#i literally cackled through 90% of the drawing process

[fletchingbrilliant]

do you ever just

[loosescrewslefty]

Fox-cicles

Femslash Feb 01- Snow

Dedicating this one to @larvesta for supplying about 90% of my Alyanette needs.

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“Cold! ColdcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldCOOOOOOLD!!!!!”

Marinette pressed a hand against her mouth to hold back a giggle as she watched the orange figure on the rooftop above her bound from one foot to another, clearly displeased with the surprise snowfall they had received the night before.

“Okay, seriously, why is it so cold?! I mean, really Trixx?! You give me a freaking supersuit that can withstand bullets and getting powerbombed from the top of the Eiffel Tower and I don’t even breaking a nail, but then you forget that little detail about providing some WARMTH?! You know, that thing clothes are SUPPOSED TO DO?! I swear to whatever deity your furry little butt prays to, I’m feeding you tuna fish for the rest of the month if you’re doing this just to mess with me again…”

“Having problems there, Rena?” Marinette called up teasingly.

The fox heroine yelped in surprise at the sound of her voice and whipped around frantically to stare at her with startled amber eyes before promptly losing her footing on the icy roof. The brunette’s tailbone hit the shingles with a loud crack and, before Rena had the chance to recover, the poor frozen fox slid right off the incline and landed straight in a snowbank that was nearly up to Marinette’s shoulders.

Marinette almost cried trying to keep herself from laughing as Rena Rouge groaned in dismay.

“Su-sorry!” She gasped out, giving an unladylike snort at the fallen girl’s put upon expression. “I didn’t mean to startle you! I just-!” That was as far as Marinette made it before she couldn’t hold it in anymore. Doubling over, the blue-eyed girl started to cackle loudly as she mentally replayed what had just occurred and savored Rena’s expressions as she fell.

The fox heroine sighed loudly before pulling herself from the snowdrift and shaking off the flakes the now decorated her suit and hair, casting some of the cold droplets in Marinette’s direction as she did so. The designer gave a small squeak of protest at the onslaught of cold water, earning her a smug look from Rena as she pouted at her in response for the attack. Dropping the expression with an exasperated sigh, Marinette smiled wryly at her friend and fellow crime fighter, admiring the way the snow that Rena hadn’t managed to completely shake off caught in the dim streetlights and made the brunette literally sparkle.

“Are you okay?” She asked, slightly amused at Rena’s look of surprise. Usually, it was the cunning fox catching her off-guard, not the other way around, and Marinette found she rather liked having the upper hand on the taller girl.

“Of course!” Rena insisted boastfully. “A little slip and fall isn’t going to keep Rena Rouge off her feet!”

"Glad to hear it, but I was actually talking about the fact that you don't seem to be handling the cold all that well." Marinette said a little slyly, biting back a smile as Rena went red at the reminder of her earlier rant.

“Oh. That.” Rena laughed weakly, looking more embarrassed then Marinette had ever seen her. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just… You know… I’m kinda an island fox. Not used to being cold, you know?” Marinette gave a sympathetic hum at that.

“My friend Alya’s like that too.” She confided to Rena, smiling fondly as she thought of Alya’s War Against Winter. A fruitless battle, but the Martiniquan teen was still fighting nonetheless. Thankfully, she found a strong ally in Marinette, or ‘the Queen of Warm and Comfy Clothes’ as she was crowned by Alya herself, with a tiara fashioned of origami flowers that Alya had forced her to wear all day at school after the designer had brought her in an armload of knit sweaters and socks.

"Your friend's a smart girl, then.” Rena said with a confident nod. “Snow’s pretty for a day, and then it’s a hassle. A cold, wet, miserable hassle.”

"You really do sound just like Alya.” Marinette giggled, delighted at the girl’s openness. Her powers might have been illusions and deception, but Rena was as honest and forthcoming as they came, and Marinette appreciated that. Sparing the heroine an affectionate smile, Marinette prompted. “You know, I’m actually a designer. I could probably make you a jacket to patrol in for cold nights like this.”

“That’s sweet of you to offer, but don’t you have other things you should be focusing on instead? Like school? Or boys? Or other things you should be designing instead of jackets for whiny foxes like me?” Rena asked with a pointed look. “I heard something about a dress design contest at Le Grand Paris for your age group coming up soon. Winner gets 5,000 euros and a two page feature spread in La Mode Magazine. Why don’t you do that instead?”

“You’re a fashion fan?” Marinette asked, a little surprised. She never would have guessed that Rena would have an interest in the industry, let alone know about the competition she’d been practically tearing her hair out over the last month.

“A friend is a rising star in the industry who’s gonna be super famous one of these days, so I know enough.” Rena answered with an enigmatic smile. “In fact, I recognize you from a few of the competitions you’ve won, Mlle. Dupain-Cheng.” Marinette flushed a little at the praise, a flood of warm pleasure running through her at the way Rena purred out her name.

“If you’re honestly trying to persuade me not to design something for you, you’re doing a terrible job at it.” She told the superheroine with a grin as she planted her hands on her hips. Rena shrugged carelessly in response, shooting her a smile.

“I’m not gonna lie and act like I don’t appreciate you thinking about me, or imply that I don’t think you’d do a good job.” She replied. “But you probably have enough on your plate as it is. No need to take on any more pet projects and let the stuff that’s important to you suffer, right?”

“Well maybe you’re one of the things that’s important to me, Rena Rouge.” The words came out before Marinette could fully consider them, and it took a few moments of stunned silence from the fox for the implications of what she just said to fully sink in.

Once it did, Marinette screeched like a whistling tea kettle.

“THAT’S NOT-!!!” She sputtered, face going red as she waved her hands in front of her in protest. “I DIDN’T MEAN THAT LIKE- I MEAN, I DID, ONLY-!”

“Marinette!” Rena interrupted, her shoulders shaking in silent laugher. “Marinette, calm down! It’s cool, girl! Really!” Moaning in dismay, Marinette buried her face into her hands and gave another, quieter scream.

“Sorry.” She groaned, embarrassed that she had come on so strongly to her teammate. Rena was probably creeped out by her now… “I’m such a mess…”

“You are. But it’s cute.” Rena replied bluntly. Surprised, Marinette took her head out of her hands to look at the other girl again, who met her gaze with a grin. “I like people like you. You might be a little awkward, but you’re passionate and you want to help. The world needs more of that kind of energy.”

“You really think so?” Marinette asked, smiling in gratitude at the compliment.

“Are you kidding? Of course I do!” Rena said, giving Marinette a playful knock on the head. “You’re one of those rare, amazing type of person who can do anything, Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” Marinette’s smile warmed at that, grateful she hadn’t scared the fox girl off with her odd behavior. Turning Rena’s words around in her head, Marinette’s smile took on a slightly slyer edge and she reached up to take the fox girl’s hand with her own.

“Well in that case, I should be more than capable of making you a jacket and getting the rest of my stuff done at the same time. Wouldn’t you agree, Rena Rouge?” Rena stared at the smaller girl for a moment, clearly trying to work out the trap she had walked right into. Once she realized she’d been had, though, the fox doubled over with howls of laughter.

“Oh you’re good you little sneak!” She said in delight, grinning at Marinette in approval. “Alright. If you think you can handle it, then I would be honored to receive a Dupain-Cheng original design!” Marinette grinned in triumph at her victory, only to have it fall away when Rena gave her own smug smile in return, her finely honed superhero instincts practically screaming at her that she was about to get owned. “But if you do make me a jacket, I’m going to make sure all the news outlets know that you were the passionate and caring fan who made me such an amazing and thoughtful gift. Hope you don’t mind the free publicity there.”

“What?!” Marinette said in alarm.

“it’s only fair to give you recognition for your work, since I doubt you’ll take my money.” Rena crooned teasingly. Marinette frowned a little, not entirely comfortable with the idea of using her teammates superhero status to garter attention for herself. And besides, if people- namely Hawkmoth- started making connections between Marinette and the superheroes and started looking at the designer a little too closely, then that could spell bad things for Ladybug.

In fact, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for Ladybug to put her foot down and tell Rena not to draw any attention to Marinette, lest the ‘helpless’ civilian get caught up in their crimefighting.

“Alright, deal.” Marinette said confidently, holding out a hand to shake Rena’s gloved one. Rena smiled as she took the smaller girl’s hand, but rather then shaking it as Marinette intended, Rena instead tugged the girl forward into her space, planting a quick, playful kiss on the end of her button nose.

“Deal!” Rena laughed as Marinette’s cold-pinked face went scarlet as the heroine’s actions processed in her mind. “I’ll meet you at your house when you’re done, okay?”

“What?” Marinette’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion at that statement. “But how will you know?”

"Oh, I have my ways~” Rena purred with a teasing wink before she jumped away once more, leaving Marinette cold, flustered and confused in her wake.

So much for having the upper-hand. Marinette thought wryly before gathering her wits and continuing her trek home.

She had a jacket to start designing, after all.

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[i-am-an-accidental-hipster]

this "Mataguy Madness" is interesting, sounds a bit r/nosleep-esque. Give us all the spooky stories! (If you wanna) :D

Heh, i don’t know if they’re spooky, but that may be because I’ve lived it.

Ok, so the camp that I work at is called “Mataguay”. It borders on the local kumeyaay reservation, as in if you wander too far up the slope of one of the hills they are legally allowed to shoot you. I’ve never tested it, and I don’t intend to.

We have ghost stories at the camp, but it is common knowledge among the staff that the stories are almost entirely made up. there is some true information to be found in it, though. the valley used to belong to the kumeyaay, and they had a conflict with the spaniards, a lot of them died and were supposedly buried in a mass grave on one side of the valley, and then english (or american? not sure) settlers moved in. most of the new guys were jerks, but this one guy (Trainer? Traynor?) was more nice to them, i guess. then he was crushed by a tree branch and died, and the kumeyaay created a memorial stone for him in his favorite part of camp, and his wife’s ashes were spread around it when she died. supposedly the stone is cursed, which of course means that people dare each-other to touch it. his barn is still standing, btw. then the portion of the land which trainer owned was donated by his daughter to the boy scouts. later, when the kumeyaay needed money they sold part of their land to the camp. and then some more later on.

also, the camp is infested with Datura Stramonium, a very potent and highly lethal psychoactive plant, so take everything i’m about to say with a grain of salt. but also, i’m not making any of this up. this is all stuff that happened as i remember it.

there were some red flags that the camp was a haunted madhouse right when I joined, because right off the bat one of the more experienced staff encountered a doppelganger. of me.

apparently she was walking over near the old observatory when she heard, very distinctly, my voice shouting a greeting to her “from the trees”. She ran up to me and literally asked me “were you in the trees? i heard your voice coming from the trees”. i had just come from the trading post, not the old observatory, so i said no, and she seemed very distressed by the revelation.

even back then, when the madness had not come over me, i could tell that there was something wrong about Mountain Man Meadow. Every other part of camp had a sort of natural white noise to it, with crickets, frogs, bats, and even just the wind making some kind of noise. But when we held an astronomy outing in the meadow that year, it was eerily, deafeningly silent. and there was a feeling of oppressive dread which seemed to emanate from the place, almost as if the shadows were moving of their own volition. it creeped me out enough to distract me from the astronomy, and I love astronomy.

mataguay madness always starts with one landmark event, which marks the point where you first start to crack. for most, it comes in the form of violantly intrusive thoughts, like “I wonder what my life would be like if I were a little french girl”, followed by an inability to process reality for a minute or two, and can strike even in the middle of a class in front of an audience (actual example, and no, the guy is not trans). It usually strikes at the end of the second year. mine was more... dramatic.

... i got high...

...on ice cubes.

i’m not kidding. I wasn’t even eating the ice, I was holding a large clump of ice cubes in my hands, watching them melt and feeling the cold run through my fingers. then, I started to snicker. the snicker developed into a chuckle, then into a loud, uncontrollable, almost painful cackle. one of the other staff came over to me to see if i was alright, but was rather taken aback by how utterly unhinged i looked, rocking back and forth and laughing like a stereotypical asylum patient. i calmed down after a few more seconds, but i was forever changed.

years later, a friend of mine who i would later date for a time suffered her bout of madness by tearing the bean-bag chairs apart, spreading around the little Styrofoam pellets, and giggling hysterically as she rubbed some of them into my hair. not as dramatic, but pretty similar. she had no idea why she did it.

anyways, the next year i officially joined staff, as the astronomy instructor. and for whatever reason i decided to take a plastic owl I had found in the upper room while I was sorting (one of the ones used to scare off rats and such) and carry it in my arms. for the entire summer. I named it Arcturus. Also, because I thought I was hilarious, I told everyone that I could use it to steal people’s souls if they displeased me. All the campers found it funny (for the most part), and so did the younger staff. The older staff, on the other hand, seemed to become afraid of the owl. They actually asked me to turn it away from them when I would set it on the table during meals. I thought that was hilarious too, until they kidnapped it and through it away during the last week of camp. I had grown rather attached to the thing over that summer, so i was notably distressed when I found out. One of the other staffers gave me a replacement owl, Spica, which I still have in my room.

the next year, i completely changed my look. I still wore my staff uniform, but over it I wore a lab-coat i had found in one of the drawers at my house, i changed my haircut, and i carried around a large “walking stick” i had found in the woods. this may seem irrelevant now, but it will become relevant later, as I basically kept this look for the next 4 years, and was instantly recognizable.

My eyes began developing a bit of a quirk. i could barely stand the daylight, but during the night i could see perfectly, as if it were day (I still have this). The constellations started to reveal themselves to me, but not as if I were learning their shapes but more like they were actual people, introducing themselves to me. sometimes, i could almost hear them speaking to me, and could certainly feel them. As soon as the stars came out, I would feel as if my body were humming with some kind of power. i can’t explain it. i began wandering around at night without a flashlight, sometimes crossing the entire valley just to play diablo 2. where i used to feel the shadows crowding around me, now I could kinda see them, but they always seemed to be fleeing from me. they looked like a shadowy haze in the vague form of man. occasionally, they would group up and try to bar my way, but i would just stare at them and start singing “Flying Fortress”, or reciting the Saint Michael prayer, and they would part around me. I was never quite sure if what I was seeing was real, or the result of an over-active imagination, though.

Back to mountain man meadow, my area was right next to it, and i began noticing some strange things about it, not the least of which was the blood-curdling scream which came from the forest just beyond it every once and awhile at sunset, a scream of a little girl. we actually sent in search parties to figure out who was screaming, but we never found anything. might have been a goat. but i also know that there were footprints that would appear in the meadow whenever one wasn’t looking. i checked.

apparently the meadow is right next to that kumeyaay mass grave I mentioned earlier. I could never get an exact answer on where said grave was relative to the meadow, though. other people have said that they saw actual apparitions there, a little girl in a white dress and a little boy in a small headress, both silent. One guy even claimed the first one followed him around, though he also he believes he saw the ghost from our false ghost story, so...

ok, so my madness was bad, but this one guy... i dunno. it was either madness or he was stupid as a brick. he ended up stabbing himself through his sleeping bag somehow, apparently while “trying to stab a rat that was on the wall next to him”. i don’t doubt the part about the rat, as i have had to bed a foot from a tarantula, but HOW DOES ONE MISS AT A 90 DEGREE ANGLE AND STAB ONE’S LEG IN A SLEEPING BAG WHILE TRYING TO STAB A RAT? anyways, he goes to the hospital to have it stitched up, and he comes back a week later with explicit instructions to stay out of the water or the cut will re-open

the first thing he does when he gets back is jump in the pool. he spends the rest of the week in the med lodge. he comes out the next week only to do the exact same thing, and repeat. administration began confiscating his knives, and he kept buying new ones and bringing them to camp, often playing with them dangerously in front of the scouts. he got fired.

now for mataguay magic. during that very same year, there was a revival of mataguay’s apparently very old practice of what is called “rain turtles”, though they are more properly called weather turtles. their purpose is to change the weather. it’s kinda like alchemy, ah-la FMA. first you draw a circle on the ground, and then draw four legs, a head, and a tail on it so it looks like a turtle as viewed from above. then you draw the kind of weather you want inside it, usually rain. you dig a shallow hole in the center, and then place something of the same “element” as what you want in the hole, usually spitting in it for rain. then you dance around it in a circle, counterclockwise while spinning around counterclockwise as well. The intended weather usually strikes within 48 hours. our “camp witchdoctor” earned his title when he had his class each make they’re own rain turtles in mountain man meadow every week, resulting in every weekend being covered in an absolute deluge. he actually got in trouble with administration, not for teaching his students magic but for doing the ritual the day before clean-up day every week, because even the administration believed the stuff actually works. as if to spite them, he then made a turtle with a picture of a fire in it and threw his lighter into it. low and behold, the next morning the other side of the hills from camp burst into flames. never reached us, but still. he was then banned from making weather turtles ever again.

now for mataguay religion. during that very same year, a cult began to form around the program director. largely because he was the first good program director we had in years. at first it was all in fun, with chants of “hail [redacted]” and much air-punching. then it got weird. some of the older staff began taking pictures of him while he was asleep (a rare occurrence, as he pulled way too many all-nighters to try to fix all the problems the previous directors had caused) and making said pictures the desktop background for every computer they could get their hands on. they changed the screen-savers to “hail [redacted]”, and taped that phrase on the wall of my area’s staircase in red tape, with the “hail” spelled the german way. because of course it was. I happened to share a name with said program director, so in order to keep people from thinking i was an egotistical nazi i would tear the message down, only to have it show up the next day. Then our camp witch-doctor took it too far, and signed it up with the state as a protestant sect and became a minister of it. since then, even though that program director left I haven’t been able to escape the cult, largely because we have the same name and everyone thinks that I’m the god of mataguay. I really don’t like it, and it may have contributed to the full emergence of my doppelganger last year.

the camp witch doctor mentions to me, almost off-handedly, that the spirits of the camp seem scared of me.

the next year was the first time camp begins to suspect there is something up. about ME. one of the administration comments he heard footsteps and the muffled sound of my voice emanating from my classroom in the middle of the night. he goes to check, but there is no-one there, but he feels a certain wrongness in the place. he goes back down stairs only to hear footsteps again, this time leaving the room, and then heading off in the direction of mountain man meadow. he asks me about it the next day, only for me to tell him that i had been on the other side of camp doing an astronomy outing. there is much perplextion on either side. it also comes to my attention that people have begun seeing what looks like the glow of electric lights in trainer’s house, even though no-one lives there and further there is no electric current running to the house, as no-one has ever bothered to run an electric cable out that far. i remembered a time when we were walking back from the camp ghost story as a tenderfoot and i saw a blue flickering light in that very same house which i had assumed was an old tv set.

by this point i have started to talk to the constellations and greet them when they appear, and also to yell at the sun to stop hogging the glory

the next year, near the end of the year, i come across a friend of mine who is trying to get out of working his area the next day. I catch him performing an extremely bastardized version of the rain turtle ritual and, even though i have avoided ever doing the ritual myself, i feel compelled to correct him. this turned out to be a mistake. upon completing the ritual, i feel a tugging sensation in my gut, and he and i and this one scout who was watching us nearby felt both the temperature and pressure drop in three waves over a course of 5 seconds, and clouds begin appearing on the horizon. the scout was awestruck and begins asking what i just did, my friend was elated, and i... i was highly disturbed.it rained from thursday to tuesday that week, and the forecast said it as supposed to be sunny with slight clouds. i have never performed that ritual ever again, because i felt like a bit of me seeped into the land when i did so.

this turned out to be a bit of a prophetic feeling, because at the beginning of the next year a series of disturbing events started to occur. the first evidence that something was seriously wrong was that, a week before we moved back into the cabins they already showed signs of being haunted for some unknown reason. only two people were on camp at the time: a new staffer and one who had worked there for nearly a decade and a half. the older one fell asleep in the cabins, with the lights off, while the new one went to the staff lounge to get a drink. he came back to find the lights on, and the older staff member still asleep. he woke u the older staffer to ask him who turned the lights on, only to have the older one look at him with confusion (the older one has very low-functioning autism, and has never been known to lie even in jest, so i doubt he was playing any kind of trick).

2 weeks later, I got annoyed when someone was vaping in the cabin and the fumes kept wafting over to my bunk and with the fact that they were going to press people into work parties as soon as we woke up, so I got up without telling anyone, left my sleeping bag on the bunk, and went to go sleep on one of the comfy couches in the staff lounge. keep in mind, i did this in the middle of the night. in the morning, the person next to my bed told me that he could have sworn that he heard me get up at 5am, say “they’ll never find me”, and walk out the door. he was adamant that he had heard me say it, and was baffled when i told him i was in the staff lounge the whole time. however, i also mentioned that i did wake up briefly at 5 am and think that exact thought.

soon thereafter, an even more anomalous thing occurred: the shadow people began to come back, and with such frequency and audacity that even the new staff began to see them clearly. many of them appeared at one of my old haunts, a concrete platform next to a broken shack known as the “old observatory”, though I never saw them there myself. one of them even walked towards a trio of new staff into the moonlight so that it was fully visible as a hazy, black mist in the shape of a man. that trio shortly fled the area.

even so, it seems the shadow people were still afraid of me. Once, when I was sitting up on the hill overlooking the dining hall at night, I saw a shadow flit past my shoulder, and it was running towards the staff cabins. I stood up and addressed it directly. I told it I would not harm it, and that I wanted to see what it looked like. It paused, turned towards me, and the shadow collapsed into a single point in mid-air, which shifted to become an orange-red light. It only stayed that way for a moment before changing back to it’s shadow form and speeding away from me as fast as it’s shadow legs could carry it.

but that was only the prelude of what was to come, because soon after that, IT started showing up, visibly. And by it, I mean me. Whatever had been copying my voice and footsteps before now was copying my appearance as well. staff became adamant that they saw me, walking silently between Mountain Man Meadow and the Fort, with my white lab-coat blowing in the breeze and my walking stick clacking on the asphalt in time with my steps. Two things were wrong with that: #1 I was on the other side of camp playing Warcraft 2 and #2 I never walk quietly. I always sing or chant or pray aloud when walking at night, as loud as I can, because I can. Me moving in silence at night is so out of character it was jarring to hear. In most cases when the staff member in question called to me in greeting, “I” did not speak up but instead glanced over in their direction without expression and waved mechanically back at them. we began calling this other me “[redacted]” which is my name backwards. when I later ask one of my friends who was into magic if i had indeed been it two places at once, she got back to me a day later and told me “that thing wasn’t you. don’t go back there.”

I think it was the first time in a long time I had actually been scared of something supernatural in nature. as silly as it might be, there is something dreadful about thinking that at any moment you might see your own face staring at you blankly through the window. even today, a year after having quit the job, I still have difficulty looking in mirrors, as it brings back foul memories of fearing the sight of my own face.

i had one regret upon finally leaving the camp, after so long, and that regret was leaving my friends, the constellations. sure, I had set up a promising successor to teach the badge (i never had anyone to teach me), but I knew that for a time the quality of instruction would take a serious nose-dive. And I also knew that I would miss seeing the constellations. i live in a place with a lot of light pollution, so it can be hard to find a place to see my old friends properly, whereas in mataguay they veritably blaze in the sky, cold and beautiful. and i knew, somehow, that the constellations would miss me too, miss me retelling their stories or explaining fun facts about the stars within them. Above all, I would miss Scorpio, the first constellation I would see each evening, the one I liked to talk to most. sure, i could see them occasionally on camp-outs and whatnot, but it wouldn’t be the same. call it madness if you will, but that day I feel like I lost some good friends.