached in tandem! and also YAY WOOO ARSON THIS BITCH UP 🔥

- OH MY GOD THIS IS HILARIOUS I LOVE HOW THE abrupt cut to disaster WAS DONE IN COMIC FORM

- THAT MERCH DESIGN IN THE NOTES APP ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SENT ME DUDE

- "i use sculk to season my pizza" ah. I see. typical cubfan behavior. carry on

- "None of us are perfect, despite what you say might feel when you look at me" this Bdubs email is SO IN-CHARACTER

- " i replied to some of these but then i kinda got bored and started sending links to cool space facts instead" honestly this is what i would do too. and i would be happy to get cool space facts in return for my hotguy email. i dont see what the issue is here

- oh is cuteguy taking issues with the supernovae. skill issue tbh

- this whole cuteguy-cub email chain is HILARIOUS. scratch that this whole email segment is hilarious jesus christ. grian is being SO BITCHY and im HERE FOR IT

- PEARLIPOP IS A REPORTER! YES! and zedaphs in this au! he isnt even going under wormman??? shocking (< says a zedaph fangirl who is completely fixated on one passing mention of him)

- oh my god this is the best storytelling format ever. the panicked exchanges between cuteguy n cub, pearl reporting as she is wont to do... genuinely i love this so much i am giggling so much im actually gonna stop liveblogging because i just want to read this. ill be with yall in a moment

- actually never mind "if he waits too long to answer it starts to play the whole Lilo and Stitch movie audio" cub i love you so much. hgcz i love you so much i almost forgive you for that very jarring first comic

- it looks like we have seven or so more years before hotguy becomes a reality... new reasons to live. also the chatter discourse is insane from what ive seen doc does just act Like That on twit/chatter

- "sumagram" well i guess we know who owns that now

- :000 HOTCAT APPEARS!!!!! WE LOVE YOU HOTCAT <3333333 EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR OUR BELOVED HOTCAT!!!

- THE AWKWARD EXIT. i love it

- I SEE THAT BIG SALMON DONT THINK I DONT

- SHIRTLESS SCAR.... im aroace but like. i can still admire a shirtless man cant i. artist did a good job

- NO YOU DID NOT PUT A LILACS AND POPPIES REFERENCE IN THIS COMIC I AM GNAWING THE ARTIST OF THIS COMIC WITH MY TEETH YOU ARE MAKING ME INSANE DEAR GOD THEY TEAMED UP BUT HOW IS THIS GOING TO END AAAAAA HOTGUY DONT DIE IN THE CACTUS RING PLEASE BUDDY

- CREEPER AW MAN

- horsegirl hotguy... wild stallion cuteguy... someone needs to write this au. i should write this au. actually hold on *scribbles furiously in my "crackfic ideas" notes* carry on

- update: now listening to scheming weasel for atmosphere.

- “Who’s the more foolish: the fool, or the fools who follow him?” stellar line. only a certified HotGuy can produce lines like these

- "after a tick or two" if hermitopians measure time in ticks like minecrafters do then thats such a cool worldbuilding detail

- FOR A MOMENT I THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO BURN DOC AND HIS LACKEYS ALIVE. THANK GODS THEY DIDNT

- testing of new weapons montage! i know hotguy is the star of the show here but god i love cub so much more. can cub be the "protagonist" here instead actually

- i. i have suspicions that cub is not sculk-free. or is this a flutterbat situation where it is all dealt with but its not but actually it is but it also kinda isnt? yknow. im gonna write this off as a flutterbat thing but i will still be keeping a very close eye on cub

- *snort* deep enough to hold twelve pieces of bamboo (i am such a sucker for in-jokes)

- grian is warming up to scar... also hotguy bandaids

- AND I GET THAT REFERENCE TOO!! very clever! grian shut up its two in the morning! "Scar doesn’t seem to know how to react, his mouth falling open and then promptly shutting again." same grian why would you bring up the nose hair incident and to an unsuspecting hotguy no less smh learn sone manners

- you know what if grian can learn first aid from the nose hair incident in alaska then scar can get injured in a volleyball incident (i have never watched scar which yes is a skill issue but also if this is also a reference i would not get it). beloved desertduo who cannot lie to save their fuckin lives

- THAT ENDING COMIC IS HILARIOUS. SUCH A SCAR THING TO DO

- alright im gonna take a break from liveblogging rn! i will be back in (my) morning with scheming weasel and a renewed spirit. goodnight yall! <3

[tradetobest]

do u still think abt the golf au bc i would pay billions for you to infodump about it…

YEs i love thinking about this au so much thank you so much for asking me about it anon ilysm....

(under the cut bcs it feels a bit long to me)

this was my first act as a hockey fan it has such a special place in my heart.... i thought about it while i was in class and sorted everyone into categories Definitively. thank you for making me do this. of course some of the things i have these guys do you Shouldnt Do on a golf course, and like this is Super unrealistic but i love having my fun ok…. just Good Vibes… (also, im generalizing “clubhouse” as both people who work as servers at the course’s restaurant and the people who help golfers with carts/clubs/etc and all that. i did Not work there At All so it just makes it easier for me to loop them…. imagine they just like rotate around or something….)

OK… so…. starting with the two who started it all, mitch and auston.

i dont ever think i ever totally explained what mitch and auston's roles were besides surface level stuff so!! mitch is a member of the turf team at the golf course, which are basically the group of people who go around and cut the grass and do the landscaping and all of that. like ice crew, but just for the golf course.

auston is like. i don't know. some sort of moderately rich guy. maybe he's Auston Matthews or maybe he's just rich, i have no clue. all that matters is he golfs. maybe he's a professional golfer. of course, i imagine everything in this au as happening at my course, but tbh it works at any course...

(now, of course, one of mitch's friends works at the clubhouse, and tells mitch every time auston is sitting there looking for him... willy nylander youre a real one)

just imagine mitch driving around a work truck with a rake, a bucket of sand, and a leaf blower in the back and auston (dressed prim, and proper, white pants white shoes white hat purple shirt all nice) literally falling all over himself to talk to him. loitering all over just Hoping that Maybe mitch will drive by and he can rope him into conversation. meanwhile when mitch sees willy he’s like “yeah auston’s so cute but like idk if he’d ever go for me” and willy is like “yeah you have no fucking idea”

i used to have to do this task which was just. watering all of the flowers near the clubhouse and i can imagine mitch doing that and like surroptitiously glancing over his shoulder to check if auston is around or watching or something… just some good old fluffy pining yk…

i have a like Whole Ass procreate file w everyone sorted into lil groups so here’s some little tidbits …

i think i mightve talked abt this in another post but sid (crosby) and claude (giroux) both work for turf and are both Incredibly Competitive about it in the most insane way ever… im talking “you take half the course i take half the course and we see who finishes faster” (starting at 6am ish) mowing competitions and theyre both done at 8 on the dot…. insane people shit…. they did it with bunkers ONCE and claude tripped and fell into a bunker and broke his wrists so they do not do that anymore o7….

in honour of my boss feeling like my dad i put patty marleau and matt martin in turf…. they do rough mowing in honour of the two guys at my course who Only did rough mowing…. big ass machine

the thing to know about guys who are higher up on the turf echelon is that not only do they all know each other but they also went to school for it… turf school…. all this to say top grad of turf school Sidney Crosby got some little ducklings and thats how Connor McDavid (top turf school grad) got to this course…. we love that for him

shoutout to other guys who also have fun little romance stories but who arent mitch and auston, including but not limited to:

connor mcdavid, who keeps getting his work paused by these three golfers, which always makes him grit his teeth and smile softly at them, because Holy Shit Let Me Get Back To My Job Please. matthew tkachuk (son of Great Golfer Keith Tkachuk) seems to take joy in interrupting connor while he’s in the middle of something, jack eichel always catches him bent over and sweaty trying to shove the wheels back onto a greens mower for one of the kids, and leon draisaitl stands on the side to wait until connor’s at least done a pass to ask him something. matthew jack and leon can be seen at the clubhouse after they finish a round, head in hands, because connor is oblivious to their flirting. maybe they should try learning the names of different types of grass.

jamie drysdale (uni student staying with his grandparents over the summer) always comes to the clubhouse for breakfast with them, which absolutely delights bored server trevor zegras… too bad the summer has to end some time! lol! anyway

tyler bertuzzi (turf) seems to always have dirt under his fingernails, some mulch and woodchips stuck to his shorts, scuffs on his knees, and a dirty ass sweater on. dylan larkin (clubhouse) finds him INCREDIBLY endearing.

brady tkachuk (son of Great Golfer Keith Tkachuk) when he’s not driving his brother around so he can try and find connor (“seriously, matthew, he looks busy” “no, it’ll be fine, look—”) is smiling sweetly at the fumbling german waiter who always engages leon in rapidfire german conversation. tim, his nametag says, and brady would love to have more than a few word conversation with him. maybe he should interrupt leon’s brooding time with matthew and jack and ask him to teach him some german.

if you want to communicate with the turf team’s mechanic and don’t want to be asked “where sid? tell him—” you should bring sid with you to see him. however, if you do bring sid, you will have to watch him and said mechanic do Weird Flirting for a good 30 mins before your question is answered. this is outside of the Weird Flirting they do anyway, all the time. if a day goes by without sid twirling his hair kicking his feet over some shit geno said to him earlier in the day has the day really gone by?

followup turf/clubhouse Flirting (I CANT BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THEM IYKYK) tyler seguin, Pretty Boy Galore, and his loud, bubbly, and all consuming obsession with quiet doe-eyed turf worker jamie benn. now thats what i call oblivious. “yeah i flirt with jamie all the time but he just thinks its a joke haha he couldnt want me i know that like have you seen him?” “yeah tyler flirts with me but he’s just joking he doesn’t mean that he could never like me like that have you seen him?” and all that good good shit… tyler sees jamie take off his shirt once because it got soaked and loses his mind.

jack hughes (brother of turf guys luke and quinn) absolutely has the biggest crush on his coworker, fellow clubhouse worker nico hischier. once nico got wet in the rain and soaked through his white work shirt and jack almost lost his fucking mind. absolutely twirling his hair kicking his feet.

both pairs of bruins that i like (bergeron/marchand and swayman/ullmark) are fun little golf tandems. me when i get a hole in one and hug and twirl around a kiss my golf partner. what if we kissed in the front seat of a golf cart. and all that.

finally… honourable mention to john tavares (golfer, has his own labelled golf cart at a course in toronto… love that for you king….) kris letang (turf) and marc-andré fleury (clubhouse) who get to listen to sid moan and groan about geno, and self jarvis (turf) who is completely out of place among the other teams included in this au but i love him so hes here lmfaoo

anyway. yeah. i have LOTS of ideas about this au if you couldnt tell and anon i am SO happy you asked abt it… sorry it took me a few days i have to write like most days for school this semester and its leaving me Very Little time to do anything but reblog posts and draw matty and woller. MATTY AND WOLLER. oh my god i cant believe i almost forgot them uhhh…..

matthew knies and joseph woll are….. both turf workers maybe… yeah. call that lets talk while filling divots on the course or raking bunkers. what if we kissed in the rain while shovelling dirt and seed mix into small holes over and over again. Them

OK IM DONE FR NOW. thank you so much sorry there are no visuals i have written this mostly in class now but if you want to know more or if you want me to elaborate on a specific dynamic (or add some people, because god knows these are just the guys i know/like) or want visuals for anything i can 100% provide, might just take a bit again haha… ilysm anon you made my week

[nyxi-pixie]

You tits are magnificent and that take on Chuuya as a Hound is superb.

However I am kind of missing pocket pooches in your definition. What about the dogs whose purpose it is to be loved? Are they hounds? Fulfilling their duty to still only be considered for the work they do? What about the dogs that are loved as equal to a human being while still housing the potential for a rabid beast? Sharp teeth, strong jaws. That tear apart their veneer of tameness if threatened and especially if the one that has showered them with love is threatened?

PLS took a minute to respond to this so now telling me my tits are great is wildly out of context😭

but anyway! like i said!! its a scale! you can come up with a bunch of different ways the trope manifests (as youve just done🙏). i <3 dog motif, but with popularity for any theme used for character exploration comes people using it as a one size fits all deal, more for shock factor than actual exploration. and thats frustrating! its dependent on the character at hand (and sometimes it just. doesnt fit at all. which is okay too!)

i said in the tags of the original post that not all dog poems apply to every dog-coded character, and this is what i mean. you can use the dog to represent a whole lot of different things (many of which outright conflict eo). essentially: when youre analysing a character through the lens of any general metaphor, it should be done with the character as the baseline rather than the metaphor as the baseline. you figure out where the dog fits into the blorbo rather than how you can shove the blorbo into whatever dog quote youve recently seen.

gonna ramble abt ur specific examples under the cut, but the above is the important part.

in my hound/mutt spectrum idea, the hound is like a subclass of purebred dogs in general. anything bred specifically for some purpose fits around that side of the scale. i do a lot of thinking abt the victorians' dog experimentation when im thinking abt this side of things. its like an extreme version of the idea behind the dog's evolution from wolf - they are built to fulfil a human need of some kind. its all about conditional love and the reward of being good and doing what you were made to do for the benefit of another.

so where hound characters like chuuya are typically ones carrying out a defending/protecting job, you also have the small pet breeds as you mentioned, who are loved for presenting a certain picture or acting solely to be of comfort to the owner (usually in this trope, the owner is a parent). so very similar to the hound idea, the individual exists as a possession, desired for what it can do for you, and loved only as long as it keeps that up. and with this you get the acting out being natural instincts surpassing rewarded actions. 'a pet that bites isnt loving enough' and all that, because this version is at no point supposed to make its owner uncomfortable in any way.

dogs considered equal are sort of an outlier bc a lot of dog motif centres on dehumanisation as making the character inherently Lower (loyalty, servitude, obeisance or 'unintelligent' violence and the inability to restrain oneself as making them Lower than humanity). but yeah, like you said!!! theres always the rabid beast lingering underneath. so you can have the 'theyre equal until they remind you that theyre Different' thing, where you get dehumanisation that only really crops up in times of tension, easily hidden until theyve cause to bite. characters with messy pasts whose loyalty manifests as violence and all that fun stuff.

point being, as youve demonstrated, there are loads of ways the trope manifests, its NOT a one size fits all, and just bc people say a character is dog coded does NAWT mean every single thing abt dogs applies to them.

[n3v474]

!!THINGS TO SCRIPT!!

Little note: idk where yall are shifting or what ur shiftibg for or if any of these will be helpful but personally i have 2 DRs. Diary of a wimpy kid (rodricks so damn foine😍🫶🏼) and a boarding school with a bunch of characters i like from diff DRs. The boarding school thing would be so fun. Like imagine going to get ice cream with Olaf, or going shopping with Cat Valentine, or skipping class with Sarah Lynn from Bojack Horseman… All in one DR!?!? Idk just seems fun to me. Ok thats enough fantasizing about that dr. TO THE THINGS TO SCRIPT!!

☆Script that nothing traumatic happens !! I saw sb talking about how scripting that you’re immune to bringing trauma back to ur cr doesn't make sense or work so js script out traumatic events?? Idk if that makes sense still tho, tell me if it does idk.

☆if you cook or bake script that cooking is easy for you and you dont make mistakes on accident. Like u dont burn food, dough isnt too sticky, nothing comes out the wrong texture, u dont over/underseason, etc

☆Script that ur hair always behaves omg!! I have curly hair and this is a NEED. Script that its healthy, shiny, desired length nd thickness, CANT GET TANGLED, doesnt get frizzy, etc.

☆Script a cool teacher character, trust me. I think it'd be so fun to have a nice cool (hot😍) teacher. Like that one guy on tiktok idk if anybody else has seen. The hot psych (maybe) professor, like that guy😍.

☆script that whenever u order food it gets done quickly, im not waitin no 45 mins for a pizza !!

✩clothes u order are always high quality, immune to getting stained, stretchy and fit well, etc. For the shien hoes...

☆script that ur desired resturants are near u. I wanna be getting some chicago pizza in my boarding school🤤

☆script short painless periods or get rid of them completely, script that its natural and healthy though ofc.

☆nice school. Clean luxury bathrooms, good lunch, good teachers, good field trips, rooms that are decorated well, etc.

☆script good intuition !!

☆script waterparks, malls, trampoline parks, stuff like that near you. You dont wanna get bored in ur dr ??

☆script naturally good hygiene. If ur super tired one morning and don't wanna shower then ur not gon stink all day!! And if u forget to brush ur teeth or wash ur ass or smth ur not gonna smell, it wont matter.

☆SCRIPT THAT EVERYONE HAS GOOD HYGIENE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE‼️

!!SLIGHTLY NOT SO SFW SECTION!!

☆Never get caught doing less than legal stuff

☆dont get nic sick, green out, hungover, etc

☆age to buy stuff (🍺🍃💨) is lower. Its 21 for me, gotta lower that😉

☆“organisms“ are a million times stronger

☆“organisms“ come quicker

☆soundproof walls...yk if u need them for any reason...ion judge🤫

☆bed doesnt move or make noise...incase u need it yk...🤫

☆u taste and smell good, they taste and smell good. Script the taste and smell. Script it tastes like whatever food you’re craving at the time😉

OK THATS ALL FOR TD, YALL HAVE A GOOD DAY/NIGHT STAY SUPER FREAKY HAVE GREAT VAGINA ND HAPPY SHIFTING!!🥰

[fipindustries]

WELL WELL WELL, what a bounty! and just two days away from my birthday no less! let's sin our teeth on it.

i will give lengthy and indepth responses to all of this but i undersand how constrained and frazzled you are by life circumstances so feel no obligation to respond to any of this

-Other people's explorations of sexuality usually don't mesh well with my own, and explorations of gender irritate me with their very premise.

funny how that works, i tend to be irritated when people deny gender or act like its a made up thing because they personally dont have it/experience it

Fip is an incredibly raunchy person; she really exults in getting nasty and freaky.

praise of the highest caliber

I couldn't help but step outside myself and wonder what Fip herself was seeing when she was creating this. What did it mean to her? Where did it come from? These kinds of questions probably have some pretty obvious answers—fun and goofs, general horniness, power fantasies and wish fulfillment, etc.—but there are probably some deeper rabbit holes here too.

thats a good question. its interesting because people bring up a lot how "honest" jennyffer is as a character and as a story. how personal and how intimate and how naked. very rarely do i go out of my way to express a part of who i am and how i feel in my works, ive done that a lot more in my writing in places such as fan.tastic, there is a crack in the world and milkman, than in my visual stories. jenny herself i concive first and foremost as her own character, with her own personality orthogonal from mine. obviously inebitably i express a lot of things about myself through her, but she was not intended as a "one ring" as you say. on a broader sense, about the work itself, im not sure. like you point out, yes, being funny was the main impetus, but also being original? exploring a trans story that i just dont see around a lot, at least not when i concieved of the character. just scratching the frustation i always had that noone had tried this thing that i felt would be so incredibly effective and that i knew how to do it right. i was convinced that i could tell a story about a trans character that was actually funny without being didactic, without being maudlin, without feeling like i was pandering, a trans story that was actually funny in an edgy way, and not "funny" in the sanitized woobified way that so much queer media was at the time. i could be the person that could make a trans story that even people who are not into queer stuff could find hilarious. i was so piercingly, singlemindedly convinced that i could do it. and i did it i fucking did it

sorry, i got heated, moving on.

On that first watchthrough, though, I was very much a stranger in a strange land at first. Engaging with somebody's art really is like stepping into another world. All the rules are subject to change.

i love this and all other subsequent thoughts you have regarding how friendships help you discover new works. a lot of times with mainstream media you go in more or less knowing what you are getting thanks to mass marketing. but when you stumble on to those obscure hidden gems online, made by some idiosincratic character, where all you have going on for it is some vague recomendations and maybe a tagline, the sense of mystery and wonder and discovery you get from those works is priceless. i love figuring out what the hell i am engaging with as i am engaging with it. i love that sense of a stranger on a strange land and all the infinite potential that a story hides when you are in that state. also i have discovered that engaging in art from nobodies online, and specially your friends, is just so incredibly rewarding. you get something that is just so raw and unprocessed and unfiltered and weird and herky jerky and sui generis. truly this is how i discovered some of my favourite masterpieces in my life.

-But in so doing I also had to resist the temptation to pre-judge it on the basis of tropes, like Jennyffer's smartass behavior style, or cringeworthy elements

i am of the opinion that the first episode is the weakest by far, if nothing else because its a very rote and stale execution of the "author self insert blows the fuck out of a strawman" kind of comic that is very tiresome. nobody wants to see the arguments you had in your head in the shower with a caricature of your enemy where you easily win. it is saved though by the fantastic joke where the bullies eat the corpse of the other bully

-I appreciate the fat tummy on the light-haired, scantily-clad chick in front. Looks a lot like Cherry from Galaxy Federal in her past when she wasn't gaunt.

we all love gaz digsby

-I think it implies that, even though she is out as trans and is accepted as such by her family and friend, her journey isn't actually complete yet. I didn't think about this at all on my first watchthrough, because I took the plot device of sex reassignment at face value, but, knowing as I do now that she ends up rejecting reassignment surgery later in Episode 10, I think her moderate stance and flashbacks here are clear indicators of the cognitive dissonance that is brewing inside her. She's smart, and she had seen the news report earlier in this sub-episode, so the premise of reassignment surgery is already in her mind at this point, forcing her to confront a future that she has always deliberately avoided looking at in the past

bingo, got it right there. later you point out that is weird that the detransitioner is what makes her doubt about the surgery but that doubt was already present there from the first moment she sees the news in the phone. the conversation with the detrans guy just gave her doubts an extra push. also i love that i managed to create something that acquires more depth on a second read. i rarely dare to aspire to attempt that level of story telling because i fear im not talented enough for it yet, but im glad in this case it worked.

-This not only contrasts with Jennyffer's dental braces but transforms those braces into a compact yet powerful metaphor: JJ's life was a rudderless, uncaring mess, while Jenny's is "willing to make the effort," whatever that might entail.

is also such a perfectly succint way to argue for gender transitioning. sometimes our bodies just dont fit us and we have to reshape them through drastic medical intervention into a new shape to be more harmonious with us. if society at large is fine with the example of uneven teeth then why not with genitals and so forth? is the exact same principle

I love how JJ's visual design projects their total rejection of the world and life.

yeah, JJ's source of anger and frustration was mainly just her internal sense of dysphoria, but above that it was the fact the she couldnt properly express it because she couldnt properly understand it, either because she truly was not aware or because on some level she didnt want to be aware. you can see how she lashes out against peter for failing to perform masculinity in exactly the same way she was terrified of failing. she had this aching sense of insatisfaction and she couldnt fully point out why, all she could do was vent through violence. the whole gender idea was something she didnt fully consider or entertained for long because she had absorbed the background noise radiation that "boys are boys and girls are girls and a boy acting like a girl would be a shameful thing"

-Jennyffer is more put-together in Episode 10 than we've ever seen her. Her conversations with her parents and the staff at the health clinic show a maturity and well-adjusted attitude that is definitely not present in most of the series.

this is because in the rest of the series we see her almost exclusively being challenged or bullied or pushed. the great tragedy around jenny is that she is actually a very sweet and nice girl, or she would if she didnt have this albatross around her neck, if she didnt need to develop all these defense mechanisms. and we see fleetlingly that in the moments she is treated with kindsness and respect she tends to respond in kind. if we were to see jenny's life in a more realistic way, if we were to follow her day to day and focused on the uninportant, narratively irrelevant moments, when she goes to the grocery or takes the bus or whatever, she is fairly normal and polite. but the series focuses on the moments where she is being pushed.

and other times she's just an asshole because she has something to gain from it, like in episode 5 where the teacher is nice but she still behaves like an ass (but only up until a point where the teachers niceness just disarms her) because she is after all an immature and occasionally selfish teenager.

-I like how Rebecca, the receptionist at the health clinic, is really obviously the grown-up version of a Mean Girl. The Mean Girls were dropped as a series subplot pretty early on, which I missed, so this callback is nice. (It's actually not that; I subsequently saw in the credits (and the YouTube comments) that it's actually an allusion to another piece of media I'm not familiar with: one of many such instances!)

the funny thing about becky prim is that she IS jenny, she was one of the original inspirations for the character of jenny. if you watch the pilot of becky prim you can see her acting virtually the same as jenny does in early episodes. to put it in your terms: in a sense this scene is galavar having a conversation with ganondorf (imagine such a thing!). except in here becky is more grown up and more relaxed and a sort of window into who jenny herself could be when she grows up.

I know it's a contentious and complicated topic within the community, especially since a not-small number people who detransition go on to become enemies of trans folk and trans legitimacy

yeah this scene was probably the one that i was most uncomfortable and unsure writing because to be honest i didnt seek for detransitioner voices to inform myself as to how to write this character, i just wrote what i would like to hear and what i personally think would be the most healthy attitude to tackle that situation. i wouldnt be surprised if a detrans person sees this and thinks its incredibly disrespectful and completly illegitimate and incorrect. as for the doubts on legitimacy that this may cause in some people, well, yeah, that is kind of a reflection of my own insecurities because i myself have wondered and still wonder if i might not end up like that one day, that one day ill wake up and come to find out that this whole trans thing was me being delusional. it makes sense that this insecurity gets reflected in the story itself.

-This is my first time realizing that JJ's therapist looks a lot like Fip's own avatar—a not so subtle subtext, if intentional.

it was very much intentional, i thought it was a cute little joke to set the writer as the therapist of her own character because is that not what a writer does? explore the psychology of their character, peel their identity layer by layer so that we get to a fuller understanding of them? but also on the note of our characters never being quite ourselves, i did deliberatly made the psychologist catholic, if you notice in some shots we can see she has a picture of some saint or another with an olive branch in one of her walls

-The consistency of his characterization as a schlemiel (including in the past) makes him kind of lovable and adorable.

i love yiddish

I have to say that it caught me by surprise on my first watchthrough that Jennyffer backed out of her surgery. I had been assuming uncritically that this surgery was going to happen and serve as the culmination of her journey. This was set up in Part 2, so that's actually when it caught me by surprise, but Part 3 here is where the actual surprise drops in-plot.

see this is really funny. because yes, on some level that was the "twist" i was going for, or the lesson, or whatever. that you dont need srs to be a woman, that not all trans women feel necesarily dysphoric about their genitals, etc etc etc. thing is, while i did intend it as some kind of suvbertion of expectations it actually felt kind of weak to me because like. yeah no duh. the character of wanda in sandman already taught me this lesson back when i was 15 reading a comic from the 90's. and if you spend any time in trans spaces (where girlbulges are treated as the sacred fruit from the garden of fucking eden) this is not a revolutionary take at all. it is as cold and mild a take as there can be. so i was worried it might not actually hit that hard or be that revolutionary. its that xkcd comic all over again, even when trying to compensate for it experts are bad at estimating how much the public knows about a field. as for why jenny doesnt want to do it. well on the one hand is because surgery is scary but also because she really doesnt mind her dick at all personally, if she feels self concious about it is because of what other people might think about it. she is perfectly comfortable like that so the incredible challenges of going through such an invasive surgery are just not worth it for her.

-I'm pretty fuckin' straight, personally, or at least "straight" is the word I'd use if I weren't agender. Instead the precise word is the super technical "gynosexual," i.e. "attracted to female bodies"; hence why I usually still use "straight." And so I do occasionally find transwomen attractive, but usually not, because they usually don't scan to my nether-regions as "female-bodied"; and on the other hand I've found more than a few transmen attractive over the years, mainly the ones who go for a look of androgyny and/or possess fat and highly pear-shaped bodies.

cancelled, called out, reputation tarred, doxxed, blocked, etc

-I would like nothing more than to say that I am pansexual myself; attracted to everyone. But the simple truth is that I'm not.[…] It's a hard pill to swallow, and it's unfair, and it makes me upset because I contribute to the problem and can't authentically be any other way. I've tried to flush out any bias that may be motivating my preferences, and, to the extent that I can trust my findings, I haven't found much. The part of my brain that conceives of things like the peaceful existence with and acceptance of human diversity doesn't live at the same address as the part of my brain that wants to fuck

god it feels so good to be bi, man what a great gift it is to find the human figure in general just inherently attractive, it is just the best, am i right fellas?

-Or it may be that Peter is fully gay, but that his existing bond with Jenny overrides Peter's orientation. The end of the episode suggests that it was actually the second possibility, by stating that they broke up once Peter realized he was too gay and Jenny was too much of a woman, but I'm gonna invoke Death of the Author and state my preference for the third possibility. :p

got it right again. peter's problem is that he grew up looking up to JJ, and when JJ became jenny peter just couldnt shake the image of JJ from his head. to peter jennyffer was still his male friend JJ. much in the same way some parents just cannot shake their view of their child as their assigned gender no matter for how long they have transitioned. it probably took for them to have sex like a couple more times after they hooked up and every time was a little shittier than then last and then they just realized this wasnt actually working and they just separated amicably

-I don't know how I feel about the culmination of the love arc between Jenny and Peter. I believe that it wasn't meant to be. I do like that all the promise and buildup was delivered upon by Peter finally confessing his feelings—and doing so at a moment perfectly suited to a plot climax. And the two of them consummating their relationship right there on the spot is, well…very Fip! 😂 But I guess I don't know how I feel about whether or not all the buildup was worth it.

see im also very unsatisfied with how i resolved it as well but for different reasons. i think the arc of jenny doesnt fully really coalesce tbh. in the end we discover that her big fear all along, the thing that was pushing her insecurities was the fear of being unloved, which im not sure i really did that clear a job establishing in previous episodes. and the way this gets resolved is with her friend coming along and being like "oh but i do actually want to have sex with you, so you shouldnt have self worth issues anymore". but then in the epilogue i kind of take that away and i handwave it all with a statement that she made a bunch of friends in the time skip off screen and she is not worried about being alone anymore. is all very messy and undercooked and weak honestly. but the thing is i really really really wanted the climax of the story to be the two of them getting together because that ending was one of the very first things i concieved of when i first created jenny

i couldnt kill my darlings. (also peter was called michael back then wtf)

-But one thing I've noticed over the years is that there is no one genre or category or topic that I categorically dislike.

amen brother, the most valueable lesson i learned as i grew up is that all styles, genres, mediums, artists, no matter how convinced i cold be that they are not for me, they will always have at least one work that i actually really enjoy.specially with music. as a kid i was convinced i hated reggeaton and cumbia and bachata and yet on every one of those genres i found songs i liked. i was convinced i hated abstract art and then i met kandinsky. i was convinced i didnt like eggplant and then i tried pickled eggplant with garlic and it was delicious.

is always worth to keep your ears, your eyes and your mind open.

so yeah! what an absolute corker of a birthday gift! thank you so much for it, specially know the effort it must have taken, i really appreciate it a lot. take notes people, this is how its done!

More Thoughts on Jennyffer

@fipindustries / Amanda Avila recently published Episode 10 of her animated webseries Jennyffer, which is about an edgy trans high schooler. Last year I watched through the rest of the series and wrote down my thoughts, the short version of which is that I enjoyed it and was excited to hear that Episode 10 was coming out.

I didn't know that Episode 10 was going to be the series finale until Fip mentioned it after the fact, but it's a great note to go out on. Anyway, I figure that I should write down my thoughts for this episode too, since it's the big finale after all.

This post contains full spoilers for Jennyffer. You can watch the series yourself on YouTube. I do recommend it! This is one of those small indie works that I would probably never have sought out on my own, but one thing that friends are good for is getting introduced to new stuff through them, including sometimes their own work!

Some Stuff Before the Episode 10 Review

Before I start talking about Episode 10, I want to talk about the series as a whole.

I'm kind of an outlier queer person. I'm not gay; I'm not trans; and in fact the way my own sexual identity works is that I don't actually like looking at the topic of human sexuality all that closely most of the time and in most ways. A lot of sexual stuff grosses me out; I am a sexual person but am very particular about it. And I have no gender at all: I am agender. I don't like gender. Cis, or trans, or other for that matter. In my ideal world "masculine" and "feminine" would not be a thing; the traits from each binary would be assorted into all human beings on the basis of their character alone. This is one of several reasons I say that I would probably never have sought out this series on my own initiative. Other people's explorations of sexuality usually don't mesh well with my own, and explorations of gender irritate me with their very premise. Jennyffer is a series specifically about a trans girl coming into her own in the world, with a lot of overt sexual and genital stuff thrown in the mix, too. Transgender identity itself is both the main theme of the series and the main axis of virtually every plotline. I don't usually seek these things out. And so I just don't see this kind of work very often.

Watching Jennyffer, therefore, is a healthy thing for me, I think. It's good for me to look at more gender-exploration stories. And, on the sexual side, there's a certain level of reptilian-brain discomfort in me when it comes to looking at many spaces in human sexuality (queer or straight), and I would like to have less such discomfort with it, and Jennyffer is exactly the kind of acclimatizing art that helps me progress in that. Fip is an incredibly raunchy person; she really exults in getting nasty and freaky. Jennyffer itself is probably a whole lot tamer in regard than it could have been, yet even in its actual form it runs right up against the limits YouTube's Terms of Service—often satirically, e.g. daring YouTube to classify Jennyffer's bare breasts as female nudity. (A fight which has become significantly more salient given the corporate roll-overs to appease fascist ideals in the new Trump era, as we have seen a marked contraction of overt support for queer rights in the tech, media, and retail sectors, and a collapse in trans rights specifically.)

In any case, my friendship with Fip gave me the occasion to watch Jennyffer, and I am better off for it.

Speaking of: I also look at Jennyffer, the character, and can't help but wonder how quintessential she is to Fip. I know through my own experience with character creation in my storytelling that, for those of us who use art to explore and express ourselves, our central characters can be extremely intimate for us in the sense that they come to serve as vessels, "One Rings" if you will, for pouring so much of our essence and desires into. Fip wrote some things in her blog after publishing Episode 10, which I'll get to later, but, without considering any of those writings now: After observing my own deep-rooted discomfort with Jennyffer's heavy, proud focus on sex and gender, I couldn't help but step outside myself and wonder what Fip herself was seeing when she was creating this. What did it mean to her? Where did it come from? These kinds of questions probably have some pretty obvious answers—fun and goofs, general horniness, power fantasies and wish fulfillment, etc.—but there are probably some deeper rabbit holes here too. In any case, Jennyffer is a very personal work and I evaluate it as such—even more so on my second watchthrough than on my first. This series is not just grist for the mill; this series is someone's naked honesty, and that's special. It is a privilege to get to see artists bare their souls to the world in this way. The thing about passion is that it always says more about us than we mean it to. Something like Jennyffer can never be limited to being the face-value version of itself; there is always more to it underneath, intended or not.

Jennyffer isn't really a coming-of-age story to me. If I had to shoehorn it into a big formulaic category like that, I'd pick "slice of life." Jennyffer is mostly about Jennyffer being Jennyffer (in our messed-up, transphobic world). There isn't really a narrative "point" to the series—no central arc or final showdown—that is, until Episode 10. But Jennyffer's shit is about as together in Episode 1 as it is in Episode 9. Even Episode 10 is climactic mostly because it is declarative; it fills in more about the core of Jennyffer's character, and it does so with a much more serious tonality. Some of the subplots in the series have arcs across episodes, most notably the love arc, but these are never central; they are more like amusements. Jennyffer is a work that rewards paying close attention to detail and assuming that the creator's artistic decisions are always deliberate and intelligent. But most of this power is dedicated in the background simply to being clever and funny—Jennyffer is conceived as a comedy series, after all—and not to making any self-indulgent, grandiose philosophical statements about Jennyffer's "evolution" from child to adult or boy to girl. Arguably, this doesn't apply to Episode 10, which definitely does tread into this more ambitious space, but I think it's also arguable that Episode 10 is simply one more slice of life.

Ahead of writing down my thoughts about Episode 10, I rewatched the entire series (including Episode 10 again at the end), and on my second go-through I found I was immediately familiar with and comfortable with the format. When I sat down to watch this show for the very first time, I had no idea what I was going to get. An indie production can be anything: pure gold, pure crap, or anything else. Fip is a friend and my biggest worry was that I wouldn't be into her work. But that wasn't a problem on my second watchthrough, because I'd already seen the whole series and I knew that I liked it. On that first watchthrough, though, I was very much a stranger in a strange land at first.

Engaging with somebody's art really is like stepping into another world. All the rules are subject to change. So are all the conventions. And I've found over my life that what we bring with us as audience members on our travels into these new worlds is critical. Fip is a friend and so I had a lot of premade goodwill going into the series. I am always telling myself that I should try and be more like this when I engage with strangers' works, too, because the extra patience and good faith often pay off. I got a lot of extra benefit from this series because Fip is a friend and I went into it with so much more good faith and alertness; these postures would benefit me from watching works from strangers too. This is hard to do, of course, because, in general, extra patience and good faith and alertness more often don't pay off, as many works don't deliver on the higher degree of audience investment, and I do find myself becoming less and less patient and attentive as I get older. But Fip got maximum good faith from me, and it paid off handsomely, because Jennyffer starts out pretty rough but it drastically improves.

The title sequence is actually great and was great right from the beginning, an Episode 1 has plenty of good humor and interesting ideas and emotional effects in it, but on the whole it was very unpolished to me when I was watching it for the first time, and my mind was constantly on a tightrope between perceiving it as good and perceiving it as bad. Because I had stepped into a new-to-me world of the artist's own creation, I had to learn what I was actually seeing before I could judge it. But in so doing I also had to resist the temptation to pre-judge it on the basis of tropes, like Jennyffer's smartass behavior style, or cringeworthy elements, like the poor sound design or Fip's uneven voice acting. I also had to keep in mind that this was a one-person animation team. I'm spoiled on animations that cost millions of dollars to make, so I have to recalibrate my expectations to watch one-person, low-budget productions and not get caught up on the animation. (That said, Fip's animation is actually pretty decent, and, once you get used to the style of it, it's completely adequate to the task. Indeed, if anything, Fip's animation is actually probably one of the strong points of the series, because I for one can't imagine animating roughly 90 minutes of runtime with just my ole self to do the animation.)

One thing that stood out to me on my second watchthrough is that Jennyffer got over its uneven starter phase real fast—and I adapted to its idiomatic style even faster. Almost every post-as-you-go indie production starts out pretty rough, and Jennyffer is no exception, especially in production value issues. On second watch, I think Episode 3 (the one where Jennyffer's hormone gel turns the big burly sports team into ladies) is the first one that I unambiguously dig. This is where the show first finds it footing, and this is where I first get really into it. That means it only took Fip two episodes to basically get a feel for her show, which is pretty impressive and speaks to her artistic talent and smarts, her ability to learn from other productions and digest their lessons, and most of all to her passion for the subject matter and characters. This is not a given: All creators improve with practice, but not many improve so quickly or to such heights. And, in that sense, maybe the most exciting thing about Jennyffer is that it invites us to imagine what Fip might create in the future.

But would I have made it to Episode 3 if Fip wasn't a friend? I don't know! I've become a notoriously disloyal YouTube viewer; I used to finish a lot more videos through to the end, but these days I will bail readily. I don't know if Episode 1 would have persuaded me to click on the next one. And Episode 2 is the one and only episode in the series that I dislike more than I like—though I disliked it less on my second watchthrough, as, this time, I got to thinking less about my own lack of amusement at the episode's central joke and more about what parts of Fip went into creating it. But would I have clicked through it on my first watchthrough to see Episode 3 if Fip wasn't a friend? I honestly doubt it. I do know that creators usually have a rough beginning, and in the past I've trudged through many a bad show or webcomic to see where it goes once it improves, so it's possible. But it's definitely not guaranteed. Only Fip's preexisting friendship guaranteed I was going to watch the whole thing. And I don't know if this can really be generalized to an actionable principle for anyone reading this, but the power of friendship certainly profited me this time, because the series really is clever and funny and does all sorts of cool things, if you give it a chance to get there. And I guess I mention all of this to reiterate what I was saying earlier, about how our friendships and other associations can take us to new places we wouldn't otherwise go. It's good to cultivate these opportunities for ourselves in life.

Moving on, I wanted to mention how much I like Jennyffer's character design—that is, the visual design of Jennyffer herself. She's kind of amazing, with a mixture of traits coded as both ugly and pretty. There are moments where she looks cute and charming and sometimes even downright beautiful, like a kid from a faerie-tale; and there are other moments where she looks like a troglodyte or an utter slob or Helga from Hey Arnold. This is one area where animation has more power than live-action, because live-action can only do this through costuming, makeup, and great finesse by the actor of their facial expressions and body language, but animation can redefine the reality of the character's entire physicality from moment to moment. Jennyffer has a believable range of appearance and aesthetic attractiveness, and it's clear that Fip approached the character with a sense of dignity for Jennyffer but also an aversion to making a sacred cow out of her. Many storytellers go one way or the other, either cynical and self-deprecating to the end, or unable to let their precious creations be truly ugly or horrible. Fip can harbor both thoughts simultaneously, and the result is pretty compelling for me. I love that sometimes Jenny is so cute and other times she looks just hideous. It's also interesting to contrast this with Jennyffer's pre-out self in Episode 10. Her male-presenting form is exclusively hideous. (Or, I should say, coded as hideous; an important distinction but not one that I'll necessarily be spelling out each time.) Her female-presenting form is still hideous sometimes, but only rarely, and only as one bookend of a much wider range of good and bad. There's a lot of truth in that. No metamorphosis brings us to Illum, that paradise of the inner mind, the state of perfection spoken of by the Relancii in The Curious Tale. Being true to ourselves only gives us the chance to glimpse paradise once in a while. It does not entitle us to permanent happiness.

Anyway, here's a few scattered notes from my second watchthrough. Apologies if I already said any of this stuff in my first review, and double apologies if anything I say at any point contradicts anything I said in my previous Jennyffer review:

In Episode 4, the fact that the school councilor is by definition unhelpful is some really sublime humor. Fip's acting here is also noticeably improving. The art was good right from Episode 1, but some of Jennyffer's poses and expressions in this episode show a growing familiarity with and grasp of the character that open the door to my favorite thing: nuance!

In Episode 5, Jennyffer's outrageous attitude and ridiculous evil scheme (crack her tutor's egg in order to be able to spend more time with Peter), is channeling pure Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes). It's delicious! I also love how her cat ears move like real cat ears.

In Episode 6, "Hello dear. You know you don't have to break your computer ever time I come into your room, right?" is still one of my favorite jokes in the series, just because of how dry Peter's mother delivers it. Also, can I just say, growing up in the '90s with a family computer in the den and two parents who scarcely knew how to use it and rarely came into the den was a wonderful thing! I was rarely intruded upon. Granted, I was mostly playing games or writing stuff of surfing the web, not doing anything "dirty," but I think we all know what it feels like to be walked in on when you're doing something private and comfortable. So I can relate to Peter here.

Episode 10, Part 1

I don't really buy the news story opening, because it omits the role of the House of Representatives and because Republicans nowadays would never vote for a teen sex reassignment bill; even many Democrats would not have the courage to pass such a law. However, I do appreciate the jab at single-issue anti-Israel haters on the left being against the Democrats doing anything whatsoever so long as their pet issue isn't being addressed. Single-issue blinders are a huge problem on the left in America, and it's all the more glaring when these issues happen to be greatly overstated or outright illegitimate, which sadly isn't uncommon.

I appreciate pre-out Jennyffer's / JJ's grim, annoyed, completely hopeless self pep talk to "just get through the fucking day" even as the day is only just beginning and nothing has had the chance to go wrong yet. I've become all too familiar with that mindset in my old age, and I have a lot of sympathy for it in others.

JJ struggles, for obvious reasons, to choose the sex of their video game character. That only stands out to me because I have never hesitated to play female characters (and in fact I rarely don't play them when I have the choice). Goes to show how different strains of queerness (and different subjective experiences of the same strains) take different forms for folks.

2'30": The reference on the wall poster is lost on me—I often miss allusions due to my lack of exposure to whatever other people are talking about, but I appreciate the fat tummy on the light-haired, scantily-clad chick in front. Looks a lot like Cherry from Galaxy Federal in her past when she wasn't gaunt. I only point it out because I bet no one else will. Just goes to show that every detail, no matter how small, will find its appreciators, if the audience is large enough.

3'10": I mentioned this in my YouTube comment when Part 1 premiered, but the fucks being given here when JJ catches the bird midair and snaps its neck have dropped below zero and are now in the negative! This is an instance of the artistic exaggeration of emotions and situations that was common in the rest of Jennyffer but is less pronounced in Episode 10 due to the much more serious overall tone. You need to maintain a certain minimum level of over-the-top stuff if you want to keep it in at all, or it gets taken at face-value and stands out too much, creating a likely-unintended reaction in the audience. This bird-neck-snapping gag—and the others, like the headlight-punching gag that occurs shortly after—keep the episode grounded in its series' idiomatic style.

The simultaneous action of the present-day conversation and the two-years ago one is digestible enough, but probably would have benefitted from some supporting sound design and added visual cues to better demarcate the two, although the existing use of darker grays for the inside of the house in the flashback definitely helps.

It's fascinating how supportive and kindly Jenny's parents are to her, considering how hard her life has been and how jaded she is. I suppose they weren't necessarily always this way, but, supposing they were, I think this illustrates how even people in relatively good situations can have miserable lives—which is also an important theme in the Galaxy Federal Inaugural Novel and therefore one that I've thought about a lot in the past several years. I find Jennyffer and her troubled past completely believable.

Overall, this sub-episode sets up the premise of Episode 10 as a whole pretty well: Jenny's transition, and her finding of herself in her new identity. It establishes more definitively (though there were clues earlier in the series) that Jenny's social transition is fairly recent, and also establishes that she was actually even more violent and assertive before she transitioned, which means that her hard edge isn't (solely) a coping mechanism for the discrimination and mistreatment that come with being out as trans. And it also sets up her anatomical transition as the central plot of Episode 10—which, given that this is the series finale (though I didn't know this on my first watchthrough), gives it an incredible amount of weight and retroactively focuses the entire series around this issue of identity and self-acceptance.

This sub-episode, and Episode 10 as a whole, are much more plot-heavy and narrative-driven than the series up till this point, and, together with the much more serious tonality, Episode 10 definitely feels like a step up in Jennyffer's gravitas.

As a critical viewer it is relevant to question why Jennyffer begins having flashbacks to two years ago before she actually commits to the sex reassignment surgery or is even seriously considering it. In fact, in the brief moment where she addresses the matter herself before her parents invite her to pursue it, she actually signals that she is willing to wait. I'm prepared to believe that this is just a continuity error (in the service of telling two simultaneous stories set at different points in time), but I much more so suspect that there's something going on in Jenny's psyche here. I think it implies that, even though she is out as trans and is accepted as such by her family and friend, her journey isn't actually complete yet. I didn't think about this at all on my first watchthrough, because I took the plot device of sex reassignment at face value, but, knowing as I do now that she ends up rejecting reassignment surgery later in Episode 10, I think her moderate stance and flashbacks here are clear indicators of the cognitive dissonance that is brewing inside her. She's smart, and she had seen the news report earlier in this sub-episode, so the premise of reassignment surgery is already in her mind at this point, forcing her to confront a future that she has always deliberately avoided looking at in the past ("Just get through the fucking day.")—and, with it, the question of who she really is.

Episode 10, Part 2

I immediately appreciate how JJ's teeth are almost all a different shape from each other, each one irregular in its own way. This not only contrasts with Jennyffer's dental braces but transforms those braces into a compact yet powerful metaphor: JJ's life was a rudderless, uncaring mess, while Jenny's is "willing to make the effort," whatever that might entail. It also retroactively provides narrative significance to the braces, above and beyond being a teenage character design trait. And Jenny's braces are so essential to her facial expressions!; this is definitely not a trivial or peripheral thing. I absolutely love stuff like this in storytelling, where the significance of something in plain sight isn't evident until later on. We did see JJ at least once earlier in the series (not to mention in the title), so this isn't new to Episode 10, but JJ gets a ton of screentime here so it's much more apparent.

I talked about this a moment ago, but I really love the visual design of this character of Jennyffer. Not only is Jennyffer everything I said earlier, but her pre-transition incarnation as JJ is also really compelling. JJ looks like a muppet monster. This is someone who doesn't care, and whose physical form reflects this lack of care. Trans-haters often accuse trans people, especially transwomen, of looking ludicrous, like they are making a joke of womanhood. Lipstick on a pig as it were. Jennyffer however is drawn in a way that shows she clearly cares and makes an effort to appear feminine and (usually) dignified. It's actually JJ who looks ludicrous, with the snaggle teeth and mop of hair swallowing their head. Again, this is merely coded as ugly; this is not an inherently ugly look (so no shade to anyone who looks like JJ!); but I'm taking it as "ugly" because I think that is the narrative intent.

Now, I've said a couple times that JJ "doesn't care," and actually I know that that's not true; it's actually the exact opposite: JJ cares a lot! If they didn't, JJ's misery wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't have Jennyffer the character later on or Jennyffer the series by Fip. But an outward lack of expression of care is what I'm talking about. I love how JJ's visual design projects their total rejection of the world and life. It's obviously no surprise that Jenny / JJ are drawn with such attention to detail and such artistic oomph, since that would have to be an important component of the point of Jennyffer as a series, but it's still impressive, because a lot of main characters out there do come across as pretty generic or otherwise underwhelming with respect to their narrative and thematic substance (if such things are even present). I love Fip's thoughtfulness and performance of talent here.

Moving on, it's interesting how, in both of the sub-episodes so far—and I noticed this on my first watchthrough too—Jennyffer is more put-together in Episode 10 than we've ever seen her. Her conversations with her parents and the staff at the health clinic show a maturity and well-adjusted attitude that is definitely not present in most of the series. Jenny is also much more frequently drawn in her "cute" poses than in her "gross" ones. I assume this is to deepen the contrast with JJ, but the narrative effect of it is to imply that Jennyffer is already coming more fully to a point of self-acceptance and adult maturity, and is therefore ready to confront the question of an anatomical transition—and I wouldn't put it past Fip to have been clever enough to do this on purpose for this reason, and kill two birds with one stone with respect to also deepening the aforementioned contrast with JJ. But, either way, this maturity and good behavior are a major step forward for Jennyffer as a character, and further legitimize the role of Episode 10 as retroactively giving focus to the entire series. In fact you could almost imagine the boundaries of a metaphor to exactly this effect wrapped around the entire series. I wouldn't expect it to have been deliberately planned from the start of the series, where Jennyffer would become mature just in time for Episode 10, but, if it was planned out this way all along, that's very impressive.

I like how Rebecca, the receptionist at the health clinic, is really obviously the grown-up version of a Mean Girl. The Mean Girls were dropped as a series subplot pretty early on, which I missed, so this callback is nice. (It's actually not that; I subsequently saw in the credits (and the YouTube comments) that it's actually an allusion to another piece of media I'm not familiar with: one of many such instances!)

Since my first watchthrough, I had forgotten that it is a de-transitioner at the clinic who sows the primary seed of doubt in Jennyffer's mind about the reassignment surgery. I don't claim to speak for trans people or detransitioned people, but I know it's a contentious and complicated topic within the community, especially since a not-small number people who detransition go on to become enemies of trans folk and trans legitimacy, sort of like how many fat people who lose weight go on to become some of the worst anti-fat bigots. But the detransitioner in this episode isn't one of those; they're actually very reasonable, and have a valid perspective. I compliment Fip for tackling it head-on, though, in retrospect, I think it is a weakness in the drama for this person to be the main source of Jenny's own doubts, because, even though it is entirely reasonable to imagine that a detransitioning person would be a valid and likely source of such doubt, in storytelling we look for dramatic patterns, and this signal implies that Jenny herself may not be clear in her gender identity, which would be a very significant development for the character and would also establish an incredibly strong symmetry with the events happening concurrently in the two-years-ago storyline.

4'10": I know these are window blinds, but, for the life of me, they look like those metal drop-down barriers that you see in high-crime areas, implying the prison that JJ psychologically dwells in.

In my YouTube comment when Part 2 premiered, at the scene of JJ's mom walking in and dropping the pizzas, I wrote:

This is pretty raw! Wasn't expecting an episode like this, but I like the earnestness of it. The doubt, the uncertainty. I love how pre-out Jennyffer is drawn like a slovenly monster (or a monstrous slob, maybe?) while present-day Jennyffer seems to be drawn more beautifully with each passing episode, and I love all the unspoken things that this says. And most of all I'm digging the parallel storyline and curious to see where it all goes and how it all fits together. I got a laugh when Jennyffer's mom came home with the pizza because I knew as soon as I saw those boxes that their sole purpose in life was to be dropped. 😂

Fip mentioned in reply that it was annoyingly difficult for her to find a sound effect for the sound of them dropping, which made me smile. She also mentioned how hard it was to find a voice actor for the detransitioner, which I suppose is understandable.

I think media like Jennyffer do important work in the space of trans legitimization. Trans representation in storytelling is one thing. I have trans characters in all of my stories. It's good to give as many people as possible the chance to see themselves. But that's sort of a minimum bar. Actually confronting contemporary trans issues and even the stigma on trans legitimacy emanating from the hateful quarters of society, through representation, is a much higher accomplishment, and it's one that is much easier to tackle—and more readily acceptable to others—if you're actually trans yourself. Whenever I talk about trans issues I know I am wading into a minefield, and as a result I am much less assertive and combative than I would have been in the past (in the past I was quite fierce on many issues even if I wasn't super-knowledgeable on them). But that lack of ferocity also makes me less effective as a messenger, not to mention my preexisting level of being less-informed and less experienced. Fip obviously knows a thing or two about being transgender and going through a transition, and Jennyffer is an important work that has the potential to reach a lot of people and sway a lot of minds—and this is certainly a timely time for it, given that the fascists in the US have made trans people and immigrants their two chief scapegoats. Jennyffer is not preachy at all, but it handles the subject matter with a familiarity and an approachable irreverence that get through to some people in a way that well-ordered essays do not. I guess, to put it in other words, it assumes from the onset that the viewer is onboard with trans identity being legitimate, and tells stories on that basis, and this can have a way of drawing people into its underlying premise through the accessibility and relatability of the storytelling. It also helps, I think, to soften many people's shock at the fact of transgenderism, since our thinking about sex and gender is often very tightly codified by society, and even to some extent by our instincts.

Stepping back a couple sentences, and speaking of the US, it's interesting that Jennyffer is set in the United States, considering that Fip is from, and still lives in, Argentina. It takes a lot of knowledge and bravery to do that. I don't think I would dare to set a work in another present-day real country, myself. I'd be uncomfortable even setting a work in a place like Chicago or New York City. But I guess this speaks to Fip's worldliness and also to the freshly-expired US global hegemony. Because we situated ourselves at the center of the world economy and world culture for nearly a century, people all around the world know an unusually high amount about American life, culture, and politics. That will begin to dissipate now that America under Trump has cut itself off from the world, but for now at least we still get things like Jennyffer, where a creator from another continent will set one of her works in the US and voice it in English, because she absorbed a ton of English-language media and hangs out in a bunch of English-speaking communities online, and is actually more comfortable writing dialogue in English! (Fip told me so herself when I brought it up in a conversation a while back.)

Moving on, kudos to Fip for JJ's cross-dressing visual design being clearly distinct from the look she settled into when becoming Jennyffer. That's the kind of attention to detail and realism that I really appreciate, and I always miss it when creators omit it. This essentially required drawing a completely new character, and not only that, but one who has to look relatable to two other characters. Neither of these things is trivial! It's common in storytelling for storytellers to connect two known points with a direct bridge and no intermediate nodes or steps, i.e. to turn a JJ immediately into a Jennyffer with nothing in between. Sometimes this is done to save work but more often it is just done out of lack of imagination; people often don't think of it! Yet it is entirely plausible and extremely likely that JJ's first attempt at presenting as feminine would not be the end of that particular journey for her. What we see in the series title (the animation of JJ becoming Jennyffer) is highly stylized and works very well for what it is trying to do, but it isn't by any means a literal representation of How That Works.

I appreciate the end credits hanging on "Georgie Girl" long enough to not let the song feel cut off.

Episode 10, Part 3

This is my first time realizing that JJ's therapist looks a lot like Fip's own avatar—a not so subtle subtext, if intentional.

I'm always careful never to assume a one-to-one direct relationship between an artist and the surrogate characters they create. None of my own author surrogates are a one-to-one representation of me. They aren't intended to be (with the very asterisk-laden exception of Silence Terlais), and in fact I deliberately give these characters (including Silence) traits that I wouldn't have. I do this for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that otherwise readers who know anything about me can begin to make mistakes about their readings of these characters by mapping what they know about me onto the characters. I also want to be able to put my characters in situations where they can behave in ways that I never could, not in the "power fantasy" sense (although I do that too) but in the "let's explore this from another angle" sense.

And, so, I have never taken Jennyffer as Fip, or Fip as Jennyffer, despite my knowing that there are doubtless manifold similarities between the character and the person, and some profound explorations of self that Fip is doing through Jennyffer, and even despite Fip's own statement (which we'll get to later) that Jennyffer is very much a part of Amanda herself. So to see Fip's own avatar [seem to] appear as Jennyffer's therapist underscores my confidence in the rightness of my decision to keep them separate. And for good reason, lol: I recall a conversation I had with Fip a while ago, where I mentioned that Jennyffer, at least at this point in her life, probably wouldn't like Silence, whereas Fip does like me. 😂

Anyway, moving on: This sub-episode has some issues with the balancing of the sound levels, which had also come up again in Episode 6 (though I don't know if I mentioned it at the time). So I was riding the volume knob here, because being hard of hearing means the soft parts were too quiet otherwise.

In my YouTube comment at the time, I wrote this:

This is my favorite part of Episode 10 so far, and one of the top installments of the whole series!! I'll save most of my thoughts for my eventual Tumblr write-up, but I wanted to say your voice acting during the therapy scene really hit hard, the humor on this one hit me just right, and the photo montage during the song was so heartwarming and one of my favorite moments in the whole series! 🥰😭🥰

I stand by this comment! The therapy scene was very well-done. That said, I think it had more of an impact on me the first time than on my second watchthrough, because it was such a breakthrough moment for the character and I as an audience member could only experience that breakthrough once, but it still stands out as very well voice-acted and drawn by Fip. And the montage afterward is 100% my favorite moment in the series, and Jennyffer has never looked more adorable or more herself than in these extra-effort still images. And she's still Jenny, after all, as shown by how she starts decompiling the face of a classmate who makes fun of her after she's out as trans. <3

And now I guess the time has come due to pay the bill on my "eventual Tumblr write-up." I had intended to write down a great deal of thoughts about Episode 10. The essay you're reading now is only an echo of that intention, because in between then and now Real Life happened to me and I don't have a lot of mental bandwidth for intellectual exercises like composing and articulating my thoughts. I hope this post is readable at all, and that it has anything of value to offer. I don't know when I would have gotten to writing this if Fip hadn't nudged me with a reminder recently. And with her birthday coming up shortly, I knew I had to make the best effort I could, even though it won't be as good as I really wanted.

But such things must be as they are, and, echo or not, I will say this:

Whenever an artist attempts to undertake the actual, on-screen depiction of a major transformative moment in a character's life, that's sort of a sacred calling to me. Not in the religious sense, since I'm not religious, but it really cuts to the heart of our art. It's always appropriate, I think—and it's bred into our nature as human beings, too—that we tend to notice these moments when they happen to others around us, and we naturally give these people the space to have their moment. In moments like these, most rules of social etiquette are suspended. Most norms of conduct are suspended. There is an inherent understanding, that most of us possess, that, in these defining moments of our individuality, we will be given space to act and react naturally and true to ourselves. I like that the therapist knew when to push JJ, and how to push, and that she also knew when to be quiet and listen. This scene illustrates an example of one of the uncommon cases where I think it's okay to adversarially yell at your therapist (or at another person in general). And I like how Jennyffer's mom also pushed, because it's not the choice I would have made in her place, but it was the right choice. It sent Jennyffer over the edge, and "cracked her egg," and that's what she needed and that's what she was heading for. If it had been me in her mom's place, I would probably have never have been tone deaf enough to go pounding on my kid's door like that. I say "probably" because the way Jennyffer was acting in that moment, marching to her room, could plausibly have looked a lot to her mom like something really bad had just happened to her, like a beating or mugging or sexual assault even. And in that case, if I'd inferred that, maybe I would have pounded on the door after all. But, regardless of what I would've done, that's what her mom did, and then, afterward, her mom gave Jenny the space to have her carpet-ruining moment of awakening. It is a privilege and dare I say even an honorable burden to bear witness to these most intimate and stressful moments of metamorphosis and personal development in a person's life, and to depict it in art is a difficult and ambitious undertaking that is incredibly easy to fail at. Especially if the artist is not relying on tropes and formulae, these situations can be really hard to pull off with the right dramatic weight and tonal color. They can be hard to depict in a way that is convincing and compelling. They can be hard to pace properly. In visual media, they can be hard to storyboard and block out. What is the camera doing? What is the lighting doing? What angles and elevations are we using? What props and scenery are going to be in the shot? Etc. Humans have a good nose for sniffing out insincere or uncompelling moments of great personal transformation, and any artist who attempts such a thing seriously is putting themselves at a lot of risk. But it is noble to try; it is that sacred calling; and all the more so when the subject matter is of deep and vulnerable personal significance to us. Felicia's egg-cracking from a few episodes back was played mainly as a joke. While it's not impossible that an adult might realize they are trans by the obvious machinations of a precocious teenager whose main goal is to get out of her lesson and hang out with her friend, it's more likely that this was not intended to be taken as a literal representation of the moment of awakening. But Jennyffer's moment is (notwithstanding the giant beams of energy). And I think Fip pulls it off; I really do. In so doing, she achieves something that most people have not: capturing one of these transformative moments in media authentically. That's a great feat, and it makes me proud of her, and it also makes me dream about all the potential this series has to break through to people and help them in their own journeys of personal understanding within themselves or perhaps with others in their immediate lives.

And, in a nod to Fip's artistic prowess, the therapy and home scenes would not pay off the way they do without the immediate and powerful catharsis of the incredibly upbeat musical montage afterwards where we see the first days of the new life of Jennyffer. That montage is the reward that Fip earns in succeeding with the previous scenes so well.

7'51": Lol at Peter's written note including all the "umms" and so forth. 😂😂😂

I haven't said much about Peter, or the love arc he has with Jennyffer. This arc is the biggest narrative structure in the series, as it becomes clear relatively early on that Peter has a crush on Jenny, and in several episodes we see him trying to confess his feelings for her. (I feel for him, by the way: I confessed to my high school love in senior year, after two-and-a-half years of suffering, and it was the scariest thing I ever did.) Peter is one of those characters who doesn't have a ton of meaning or purpose in and of himself—or, since Fip says that he's a part of her, I should say that Peter doesn't have a highly independent purpose in Jennyffer, but, rather, exists more so to help define Jennyffer as a character and give her a conversation partner whom she can be real with. But despite these humble origins Peter becomes a charming character in his own right relatively early on in the series. The consistency of his characterization as a schlemiel (including in the past) makes him kind of lovable and adorable. He's a cinnamon roll who needs to be protected, and this plays wonderfully well against Jennyffer's headstrong independence and fierceness. As for the love arc, I'll say more about it in the next sub-episode.

Finally for Part 3, I have to say that it caught me by surprise on my first watchthrough that Jennyffer backed out of her surgery. I had been assuming uncritically that this surgery was going to happen and serve as the culmination of her journey. This was set up in Part 2, so that's actually when it caught me by surprise, but Part 3 here is where the actual surprise drops in-plot.

I have to admit to some personal ignorance here. I'm aware that plenty of trans people don't get bottom surgery. But my assumption had always been that this was usually a matter of money or health concerns. For a long time it didn't even occur to me that people with gender dysphoria would pass on sex reassignment surgery if they could get it without much issue. It's one of those things where, once I think about it directly, of course it's obvious that changing your genitalia isn't a direct equal sign with transitioning, and not everyone is going to want to do it. But because I don't watch a ton of media that specifically deal with the issues surrounding transitioning, Jennyffer was one of the only times I've actually seen this reasoning process play out. Like I said before, it caught me by surprise when Jenny backed out. My natural inclination would be to ask "Why wouldn't you go through with it? Isn't it what you want?" And the answer of course is that "It's complicated." Indeed, Jennyffer herself never truly, fully explains it. Once again, this series isn't afraid to go in a difficult direction, and I appreciate that. I appreciate that it isn't all Disneyland and neatly-bowtied ribbons where everything works out the way you expect it'll work out, but instead frequently veers off in other directions for valid and well-articulated reasons.

Episode 10, Part 4

It's a subtle touch that Jennyffer's hair in the bathroom has partially reverted to JJ's hairstyle.

The front-on confrontation of the fact of Peter being gay but also being attracted to a transgender woman falls into a category of queer relationship pairs and sexual preferences that doesn't get explored nearly enough, I think. Jenny herself asks Peter what he's pulling, since at face value that's pretty invalidating toward her. Peter admits that she is essentially his only exception, and she takes that well enough, but in real life this can go all sorts of directions.

This is something I think about myself sometimes. I have a policy: Never apologize for your sexual attractions. You don't get to choose who you're attracted to. It just is what it is. But there's room within such a policy for bias to hide out, and I think we all have to ask ourselves from time to time whether and how guilty we are of harboring such bias, if we should find ourselves habitually unattracted or infrequently attracted to sexual minorities, people of various colors and ethnicities, people of various shapes and sizes, and so on and so forth.

I'm pretty fuckin' straight, personally, or at least "straight" is the word I'd use if I weren't agender. Instead the precise word is the super technical "gynosexual," i.e. "attracted to female bodies"; hence why I usually still use "straight." And so I do occasionally find transwomen attractive, but usually not, because they usually don't scan to my nether-regions as "female-bodied"; and on the other hand I've found more than a few transmen attractive over the years, mainly the ones who go for a look of androgyny and/or possess fat and highly pear-shaped bodies. And that's a difficult position to be in, because, on the surface level at minimum, it is insulting to both transwomen and transmen, but it is also a part of my identity that I don't control and therefore—per my policy—don't apologize for. I would like nothing more than to say that I am pansexual myself; attracted to everyone. But the simple truth is that I'm not. In fact my sexual preferences are very specific (and not just in this one area). This reality, in its commonness among people, is one of the many things that helps populate the cloud of dread that often darkens the sky of trans people's daily lives. "This person's cute, but what if they think I'm just an ugly freak?" Trans people know that a much higher than usual proportion of people are not going to be into them when compared with cis folk. It's a hard pill to swallow, and it's unfair, and it makes me upset because I contribute to the problem and can't authentically be any other way. I've tried to flush out any bias that may be motivating my preferences, and, to the extent that I can trust my findings, I haven't found much. The part of my brain that conceives of things like the peaceful existence with and acceptance of human diversity doesn't live at the same address as the part of my brain that wants to fuck. If anything, finding correctible bias within myself would actually increase my odds of moving closer to being pansexual, because it would imply that I can decondition or unlearn some of those biases, whereas unbiased sexual preferences are basically there to stay.

In any case, I especially appreciate Fip acknowledging this issue, in her own way, by finally addressing Peter's attraction to Jennyffer despite being gay himself. This kind of complexity exists abundantly in the real world, and we don't talk about it often enough, deeply enough, or maturely enough. In Peter's case, it may simply be an instance of him being not completely homosexual, just as most straight people aren't completely heterosexual. Or it may be, less flatteringly, that, like me, his southern brain is something of an essentialist when it comes to matters of sexual orientation, and doesn't process gender as sexual. (As an agender person, my brain definitely doesn't do that, and, in fact, while I am only attracted to bodies that I perceive as female, I am also highly inclined toward female bodies that present as agender or androgynous, not "feminine.") Or it may be that Peter is fully gay, but that his existing bond with Jenny overrides Peter's orientation. The end of the episode suggests that it was actually the second possibility, by stating that they broke up once Peter realized he was too gay and Jenny was too much of a woman, but I'm gonna invoke Death of the Author and state my preference for the third possibility. :p

But seriously though, it's an interesting and fraught topic. Most stuff concerning sexuality usually is. It's good to bring up and grapple with in storytelling.

5'00": I don't imagine this camera shot of the bathroom ceiling light is a deliberate allusion to Taxi or anything else, but it's funny how public bathrooms are such a common setting for "gritty" storytelling and human love and pathos, and there is an episode of the TV show Taxi where such a scene is occurring, and at one point they talk about the ceiling light, and how it's a good light. I always liked that moment.

I don't know how I feel about the culmination of the love arc between Jenny and Peter. I believe that it wasn't meant to be. I do like that all the promise and buildup was delivered upon by Peter finally confessing his feelings—and doing so at a moment perfectly suited to a plot climax. And the two of them consummating their relationship right there on the spot is, well...very Fip! 😂 But I guess I don't know how I feel about whether or not all the buildup was worth it. This was, after all, the biggest arc of the series, and nothing correspondingly big came of it. They just settled back into being the friends they were always meant to be. I suppose it's honest enough that one of them might have developed feelings for the other at some point; that's quite common, especially among teenagers. But in a story with a pretty limited runtime, playing up a romantic tension wasn't necessarily the best use of time, energy, or focus, at least in my opinion.

Then again, as I type that, I can't help but feel that Peter would have been pretty underdeveloped if Jennyffer had not had its love arc. I guess maybe in another timeline there would have been a different arc or arcs in its place, or other material to flesh out Peter's character. But, yeah: Speculation aside, the love story didn't do much for me.

Moving on, I like how Jennyffer's parents aged like twenty years in just two years, heh! I think this is one of those things where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't: You can't really make a character drawn in this style look two years older. So if you want to make them look visibly and noticeably older, you have to overstate it.

I also appreciate Jennyffer's mom putting on (more than) a few pounds. Her dad, too, actually. Given the power of cartoons to play around with body shapes, I really wish we saw this more often, but we rarely do.

8'03": I remember seeing the title in the end credits on my first watchthrough and thinking "This needs to be scrolling credits! It would fit with the ambition and scope of Episode 10!" And, lo and behold, the credits begin scrolling down, movie-style. Very classy, Fip! Well done.

Overall Thoughts

I read a lot of the YouTube comments and was clued in to many references and other artistic flourishes that I missed, despite my being on the lookout. I like it when a work is bigger than me like that. I didn't get even close to catching everything, and, probably, not all of what I did get was actually intentional. But, regardless, there is enough substance there for me to get a lot out of it, and for others to do the same despite loading up their proverbial plates with different food selections. I am reminded once again of how the experience of engaging with the art of thoughtful people is partially a mirror that shows us things about ourselves by fact of what we notice and how we interpret things.

This is a good series. If you've read this far and haven't seen it yet, you should watch it. Doesn't take long; the whole thing is roughly one feature-length movie in runtime. The first few episodes are just a couple minutes apiece. And if you watch it and like it, and have a few coins to spare, you should donate to Fip's Patreon fund! Which I say as a total hypocrite, because I'm not a patron myself, because I'm absolutely broke. (Not figurative "broke" either.) But maybe you are in a place to support. It's important to support small artists. Your money goes so much farther with them than it does with a creator who has dozens or hundreds of patrons. It's Fip's birthday soon, so go give her lots of cash!!

I mentioned earlier that this isn't a work I would have sought out on my own, most likely. I mentioned that sexual stuff kind of grosses me out a lot of the time, and gender stuff kind of pisses me off a lot of the time. I'm also not super heavy into bawdy, raunchy storytelling and humor. But one thing I've noticed over the years is that there is no one genre or category or topic that I categorically dislike. There will always be artists who speak to me, for whatever reasons, in a way that welcomes me into places where I don't normally choose to go. Fip is such an artist, and Jennyffer is a series filled with masterful creativity and genuine human warmth in spite of all the cynicism, and the humor is clever and adorable, and so are the characters. I enjoyed this series a bunch.

There Is No Need to Be Angry Anymore

Fip wrote down her own post-finale thoughts on Tumblr a while back, and I wanted to respond to some of that, too.

long long ago, back in 2008, i made a deviant art account and i started sharing my works online. i made the very concious and very deliberate choice back then, to fake it until i made it. every time i posted something, every time i updated my journal, every time i left any kind of note for a potential audience, i would talk with the register and confidence of someone speaking to a huge audience of adoring fans. would apologize for delays, i would advertize big ambitious porjects i had in the works (which i never finished or published). i would explain what i was going for with every work as if i had my dms filled with questions and fan theories.

much of that was me mimicking the style with which pretty much everyone posted at the time in deviant art. i did this when i only had like 4 followers there.

[...]

except this time is special, is it not?

this time i do have an actual, proper audience.

I used to do this too, a very long time ago—except that my confidence in those years was sincere, not faked. You, Fip, were probably just learning about my existence at about the time that I was definitively dialing back on this. I had gotten tired of promising big things and never delivering on them. And, by the mid-2010s, I was running out of things to say in the nonfiction space, having already articulated all the broad brushstrokes of my philosophy and worldview. And, so, when the Troubles came, I just stopped saying as much. And what I did say was not in the supremely self-confident style of yesteryear; it was in fact the exact opposite: a reflection of all the suffering I was going through at the time.

I never chose the right platform: I was on LiveJournal, a few niche web forums, and my personal website, lol. And I never had a consistent pipeline of published works. And so I went from having maybe a dozen followers to ultimately having the same four or so that you began with: very much the opposite trajectory from you, except even at my biggest I was still small-time, whereas you've built up a much more substantial audience!

I've become pretty familiar with disappointment in my own life, and so it has become all the more important to me over the years to take vicarious pleasure in the adventures and successes of others who richly deserve it. Especially when those others are friends. I hope your next projects build on what you have accomplished, and grow your star ever toward the elusive goal of a livable income as an artist. And if you ever get rich, buy me a house or something!

I'm kind of glad Jennyffer is over. When you mentioned around the turn of the year that you were working on Episode 10 after a hiatus, I remember thinking that, usually when this kind of thing happens, the artist comes back to it briefly and then falls off the wagon again—this time forever. But by choosing your comeback to also be your series finale you completely preempted that timeline and gave completion and closure to your series. It's a good size. And Episode 10 does a lot to cast the rest of the series in a new light. It's almost as long by itself as the rest of the series put together, and it really does serve nicely as the centerpiece, even though it comes at the end. And finishing Jennyffer means you are that much more free to work on something else. When you were posting some animation studies recently, I couldn't help but wonder if there was any secret information to be gleaned from reading those tea leaves.

i was perfectly content to be someone on the same tier as, say, tom sidell or zach morrison or scott dewitt. someone with a well liked webcomic who could feed a relatively small but loyal group of fans that would spurn discussion, analisis and fanart. that was the thing i was looking most of all, praise i can do without, i wanted engagement, i wanted analisis, i wanted the kind of fan interaction that is measured in fan content. i wanted reviews, even bad reviews, it meant people were thinking about my work.

That's exactly what I wanted for my own work, too. There isn't a much more meaningful and valuable gift a fan can give a creator than thoughtful feedback, good or bad. We've talked about the importance of artists doing this for one another in our one-on-one conversations, Fip, but, for anyone else reading, I hope this is something you'll take to heart. Give small creators thoughtful feedback! Don't worry so much about the popular creators who get thousands of comments on everything they post and probably won't even see your comment; spare your energy for the people who often get nothing at all except a few praises. Praises are wonderful, but thoughtful analysis is priceless. Take the time to do it; it's a good deed! That's why I'm doing this, despite my brain hurting to do it. It is meaningful to me because there truly is very little that you can give an artist that they will prize more than your thoughtful and honest feedback.

the actual biggest success of this project id say is the fact that people got me. people truly understood what i was going for. i have heard many analisis of what is art in the last few months, wether there is such a thing as objective criticism of art, what is art for, what is the purpose of art, why we make art. and one position i heard over and over again was that art is not for communication. you know, death of the author and all that, what the creator meant has no bearing on the work and the experience of the work itself.

and yet i cannot help but disagree on some level, because if so what else can i call jennyffer other than an absolute triumph of conveyance. people understood it, time and time again i would see comments where people descrive pointedly, incisively, precisely what i was going for. i felt seen.

🥹

(That just shows up as a black rectangle on my computer, but it's this emoji of eyes welling up with tears of gladness.)

Yes. It feels good to feel seen! Even if the part of us that we are feeling is seen is only a little bit of our entire whole. To steal the conversation back to my own work for a moment, the absence of this feeling of being seen is very closely related to the central theme of the Galaxy Federal Inaugural Novel. I have gone through my life mostly without feeling that I have been seen, and it is deeply dismaying. Wearying, too. The best I have been able to do, in lieu of being seen, being understood, and therein being accepted, is to write down what it feels like not to be, in the voice of my character Cherry, and grapple with the meaning of a world where that is so. It's not a fun book. It's not the book I wanted to write in years past. But it's the best I can do in this lonely world of mine, because it is honest and it is central.

I am always so glad when people have a chance to feel seen. We don't do enough of that in the world. We don't try as hard as we should to understand each other, and indulge each other in the act of gazing upon them with insights and interrogatives. Despite growing up on a media feast of affirmations that we should all embrace our individuality, the harsh truth is that human civilization is viciously conformist and will punish ruthlessly, or ruthlessly ignore, anyone who deviates outside the social order. Counterexamples exist only in the exceptions. Even cultural and political movements do not bring the true, full-figured inclusiveness we wish for them to.

Moving on, I agree with you about your personal importance to the series, and I always have: Your intentions matter to Jennyffer; they deeply enrich it. And this is true in general. The creator's intentions matter, and when those intentions are lost, a part of the work is lost.

Now I want to end this with a talk about the characters themselves in this story. Jennyffer and Peter.

They are based on many many different things, things that i have descrived many times in the past. but one thing i want to put emphasis on is that they are very much two sides of myself. the sensitive, morally punctillious and enciclopediacly nerdy Peter, and the assertive, sarcastic and ebullient Jenny. those who have known me for a while would have seen my inner peter poke out whenever in talking about some interest of mine, or when i first met them and want to cause a good first impression, or when im kinda tired or melancholic. and they would have also noticed my inner jenny get out whenever im salty, or stuck in debate mode, or excited or enthusiastic.

They are two lovely kids. they are endearing, they are funny, they are a little messy and sometimes a bit too much to handle. but it was an absolute delight and a priviledge to have them live in my head for four years and im very greatful that i had the time, the energy and the will to bring them to life.

:333

Actually, I'm not gonna say anything in reply to this. I'm only gonna explicitly appreciate it.

[forecast0ctopus]

how do you use references when you draw fanart or figure out how to draw irl characters?? it's just that i've been looking through your art and i feel like you ability to capture a character's idk essence, in vibes + appearence, are just unmatched! they're all so dynamic and like them i just <33

aaa thanks so much!! im glad to hear that since i honestly dont watch a ton of live action? i generally have done a lot more fanart for animated things so thats nice to hear haha anyways though!! i have far too many words that may or may not make sense to say so i'll put how i use references and figure out live action characters below

the main rule i like to keep in my head is that i am drawing the character, not the actor, if that makes sense?

this is all taking arthur as an example, to show what kinds of things i look for!! if i were talking about merlin any other live action character like. bobby briggs or something all the details would be super different haha a way i like to familiarize myself with a live action character at first is tracing which i must preface by saying TRACING ISNT BAD!! its a tool and it just needs to be used correctly. tracing is a great way to figure out a method to drawing things, so its really valuable in studying. im not gonna address using tracing in finished artwork rn bc thats where it gets a little dicey and i would talk about it too much.

i dont really need to do this for arthur anymore but it was a fun exercise lmao

sorry the images are so crunchy i always forget i work on small canvases, anyways in capturing a likeness i like to emphasize and exaggerate a little which features make the character most recognizable to me.

he's got a sharp nose which is bumped at the bridge and a little bit upturned at the bottom. when he's smiling his eyes crinkle a lot and his cheek muscle becomes more pronounced and connects into the corner of his mouth

very square jaw. his brows are thicker near the center and don't have much of an arch. his cheeks are hollowed with neutral expression and the muscles on the sides of his mouth (depressor anguli oris, if i remember correctly lol) are obvious when the corners of his mouth are downturned

the corners of his mouth fold in a lot when he bares his teeth if hes angry or agitated, its a different type of fold when hes relaxed or smiling

his masseter is rather pronounced when he's talking or agitated, and i usually connect the line of it to the line that goes down from the inner corner of his eye. i forget what the word for it is rn but its different from eyebags (though i do like to draw eyebags)

but none of these details work if whatever hes doing in the drawing isnt in character, yknow? like he could look like arthur but he wouldnt really feel like arthur if hes not acting like arthur. idk it s hard for me to put to words im sure u get what i mean enough

body shape and language are also super important to think about, these are some things i keep in mind with arthur - hes shredded but not like marvel movie dehydrated shredded (good for him) - hes very broad and his shoulders slope down because of his trapezius muscles - he takes up a lot of space! he hardly ever curls up or sits with his feet up in his chair. even when hes sleeping hes pretty sprawled out - his "closed off" body language is crossing his arms or raising his left hand to twist his index finger ring with his thumb (worried/thinking gesture) - he moves with a lot of purpose usually and isnt often clumsy (unlike merlin lmao) - he moves his shoulders a lot when he walks (see top left image)

honestly think body language is just as important as facial features if not more, for the purpose of creating personality and character

i probably sound like i think way too much about this stuff which i. i kind of do but not in so many words i dont need this many words when its all in my brain. but yeah thats how i figure out how to draw a live action character i guess? anyways this was kind of a mess haha

[fromthedeskoftheminister]

Forgotten but not Lost

NOW ON Ao3

Unknown Life Series Season 4 sometime early march? Cubfan? Fwip? The bunnies are a goin folks. Have.... Whatever this is?

Unbetaed.

Forgotten but not Lost

They’re all just standing there. In a circle around a campfire. Its the first time that hes done this, Scar knows. It is not the first time he’s done this. He’s just as sure of that.

And yet, something here is wrong about the tableau before him. He’s never seen these people before in his life. Yet somehow he knows them. Not well, but still its stuff that he should not know about any of them. The werewolf? wolf hybrid? he doesnt know which and hes not sure why thats the questionable point when he knows the man is?was? royalty. Theres also something whispering in the back of his mind about frozen blood and an affront to good taste. To the wolfman’s right just where he should be is his right hand, the one who hears. The Fey is next, chatting quietly with a Demon no animosity present at all. The survivalist is blatantly listening to their conversation while he lightheartedly taunts an Omen whos trying to ignore him in favor of the conversation hes having with the Forge spirit. A Dragon gives him a smile or perhaps its the flash of a fang when their gazes meet.

He returns the grin, threat and greeting all in one before moving on. Theres the innovator, the timekeep, and his other half? former other half? his betrayer? his... The whispers are incoherent. Theres too much there and no time to piece through it at all. His gaze skips over a blank space, before landing on the puppetmaster, Fate’s favorite fighter, and completes the circle with a couple of people the whispers dont have much to say about at all. A glint, and Scar’s attention is drawn not to the pesky bird that the whispers have entirely too much to say about but to the blank space next to him. A space which is now occupied. A space which as always been occupied and Scar knows that this is what’s not... quite right. Black eyes with a spark of electric blue in their depths meet his own hazel evenly as they take each other in. The slightly rumpled young scientist across from him seems content to just study the strange company they both have found themselves apart of. Yet, something about the way he holds himself, the lack of surprise at his own presence here or the appearance of the others, suggests that he knows more than they do. And that the smug trickster finds it funny. And its just as obvious that he knows that Scar knows because he gets a sly half smirk directed his way the longer they stare at each other. It’s Scar who breaks first. “You have something of mine” he states, surprising himself. He doesn’t know how he knows this, he doesnt know where the other man got it, the whispers arnt talking. Theyve been strangley silent since their eyes met, and Scar knows that hes never met the man before in this life. Yet his statement, while attracting everyone elses attention, including a startled squawk from his former soulmate, is simply met with a widening grin that reveals far too many sharp teeth for the mouth they’re in. “I do.” Theres a pause while the rest of the group very loudly tries to figure out exactly when this blank space arrived but cannot to their vexation. “Did you want it back?” Scar almost nods and reaches out a hand before stopping abruptly “What happens if I take it back?” A shrug “You Know what you Are and you are Unfettered and Unbound in what you Can Do” Scar peers at him mulling that over. “I heard those capital letters Sir. What happens if I don’t take it back?” “I keep ahold of if until you decide you want it back” “Its not a limited time offer?” “Ehhhhhhhhh.” the noise is accompanied by a hand wiggle “It is a limited offer” “But not a limited time offer?” “No.” Scar hmms. “You keep it. I think I’ll have more fun figuring things out without it.” The other man nods and looks slightly wistful but accepting, as if he had already known what Scar would choose but had hoped otherwise. Their conversation is interrupted by a cough and the Instigator says from somewhere to his left “And with that cryptic conversation out of the way, lets get on with it shall we?” *****************************************************************************************************

Its later that same day and Scar has since learned that the blank space’s name is Cub and the one responsible is Grian, along with a host of other names which are frankly a lot easier to remember than the epithets that the whispers were offering when he stumbles across the pair of them arguing about something in the forest. “Listen, Grian” Cub says, clearly done with whatever is going on here. “We’re done. You’ve got resources to collect and so do I. But before I bounce, riddle me this; what is a watcher to a vex?” The words mean nothing to Scar, but Grian apparently does as do the whispers. He can feel their tension and can see just how tense and pale Grian has gotten, before he grits out a “I dont know” “Dinner and a Show” Cub answers before turning around and striding off deeper into the dark oak forest. “So step lightly, little watcher, before someone takes a bite”

[leossmoonn]

One Day at A Time

masterlist

pairing - lip gallagher x fem!reader

type - angst, fluff

note / request - “Hi, I love your Shameless imagines! And I was wondering if you could write something for Lip Gallagher x Reader having a baby and struggling with their new life ❤️” alright so i named the baby fred bc thats lip’s baby’s name already lol also you and lip live in the house that lip wanted to buy for tammy. enjoy!

summary - you and lip struggle to raise a baby and survive 

warning / includes - language, fighting, alcohol, smoking, but fluffy ending

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*gif isn’t mine*

“Lip!” You shouted. 

Your boyfriend ran into the room frantically. “What’s wrong?” 

“I need you to get me more baby wipes. Freddy took a big shit,” you instructed. 

Lip nodded, going to the table where you kept the baby wipes. He gave you the whole packet only for you to yell at him.

“Hand me them! I have to hold Freddy down so we doesn’t roll off,” you said.

“Sorry, Jesus,” Lip muttered, handing you baby wipes each time you put your hand out. 

You successfully cleaned your baby’s bottom and but on a new, fresh diaper. You picked Freddy and went downstairs with him. You set Freddy down in his high-chair, going over to the cabinet to get Freddy’s baby food. 

“Are you um, are you going into work today?” Lip asked.

“Yeah, are you?” You asked. 

“Yeah, I am,” Lip said. 

You frowned, turning around and putting a hand on your hip. “You can’t. Someone has to watch Freddy.”

“Debbie can watch Freddy,” Lip said. 

You scoffed, “She's never here. And before you say V and Kev, they’ve already helped us enough the past few months. They’re busy with their own kids.”

“Well, I need to go into work. We need the money,” Lip said. 

“Yeah, and I need to go to work or I’m gonna get fired!” You exclaimed. You began feeding Freddy, your mood lightening a little once you saw the little guy’s face. 

“What about working tomorrow? I thought that was our schedule,” Lip asked. 

“It was, but one, I’m well overdue on maternity leave and two, my boss doesn’t care about my personal life. She doesn’t care that we are struggling to raise a child,” you explained. 

Lip opened his mouth to suggest something, but nothing came out. He looked at you helplessly. 

“Here, why don’t you work for a few hours and I’ll watch Freddy in the morning, then you come back home at lunch and I’ll go and work for the afternoon,” you said. 

Lip nodded. “Yeah, that works.”

“Alright, good,” you said. You turned your attention back to the baby, feeding him the rest of his breakfast. Meanwhile, Lip went to shower and get ready to go to work. He came downstairs, coming over to bid you and Freddy goodbye. 

“I’ll see you later. I love you,” Lip said, giving you a hug and a kiss on the forehead. 

Even though you were mad at him earlier, you melted into his arms immediately. You hugged him back tightly, burying your head in the crook of his neck. 

“Hm, I love you, too,” you said, breathing in his scent. 

Lip couldn’t help but smile at your actions. He pulled away after a few moments, walking over to Freddy. 

“I love you, too, buddy,” Lip cooed, kissing Freddy on the cheek, making the baby giggle. 

You smiled at the scene, enjoying seeing Lip interact with Freddy. 

“Bye,” Lip called out before leaving. 

“Bye!” You exclaimed, watching him leave. 

You let out a long sigh, leaning back against the fridge. You looked at Freddy, who was clapping his hands on his high-chair table. You laughed a little.

“You’re so silly,” you said, going over to him and picking him up. 

“Do you want to go to the store with me?” You talked to Freddy, bouncing him up and down while walking across the room. 

Freddy make a little squeak and you smiled. “Yeah, I know you want go to the store with me. I’m gonna shower and get ready, you stay in the crib, okay? I’ll be out in 10 minutes,” you said, going up to the nursery and setting Freddy down  gently. 

You went into the bathroom, taking a quick shower and brushing your teeth. You went back in your room and got dressed into a pair of mom jeans, a dark-purple, buttoned-up shirt and put a grey sweater over it, taking the collar of your shirt and folding it on the collar of your sweater. You then returned to Freddy’s room. You saw him on his back, sucking in his thumb. You smiled and picked him up, quietly going down the stairs. You set him in his high-chair again, getting your coat, purse, and your shoes. You also got Freddy’s little coat and hat to keep him warm in the cold winter of Chicago. 

You went out to your car, buckling Freddy into his carseat. You then went to the supermarket, putting Freddy in the front of the cart. You picked out fruit, vegetables, and salad mix. You got 2 gallons of milk, new coffee creamer, and cereal. You bought a few warm-up dinner packs and hamburger meat, going to the freezer isle and getting ice cream. You then went to the snack isle. 

“What should we get, Freddy?” You asked, looking at the pop tarts. 

Freddy pointed to the birthday cake-flavoured pop tarts. 

“Good choice, baby,” you smiled, grabbing the pop tarts. You then grabbed a few packs of chips and gum, going over to check out.

“Cute baby,” the girl at the register said. 

You looked up from putting the groceries on the table. You looked at her name tag and smiled. 

“Thank you, Stacy,” you said. “How old is he?” Stacy asked. 

“Almost 2 months,” you said. 

“Awe, so cute. I just found out I’m pregnant,” Stacy said. 

“Oh, really. Congrats,” you smiled. “Yeah, my boyfriend and I are happy,” Stacy smiled, putting her hand on her stomach. 

She rang your groceries up. “It’ll be $103.98.”

You nodded and took your card out and a few coupons you and Lip had collected in the past month. 

“Alright, with these coupons, your total is $80.56,” Stacey said.

“Great,” you smiled. You paid with your card, gathering the grocery bags. 

“Have a good day!” Stacy smiled. 

“Thank you, you too. Congrats again with the baby,” you gave her a kind smile. 

She thanked you as you walked out. You loaded the groceries into the car and put Freddy back in his carseat. You then drove back home, putting away the groceries while Freddy watched you in his high-chair. 

“Are you tired, baby? I’m tired,” you yawned. Freddy yawned right after you, making you chuckle. 

“Why don’t you take a nap and let Mommy clean the house, okay? It’s a fucking mess,” you muttered the curse words, looking around the house. Clothes and toys were everywhere. Plates were stacked in the sink and on the coffee table. The house needed to be vacuumed and wiped down very badly

You put Freddy down in his crib, turning on the baby monitor. You changed into a tank top and shorts and put your hair in a ponytail, going back downstairs to clean. 

You started with the dishes, washing and drying them off, putting them back in their cupboards. You then wiped down the kitchen counter, stove top, kitchen table, and coffee table. Next you decided to clean up all of the baby stuff that was on the floor. You put Freddy’s toys in the play bins you and Lip had bought and put Freddy’s clothes in the washing machine. You then vacuumed the living room carpet and swept the kitchen tiles, making yourself another cup of coffee. You were done in an hour and a half, taking a look at your work, smiling in satisfaction. Your house hadn’t been this clean since you and Lip had bought it. 

It was lunch time and you knew Lip would be coming home soon. You decided to make you and him lunch. You made chilli and salad, knowing that it would last you two for a few days. You changed back into your work uniform before grabbing yourself a bowl and sitting down, eating your lunch quickly before you had to go to work. 

15 minutes later, Lip had walked through the door. You got up to greet him. 

“Hey, babe. This smells good, what did you make?” Lip asked.  “Chilli and salad for lunch. You can have some,” you said. 

“Ah, nice,” Lip said. He gave you a kiss on the cheek, going over to the kitchen.  You frowned. He usually wasn’t this detached.

“How was work?” You asked. 

“Good,” Lip said, grabbing himself a bowl of chilli. “How was your day?”

“Good,” you said. “ I um… I cleaned the house and got groceries.”

“Oh, nice,” Lip said, sitting down. 

"Are you okay?” You asked. 

“Yeah, I’m just tired,” Lip said. 

“Um, okay,” you said. “Well, Freddy is upstairs taking a nap. He’s been asleep for about two hours, so he will probably wake up soon. The baby monitor is here. When he wakes up can you give him a bath? He’s a little stinky.”

“Sure,” Lip nodded. 

You narrowed your eyes at him, trying to figure out why he was acting so off. 

“I gotta go to work. I'll see you later, okay?” You said. 

“Okay. Have fun,” Lip said.

You slammed the front door shut and walked to your car, letting out a long sigh. You wanted to ask why Lip was acting so distant, but you knew you had to go to work. You worked as a waitress at a local diner. You had been working there for the past 3 years. You hoped to be moving jobs to what you really wanted to do, which was cosmetics, but having a baby set you back a little. You were so thankful for Freddy, though, you didn’t regret having him one bit. It just sucked a lot. But you were good at your job. you were friendly to customers and co-workers, got the most tips, and never played around. You were your boss’s best waitress, despite you always having to change your shifts. 

You worked from 1 pm to 9, going back home tired, but happy you at least got a shift in. You drove home, looking forward to seeing Lip and Freddy, but once you got in the door, your excitement immediately diminished. 

Freddy was in his play pen and the person who was watching him wasn’t Lip. It was Carl. 

“Um, hey, Carl,” you frowned, setting your coat in the closet. 

Carl turned to you, a nervous smile on his face. “Hey, Y/n. How’re you?”

“Good, thanks. Where is Lip?” You asked, putting your hands on your hips. 

“He went out,” Carl answered. 

“To where?” You asked, your temper rising. “Um…. to the Alibi,” Carl said nervously. 

Your eyes blew wide. “What?! He went to the Alibi and left you to take care of our baby? No offense, Carl.”

“None taken,” Carl shrugged. 

“I…” you started to say. You put your fingers on your temples, rubbing in circles to try and ease the headache you were beginning to have. You were able to calm down a little. 

“Thank you for taking care of Freddy,” you said to Carl. 

“No problem. I love the little guy,” Carl smiled. 

You smiled back, grabbing your purse. “Here, let me pay you for watching him.”

“I would usually say yes to money, but I’ll say no this time. I like spending time with Freddy, he's my nephew, I like watching him,” Carl shrugged.

“Are you sure?” You asked, holding a 20 dollar bill. 

“Yeah, I am,” Carl smiled kindly. 

“Alright. Thank you. I’m going to find Lip. Do you mind staying until I come back?” You asked. 

“Nope. Can I have some of the chilli?” Carl asked. 

“Yeah, of course. Do you know how to change diapers and feed Freddy?” You asked. 

“Yeah, of course. I took care of Liam and Franny for Debbie sometimes,” Carl said. 

“Right, of course,” you chuckled. “Thanks, again. I’ll see you later.”

“See you,” Carl waved. 

You didn’t bother grabbing your coat, rushing out of the house to find Lip. You drove to the Alibi, parking haphazardly. You went in, anger surging through you as you saw Lip smoking and drinking his liver and lungs out. He was talking with Kermit and Tommy. 

“Lip!” You screamed, the whole room turning going quiet. 

“Oh, hey, Y/n!” Kev smiled. 

“Hey, Kev. Can I see Lip for a second?” You asked, clenching your jaw. 

Lip looked at you, his eyes dropping. “Hey, baby.” He walked up to you, a stoned smile on his face. 

You grabbed his hand, yanking him out to the alley behind the Alibi. 

“What's up?” Lip asked.

“You! That’s what’s up!” You exclaimed. 

“What do you mean?” Lip asked. 

“You fucking left Freddy alone!” You shouted. “I left him with Carl. He’s fine,” Lip shrugged. 

“Yeah, but you didn’t call me to say you were going to leave Freddy!” 

Lip glared at you. “I don’t need to call you. He’s my son.”

“He’s my son, too! I’m his mother. I need to know who he is with! What if Carl brought over Kelly and they started having sex on the couch where Freddy could see, huh? I don’t fucking want that!” 

Lip chuckled. “They wouldn’t do that. Carl and Kelly are broken up or whatever.”

You groaned. “That’s not the point! I’m tired and super stressed out. You could have let me know!” 

“I’m tired and stressed out, too!” Lip exclaimed.

“Oh, yeah, I bet you are. Getting fucking drunk and stoned,” you laughed sourly. 

“I’m not drunk, I had 2 sips of beer, and I worked!” Lip exclaimed. 

“Yeah? Well I worked, too! I worked until 9 at night. I should be home by then! And I was the one who cleaned the house and did the dishes and got the groceries, which by the way, you are fucking welcome!” You shouted. 

“I never asked you to do that,” Lip said. 

“i know, but I did it because we needed it. All I wanted was a thank you!” “Well I was tired and hungry when I got home,” Lip shrugged. 

You glared at him, tears clouding your vision. “You’re so full of shit, Lip. So full of fucking shit!” You screamed, pushing him back. He stumbled backwards and hit the brick wall gently. 

“What the fuck, Y/n?!” Lip yelled. 

“Don’t do that! You don’t have the right to question me!” You screamed back. 

Lip opened his mouth to yell back, but Veronica and Kevin came out. 

“Hey, you two stop it!” Veronica yelled. 

“Yeah, what’s going on?” Kevin asked. 

“She is yelling at me!” Lip pointed to you. 

“Yeah, cause you’re a fucking asshole!” You screamed, your voice hoarse and tears running down your face. 

“Oh, no,” Veronica muttered. She went over to you, wrapping her arms around you gently. “Let’s go inside and get you some tea, okay?”

You started to sob, leaning in to Veronica. Lip looked at you, his heart breaking at the sight of you so upset.  

“Kev, you take Lip home and get him cleaned up, okay? Make sure Freddy is fed and changed and put to bed, too,” Veronica instructed. 

Kevin nodded, putting his arm around Lip and went to Lip’s car. Veronica walked you inside, taking you to the back of the bar. She got you a beer and a hot cup of tea, placing them in front of you. 

“T-Thanks,” you sniffled. 

“Talk to me, baby,” Veronica said, sitting down next to you. 

“Lip left Freddy home alone with Carl. I’ve been so busy and tired today. I cleaned the whole house, got the groceries. I worked for fucking 8 hours. I just wanted a little ‘thank you’ from Lip. That’s all I wanted,” you cried. “God, I’m such a fucking crybaby.”

Veronica put her hand on your arm comfortingly. “No, honey, you’re not. I understand, don’t worry, and Lip should, too. Maybe you should calm down a little and then go back home and talk to him. Really talk, no shouting and pushing.”

You took a big sip of your beer and nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good plan.”

Veronica smiled. “Do you want anything to eat?”

“No, I’m fine,” you said. 

“You sure? We have some chocolate chip cookies,” Veronica smiled. 

“Hm, okay. I'll have a few,” you smiled. 

“Great!” Veronica squealed. She went away for a few moments, coming back with a container full of cookies. 

You sat and talked with Veronica for two hours. You soon were about to pass out and decided to drive you and Veronica home since Kevin had taken their car. 

“Thanks for the fun night, V,” you smiled at Veronica as you dropped her back to her house. 

“No problem! Drive home safe! Call if you need anything,” Veronica said. 

“Will do,” you said and drove back home, which was thankfully only 5 minutes away. 

You got home, going in and seeing the living room empty. You took off your shoes, groaning in relief as your heels had been aching the whole day. You trudged up the stairs and into your bedroom. You heard the shower going but didn’t bother to go and see Lip. 

You changed out of your work clothes and into a pair of shorts and a tank top. You put your hair in a messy bun, flinging yourself on your bed. 

Lip came into the room with Freddy a few moments later. You noticed his presence.

“What?” You snapped. 

“I just… do you want Freddy and I to lay down with you?” Lip asked. 

You looked to them, seeing Freddy smiling at you. You couldn’t help but smile back. “Sure.”

You scooted over, Lip setting Freddy down next to you and climbing into bed with you. You gave Freddy a big kiss. 

“Hi, baby. I’ve missed you,” you cooed. 

Freddy chortled, clapping his hands. You giggled with the baby, ignoring Lip until he spoke. 

“So uh… how was your day?” Lip asked nervously. 

“Fine. How was yours?” You asked, not looking at him. 

“Mine was uh… good,” Lip said. 

“Good,” you said shortly. 

There was an awkward silence between you two before Lip spoke again. 

“I wanted to apologise for my actions today,” Lip started to say. 

This was the first time you felt like looking at him. You stared in his blue eyes, waiting for his apology. 

“I’m sorry about ignoring the work you did around the house and I’m sorry for not letting you know I was having Carl take care of Freddy. And I’m sorry for going to the Alibi and getting stoned. I really appreciate you cleaning the house. It really needed to be cleaned and to keep it clean, I promise to try and not leave dishes out and pick up Freddy’s toys,” Lip said. 

You smiled at his apology, scooting up on the bed so you could put your forehead on his without crushing Freddy. 

“Thank you. And the house being messy isn’t totally your fault. I need to learn to clean up after myself more, too,” you said. 

Lip chuckled, “That’s something we can both work on then.”

“Totally,” you smiled. 

“I’m also sorry for yelling at you at the Alibi. I’ve just been so stressed with work and Freddy. I’ve never had to take care of a baby that was my own before. I’ve always had help from Fiona and Ian,” Lip said. 

You put your hand on his cheek. “I know, baby. This is all new for me, too. And I’m sorry for yelling at you, too, you didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s alright. I kinda did,” Lip chuckled. 

You rolled your eyes with a smile “Well anyways, we’ll get through this together, okay? I love you. So, so, so much. And I love Freddy, probably a little too much,” you joked. “Let’s just take this one day at a time okay?”

Lip nodded and pressed his lips against yours softly. You kissed him back before pulling away, making sure Freddy was okay. 

Lip smiled. “I love you, too, you know.”

You looked back up to Lip with a big smile. “Yeah, I know.”

————

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[husbandohunter]

Stardew Impact [Stardew Valley+Genshin Impact x Reader]

Part 2/3 Zhongli, Xiao

Synopsis: “A mysterious phenomenon brought you and your s/o to an unfamiliar world: Pelican Town! Without the power of Visions, the two of you begin to learn the life of what it takes to be...a farmer?”

(DOMESTIC FARM LIFE ROUND TWO)

Genre: Fluff

Others

Diluc and Kaeya

Albedo and Childe

(A/n): This was meant to be part 3 but I couldn't wait to write xiao. Plus Ive been writing Albedo for almost the whole month already Word count_2.6k

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Xiao

• Thrown in an unfamiliar environment puts Xiao on high alert. Instincts kick in and his hand subconciously grabs for his spear. Nothing. Not even his vision activated. Xiao's gaze darts all over before landing on your figure. He sighs in relief, you're safe, that much he can decipher as of now.

• Stripped of his power, left with only claws and teeth (if must) to protect you from any dangers, he was ansty with every little thing. 

• The villagers are so nice??? For what reason must they have to act so friendly to strangers (Xiao wonders). The Mayor even granted you two a vast farmland free of charge. 

• Shortly he realized he no longer had his karmaic debt. Xiao wasn't sure how to live his life in this state. He dedicated his entire existence to years of slaughter and suffering that it became the only thing he knew. He won't admit it of course, he'll just throw in scoffs and remarks about how mundane activities are a waste of time when in reality, he just has no clue on how to handle them.

• Thats why the first day was difficult as you both try to figure out how to plant parnsips. Deciding it was better to go with an experiment, you split the share of seeds in half and used what basic knowledge you had on farming to finish the job. Xiao on the other hand tried copying what you did….though the outcome wasn't so desirable it was a mess. (His trained hands have taught him to be on the rough side).

• He doesn't bother socializing with the townspeople even though he has no karmaic debt to worry about. Xiao thinks you're more than enough anyways so what's the point? 

• Robin is the only person who can tolerate him for obvious reasons (cough Sebastian cough) she knows exactly how to deal with his personality type. His glares don't faze her, she simply thinks its just a teenage phase of some sort. 

• Eventually they become mutuals, Xiao thinks Robin is similar to Verr Goldet in a way. Since he's the one who does the heavy labour of chopping down trees and mining stones for building upgrades, he gets a chance to visit her house quite often. He comes back with lots of recipes too.

• You find out that his adepti blood never left him. Xiao doesn't need sleep so you better believe it when he tells you the next morning that he spent the whole night watering all 300 of your crops (watering is the only process he's good at for farming). 

• Sometimes you catch him staring out of the window, wondering what he may be thinking. Life was so much more different, almost hard to recognize. Was this real? Is it okay for it to be real, just this once? Ever since he committed his duty to Morax, Xiao didn't dream of a time when everything would be peaceful. Yet here he is, no longer a weapon but on a journey to find out what it's like to live as a normal person. 

• Spring: Every morning you find him kneeling behind the cabin with the pet cat (yes, cats seem to suit Xiao very much). He just stares at them, hesitant if he wanted to pet their fur or rub their chin. So he continues to glare intensely, scaring your cat away :(

• Whenever you wanted to attend any of the town's festivities, Xiao wouldn't even hide his distastefulness but goes with you regardless. Why do mortals consider hiding eggs and finding them a fun activity? And what kind of a name is Flower Dance? Can't they just call it a dance?

• Though…he does like the sight of you wearing a flower crown. Xiao likes putting stuff in your hair.

Since setting foot upon this new world, time seemed to have slowed down to the point that almost everything felt like an eternity. And you didn't mind, with him by your side, you wouldn't mind if it did last forever.

The lull of the grass was the only sound Xiao could hear as he closed his eyes and rested his head on your lap. You maneuvered across his scalp in small, subtle motions, surprised with how warm he felt against the heat your palm. He stirs a little and lets out a soft breath before turning his face to lay on the side.

You were slightly intrigued by the yaksha's new demeanor. From far away, Xiao was an intimidating man, even during the first time you laid eyes him, his presence felt similar to a knife pointing at anyone who dares to come too close. But now, the face that usually held his signature annoyance melted into something you never thought you'd see as the sun rays brushed against the surface of his fair skin. You observed the way his dark eyebrows stayed in a relaxed arch. The red crescents lining right above his beautiful long lashes and the sound of soft snores through parted lips. It was hard to believe that this man was the same person who claimed to have ended a thousand lives through thousands of years.

Did he fall asleep already?

Gently moving away the strands away from his cheekbone, hovered your gaze above him and whispered, "I thought adepti don't need rest."

"Hmph," Xiao responds, though there was no harshness in his tone, "Quit trying to be difficult, I didn't tell you to stop."

The smug grin on your face only widens. You lean downward and said to his ear, "And what's the magic word~?"

Xiao sighs at your antics. You were truly pushing your luck today and he simply didn't have the patience to entertain you. Without a warning, he grabs your wrist and pulls you down, foreheads pressing until you were but a breath away. The adepti conquers, he does not plead.

• Summer: As expected, your parnsnips weren't able to grow as much. Thus, this season was going to be the one to make up for the lost profit. Xiao is very good at hunting, perhaps the best in the entire town. Though the way he catches fish is rather peculiar, said by the folks. He prefers to carve a spear made of wood and repeatedly stabs the lake until results show. Xiao dislikes the old fashioned way, he says its unproductive and it unecissarily takes too much time. 

• But as much as he scared the whole town, they were extremely grateful when he cleaned up the slime issues happening in the mines. You could say that he grew very popular since then and eventually mustered up the courage to greet him a hello whenever he passes by. 

• You nudge him to reply back. Xiao usually shoots you a glare but slowly, he learns the courtesy of acknowledging someone's prescence.

• Fall: You woke up to a burnt smell coming from the kitchen. Xiao just thought he would return the favour since you always worked so hard. (He was actually trying to figure out what a 'whisk' was. It was no wonder why there were eggshells in the dish!)

• You realized that Xiao was taking more initation compared to before. At night, when you thought the animals were actively jumping in the barns, the noise was actually from Xiao trying to adjust himself to the ways of tending the field. After learning what TV was, he would always switch to the channel "Livin off the land" to gain some insight. Truly, Xiao was greatful even though he knew he eventually had to return to his duties, he wanted to utilize the current days the best way he could. And what better way was it to just make you happy in return?

• Winter: This was the season to test the accumulation of Xiao's abilities: you caught a cold and he had to manage everything in his own. Xiao scolded you for not wearing enough and being too careless but at the same he considered that you must've been working too hard.

• Goes to Robin for help. She basically became his mom now. Prepares the food and leaves them in the fridge, she teaches Xiao how to use the phone in case he needed any help and also lets him know where all the essentials are. 

• Xiao stayed by your side the whole time even though you told him you'd be fine. But he refuses, he may no longer be a gaurdian but he was your gaurdian. That role never changed.

~~x~~

Zhongli

• You wake up on a soft bed with Zhongli sitting at a chair nearby. He hands you a cup of brewed water but you're still blatlantly confused. Seems like everything was taken care of by Zhongli, it ends up with him explaining everything to you. 

• The folks instantly assumes you both as a married couple. Who could blame them? He did carry your unconcious body all the way to town while asking for a local doctor. You can bet that the ladies wish they were you at that moment. Zhongli took care of everything, including with the contract with the new farm.

• It didn't take long for you both to adjust to the new lifestyle. Zhongli's accumulated knowledge was enough to last all four seasons. Days past by peacefully as you shared the tasks. He'd place down the stone paths towards the gate and you busied yourself with decorating the house. After that was done, Zhongli would rest upon the rocking chair outside your door (like the grandpa he is) and sometimes you'd join him in one reading session. His voice was soothing, you eventually dipped into a slumber as the evening grew colder. Just like always, your beloved brings his arm to encapsulate you from the wind, brushing his thumb against your skin subconciously while you snore softly into his shoulder.

• In a way, the townsfolk were right. You both do act like a married couple. It's basically domestic life with Zhongli in a nutshell.

• He gets connected with Gunther and lands a role in the Museum. Since he's there so often, Zhongli also manages to be acquainted with Elliot as well. Two men who have a common interest with books while speaking in poetic prose. Their conversation would last for hours to the point Gunther had to kick them out of the library!

• Veeeery good with the children, not in an entertaining way but its just the aura he reeks. Penny usually had trouble dealing with Vincent since he never seems to be able to focus but the minute Zhongli speaks, he's all ears. Not only that he was also very good with the elderly. He even recommended some herbs George could take to soothe his back issues.

• Problem is that he still forgets to bring his wallet and Childe isn't here to save him. So once you stepped foot into the Stardrop Saloon and Gus calls you over, he tells you about the cost he owed to his tab….

• But this tranquil life full of genuinity and deprived of sovereignty, he was overjoyed to be able to spend it with you. Because he knew you were unlike him, that all humans were born with an expiry date. He knew so well that after every new greeting, he would have to face the goodbyes over and over until the world eventually came to an end. He knew you were also going to be part of those many goodbyes while he would still be here.

• But as Zhongli walks amongst the fallen leaves, he remembered the beauty that carries within every new beginning. They brought him to you and he would never hesitate to trade his gnosis for it.

Spring: You shot up your bed when Zhongli blast the TV at full volume. He apologizes, saying that he was simply trying to change the channel. You figured it was best for him to go outside before he somehow glitches the screen until it couldn't repair itself (Robin charges for repairs).

• Every thursday you both go to Pierre's store to complete your grocery shopping. He offers to push the cart as you fill the basket with all the necessities (plus it saves you the trouble of having him tossing whatever he sees without looking at the price tag).

• Every afternoon you order a take out from the Saloon, sharing the meal while sitting at the fountain's edge near the community center. Every evening Zhongli would take you to explore the rest of the vast farmland, discovering places you weren't even aware of. It was no wonder why everyone thought you were a married couple. 

• Summer: Since the cabin was too small for a bathroom, you guys would have to travel up the mountains in order to get to the Spa house (cue sweatiness x10). 

• The concept of hotsprings was derived from Inazuma so it was no surprise that Liyue eventually took it after him. Zhongli had collected some incense from foraging items over the past few months, he knows whats up. But overall he gives the best bath sessions (hands down) and you were the one who insisted in joining him.  He was a gentle and sweet lover, always putting your needs before his. Ancient artifacts and old history books have always been precious to him, he treated you no differently.

The heartbeat of the oceans continues to rock back and forth until they brush up on the sandy shore, washing away the two pairs of footprints left behind by a man and a woman.

Gold against gold, his amber eyes reflected against the scenery. Millions of lights flashed among the sea when the sun began to climb down from the sky, it's rays hugged across the valley like an ethereal glow bestowed by the heavens as summer's wind brought even more warmth than what he had currently felt. You trance ahead of with the same light shaping around your form. 

"Oh hey there's another rainbow shell," you waved at him before running off, "I'll be back!"

How is it that you still continue to shine like gold in his memories?

Zhongli suddenly ponders at the chapters laying ahead of him. He spent so many years turning each page without ever reaching a conclusion, forever searching the fabled happy endings written in fairytale books, but he knew his immortality wouldn't grant him that wish.

Thus, the formal archon raised his pen and reweaves his own story. He envisions his future with you by his side, engraving every detail until it was immortalized in his memories.

Perhaps I shouldn't keep her waiting.

With a renewed resolve, Zhongli clutches the gemstone tightly in his palm, he seals the page with the final contract between your future and his.

• Fall: After getting your first house upgrade, it was time for the next event: the ceremony. Yes, Zhongli would only have a wedding if Liyue traditions were involved. Everyone was invited of course, they were quite intrigued with the flashy setup such as lanterns and fireworks (you were a little worried with where he got the budget for such items) and Zhongli even educated Gus about some recipes he can use for the Saloon.

• You found out that Zhongli was saving all his money for this day (it was no wonder that he couldn't pay for his tab!). Old habits die hard, it was a shame that he didn't have his powers to craft the right items, but at least he got to sea you in a traditional eastern dress (it's the part he was looming forward to the most).

• Fall is the best season. One you wouldn't forget.

• Winter: Ah he finally learns how to use  technology after three seasons. He only knows two channels from the TV which was 'Livin off the Land' and the weather channel. Zhongli oftens talks to himself as he tries to figure out more mechanics, he seems to be extremely absorbed in the most basic things.

• The miner of the house. But instead of using them to upgrade tools and donating them to the museum, Zhongli likes to keep some of them for collection. You could say your house also had a little museum in the other room.

• Romcom movies and soap operas. You can't change my mind that this is what you both spend your time watching as the snowstorm rages outside. 

[lucy90712]

georgenotfound- colour blind

Wc: 1857

Warnings: reader wearing a dress; one specific feature mentioned 

George's birthday is coming up and I have no idea what to get him, I have already got some presents but I want to get him something that would be kind of special or show that I really care about him. When George isn't around I've been on call with dream to try and come up with some ideas but we never get very long to think before George comes back so its been kind of difficult.

I was in call with dream and sapnap joined to see what we were talking about and he gave the best suggestion ever. Colour blind glasses. What a great idea. I can get him glasses that will allow him to see colours properly or at least better for the first time and we can do a bunch of things together that he has never been able to appreciate before. While still in the call I ordered them to make sure I was getting the right ones, and now they arrive Wednesday.

This is so exciting I can't wait to do so many things with George that he isn't able to appreciate like other people can we can play Minecraft together, we can go to a park and look at all the flowers when they come back out in spring and my favourite thing ever we can watch sunsets or sunrises together.

Skip to Wednesday:

The glasses arrive today which I'm so excited about but I also have to be careful to not let George see them or the package because he gets curious when I order things but this time he isn't allowed to know.

I have been watching the parcel tracker intently for the last hour and now it should be here in the next 5 minutes. George is currently downstairs getting water before he has to go back up to film another video, I went to stand with him in the kitchen and we talked for a little bit before he left again. Seconds later the doorbell rang and I collected the parcel and hid it in the storage cupboard next to the door which George never goes in because he never goes outside.

Late that evening when George was done for the day he came down stairs and sat with me to watch tv with me. I was lying down on my own across the sofa but he moved my legs to lay down with me and cuddle which he likes to do after a long day.

"Who was at the door earlier?" He asked

"Oh just some guy trying to sell me stuff" I lied

"That's annoying" he remarked

After we went to bed and George was fast asleep I snuck out the bed to go and wrap all of the presents I had got so that it wouldn't be obvious exactly what everything was just incase he went in the cupboard for whatever reason. I am useless at wrapping especially by myself because I just don't seem to have big enough hands but I managed to get it done somewhat neatly or at least good enough that George wouldn't notice.

Skip to his birthday

It's George's birthday today and I couldn't be more excited, I woke up super early because I was so excited to give George his glasses and other presents. Of course waking up so early made no difference because George won't be up for another few hours. That man can sleep for forever with no issue at all, I wish that I could do the same but it just doesn't work like that does it.

George woke up about an hour after I did which I believe might be a record but thats besides the point. He moved over to cuddle into my side and kiss my cheek a few times before putting his head in the crook of my neck.

"Happy birthday love" I said

"Thank you" he said

"Let's get up I have some things for you" I said

He groaned but got up with me or should I say attached to me because he had his arms around my waist hugging me from behind as I tried to wash my face and brush my teeth. He only let go when we had to go down the stairs but as soon as we made it he picked me up and carried me around before dropping me down in the kitchen.

We worked together to make breakfast before I went into the cupboard to get all of his presents which I placed in George's lap along with his card. He read the card first which I really tried to put some nice meaning in because I want him to know I appreciate him even if I don't say it as often as I could. I watched his face as he read the words and his lips slowly turned into a smile and his eyes gleamed over.

"This is really sweet thank you" he said

He continued to open the presents leaving the glasses last which I was glad about. When he opened the last present and the box inside he looked very confused about which is understandable. He tried to read the label but he still didn't seem to understand, meanwhile I was aching to show him what they are so that we can do the exciting things.

"What are these?" He asked

"They are glasses that help you to see colours" I smiled

"Wait no way thats amazing I'm so excited to see the things you do" he said

He wanted to get ready for the day so that we could do all the things he wanted to with his new glasses. For fun I decided to wear a red dress that I like to wear all the time but George can't see the colour to the point that it just gets funny when he attempts to tell the colour.

Once the both of us were ready he wanted to go to the park to see what grass looks like so that's where we went and we sat on the grass looking at a flower bed and trees. He had yet to put the glasses on but I could tell he was itching to do it, I had them in my pocket so I took them out and slid them onto his face.

Watching him was the best thing in the world he looked all around mouth open and eyes wide under the classes from the shock of being able to see colours for the first time. He looked at the grass while touching it before looking at me and studying my face intently.

"Your favourite dress is red" he stated

"Yeah it is" I laughed

"And your eyes are as green as the grass thats amazing there so pretty" he said

"Aww thank you but I have to know what colour did they look to you before?" I asked

"Like a weird yellow sort of colour like a lot of things really" he said

His hands were put on my cheek and he pulled by face closer to his to look deeper into my eyes at their colour, it has always amazed me that he couldn't see green even though its quite a common colour but I never thought he would be so entranced with my eye colour. When he was done staring into my soul he kissed my lips sweetly and pulled me up from the grass so we could walk around a bit. He was so amazed by everything in sight which made us get weird looks from others but I just gave them a look back and they stopped.

We went back home after a good hour of just walking around places in London. Back at home we made lunch and talked to dream and sapnap who had been asleep until now. George was telling them all about the glasses and how amazing everything looked and he wouldn't stop bringing up how amazing my eyes were. He put on his glasses when both boys on the call turned their cameras on so that he could see dreams eyes seeing as they were green too but he wasn't as bothered by them.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Dream asked

"They just aren't as vibrant and pretty as y/n's sorry" he said

Dream got fake upset with him and sulked in his chair which I had to try my best not to laugh at how stupid they were being. They wanted him to play Minecraft with the glasses on so he booted it up on the tv so I could play with him. We got into a new world in creative so we could just travel to places that would be more interesting.

It was in these moments that George realised that dream was actually green which was the funniest thing because thats like part of his brand but all George sees is a mustard yellow colour. We had a lot of fun showing him different things like the nether because for him they aren't red/ orange which again is an odd concept to comprehend.

We played for hours before dream and sapnap had to go and me and George were left to spend the evening together. I had promised George the other day that we could have whatever he wanted for dinner today and he wanted to order food so I did that for him and set up our small outside table to we could eat under the last bit of light for the day and then watch the sunset together.

The food arrived pretty quickly and we ate in the sunshine which wasn't the warmest considering the time of year but it was relatively nice today. We finished the food and I took the plates back inside and to the sink before going back out to sit with George who was now laying down on the grass staring at the sky which was beginning to turn slightly pink. I chucked the glasses at him and he put them on as I laid down besides him leaning against him.

We watched as the sky continued to fill with all sorts of colours from purple to orange like it does on days like this which is why I always watch the sunset whenever I get the chance. Once the sun had fully gone down George pulled me on top of him so that my head was laying on his chest as he played with my hair.

"Have you had a good birthday?" I asked

"I've had the best day all thanks to you and those amazing glasses" he said

"I'm glad you like them I just like watching your reactions to things" I said

"Well expect to see them a lot more because I love your eye colour and want to see it more" he said

"You are so cute" I giggled

That night we laid under the stars before cuddling in bed, it has just been a wonderful, day overall getting to spent so much time together and doing new things like being outside for so long.

[fanfic-cave]

Corellian Ale

Rating: SFW/PG-13

Word Count: 2.2k

Pairing: Hunter x Fem Jedi!OC

Warnings: Drinking and getting drunk, swearing, I think thats all? Also romance but when is that ever not in my fics hahaha

Summary: Our ex-jedi veteran Sera finished a mission with the bad batch, and now looks for a way to entertain herself and get someones attention while on the flightpath back home (also this is pre "The Reveal")

Authors note: After this weeks episode I wanted to write some fun stuff with the whole group, and a drinking contest sounded perfect ahaha! Also theres fluff nobody can stop me. ALSO ALSO I decided to switch to third person for the rest of my OC chapters so sorry for the sporadic chapters and writing, thanks and have fun!

tags: @mangoberry99

“Let’s never go back to Corellia.” Sera huffed out.

“Agreed. That was too close a call.” Tech spoke from the pilot chair, the Havoc Marauder just now entering hyperspace.

“We’ve got what we came for, let’s just head back.” Hunter sighed. He was sitting by a console looking at a map of a star system.

“Corellian ale.” Crosshair spat, shaking his head. “One of the worst missions we’ve ever done.” The cargo was stored all over the ship. Someone who wanted to avoid going through the empire to acquire some had hired the boys to lift the ale from a contact they had in Corellia, and from what Sera heard, the buyer had some deep pockets.

“Why would someone want this so badly?” Omega chimed in curiously. Hunter looked at Echo who shrugged, Tech sighed, and Sera held in a laugh. Crosshair shook his head. “Good luck with that.” Crosshair spoke, and he left to be somewhere more private, walking past Wrecker who was entering the public area.

“Well, Omega-” Hunter started, but was interrupted.

“How much longer till we get there?” Wrecker complained loudly, shoving himself into a chair across from Sera.

“We only just went into hyperspace, Wrecker.” Tech spoke and sounded a bit annoyed. “We’ll be back eventually.”

“This is always the boring part!” Wrecker threw his arms up, exasperated. Sera let out a quiet laugh. Wrecker reminded her of a kid sometimes, with his lack of patience and affinity to, well, wrecking things. One of the few things that reminded her otherwise was that he was huge, and could probably throw her across the room if he wanted to.

A thought crossed her head, and a smile spread onto Sera’s lips, a glint lighting up her eyes. Echo had noticed and eyed Sera.

“I’ve got an idea, Wrecker.” Sera stood up, hands behind her back, and walked around a bit aimlessly for a moment.

“Huh?” Wrecker looked puzzled, but curiously watched Sera.

“What are you doing?” Echo asked suspiciously, arms crossed. Sera caught that Hunter had been peeking at her out of the corner of his eye. He quickly looked back to the star map. Sera felt herself scowl at the lack of attention she received from him.

“You know, I remember,” Sera suddenly turned around, and swiftly grabbed a bottle of Corellian ale. “That some of the bottles broke while we made our escape.” She easily twisted the top off.

“Oh no-“ Echo said. “We’re not doing that.”

Sera smiled mischievously and took a swig. “Sera!” Echo tried to reach and stop her, but it was too late. The warm liquid settled into her stomach, and she sighed. She handed the bottle to Wrecker. “Oh yeah! This should be fun!” Wrecker took a long drink.

Sera heard Tech sigh loudly from the pilot's chair, clearly wanting his opinion to be known. “Well, now you’ve done it.” He spoke loudly from the other room. “If he breaks my ship, you’re fixing it Sera.”

“Your ship?” Hunter chimed in finally, raising an eyebrow in Tech's direction. Otherwise he had been completely ignoring the conversation taking place.

“You and I both know you don’t want me trying to fix the ship tech.” Sera shouted loudly to the other room.

“Then you’re paying for it!” Tech countered. Sera laughed at that.

“Could I try it?” Sera heard Omegas' small voice and her eyes widened.

“No.” Echo and Hunter spoke at the same time.

“Shit-” Sera spoke at the same time as the other two, then covered her mouth and coughed.

“Sorry kid, adults only.” Sera addressed Omega more seriously.

“Aww” Omega sighed and leaned back into her chair.

Wrecker handed the bottle back to Sera and burped loudly. “Anyone else?” She shook the bottle, looking at Echo, then Hunter, who was still ignoring her.

Sera felt herself get more irritated. Whatever, she turned back to Echo.

“Not happening.” He spoke firmly, and also placed a brief pause between the two words for emphasis. Sera sighed and took another sip. She felt like she was beginning to weigh less with each drink she took, her mind wandering more too.

“I would offer you some Tech, but-“

“Alcohol consumption is well known to inhibit your cognitive functions, and make you susceptible to poor decision making. For starters, I am piloting, and secondly I would prefer to keep my wits about me, thirdly-”

“We get it!” Sera shouted out, interrupting Tech.

“Think you can out drink me Wrecker?” Sera turned and eyed Wrecker challengingly, raising an eyebrow and tilting her chin up to add more effect.

“Of course I can!” Wrecker pounded his chest, laughing heartily. Sera ignored the loud collection of sighs. She thought she heard Hunter mutter something under his breath, but she ignored it.

“Let’s put it to the test then.” She grabbed another 2 bottles and placed them in the middle of the table. “We each drink a full mouthful. Games over when someone can’t continue.” Sera laid out the ground rules.

“Deal!” Wrecker pounded his fists on the table, the drinks jumping up along with the shaking. “Let’s do it!”

“Would you all be quiet?” Crosshair walked out, clearly more annoyed than usual.

“You might not want to miss this Crosshair.” Echo said, somewhat sarcastically.

“What does the winner get?” Sera ignored the other conversation and spoke to Wrecker, trying to raise the stakes.

“Uh,” Wrecker scratched his head, trying to think of something.

Sera’s eyes flickered to the oversized knife on Wreckers belt. “If I win, I get to take your knife.” Sera pointed. Wrecker gasped shockingly. “Not my knife!”

“Just don’t lose.” Sera flashed Wrecker a grin, showing off her teeth.

“Well when I win, you have to buy me an explosive!” Wrecker grinned back and leaned back into his chair.

“Sure, if you win.” Sera countered.

“You seriously think you can beat him?” Crosshair said casually, not looking at Sera and examining a new toothpick.

“Watch me you little fu-“ Sera stopped herself and looked at Omega.

“Firaxan.” Sera finished, and coughed awkwardly. “Omega, maybe Tech needs some help up in the cockpit.” Sera gestured over to the direction of Tech. Omega peeked over to the pilots seat curiously, where Tech sat.

“Not really-” Tech started.

“Oh he would REALLY LIKE the COMPANY!” Sera yelled over him. Hunter had nodded his head to Omega, which caught Sera’s interest. Now he‘s interested in what’s happening? She complained internally.

“Alright then, good luck Sera! Oh, and you too Wrecker!” Omega added it after Wrecker had made a face at her wishing Sera luck. She trotted off to the pilots area happily, and Sera heard Tech sigh. She knew he actually would enjoy the company though.

“Alright, start us off Wrecker.” Sera smiled and handed the bottle over to Wrecker.

One and a half bottles later and Sera found herself being a bit more giggly than normal. She and Wrecker were both holding their own, and sides had been drawn. Echo had been supporting Sera, while Crosshair clearly wanted Wrecker to win. Even Hunter had begun to watch too. Sera had failed to notice that.

“It’s *hic* you’re turn, Wrecker!” Sera then laughed. “Keep it together Sera,” Echo counseled her carefully.

“Oh like that lightweight can outdrink him?” Crosshair spoke and gestured to Wrecker. Wrecker laughed at the both of them and took another drink “Ah, tastes so good! I’m almost not thirsty anymore!” Wrecker leaned back into the chair and brought his arms up, and kicked his feet up on the table. He waved his arms around a second to catch his balance.

“A-ha!” Sera slammed her hands on the table. Everyone looked at her, surprised at her outburst. “You wobbled! I win!” She jumped up, then had to lean onto the wall to keep her balance.

“No, I’m fine!” Wrecker complained. He stood up and wobbled a bit again, but held himself up fine compared to Sera.

“Gimme this I’m celebrating-” Sera grabbed the bottle and began downing the contents. Crosshair just snickered and Echo snatched the bottle away after Sera got two gulps in. “No way, you’re both done.”

“Boo!” Sera yelled, and Wrecker joined the booing. Echo only shook his head and kept ahold of the bottle.

“I gotta, I’ve, hafto pee!” Sera then giggled more and stumbled down the hall, searching for the bathroom.

----------

“I’ve got it.” Hunter stood up to follow Sera and the boys watched him walk down, Echo looking surprised, Crosshair suspicious, and Wrecker didn’t notice as he was trying to grab at the Corellian ale Echo was holding onto.

Hunter found Sera stumbling down the hall. He quickly caught up to her and grabbed underneath her arm, keeping her from taking a nasty fall. “Steady there.” He spoke quietly. She turned to look behind her and then smiled. “Hunter! What are you doing?” She looked at him confused, and for some reason was whispering.

“Making sure you don’t get hurt. Which is usually your job for the rest of us.” We did bring her along as a medic after all. Hunter wrapped his arm around her back and put her arm around his back, trying to keep her from falling.

“Pfft I’ve outdrank gamorreans, I’ll be fine.” She waved a hand at him trying to downplay how drunk she was. Hunter was watching her carefully, and he had noticed she had a blush on her cheeks from the drinking. It was a soft pink that was hardly noticeable, but Hunter found himself examining it closely.

“Hmmm what?” Sera wiggled her eyebrows at him, clearly taking notice that Hunter was staring.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” Hunter looked away and ignored her faces, and began dragging her down the hall.

“Oh, since when do you care, huh?” Sera hiccuped again when she finished.

“What are you trying to say?” Hunter wasn’t sure what he could’ve done to upset her. They continued walking together, just a few feet away from a cot. He turned to look at her, and found himself staring at her face again.

“Well you didn’t seem to care what I was doing earlier. You didn’t even say anything.” Sera grumbled it out, and Hunter was surprised at her complaint. She really thinks I don’t care?

Hunter had truthfully found Sera distracting. He had been listening to what she was saying and watching, but he also didn’t like how she grabbed at his attention so easily. He wanted to stay focused on the mission, and he didn’t want to let himself get too distracted by her. He didn’t watch her directly, or didn’t speak to her, but his thoughts would constantly drift to her. In the end, he watched the end of her little contest with Wrecker unfold, unable to keep his eyes away.

Hunter contemplated what to say to rectify the situation. “You’re my friend Sera. You’ve helped keep us alive. Of course I care.” He looked away for a brief moment after he spoke, trying to ignore how her breath smelled nice.

Hunter began steeling himself, getting ready to carry her the rest of the way. He heard her shuffle, and turned curiously, only to see Sera’s face just an inch from his. His eyes widened in shock to see her hazel eyes up close, the green in them looking striking, her blonde messy hair giving her a look of wildness. She moved in, and swiftly pecked him on the cheek.

Hunter touched his cheek, then looked back to her, his expression still shocked. Sera giggled again and Hunter's face began to turn red. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into an embrace.

“I care about you guys too.” Sera whispered into his ear. Hunter was frozen, unsure how to react for a second. He removed his hand from his cheek and put an arm around her awkwardly. He was new to physical affection, and had never really given anyone a hug. Only one time with Omega, but she was smaller, and it felt different than this.

Suddenly Sera’s head went limp on his shoulder, and her weight started to completely fall on Hunter. “Sera?” He stumbled, but easily held her up, and turned his head to look at her and see what was wrong. She was taking deep breaths, and Hunter recognized that she was asleep.

Hunter sighed and hoisted her up, carrying her bridal style the last few feet to the bed. He set her on the cot, being careful not to bump her into anything, and put the cheap blanket on top of her. She barely moved, except for her breathing, and seemed completely out of it. “So much for out-drinking gamorreans.” Hunter laughed to himself as he spoke the thought out loud.

He noticed she was laid flat on her back, and realized that could be dangerous with how drunk she got. Hunter placed one hand on her shoulder, and began to turn her onto her side. She felt warm underneath his hand, and her arm was smaller compared to his larger hand. He was watching her rose tinted face doze off peacefully as he shifted her. He indulged himself for a moment, and gently shifted a strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. He turned away and quickly left after that, flexing his fingers as he walked away.

Hunter scowled as he contemplated, feeling very confused by Sera’s actions and his own feelings. She’s probably going to forget this by tomorrow, he thought to himself.

Can't say I will though.