#i made these two drawings instead of working on video art for my youtubes whoops

[plainescape]

can you guess who two of my favorite npcs are

(difficulty level: extreme totally)

[florenceandthemachine]

@hearteyesforbuck asked:

I have been dying for a meet-cute au where Eddie takes Chris to the gym once a week and they box a little together before Eddie spars; usually Chris sits by the ring and reads but one day Eddie finds him laying on a bench, lifting an empty bar while this really cute blond guy spots him and gives him encouragement ....

guess who’s asks are still broken?

Tumblr keeps adding the “Read More” into the ask box, which breaks the entire post when I try to post it. Why is it happening? No idea, but if anyone knows how to fix it, please let me know, this is getting really old.

anyway, fun fact that I just learned about myself—if you want me to dedicate 100% of my brainpower to writing 4.5k of something in one sitting, you just throw in Christopher Diaz.

Eddie liked to think of himself as some kind of a “do it yourself” kind of dad.

Most of the time, that was a good thing.

Kitchen faucet broke? No worries, Eddie has some plumbers tape and three different YouTube videos telling him how to fix it.

Car wouldn’t start? Not a problem, Eddie bought the full repair manual offline and knows his way around a wrench.

Christopher needed forty gluten free, egg free, dairy free cupcakes for class tomorrow? Eddie was perfectly capable of... admitting when he was outmatched by a stand mixer and calling thirteen local bakeries to see if they delivered, because his car still wasn’t starting.

Point is, if there was a way he could work on something, Eddie would at least try it—and needless to say, that got a little complicated where Christopher was involved.

Eddie still wanted to do a lot of it on his own. Chris was his kid, and no one else's, and he didn’t even like being away from him while Chris was at school—he wasn’t sure if that was guilt stemming from leaving Chris as a kid, or guilt about introducing Shannon back into his life only to have her wind up dead, or guilt about... well, pick-a-thing, but he was pretty damn sensitive about what he perceived he could do to help his kid.

Which is why, when Chris’ physical therapist gave Eddie some suggestions about how Chris could work on strength training at home, Eddie dove completely into the deep end, head first, no floaties.

Working on Chris’ fine motor skills had been cake. Writing, drawing, arts and crafts, even playing video games, all helped improve Chris’ hand eye coordination (and if Eddie ran out of room on the fridge for Chris’ masterpieces and started framing them instead, well, that was his own business, no matter how nosy the busybodies at Michael’s got).

Working on his gross motor skills, though, that was another story. They could go on walks, sure, and they did every day. Eddie could hook up the trail-a-bike to his own once or twice a week so Chris could ride along with him, without worrying about his balance, but those were both leg heavy activities—and while it was great that Chris was building his core strength and leg strength, Eddie wasn’t about to just strap a wrist weight to Chris’ arms and call it a ‘well rounded workout’.

Short of more physical therapy, Eddie was at a loss as to what to do—so when Google Maps pushed him off the 101 to avoid a wreck on his way home from work and he got caught by a stop light right next to "Ricky’s Boxing Gym”, Eddie felt like his prayers had been answered.

Over the next few months, they had set up a pretty good routine. Eddie would bring Chris to the gym, they would hop into one of the many rings, and he and his son would get a half hour of quality time, three times a week. Eddie had his own set of boxing mitts, and Chris thought that spending a half hour trying to punch his dad’s hand was the most fun a kid could have after school. Chris would tire himself out and sit on the bench, drawing or reading for a while more, while Eddie would actually spar with one of the staff members, get his own workout in, and then they’d go home.

Nine times out of ten, they’d stop for ice cream or pizza, and completely undo any of the workout they had actually done, but Eddie thought that was a small price to pay for the whoop of joy Chris let out when he actually managed to hit Eddie’s glove dead center.

Eddie’s sparring partner of choice (well, after Chris) was Tommy Kinard. He was nice enough, and kept Eddie on his toes, giving him plenty of time to look over to Chris to make sure he was safe, and happy, and occupied, and (“Dad, I’m fine! Go punch someone!”) okay, maybe he was helicoptering a little bit. He hadn’t really thought it was a problem until Kinard went on paternity leave, leaving him in the capable, and brutal, hands of Boscoe.

Boscoe was a beast. He didn’t know her first name—didn’t know if she had a first name—but what she lacked in pleasantries she more than made up with strength. If Eddie was being honest, though, he kind of loved it; even after the first day they sparred together, when he wound up limping into the 118, proudly admitting to Hen that he had been beat up by a girl.

The thing was, Boscoe was intense, and while that was a good thing, it gave him less of a chance to helicopter over Chris.

Which, okay, maybe that was a good thing too. Whatever.

He knew the gym pretty well by that point, and knew the people who worked there, knew he could trust Chris with any of them—which is why when he looked up after dodging a jab from Boscoe, and saw Chris absent from his bench, he only panicked a little bit.

When he managed to take a wider look around the gym and saw a familiar pair of shoes laying down on a workout bench, the rest of him obscured by a bigger, bulkier body, that panic went from 0-60 real quick.

“Hey!”

He only barely managed to dodge a glancing blow from Boscoe as he ducked beneath the ropes, grabbing a towel to blot at his face as he hopped down. His voice was little more than a quick bark through the gym as he stepped around another group of machines, his frantic pace slowing a little as he got into earshot.

“... yeah, come on buddy, you can do it! Come on, give me one more rep! You got this little man!”

Fuck, had this stranger actually given Chris a set of weights?

His temper was white hot by the time he finally got around the front of the machine, opening his mouth to shout, to get a manager, to do something, but the words died in his throat as he took in the scene before him.

Because Chris was definitely on the bench, and he definitely had his hands on the bar—the bar that was completely devoid of weights, Eddie noticed, the same bar that had two much larger, stronger hands attached to them. Hands that were probably doing all the actual work of lifting the bar, because Chris was laying back, unable to speak, because he was giggling so hard.

The bar landed back on the rack with a dull thunk as Chris pulled his hands back, sticking them straight up in the air triumphantly as he sat up. The man behind the bar gave a big show of leaning against the frame of the bench dramatically, fanning himself, giving Eddie a full view of an employee shirt, name badge, and the gym logo stitched across the polo he was wearing.

Whelp, that was almost very embarrassing for him.

“Holy cow, that was such a good job! Man, you have got to be the strongest kid I’ve ever met in my life!”

“Dad, did you see me? Buck says I’m super strong!”

Eddie had to admit, he was a little thrown by whatever was happening here, but Chris was obviously having a good time, and he felt the white hot anger dissipate into something a little less angry and a little more embarrassed.

“That was some pretty impressive work, buddy! Have you been holding out on me?” Eddie dipped down and tossed a few playful jabs at Chris, selfish only because he wanted to prolong the joy his son was obviously feeling, but it was all worth it as he was handsomely rewarded when Chris started giggling again.

The man—Buck, Eddie gathered—laughed, drawing Eddie’s attention upward, and for a moment, his brain short circuited, because there was no way on earth a gym rat could be this... pretty.

Because damn. Buck was pretty.

Pretty enough that Eddie was easily distracted, waxing poetic (internally, thankfully) about beefy arms and a plush lip that he didn’t notice what was happening until Buck stuck a hand out, smiling, and Eddie could only guess what was going on. He reached out and took the hand, his own smile hitching as Buck’s face slipped into confusion.

“Uhh—”

“...I was asking if you wanted me to take your towel for you and get you a fresh one.”

Oh. Right. Towel.

Eddie’s face burned as he pulled the towel off his shoulder, handing it over, giving a too-tight laugh as he nodded his head. “Yes! If you could get me a new towel so I could strangle myself in embarrassment, that would be great.”

Well, at the very least, that got Buck to laugh again—death would be worth it if that was the last sound he heard. “Sorry I kind of stole your kid. He was wandering in between the machines, and it’s my first week off of the evening shift, so I just wanted to make sure he didn’t get hurt—but then he started asking about all the weights and pulleys and stuff, you have a really smart kid!”

Total Gym Hottie (Buck, his mind corrected. If he was going to drool over someone the least he could do was use their name) was complimenting his kid now, and Eddie was so star struck he was actually proud to say he didn’t stumble when Buck nudged his shoulder, head jerking back to the ring he had abandoned.

"...anyway, I think strangulation is the least of your worries, if I know that look, Boscoe has an entirely different death planned for you if you don’t get back in the ring. Go on, I’ll help little man here wheel you out on a gurney when she’s done with you.”

Buck sounded way too positive about that, and it was all Eddie could do to groan and walk back to the ring, tail between his legs.

Sure enough, even after he had the next day off, he was still sore when he walked into the 118 for his next shift.

--

Buck became easily, seamlessly, a part of their routine, in a way that probably deserved a little more insight on Eddie’s part, but insight was for suckers. At least two days out of the week, their schedules aligned—Eddie and Chris still worked on their exercises, but now it included Buck giving a dramatic play by play on the sidelines, talking up Chris like an announcer, or just otherwise causing shenanigans.

It was worth it, easily, because while Chris was certainly never a negative kid, Eddie had never seen him in brighter spirits. And Buck... well, anyone that could find a way to help out his son in a way that Chris clearly enjoyed earned an instant gold star in Eddie’s book. The fact that he was easy on the eyes wasn’t a bad thing, either.

“Diaz, I swear to God—”

Eddie only barely ducked under Boscoe’s extended hand, forcibly rooting himself back in the moment, looking guiltily back to her instead of watching Buck and Chris.

“—can you pay attention for like three minutes so I can hit you without feeling bad about it?”

Eddie tried, he really did, but it was hard. A few weeks had gone by since their initial meeting, and Eddie had gone from “wow he’s pretty” to “full high school crush” in no time flat. It wasn’t his fault, though—because what sealed the deal wasn’t the moment Buck had switched to tank tops over polos, or how happy Eddie was to spend time staring at Buck’s magnificent ass (and it was really, really magnificent, let the record show), it was how he interacted with Chris that sent him over the edge.

Buck was good with Chris, but somehow that was the understatement of the year. He was kind, and he was bubbly, and he was just in sync in a way that Eddie wasn’t even sure he had reached, and Chris was his son. Buck was patient in a way that seemed effortless, easily slowing himself down or changing what he was doing when he noticed Chris struggling, wether it was in going over a math problem while Eddie got the crap beat out of him or just showing him how some of the different machines worked.

Hell, right now, Eddie had his hands securely around Chris’ hips as he lifted the other male to a chin-up bar, helping Chris count out the pull-up’s he was doing—and while all Eddie could hear was Chris’ laughter, all he could see were the thick cords of muscle attached to Buck’s arms, lifting Chris like he weighed nothing.

Eddie wondered, not for the first time, if Buck could lift him like that.

Like she was a horrible mind reading pervert, Boscoe smacked him with an open hand—not hard enough to hurt, but not soft enough that he was going to ignore it.

“Diaz, this will be our last session together. Kinard is back next week—” Another punch, a quick jab that Eddie blocked with his forearms. “—so the least you could do is focus on me and not the apple of your eye over there.”

“Buck isn’t the apple of my—fuck—my eye, grow up.” Eddie huffed as he threw out a punch of his own, his hand knocked away violently, only barely dodging the sharp hook that Boscoe sent to him.

“God, I was talking about your kid, Diaz. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Oh.

Ignoring how red his face was, Eddie grumbled and threw another quick jab, though he missed completely as Boscoe stepped back, a grin on her face, and Eddie knew better than to trust that look. The last time he trusted that look, he had been talked into fighting bare-handed, and he still wasn’t sure his knuckles would ever really work again.

“You know, Kinard is supposed to take you back as a client, but I bet if you asked nice enough...”

Oh no.

“Hey, Buck!”

Oh no. Eddie looked up in horror as Buck easily lifted Christopher onto his shoulders—god, so much muscle—and jogged over, with the nerve to not even be out of breath when he smiled up to the pair in the ring. Eddie bit his tongue and leaned over to high five his kid, fully prepared to deal with whatever terrible thing was about to come his way.

“Kinard was supposed to take Diaz here back after he’s off leave next week, but I know he wanted to ease back into things after being away from the gym for a few months. You think you could spar with him in the interim?”

Oh, no, didn’t seem to cover it anymore. Eddie was having a hard enough time focusing on the task at hand when Buck was in the same building, he would be signing his own death certificate if he had to stare Buck in the face, and then try to hit said face. He hadn’t even seen Buck break a sweat before—he didn’t know if his little bisexual heart could take it.

He was somehow both relieved and regretful when Buck shook his head, looking plenty apologetic as he pulled Chris up and off of his shoulders, making sure that he was steady on his feet before he leaned up against the ropes. “Sorry, Eddie. I don’t really box, and besides, I think Chris and I are making real progress while you get your butt kicked. Show him the guns, Chris!” Buck said, and Chris immediately started some classic strong-man poses, Buck posing dramatically behind him, and Eddie felt his heart melt for two entirely different reasons.

Buck turned around mid pose as the door chime went off, giving Eddie ample time to count out the individual strands of muscle fiber in the moment before Buck relaxed, turning with a smile back to the gang in the ring. “Lena, that's my next client. Chris, Eddie, I’ll see you both next week, yeah?” He said with a grin before he fist bumped Chris and waved to Eddie, slipping back into Professional Buck mode. Eddie waved back, brows almost in his hairline as he looked back to Boscoe, who was scowling at him.

“So—”

“No, Diaz.”

“Wait, why not? Buck gets to call you Lena!”

“Beat me in the ring as often as Buck does and I’ll consider it.”

Eddie had his mouth open to retort when Chris cut him off, pushing his glasses up on his nose as he tilted his head. “Can I call you Lena?”

She didn’t even hesitate a moment, nodding her head seriously. “You can absolutely call me Lena, squirt.”

Chris promptly stuck his tongue out at his dad, and Eddie reacted in sort, falling to the floor of the ring as he grabbed at his chest. “The nerve! Betrayed by my own child, my own flesh and blood!”

Chris looked thoroughly unimpressed, sitting back on the bench as he started to pack up his schoolwork. “Lena, can you tell my dad to stop being such a drama queen?”

It wasn’t until they were both in the car, that Eddie, thoroughly beaten down by his son, his trainer, and his own brain for providing a play by play of Buck that day while he was in the locker room shower stall, really thought about what Buck said.

He didn’t box. Which was strange enough in a boxing gym, but whatever, there were plenty of machines that Buck could be working on instead.

But them Boscoe (god, he couldn’t even call her Lena in his head, it felt like she would figure it out and beat him to death) basically admitted that Buck regularly whooped her behind the ropes

If Buck wasn’t boxing in a boxing gym, what the hell was he doing?

--

As it turned out, Eddie didn’t have to wait long to figure it out. Barely a week had passed before Eddie had received a call from Chim, all but begging Eddie to switch shifts so he could take the girl he had been seeing out on a proper date. The switch was a no brainer—Maddie seemed like a great girl, and as much shit as he gave Chim for... well, being Chim, he obviously wanted to see his teammate happy, especially when the only thing he would have to change was a gym day from a Monday to a Sunday.

If he had known that this would be the day that sealed his fate, he probably would have reconsidered the switch all together.

The gym was packed—which probably wasn’t surprising for a weekend day, but damn, Eddie had been glad he booked a ring with Kinard ahead of time. It was nice to see a familiar face in the gym anyway, one that wasn’t trying to beat the crap out of him in the ring, and once Kinard joined up with them, it was easy to shoot the shit. Eddie congratulated him on his step into fatherhood, ruffling Chris’ hair as he did—not that Chris noticed, busy scanning through the machines for a familiar blond head.

Not that Eddie could judge, when he was doing the same thing.

“Hey, I’m gonna toss my stuff in a locker. See you out here in a sec?”

“Yeah, sounds good! Buck and Boscoe are almost done in their ring, we have it next.”

Eddie was halfway to the locker room before what Kinard had said clicked in his brain, and he immediately did a 180, making a beeline to the rings set up on the far side of the gym, easily spotting the pair when he knew what to look for.

It was no wonder that neither he nor Chris had recognized Buck when they walked in—he was literally drenched in sweat, his usually fluffy blonde hair dark and slicked to his forehead, scowling around his mouth guard as he danced around Boscoe.

Boscoe, who Eddie had never seen so worked up. Damn, she really hadn’t even had to try during his matches. Wasn’t that a blow to the ego.

No, Buck definitely wasn’t a boxer, because this was a dance. Every move he made, he made with his entire body, his energy flowing through each form, moving easily and gracefully in a way that shouldn’t have been possible with such an incredible amount of force and flat out violence. He almost felt dazed as he followed Buck’s movements, but in the best possible way, his eyes snapping back and forth as he tried to trace where one hit ended and the next began.

“Wow.”

Eddie was glad that Chris said it, because he still couldn’t find the muscles needed to pick his jaw up off the floor. He didn’t know if Chris had followed him over to the ring or if his Buck-radar was just that good, but for the time being, Eddie was more than thankful for the minute distraction as he ruffled his kids hair again.

Boscue was moving more desperately as the match continued, launching into a series of quick jabs, but even Eddie could see where that was her downfall. Buck knocked her arm back with her last punch and sent a kick straight for her shoulder, but then he twisted his entire body off of the mat and his other leg was in the air too, and Eddie instinctively sucked in a breath as Buck locked her neck between his thighs. They both came crashing down to the mat, struggling impressively until Boscoe slapped Buck’s thigh twice, and then—

—and then Buck was all smiles again, beaming as he released her and took a knee on the ring, helping her back into a sitting position, spitting out his mouth guard with an excited moment of praise for her technique.

Eddie could not compute. This was his downfall. Eddie is dead, long live Eddie.

“Holy cow, Buck! That was amazing! You’re like... you’re like a ninja crime fighting super hero!”

Well, that was one way to put it.

Buck’s head whipped around at Chris’ excited outburst, lighting up when he spotted Eddie and Chris near the bench, eagerly scooting forward into a sitting position closer to the ropes.

“Thanks, little man! That was some mixed martial arts, it’s super fun. I’ve been teaching Lena for a few years, she’s getting pretty good!”

Buck’s grin slid into something a little more proud and pleased as he looked to Eddie, and Eddie felt every muscle in his body tighten as Buck’s gaze burned through him.

“What did you think of that leg lock, Eddie? Total knock out, right?”

Oh fuck, was Buck flirting with him now? That had to have been flirty, right? Come on, Brain, do something.

“... legs.”

“...my legs?”

“Buck, your... your legs.”

Buck’s smile looked a little more pinched as Eddie groaned, shaking his head. “Okay, I, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this or I will completely die. Can I take you out to dinner sometime? I know a great place off the strip, you’ll love it, my treat.”

The look on Buck’s face was skeptical, at best, but at least he wasn’t shutting him down, giving Eddie the benefit of the doubt (and giving him a moment to get his brain back online). “Because of my legs?”

“No. Well, okay, you have amazing legs. And arms, though, and like... a stupidly handsome face, and I would be blind not to notice those things—” shit, Eddie probably sounded like such a shallow asshole right now. “—but I’m asking because you’re really smart. And you’re kind, so kind to Chris too, and you’re patient, and... Buck, you’re really really sweet. And I would love to take you out for a dinner date the moment you can look past my apparent inability to form a single coherent thought.”

After a moment that felt much longer than the three seconds it was, Buck sighed and leaned past Eddie, looking critically to Chris. He slid down to his stomach, squinting as he dropped down to eye level with the boy. “What do you think, Chris? Should I give your dad a shot?”

Well, at the very least, Buck was asking the one person that Eddie knew he always had in his corner; and sure enough, Chris delivered. “I think so. Dad really likes you.”

That’s his boy.

“Last week he spent my whole entire physical therapy appointment telling Dr. Wilson how much help you gave me and how nice you were and how much he appreciated it. It got kinda annoying.”

...well damn, Eddie wasn’t expecting to be called out by his own kid like that, but if the suddenly soft look Buck was giving him was any indication, it might have been the necessary push to get him to understand how serious Eddie was.

Eddie tried to keep his excitement tamped down when Buck nodded, sitting back up. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. Only because you managed to ask me out before I could ask you.”

Wait, Buck wanted to ask him out anyway?

“If you can land three hits on me in three minutes—should be easy after spending a weeks with Boscoe—then you can pick the time, the place, and I’ll even talk Lena in to letting you call her Lena. But if you don’t...” Buck reached through the ropes to help Eddie up, tossing him a wrap for his hands as he did. “... then I get to pick the time, the place, and you start training with me in MMA instead of going back to boring old boxing.”

Eddie blinked at him in abject horror as Buck dipped his voice low, seeing with terrible clarity exactly where Boscoe had learned her terrifying grin.

“That way you can see my leg choke up close and personal. Deal?”

The stakes were too high, and Eddie couldn’t say no.

He was screwed.

He was elated.

But fuck, he was screwed.

(Three minutes later, Buck asked if Eddie was free on Friday at seven, promised to pick somewhere nice, and gave him a searing kiss before he disappeared into the staff locker room. Eddie, on the other hand, needed a spatula to peel himself off of the floor of the ring.

He had never been so happy that he could barely move in his life.)

[theonyxpath]

Today’s blog is going to be a bit different. It’s one of the rare Mondays we aren’t holding our weekly meeting, in that it’s the Labor Day holiday here in the US and a bunch of us are all over the place taking care of everything from finishing up conventions to driving a kid back to college.

So, while we still have our updates and all that, I don’t have a meeting’s worth of notes to share with you in some mutated form. Instead, I thought I’d selfishly take the opportunity to talk about one of my processes; specifically, the process I go through to design the look of one of our game line’s cover treatments.

In this case, I’m talking about the cover for Trinity Continuum: Aberrant.

To do that, we need to go back to when I was designing the overall look of the entire Trinity Continuum line. Sitting down and considering what direction to go with it, I made the a call to make sure the covers let folks know that they were part of a series, rather than the direction of the original editions where I wanted each core book to reflect the genre the game was designed to emulate.

I’m talking about the funky and unique plastic binding of Trinity (Aeon), the graphic novel look of the Aberrant cover, and the pseudo-distressed look of an old pulp magazine for Adventure!.

I think we did a pretty nice job on them way back when, but now that we are emphasizing the fact that these game lines exist in a Trinity Continuum, I was looking for a way that the cover treatments would also relay that information.

A timeline sort of feel – something that could be read as moments along the Continuum – was what I was looking for, but my first idea, a single illustration that we’d cut sections out of for each main book, just wouldn’t work as intended. After all, we expect to add all sorts of new time periods and genres, so how could those be worked into a single illustration before we even could know which ones we were doing?

Instead, what if each point on the timeline that represented a new slice of the Continuum was represented by a vertical illustration that collaged together the high points of that setting? I could picture them springing up all along the timeline, with maybe the “tent pole” game settings of the Trinity Continuum: Core, TC: Adventure!, TC: Aberrant, and TC: Aeon, getting the largest and most involved images for their covers, and other books having treatments that were as involved as the books warranted.

Something like this:

That would give us an underlying structure that tied into the Continuum concept – and it is always a good thing to try and put new concepts into some sort of visual design that reinforces and even explains that new concept – yet not have a design that would constrict our ideas and cover visuals.

Here’s what the TC: Core and TC: Aeon covers look like:

Now for TC: Aberrant, I was able to start with continuing the structure set up with the previous covers, and I had the original edition’s collage cover by the awesome Tom Fleming to draw imagery from to give us the quite accurate sense of a connection between the two editions. So things like a cityscape at the bottom, and making sure we got a T2M logo somewhere in it, were natural choices for imagery.

Which scenes, which head-shots, and which full figures to be featured were a different matter entirely. A lot depended on just what we wanted this edition to have as themes, or basically, what kind of moments and characters best show off the setting folks will find past the cover?

For the biggest, focal-point full-body figures: we’d talked about the changes to The Fireman’s story, so I knew he was still an inspirational figure – maybe even moreso in this edition. I even played around with having the central image be his statue, but decided on keeping the focus on the living hero.

Divas Mal, of course, needed to be in a position of prominence, and I wanted the swirl of his cloak to talk about one of our most iconic characters also being a comic book character. Around him, the leading figures in his movement, since Mal was still a messianic figure that movements coalesced around in this edition.

Some rough sketches along the way to the cover design.

Then between them, another iconic and powerful character, Antaeus – even before we knew the lead-in webcomic would feature him. Smaller figures would run the gamut of the various kinds of Novas – mercenary Elites, celebs in the public eye, T2M members, etc. I also wanted a wide range of physical types.

Some head-shot characters as a call back to the first edition cover, and to break up the figures on a visual level. I knew Matthew and Eddy were anxiously awaiting a chance to pitch a supplement detailing the Nova wrestlers that featured way to prominently in first edition (IMHO), so Lance Stryker reprises his head-shot, along with the iconic Cestus Pax to reassure long-time fans that the hero you love to hate was still in there. (Especially since Ian Watson had already made some strong changes to the character).

Just like on the previous two book covers, the three characters above the cityscape are new ones, but again, I was pushing to hit some archetypes and expand some physical types. Plus, we had discussed a long time back that “inventor” type characters would be able to go all Tony Stark, so a powered-suit character needed to be on there to suggest that change in this edition.

For iconic scenes, I started with the Galatea explosion, and the attack on the Lincoln Memorial by Geryon. Both of those have also been moments from which a lot of the further events of the setting sprung. Then a few more, like a T2M rescue just to get the team into the cover a tad bit more, as even tweaked, I know they were still a great entry point for lots of folks coming to TC: Aberrant already aware of the idea of superhero teams.

Because, even with all that pre-planning, there were still tweaks to be made. The biggest came late in the actual illustrating when I was reminded that in this edition’s continuity Slider isn’t murdered. I’d designed the cover before the writing was done, and forgotten I’d included the Slider assassination as one of the cover moments. Whoops! We had to get that fixed even later than Mirthful Mike’s cover mock-up for the Kickstarter.

And please, lest you think this whole blog is me suggesting the covers are all a RichT production of a RichT idea, directed by and starring RichT, let me be clear that most of my efforts end by handing off my sketches to Mirthful Mike Chaney, who not only art directs the cover illustrations based on the sketches, but follows up on the illustrator’s versions and my notes on them, and then makes the illustrations sing by how he has done the graphic design for the covers.

Fantastic artist Shen Fei, who has illustrated the covers for all three books so far, has so far blown away and improved my ideas by a quantum level – and I expect that TC: Adventure! will also be for more beautiful than I imagined as I sketched it out! (And I can imagine a fair bit of beautiful.)

So, that’s pretty much it for this week. Just a little peak behind the scenes on how we do the voodoo that we do so well in order to illuminate our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Keep an eye out in this space as well as on our social media for the Deviant: The Renegades Kickstarter that will be launching later this month!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features recordings from GenCon! Go to https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/ or to your favorite podcast venue!

The Onyx Path News show went out live today, with talk of Vampire, Werewolf, Chronicles of Darkness, They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Dystopia Rising: Evolution, and all kinds of other games, along with lots of meandering nonsense from Matthew! https://youtu.be/ZVmX1n_54Fc

Our Twitch channel has a bumper crop of content coming up this week, with almost every day populated with a show! There’s Scion, Scarred Lands, Vampire, and more! Check us out and give us a follow on www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Here’s a special treat for fans of Mage: The Awakening! Occultists Anonymous have four new episodes for you right here as follows:

Episode 37: Forging Futures With Atratus still within her soul and tensions running a little high, Wyrd and Songbird split the party. Plans are made for the future of the cabal and the individual mages. https://youtu.be/ay54wbYhs7Y

Episode 38: In the Wings Wyrd the Seer and Songbird work to restore a wounded Hallow. Atratus experiments with the new strength of her Matter Arcana. https://youtu.be/ZsMa26FER4g

Episode 39: Lady of the Lake Wyrd the Seer delves into her Oneiros to confront the conflicts within her own soul. Songbird prepares for his UFC fight. Atratus speaks with her dead brother. https://youtu.be/AD2UTOzWSq8

Episode 40: He’s Back Acanthis, the fighter formerly known as Songbird, returns to a UFC fight, then the cabal goes to Jimmy “Smalls” Patinko’s place for a party. Enjoying the nightlife in New York City… https://youtu.be/yULxjFKo-iE

The Story Told Podcast continue their excellent Dragon-Blooded actual play. As the Dragon-Blooded set out again on the road to Daric, Kai discovers evidence of a small band of travelers attempting to hid their presence. The Dragon-Blooded decide to investigate. https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/

Our Scion: Athens, Ohio actual play is now on our YouTube channel right here https://youtu.be/gQv3599lczo along with promo videos here https://youtu.be/drNIV5G8Vys and here https://youtu.be/9_1X8l1RXaQ Expect more to come in the coming weeks!

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, Night Horrors: Shunned By the Moon for Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd will be available in PDF and physical book PoD versions on DTRPG!

Conventions!

Save Against Fear: October 12th – 14th GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Redlines

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Development

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Manuscript Approval

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

W20 Art Book (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Post-Approval Development

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

V5 Chicago Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Editing

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Post-Editing Development

Memento Mori (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e Companion)

DR:E Jumpstart (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Indexing

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars �� Contracted. Sketches rolling in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – Contracted.

Deviant (KS) – Contracted. Putting together KS graphics.

Trinity RMCs – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Sending out art notes.

Chicago Folio – Art notes going out this week.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Got Matthew’s notes.

Memento Mori – Small book, throwing it to Drew and Luis.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

Dark Eras 2 – Files with Aileen

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – With Josh. Everything is in, so he should be cruising.

Aeon Aexpansion – Need to do cover.

Proofing

C20 Cup of Dreams

Signs of Sorcery – Inputting errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen

DR: E – Back to Eddy for XXs.

DR:E Jumpstart

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel

At Press

Dragon Blooded – Shipping wrapping up.

Dragon-Blooded Cloth Map – Shipping wrapping up.

Dragon-Blooded Screen – Shipping wrapping up.

Trinity Core Screen – At Studio2.

TC Aeon Screen – At Studio2.

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

Trinity Core – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

Trinity Aeon – Printing. PoD proofs ordered.

V5: Chicago – Prepping files for press.

You Are Not Alone (TC: Aberrant Comic) – PoD proof ordered.

Shunned By the Moon – PDF and PoD physical book versions available this Wed. at DTRPG!

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Thanks to Impish Ian Watson for posting this: “50 years ago today, two computers at UCLA were connected via a 4.5-meter cable, giving birth to what we call the Internet. Happy birthday, Internet.” Because without the internet, Onyx Path would just not work – we need the connections around the world to do what we do!

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/meet-rupi-kaur-queen-of-the-instapoets/

Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'

Rupi Kaur is too sick to get out of bed and wishes she had realized this a few hours earlier. Sitting on a king-size mattress in her Soho Grand hotel room, Kaur tells the story of how she almost lost her brunch all over actress Jennifer Westfeldt. “I knew something was wrong when I was talking to Jennifer and the green haze came over me,” she says in between sips of red Gatorade. “I was like, ‘You’re talking about something so deep right now, but the strawberries are coming back up girl, I gotta go.'”

Trying to keep fruit down isn’t exactly how the 25-year-old imagined she’d be celebrating the release of her second collection of poetry, The Sun and Her Flowers. It’s a celebration which kicked off the night before with a live performance of her work featuring Westfeldt, YouTube star Lilly Singh and fellow poet Chloe Wade. But this story of what was supposed to be a nausea-free victory lap, which she spares me the gross details of finishing, is just the kind of anecdote her 1.9 million Instagram followers would adore.

Since 2013, Kaur has been sharing poems about love, heartbreak and womanhood that perfectly exemplify the self-care movement. Most are bite-size affirmations, accompanied by Kaur’s own delicate line drawings, that go down easy when scrolling through Instagram. Kaur’s most-liked poem, which is just six lines and begins “how is it so easy for you/ to be kind to people, he asked,” earned over 240,000 likes.

Her poetry has gotten her more than likes, though. Her debut, Milk and Honey, has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide since its 2015 re-release by Andrews McMeel Publishing. (Kaur self-published it a year prior.) In its first week of release, Kaur’s follow-up was duking it out for the top spot on Amazon’s best-seller list with Dan Brown’s latest novel. It would win the coveted spot atop The New York Times list for paperback trade fiction where it stayed for nine straight weeks before E.L. James usurped it.

Uncomplicated and concise, Kaur’s poetry has been criticized for being too simplistic. Parody accounts have shown up on Twitter that intend to show how easy it is to write a Rupi Kaur poem – the gist being you take any conversation, format it in all lowercase and insert random line breaks. Milk and Honey officially became a meme earlier this year when people starting taking the text from Vine videos and stylizing them like one of her poems. Now there’s even a book called Milk and Vine that’s quickly become an Amazon bestseller since its October release.

Kaur doesn’t think her poetry is simple. To her, it’s straightforward. “It’s like a peach,” she says. “You have to remove everything and get to the pit of it.” Kaur – who moved from Punjab, India to the suburbs of Ontario, Canada, when she was three and a half years old and now lives in Toronto – doesn’t want readers to agonize over each and every word like she did when learning poetry in school. “I would have to pull out the list of literary devices my teacher gave me and my 10 colorful pens,” she says, her big, almond eyes getting wider. “It was like doing surgery on the damn thing.”

Instead, Kaur wanted to do something more accessable. “I’ve realized, it’s not the exact content that people connect with,” she says. “People will understand and they’ll feel it because it all just goes back to the human emotion. Sadness looks the same across all cultures, races, and communities. So does happiness and joy.”

Though she’s made her name with words, Kaur’s initial Instagram fame had nothing to do with her poetry. Three years ago, Kaur posted a shot of herself lying in a bed with her back to the camera, menstrual blood leaking through her sweatpants. Instagram removed the image – which was for a college assignment in which she was asked to “challenge a taboo” – two separate times for breaking community guidelines. The site eventually apologized and reposted the photo, but not before Kaur wrote a letter reprimanding them for trying to censor her. “Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored,” she wrote on Facebook, in a post that’s been shared over 18,000 times.

Kaur’s response went viral and soon she was doing interviews with The Huffington Post and Vice about the need to “demystify the period.” Talking to Kaur now, she says she wishes she never wrote that letter – curious, since that’s how so many people found her Instagram. “I think that day, this anxiety came upon me that’s never left,” she says, recalling how scary it was to get “that much hate literally from every corner of the planet.” While Kaur says she received overwhelming support from the letter – the most memorable, she says, was an email from a war general in Afghanistan – she also never experienced “so many people saying so many mean things and telling me they were going to kill me.” Still, she doesn’t deny that the strongly worded letter benefited her career: “They came for the photo, but they stayed for the poetry.”

Why they stayed is simple, according to Kirsty Melville, the president and publisher of Andrews McMeel Publishing, which had previously been best known for releasing Calvin and Hobbes. “She’s given voice to things that people may not have been able to articulate for themselves,” she says. “In this digital world where content marketing is this sort of buzzword, Rupi is the content and it doesn’t need the marketing.”

Kaur’s popularity on Instagram is part of a trend so prominent in publishing right now that it’s spawned its own genre. “Instapoets” has become the term used to describe a new generation of writers including Lang Leav, Tyler Knott Gregson, Nayyirah Waheed and Robert M. Drake, all of whom have landed book deals thanks to their respective social media presence. “We were told for so long that there isn’t a market for this, and there is,” Kaur says. “I’m seeing so many more poets who are getting published, which I hope isn’t just a trend that goes away.”

Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter have allowed more poets – especially those of color – to share their work with a larger, younger and more diverse audience, but not everyone loves the “Instapoets” nickname. “Personally, I think it is ridiculous that a social media platform is used to define a genre of writing,” says Leav, who has 393, 000 Instagram followers. After all, Leav released her first two bestselling poetry collections – her 2014 self-published debut, Love & Misadventure, which sold 10,000 copies in the first month, and Lullabies, which was published that same year by Andrews McMeel – without ever writing a word on Instagram. (She preferred Tumblr.)

No two Instapoets are exactly alike, but there are similarities between writers that even those in the community find worrisome. Earlier this year, Waheed, who self-published her debut, Salt, a year before Milk and Honey, accused Kaur of “hyper-similarity” after fans on Twitter and Tumblr made those charges. Waheed wrote in a Tumblr post, which has since been taken down, that in 2014 she emailed Kaur, “woc writer to fellow woc writer,” to share her concerns “in the hopes that upon awareness on their part. efforts would be made to cease and desist.” In the post, Waheed, who keeps a low public profile, rarely giving interviews, said that her concerns went ignored.

Kaur declines to comment on Waheed’s specific allegations, but when speaking in her hotel room says she believes some crossover between poets is natural when they have “similar experiences and similar ideas about the world.” She also wonders if some of the accusations of similarity between her work and others are a way of silencing women of color. “It’s like that scarcity complex,” Kaur says. “‘We already have one and it’s enough,’ as if we have to fight each other off now and I think that’s really dangerous.”

Over 900 fans came out to see Kaur read at the Tribeca event. John Halpern

Kaur certainly isn’t spending her time duking it out with other poets. She holds her own unique space in the literary world where her poetry readings are more like pop concerts. To launch The Sun and Her Flowers, she put on a special theatrical performance at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City to a sold-out crowd of over 900 people willing to shell out $75 to $100 to see her.

In a nod to the book’s cover, Kaur’s fans – mostly women in their late teens and early twenties – took photos with gigantic sunflowers. Beyoncé, Rihanna and Drake played over the speakers before the petite poet took the stage in a dress that hit right above the knee. It was something that gave her pause, knowing that her Sikh father was in the audience. “It’s the shortest thing I ever wore in front of him,” Kaur says later. “I was like, ‘My legs! He’s never seen my legs before!'”

When Kaur speaks, her fans, which she says are “60 percent female and 40 percent everything else,” listen. They also whoop and holler when she delivers the climax of her most suggestive poem, Milk and Honey‘s “How We Make Up”: “Sweet baby, this is how we pull language out of one another with the flick of our tongues.” They snap their fingers in solidarity after “What’s stronger than the human heart/ that shatters over and over and still lives,” a line that found its way onto posters at the Women’s March in January.

“Whenever I read her poems, I have the same thought: ‘This is exactly how I feel but never knew how to say it,'” Lilly Singh writes in an email days after sharing the stage with Kaur to read selections from The Sun and Her Flowers. “Rupi’s words make people, especially women, feel safe and understood.”

Kaur has no problem connecting with her audience, but now she’d like the literary world to take her more seriously. She admits that her goal with her new collection was to improve as a writer and show “that just because your work is successful does not make it bad work.”

Kaur started writing Milk and Honey when she was 18. Now 25, Kaur doesn’t deny that she’s outgrown some of her early work, but isn’t ashamed of anything she’s put down on paper. “We grew up in a time with every single one of our moves being recorded and documented forever and in that was this idea that we can’t make mistakes,” she says, “but when that’s not happening you’re also not growing.”

The way she looks back at her life and lets her fans know it gets better is a big part of Kaur’s appeal, but some critics question whether the stories in her work are really hers to tell. Kaur’s been criticized for blurring the lines between her own experiences and the experiences of others when writing about the trauma women face – rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse – most notably in the Buzzfeed piece “The Problem With Rupi Kaur’s Poetry.” The essay makes the case that the poet’s “use of collective trauma in her quest to depict the quintessential South Asian female experience” is a way of forcing universality to reach a larger, more mainstream audience. It’s a dilemma that many writers of color face, knowing that sticking with specifics in regards to their own story could mean alienating readers.

Kaur tells me she writes about the South Asian experience – hers, her friends’, her family’s – because she doesn’t want to see these stories go untold. “I began writing pieces about violence at the age of 16 after seeing what the women around me were enduring and facing,” Kaur says. “It was my way of reflecting on all of these issues.”

With so little South Asian representation in entertainment, Kaur also understands how important it is for her to share these stories even if it may come with some backlash. “This name,” she says, pointing to the “Kaur” that appears on the binding of her latest book, which she pulls out from underneath the white comforter of her hotel bed, as if scripted, “is so important on a bookshelf. That’s the name of every Sikh woman. If I was six years old and I saw this in Barnes and Nobles, I would cry. I would sit there and be like, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.'”

With Sun and Her Flowers, Kaur’s still following her peach-pit philosophy, but she’s also getting at the core of who she is, delving deeper into her South Asian identity in a section of the book fittingly called “Roots.” The eldest of four writes at length about her parents, specifically her mom, whose struggle with being an immigrant is something Kaur admits she’s often taken for granted.

During her Tribeca performance, Kaur tells a story about how, as a kid, she would ignore her mom at the supermarket, too embarrassed by her accent to be seen with her. The anecdote acts as the perfect lead-in to “Broken English,” the standout of her latest collection in which she chastises herself and anyone else who’s ever been ashamed of their immigrant mother. “She split through countries to be here/ so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline,” she writes. “Her accent is thick like honey/ hold it with your life/ it’s the only thing she has left of home.”

The funny thing is, Kaur almost didn’t include this section in her book. “I thought nobody cares about this,” she says. “It’s not cool to talk about your parents.” But it’s the part that’s gotten the most feedback from fans who want to tell Kaur about their own mothers and how far they traveled for a better life. “When you start writing those other poems about your parents and all that, it’s like, how can you write about love and heartache?” Kaur asks. “That just seems so silly.”

For those who want it, there are still plenty of traditional love and heartache poems in The Sun and Her Flowers, but Kaur’s expanding on these topics. She’s now writing more authoritatively about the love and heartache that accompanies her mom and dad’s immigrant story and discovering that her specific experience of being a woman, being Punjabi and being a child of immigrants has universal appeal.

Knowing how far her reach is, Kaur doesn’t just want to write poetry, but prose, too. Back in 2015, she wrote 10 chapters of a novel that she’s still figuring out what to do with. She’s also thinking she might even want to give music a try. “It would be cool to write a song with Adele,” Kaur mentions with a chuckle. “You know, if she calls me up.” 

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