#i really like the way the onion skins look and the colors

[fayrism]

onion skins of an animation!

plus two other versions with different color palettes

ID in alt

[covertleathers]

Pulling Cords (Rookanis Fanfiction)

A meditation on tension and yearning.

Title: Pulling Cords (WIP)

Rating: 18+, Explicit, Gradually intensifying sexual tension, nudity, etc etc

Relationships: Lucanis Dellamorte/m!Rook (They/Them pronouns)

Key words: Yearning, teasing, jealousy (eventually)

Chapter 1: Lucanis dutifully doing his 'midnight' meal prep when an insomniac Rook joins him.

AO3 Link

A night at the Lighthouse was never quiet, per se. While day or night didn’t necessarily occur there, the body had its own rhythm that it followed like clockwork; most of the team ended up sleeping similar hours, give or take.

Except Lucanis. Sleep came in minutes, if any at all. Meditation helped at times, but it was a tenuous line to walk.

He kept himself busy in the kitchen when it was at its most empty with prepping the team’s next meals. The smell of a light roast always lingered there at these hours. These were the moments when he needed the most focus. In the absence of company, even without Bellara and Neve casually talking in a far corner, a quiet would grow. It pulled at the edges of his mind like that of a string of yarn until he could feel himself begin to unravel. 

Sounds of an expertly wielded blade hitting the wood countertop as he prepared the onions, carrots and celery. A stew perhaps. Normally, he could start with a bone broth to enhance recovery time when his companions returned from their assignments. However, with two Mourn Watch mages at the lighthouse, it was becoming more pragmatic for him to get creative.

Heavy greens. Bay leaves. Rosemary. Purplish-red Arlathan legumes. They were buttery and savory when soaked then boiled. Beets. It wasn’t Antivan cooking by any means, but it would be restorative to the body.

“Wow, you really don’t sleep.”

His knife paused, hovering above a bleeding beet. His hands were soaked in red.

“Rook.”

How were they able to move so quietly without him realizing? He should have felt their magic approaching with a small sting behind his eyes. Though, he countered mentally, this whole place made his eyes feel that way. Something to resolve later.

A lackadaisy energy seemed to coat the room as the young mage, wrapped tightly in a green linen robe sauntered inside. Lucanis, taking an unnoticeable breath, realized they were not wearing anything else, not even shoes. He resumed cutting, the knife clicking against the wood.

“I hope I’m not disturbing your alone time,” Rook said. They hadn’t seemed to notice his hands going stiff. If they did, they didn’t show it. “It’s hard to sleep in that old office sometimes. I keep having dreams about drowning.”

“You’re not interrupting.”

The Mourn Watch green was a particular color that glowed iridescent against their umber skin. Lucanis caught a glimpse of their cock pressed against the thin material and quickly turned his attention to the sautéing aromatics. Rook floated across the dining room, their plum hair falling in curls down their back like heavy plumes of smoke. “Antivan coffee really is something else. I am so used to white peony tea in Nevarra. It has such a striking boldness.”

This made Lucanis chuckle softly. Striking indeed. He moved to add the main vegetables to the sauté. Rook, knowing that Lucanis would have a ready and hot pot of coffee ready, make themself a cup, adding cream and sugar until it was almost white. Lucanis frowned deeply.

Their gaze caught his face before he could fix it and laughed. Warm and smooth. The contents of the pot started to crackle. Lucanis stirred, making sure they were properly, evenly cooked through.

“It’s better sweet.”

“Oh, I remember. You like drinks for children. I could have made you a pot of chioccolata calda.” Vegetable broth. Salt. Pepper.

From the corner of this eye, Lucanis detected their unwavering look. Rook crossed the dining room; the elf was a head taller than him and moved like lakeside grass in a gentle breeze. He couldn’t imagine someone so beautiful working in those catacombs. Handling corpses or enchanting skeletons. With skin so even. Was it soft? Did it run like silk against your fingers?

In contrast, his shoulders tensed back, right hand clutching a ladle like a dagger behind him. They stopped short of an arm’s distance away. To his surprise, they extended a mug of coffee to him. The contents fresh and dark.

Breath in.

“You do so much for us, you know.” Rook ventured. Their lavender eyes were reflecting an orange glow from the fireplace. “I can’t ask you to do any more.”

Lucanis smirked, taking the mug. His fingers, covered in red, grazed theirs. He sighed, “Nothing like work focuses the mind.” He took a long sip of the bitter, acrid drink. Hm, slightly burnt. The water was too hot. Rook’s presence seemed to throw many things off kilter.

Rook stepped forward with a one-sided smile, as they often did when they were attempting to bite back a smart remark. This usually didn’t work.

“There are other things that can focus the mind.” They said, lowering their voice as they leaned into Lucanis’ space. His heart skipped a beat. His cock stirred in his breeches as he caught the scent of their fragrance. Sweet and flowery. Like HONEY. AND LAVENDER. Mierda.

At this moment Lucanis noticed the exposed cleft of Rook’s front spilling out of this robe. Not as brawny as Davrin, though not as slim as Emmrich. Soft flesh. A single gold chain bearing the death beetle of the Mourn Watch dangled helplessly at the center of their chest.

“Oh?” Empty, empty, quick. Lucanis turned away, a dish cloth in hand to deftly hold the boiling pot of stew as he churned the contents. He had to remain in control of his face. Keep his mouth a straight line. He clamped the pot back shut and met their gaze cooly.

“I love a good riddle. Your mind will be turning it over for hours.” They laughed tenderly. Mierda, how buttery. “There are secret passageways in the Grand Necropolis that will only open if you answer them correctly. Lots of people die getting stuck that way.”

Lucanis didn’t realize how long he had been holding his breath before he opened the stew pot to let the steam engulf his face and let out a sigh of relief. When he straightened, he realized Rook was peering over his shoulder down at the roiling bubbles.

“That smells amazing,” they crooned. A shiver tickled down Lucanis’ spine and a heat bloomed in his chest. But he didn’t move. Rook seemed to realize they crossed into his personal space and quietly apologized before taking a step back.

“Crows don’t really deal with riddles.” He managed as he grasped his mug again to take a swig.

Rook seemed to mull it over and pursed their lips. “I suppose so, you’re more stab now, talk later type of folk.”

“Precisely.”

Their eyes held for a moment.

Rook nervously looked to the fireplace. Their feelings ripple across their face like ocean waves. It is impossible for them to hide. “Can I stay for a little while? We don’t have to talk—” Lucanis stopped them with a raised hand.

“Tell me more about the door riddles.”

[cactusnymph]

the right ingredients

Even when he was a child himself Gale was never good at dealing with other children. Burying himself in books all day and using the biggest words he could find to sound impressive and to be as precise as he could never really resonated with most other children—or adults, for that matter.

So when Tav walks over with a child in tow as he carefully cuts some onions for tonight’s dinner, Gale is wary. She is scrawny, with a mop of red hair and two differently colored eyes. The most important thing about her is the fat, fluffy cat at her side, staring at him with huge eyes as if he might throw it in the soup at any second.

“Gale, this is Yenna. She’s staying with us for a while. I thought she could help you cook?”, Tav says with a smile. Gale wishes that smile wouldn’t turn his brain into something that feels much like the bubbling soup in the cauldron looks. He clears his throat.

“Uh—“, he starts, unsure of what he wants to say. The child looks so big-eyed that Gale is afraid she might start crying at any second and that would most likely be even worse than having her cut some carrots. “Have you ever cooked before?”

She shuffles and nods.

“Yes, I’m real good at it! I can make all kinds of stuff. Porridge and omelets and squash soup and—“

As Yenna continues to list a total of eleven dishes she can cook, Tav rustles her hair with a soft look on their face that makes Gale’s insides tingle. Oh, he wishes he didn’t feel the unnecessary pang of jealousy just because he wants them to touch his hair and smile at him the same way. Emotions are to terribly silly.

Gale coughs.

“Well, that sounds very impressive indeed. Yenna, was it? I suppose I can make way for an assistant. Usually I don’t allow others to interfere in my nightly cooking, but! Since our fearless leader recommended your prowess I shall—“

He stops himself as Tav looks at him with an amused smile.

“Right”, he says, catching himself. “How about you peel some of those potatoes over there?”

“Yes! I can do that, sir!”

“Mind me sitting here while you work?”, Tav asks, their head tipped in Gale’s direction. Once again he marvels at the fact that he never really spent much time with anyone, let alone a Tiefling.  Tav’s dark blue skin is not unlike the nightsky, especially with the white freckles covering their entire face and their muscular arms. Gale would like to pretend that he does not spend innumerable minutes of every single day staring at their biceps. But he would be lying to himself, of course.

He allows himself to follow the curvature of their horns and gaze at their glowing white eyes before turning to Yenna.

“So, I see you have a cat companion! As do I. What’s their name?”

“This is Grub”, Yenna says, her tongue sticking out between her lips as she peels a large potato that looks even bigger in her tiny hands. “He’s shy. What’s your cat’s name?”

Gale carefully dumps some sliced onions into the bubbling liquid.

“Her name is Tara. She’s been my companion for a long time and I miss her dearly.”

Yenna smiles at him. She has a front tooth missing.

“Do you also have a cat?”, she asks Tav who is casually chewing on a piece of carrot.

“No, I don’t. Always wanted one, but my pops was allergic”, Tav says with a rueful sigh. Gale notices that their eyes linger on Grub but they keep their respectful distance. Considering Tav’s habit of speaking to every single animal they come across Gale can imagine that they asked permission to pet Grub—and were denied.

Yenna is quiet for a while as she peels potatoes and Gale does his best not to comment on the uneven peeling. He can imagine that Tav would not appreciate him reprimanding a child for less than optimal peeling techniques.

Usually Gale doesn’t allow anyone else to intrude on his cooking, but he has to admit that it’s not too bad to keep his territorial habits in check for a bit, if just to bask in the delightful companionship of Tav. And even though Gale usually doesn’t deal well with children, Yenna doesn’t seem to mind his presence or the way he speaks.

She asks for the meaning of every ‘big’ word that he uses and listens intently as he explains and Tav watches the two of them with a glint in their white eyes.

“This smells so good already”, Yenna sighs and sniffs the air with her eyes closed. “Can I stir it?”

“Certainly”, Gale allows and Yenna grabs the big wooden spoon excitedly before dunking it into the soup. Gale doesn’t cringe. He doesn’t. This is a child in distress that deserves every piece of distraction she can get. Gale can let her stir his soup even though she stirs it as if the spoon is running away from a goblin horde.

“Maybe in the morning you could teach me how to make a proper omelet”, Gale says and Yenna almost drops the spoon into the soup.

“Really?”, she says, her eyes impossibly big. It makes Gale’s heart melt. He might not be well equipped to deal with children but their joy is something precious to behold.

“Absolutely! One should never stop to acquire new skills and knowledge”, Gale says with a nod and a little bow that makes Yenna giggle. Finally, she hands him back the spoon and sits cross-legged on the floor next to the fire as she watches him season their dinner, asking about every single herb he adds to the cauldron.

It takes him a while to notice Tav looking at him with a soft expression on their face.

“Now why are you looking at me like that?”, he can’t help but ask. Tav laughs quietly and shrugs.

“Nothing. Just appreciating your efforts”, they say. Gale would love to hear more about what exactly it is that Tav appreciates, but Yenna is still watching him intently so he goes back to holding out a fresh sage leaf to her so she can smell and taste it before he adds it to the soup.

As the smell of his soup spreads through the entire camp the rest of their colorful band of misfits starts gathering around.

“Well, well, well, Gale, have you finally found your match in the kitchen?”, Wyll says, his eyes crinkling in the corners as he settles down next to Tav on the ground.

Gale waves his spoon.

“Yenna has hereby been promoted to assistant chef”, he answers and Yenna beams.

“I will teach Sir Gale how to make an omelet tomorrow!”, she proclaims proudly, Grub now curled in her lap.

“Very impressive! I can’t wait to taste it”, Wyll says with a smile and winks at Yenna.

“Maybe I can also learn how to make some pie! I love pie. Mister Gale, Sir, can you teach me how to make pie?”

Gale thinks that it seems so mundane compared to everything else he’s been doing with his life up to this point. To sit here, around a fire, stirring a soup for a group of people who—in another life—would never have been in his inner social circle, being asked by a child for cooking lessons. It’s so different from everything Gale has experienced while he was with Mystra.

It’s trivial. It’s simple.

And yet it makes his heart sing in an entirely new way.

“I will have you know, I make the very best cherry pie in all of Waterdeep, young lady”, he says with a little flourish, using the spoon to underline his words dramatically. Yenna claps full of excitement. Grub purrs, Tav laughs and Wyll and Karlach shake their heads about his exaggeration.

And for this moment in time Gale thinks that he could be happy after all.

[milkweedman]

Replacement hat completed. I knit this out of a skein I spun last year. Most of the fiber is a southdown/hampshire blend I bought at a fiber fest last year. It was a large batt that I spun on supported spindles, picking the colors to create stripes as best as I could. The bits of orange/lighter brown is some unknown roving I dyed with onion skin and added in. Most of the time I'm knitting with handspun where I also prepped the fiber; there is a clear downgrade in yarn quality here lol. Makes me feel better about how long fiber prep takes--its worth it.

The body is a 2 row repeat that I'm sure is some kind of common rib but I don't know the name. Cast on a multiple of 3. Round 1: knit all. Round 2: knit 2 purl 1, repeat to end. Repeat rounds 1 and 2.

I tried several different crown designs for this and disliked all of them, but I'm happy with what I ended up with--I divided the stitches into 3 sections and did CDD at the end of each needle, every other row. Right near the end (after adding the colorful yarn) I did k2tog at the start of each needle as well bc I was really running out of yarn.

The colorful yarn is some scrap I found and used on a whim, but I think it works well. It's some of my really early hand blended and dyed yarn (the blue is the one color I didn't dye).

I also got a little fancier with the icord (switched colors every other row--looks awesome !) And the tassel has colored segments rather than being random, which I also really like. It won't really be seen as the headrest of my powerchair would be in the way but oh well. I can still show it off.

Lastly, I sewed a smooth river stone onto the very end of the crown to help weight it, as it's a slouchy hat but knit quite rigidly, so it needs something to hold it down. Works well. It was brought to my attention that this could result in worse head injury if I hit my head right where the rock is (I think that would be quite a feat given where it sits on my head) which doesn't bother me at all but should be factored in if you want to do something similar. Maybe I will sew a felt pad there to help cushion ? That would probably be wise.

Anyway, yay, new hat !! I really loved my old hat which fell out of my bag on the way home from work a couple months ago, but I love this new hat too. Hopefully I won't lose it for a while.

[pyreofsunflowers]

How to make the Sims 3 look its best in 2022

so simming is a long time pastime of mine, and I've - in my humble opinion - perfected the look of the game without turning it into a yassed out modeling agency. (if you've ever looked for cc you know what I'm talking about) so in this first of probably many posts - here is a complete list of all my graphics mods!

Firstly, though, I should note that I have a very strong pc with a very strong graphics card. Please please please don't overload your computer, and explore options that will work best with your specs. What looks best for me might not look best for you.

Ahem, with that out of the way let's start with my default graphic settings.

This keeps my game looking beautiful while running smoothly (hence the low reflection and edge smoothing)

Now let's get into the mods!

Lighting and Environment

Burnt Waffles' Moonrise Kingdom Lighting - Self explanatory, textures for the skybox, weather overlays, and general lighting. Make sure you pick the water that matches your world!

Simsi45's Reworked and Improved EA Lights - tones down the brightness of some lights, fixes directional lighting for covered lamps, light colors made more consistent, and other such fixes.

dDefinder's Outdoor Lighting Tweaks - removes that nasty blue hue at nighttime, adds more dynamic shadows, adds new weather types and can make nighttime darker!

Neim's Sims Blog's Default replacements for Garden Bushes and Orchard Trees - Replaces the textures for plants like tomato vines, apple trees, and onion plants - creating a much more lush looking garden.

Aminovas' Plant Retextures - softens the bright, garish colors of EA plants to be more appealing. In two parts, and available as non-defaults.

CAS + Create-a-Pet

Kurasoberina's Primer Skin + Buhudain's You are Real - my skin mod and a default replacement pack with upped realism. The skin was designed to be used with You are Real, just a heads up.

I don't use any nudey mods out of personal preference - but I hear good things about Cmar's and Geck.o's work. Here is a link to a bunch of nsfw sims stuff, if that's what your into. I also don't really use sliders outside of the hat slider, a glasses slider and a height and posture slider. this is again out of personal presence, as I am generally making an entire neighborhood's worth of sims at a time and don't have the energy to be nitpicky with sliders on every single sim. That being said, OneEuroMutt complied a really nice list of CAS sliders AND a list of animal sliders if your interested in that.

Bloom's Sexy Feet and Cyo's Cute feet for children - realistic foot retexture, the op is long gone so this is a forum post. May not work unless sim detail is set to high!

Shady's Loney Eyes - subtle eye retextures available as both a contact and a default replacement. I'm currently not using any eyelash retextures - mostly because I haven't found any that work. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

MaryJane's, Firefox's, AND Agnelid's Hair Replacements - replaces defualt hair with much better looking CC from other creator's - I mix and match between the three. Note that these are far from complete, and I still work with pleanty of EA hair.

I like teh Sims CAS overhaul - less shine, and hides rather than deletes mostly unused items (i always have this weird paranoia that deleting them form CAS will delete them in gameplay...)

One Euro Mutt's Less Shoe Shine - self explanatory, fixes that weird shine that's on so many default shoes.

Simple Life's Lipstick, Blush, Eyeliner, Beards, Eyebrows, and Age Details - Simple Life is my go- to for facial updates, do note however the textures may look funky if your sim detail isn't set to high. (They don't have individual pages for each item, so you'll have to scroll - my apologies)

Ketheira's Freckles and Moles - self explanatory, more realistic face marks.

Eternal 2nd Kira's Insect Wing Replacements for Fairies - replaces the EA textures with high-def insect wings, I just think it looks neat mostly.

Brinwood's HD Dog Coats and Eyes - Also includes more colorable options for dog coats, such as inner ears and individual paws.

Lazy Duchess' cat and dog addons - adds whiskers, primarily, but also edits some face textures and adds more facial markings

Kale and Traelia's HD cat skin and eyes - better meshes for cats.

Dimitri Dane's and Elin Fredriksdotter's EQHD - a FULL retexture and remodel of EA horses with better textures of coats and eyes, and optional stallion junk if that's what your into (I'm not... lol). you will have to download custom saddles, bridles, tack, and poses as EA meshes will be incompatible - but I will probably make a separate post with all my horse CC... lol.

Misc. Textures

Pretty obviously, I use the No Build Sparkles and No Intro mod that everyone gets when they set up there CC folder for the first time. These little details make a big difference!

JustMiha's Clean UI reskin, which is currently still in development (hence the default graphic menu... lol)

Velocity Grass's remove stencil tool to remove any unwanted stencils from cabinets, beds, or toyboxes.

Simsi45's Tileable Items Fix - you know how you go to place a row of bookshelves and there's the lighting gets all messed up on a few of them? yeah this mod fixes that.

Jane Sambroski's Wood Grain re-textures - fixes a lot of the EA woods to have much nicer looking grains, and fixed an issue that caused the grain to become pixelated when zooming.

Plastic Box's Doorway Lighting Fix - fixes lots of the broken lighting with doors and archways, so now all glass doors will cast light through them and all arches of similar size will cast the same amount of light through them

Aminovas' Cow Textures - retextures the cow in the Milkin' It Corral store item to be more realistic. That's it.

And that's it! Yes, I know it's a lot, but I like my game GOREGOUS.

[adobe-outdesign]

have you reviewed the meditite line?

Meditite is one of my favorite types of Pokemon, that being the weird creature that's vaguely humanoid but in a way that makes it really hard to describe easily. In this case, it's an onion-headed creature that has meditation as a theme, with two swirls on the sides of its head and a primarily blue body.

As a whole, while I like Medicham more, this design is pretty good. I like the shape of the head, especially with how perfectly the eyes interlock with it. Speaking of eyes, they have a very distinct look to them, as does the mouth.

My only real issue with Meditite is that the white around the waist looks a bit weird—maybe if the white just extended down the leg a bit more. Also, I do wish it resembled its evo more. There are a few small similarities—gray skin, flat doll-like eyes, weird head structure—but I feel like the resemblance could've been better. I think this mostly could've been fixed by just swapping out the blue for Medicham's pink.

The shiny basically does this, and it works perfectly (though I would still keep the skin the neutral gray).

Medicham is such a weird looking 'mon, but I've always found myself really liking it. Something about those giant-ass legs and skinny body just gives it a really neat shape, and it's the right combo of strange and elegant. The baggy "pants" have just the right amount of gold accents and markings on them, which are accented by the same colors and shapes being used on the head.

My one complaint here is that the head thing doesn't go around the back of the head, so it's just kind of stuck in the front.

The 3D model up top actually makes this worse, as the pink used to extend down the head to a degree back when sprites were being used. I guess they changed it to be more accurate to the official art, but frankly I'd rather it not line up one-to-one if the overall model looks better.

And Mega Medicham's also really good; by far my favorite of the line. A lot of megas struggle with just being the originals with Stuff(TM) added to their designs without rhyme or reason, but Mega Medicham's got a very clear theme with the addition of psychic arms, which are vaguely Buddist/Hindu-esq and also make sense for a partial fighting-type.

But the other thing that works about it is that it feels like it improves and expands upon Medicham's base design in just the right way without going overboard. The somewhat awkward head piece has been replaced with a more turban-like design, and the arms have gained two golden bands, which carry the color through the design better than the original. The sheer size of the legs has been reduced down without loosing their visual punch, and they've been given a more natural shape as well. A few extra layers of gold bands have been added above the "pants" along with a row of blue beads, which accent its new blue eyes. It's better balanced in both color and form.

Another little detail I like about it is that it also makes the entire line look better by harkening back to Meditite—note how the blue accents are the same color as Meditite's body, or how the white hat matches its head better, or how the gold bands on the arms are placed similarly to Meditiate's white stripes. Good stuff.

My only little nitpick is that the pink plume on the top of the head looks a bit odd. It's meant to match the three plumes on the base design, but I feel like you could've extended the middle piece above the gold center, then made that and the two on the sides pink to achieve a similar effect. That's minor, though.

Overall, I like this one a lot. Meditite's got a few coherency issues with the rest of the line but still manages to have a unique design that continues into Medicham. Mega Medicham expands on the theme and improves the overall design in a meaningful way. Good stuff all around.

[ohforficsakelibrary]

You Brought Me Poison Flowers

Chapter 5: Onion - Never throw onion skins and peelings onto the ground; if you do, you throw away your prosperity.

prev / series masterlist / masterlist

Series Summary: Joel and Ellie settle into life in Jackson, one more easily than the other, until Joel is reminded of what normal feels like. The kind of normal that he perhaps never had. A series of one-shot glimpses into a relationship (no true plot here, people.) Soft!Joel. Two touch-starved babes. Slow-ish burn.

Chapter subtitles taken from Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham. Although herbal preparations are consistent with historic uses, nothing herein is to be construed as medical advice.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Herbalist!OFC (age-appropriate age gap)

Word Count: ~4.2K

Rating: Explicit 18+ / unprotected piv, further tags intentionally withheld. Minors DNI.

A/N: Joel returns a coat because skin is much warmer.

Joel is surprised that the shop is open when he makes his way back there after a late dinner.

A moth to the golden light that spills from her windows into the street.

Lennie is leaned over the counter speaking quietly to a young woman. She doesn’t even bother to angle her eyes over at him when he thuds in on heavy boots, coat draped over his arm.

“Joel, can I get you to step out for a second.”

It’s quick and firm and not a question.

And so he does until the woman breezes past him, throwing “she says you can head back in,” over her shoulder.

Lennie is herself with him again when he returns.

“Sorry about that, Joel. Flip that sign for me?” She cocks her head towards the “Open” sign as she moves to heave heavy blue curtains over the front shop windows. 

Trapping the gold inside.

Joel complies, eyes lingering a fraction too long at where her yellow linen dress hikes up her thighs as she reaches for each.

She’s not wearing shoes.

“I won’t stay long,” he clears his throat and rushes to apologize. “Wanted to bring this back.”

Lennie takes the coat from his hands, digging fingers into the leather.

“Thank you,” she smiles in earnest, clutching it to her chest a moment as if to clutch a memory.

Whether it’s of him or her husband he can’t be sure.

“Yeah. ‘Course,” he murmurs softly as she replaces the coat on the mudroom rack.

“Dress ‘s nice,” he gestures loosely in her direction when she returns, thumbing at the corner of his mouth before shoving his hands in his pockets.

She throws him an incredulous look.

“You handing out compliments now, Miller?” Lennie teases before softening. “Thanks. Julie’s trying out some food scrap dye. I believe this is onion skin,” she gestures down the length of her with a flourish.

“Onion skin is your color.”

Lennie huffs a laugh and Joel searches for something else to say.

“She uh, she gonna be okay?” Joel nods at the door.

“Hmm?” She looks up from wiping the bar top, “oh, yeah, yeah she’ll be fine. Sorry to throw you out, some things are just for the girls.” She tosses him a wink.

“Well,” he rakes his fingers through silvered curls with the realization that he’s just been looming in the middle of the room as she flits around him, closing up for the night.

“I just came to return the coat, I’ll get out of your hair. You’ve seen enough ‘a me for the day.”

“You want some gin?”

“Yeah, would love some.”

Flames know more than moths give them credit for.

Getting him to stay is simple because he doesn’t want to leave.

She shuts off the set of lights directly above the bar and disappears to the right of the shop before returning with a bottle and two glasses of ice. Joel fills her glass and then his own as he sinks down onto the bench at her oak table.

“Thank you for your help last night,” she taps her glass to his before taking a sip.

“Didn’t really do much.”

“You kept me from freezing to death, so. I’d say that counts.”

He wants to dig in here but thinks better of it, pursing his lips to keep the words in.

“Thanks for teaching me. And Ellie. She couldn’t stop talking about it over dinner, she loved being able to help. Thought it was the coolest fuckin’ thing ever.” Tight lips split into a grin.

“Oh she did a great job today. A quick study, for sure.”

“You gotta check on her tonight?” Meaning the horse.

“Nah, dosed her about two ago and she should be good till morning. Looks like she’s on the other side of it, but Tommy said he’ll do one more check before he heads in and let me know.”

“Mmh,” Joel grunts in acknowledgement. 

For a moment he allows himself to take her in. Her hair is half pulled up, washed and just this side of dry, streaks of silver at her temples curling over her shoulders. Free from hay. The scent of cedar and lavender heightened.

The yellow of her dress draws out the honey in her brown eyes. 

“You were asking me something yesterday. When I was here to get coffee, before Ellie came in.”

She hums and smiles through a sip. And she’s nervous for a moment with the way massive chocolate eyes have gone soft. His arms are loosely crossed, elbow resting on the table. Biceps straining against brown and green flannel.

 Joel’s tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip.

And Lennie clears her throat. 

“I wanted to ask if you’d like…”

And like a demon summoned from a place Joel desperately wishes to send him back to––Tommy knocks on the shop door.

Unfortunately, Lennie gets up to let him in.

When Tommy tosses Joel a curious smile, Joel shoots him the same shut the fuck up stare he’s been throwing at Tommy for the past 40-something years.

When Joel broke that window in the garage with a baseball.

When he snapped the door handle off his truck because he was pissed about god knows what.

When Tommy caught sixteen-year-old Joel’s girlfriend sneaking out the back door at 3am.

It only makes Tommy grin harder.

“Yeah, she’s doing good.” He answers a question that Joel hadn’t even heard her ask. “You brought her through it, Len.”

“Care to join?” She nods at the gin on the table.

If Lennie notices Joel staring daggers over his shoulder at Tommy, her face doesn’t betray it.

And if there’s anything else that Tommy has learned in the last 40-something years, it’s not to interfere when his big brother is teetering on the precipice of being down bad for a girl.

“Nah, I can’t stay. But I wanted to bring you this,” he hands her a small paper bag and it's her turn to grin.

“I’ll add it to the collection.”

“It’s well-earned,” Tommy rakes a hand through thick black hair. “Alright, well––”

His cheeky tone makes Joel bristle.

“Y’all enjoy your night.”

“Night, Tommy,” Joel growls and Tommy smirks as he shuts the door behind him.

“What's that?” He nods at the bag when she returns to her spot opposite him at the table.

Lennie fishes out a snake’s rattle and offers it to him.

“Souvenir.” 

Joel takes the hard scales between his fingers, holding it up to the light as she continues.

“I have almost every one that I've managed to heal.” She points over his shoulder to a hook above the doorframe where over twenty rattles are bound together in a bunch. 

“Almost?”

“Sometimes they get away,” she takes the rattle he hands back, re-wraps it in paper, and gets up to place it on the bar.

Without thought, Joel reaches out as she passes him, gently catching her wrist on the tips of his fingers.

Lennie looks down, eyes bright and wide and betraying nothing.

It’s maddening, the way she does that. Says nothing and shows nothing in the moments where Joel feels most exposed.

But she hasn’t moved to pull away. 

And so he pulls her in.

Joel closes his fingers around her wrist and guides her down onto the bench, facing opposite him. The hand on her arm stays while the other lays the paper bag on the table.

A chill races up her spine.

He slides his fingers up her forearm before weaving under her curls to cup the base of her skull. Dark eyes like saucers lock. Unbreaking.

“What were you saying, Len?”

Her eyes dart down to his lips and linger before meeting his gaze again.

It’s been fifteen? Sixteen? Years since he’s had a ‘first’ anything with anyone but she doesn’t know that because he’s never said anything and he remembers enough to know he doesn’t need pretty words right now. 

And he forgets his own question.

“Tell me to let go…”

“No.”

He huffs through his nose, breath from his lungs ghosting across her skin, because she’s defiant in the way she spits it, eyes still bright. 

Amused.

“C’mere then,” and he encourages her forward with pressure through his fingers until she can feel gin-warm breath ghost over her lips.

It’s just a brush at first. A brush that turns into a press, a parting, a latch. 

She bends until her back hits the oak for better access to his mouth and he twists into her, hand still cradling her head. Holding her firm. 

Holding her here against him.

Joel pulls back a fraction and she follows, her eyes flitting up to his. 

For any sign that this was his mistake. 

That he’s changed his mind. 

That his skin isn’t burning the way hers is.

But he’s pulled back because he’s breathless. With eyes closed and he never sees her fear.

“Joel.”

“Tell me to stop and I will,” his forehead thumps hard against hers, and the angle is weird because he hadn’t thought it through, just moved like all the times before.

His chest is heaving and god how she longs to feel the press of it against her own. 

“Tell me, Lennie,” he rasps with urgency.

“No.”

And she shifts because she needs him to know that she needs him, propping herself up to sit on the edge of the table as her mouth latches to his once again. He stands abruptly and the bench groans across wood planks where it gives against the backs of his knees, hungry lips and teeth seeking out her jaw. The softness of the skin just under her ear. Her throat. Her hands sweep the breadth of his shoulders to grip the collar of his shirt first, his hair next, as he fits between her legs, one arm wrapped around the small of her back, the other hand cradling her skull.

“The door,” she pants against his mouth, “Joel, the door.”

Because it’s still unlocked from Tommy’s unwanted intrusion and he kicks the bench back further. In two long strides it’s latched with the shade pulled down. 

He locks eyes with her across the room, hair mussed, lips plush from his attention.

Fingers gripping the edge of the table she’s perched on.

Two strides more and he returns to her with an urgency that knocks the air from her lungs when they collide. Her hands cup his face before moving to tangle in his hair.

Something gives when he swipes his tongue over her bottom lip.

His begging for entrance granted.  

He laps at her tongue and licks at her teeth, feeding her growls and getting moans in return. Lennie pushes his unbuttoned flannel off his shoulders and down to the floor, skating her palms over the heavy muscles of his arms before threading her fingers under the collar of his t-shirt to get at his skin.

And she grows impatient.

She hikes one leg up over his hip and he yanks her to the edge of the table, one hand splayed across her lower back, the other hitched up under her knee, holding her firm to grind his hips against hers. She lets out a gasp and buries her face against his neck when he presses the bulge in his jeans against her with a groan. 

He rocks there against her heat, nose crushed against her temple, frantic breath rushing over her cheek. 

There’s far too much fabric here but she can feel the searing heat of him and the thick, heavy line of his cock through his jeans.

“Joel,” she breathes, and he thinks for a second it’s too much too fast, but her fingers tug at his belt loops, and skim down over his ass, pulling him closer.

And god he wants to touch her, taste every inch, but right now he’s burning. Scrambling over her thighs to get to the core of her because his brain is sparking with the need to bury himself there until his blood stops simmering.

And Lennie.

Lennie’s on fire.

She shifts to help as thick fingers slide under her dress, yanking cotton panties down her thighs before one side of them snaps, Lennie uncaring as she paws at his belt then the button on his jeans and rips at the too-worn zipper, slipping it and his boxers down just far enough to allow her to take his cock in hand.

His forehead thumps against hers as he moans from deep in his chest.

“Jesus christ…” Lennie murmurs at the size of him, more to herself than anything. She just does it into his mouth. Joel huffs halfway between a laugh and a heady growl at the way her small hand slides over the thick girth of him.

Unable to still the barest rock of his hips into her fist.

Joel grabs at fabric where the hem of her dress is rucked up, tugging hard to urge her up off of it.

“Lean back, Len,” he murmurs against her mouth, pressing her backwards with his chest. His hand replaces hers around his length when she steadies herself with both palms on the table.

He leans against her with one hand on the table as the other leaves his cock to lick his fingers and reach between her thighs, tongue breaching her lips the second his fingers do.

A choked sob catches in her throat.

Joel hums low at the wetness he finds there. He spends a moment, teasing small circles against where she’s already so sensitive to his attention.

There’s no pretense here. 

No romantic gestures, no pause to look into each other’s eyes. 

Only his lips on her neck as he sweeps the blunt, weeping head of his cock against the slick lush of her and slides home with a strangled cry from them both. 

Oh–

–god

She wraps a hand around the nape of his neck and he bends down with her. Back until her shoulder blades hit the table as she arches as best she can under the broad weight of him. 

The gold chain of her necklace skitters over tendons as rings land with a dull clink against oak.

The pads of his fingers dig into the wood on either side of her head. 

For a moment they just breathe each other in. Humid air delivered through open mouths. 

The same molecules shared between two sets of aching lungs.

Lennie wraps her arms around the thick column of his neck that’s gone red with heat, beard prickling against her biceps, turning to a scrape when he angles his head to bite the flesh there.

Joel is a creature that needs touch, desperately.

He’s just walled himself off from it because touch gets you killed.

But now, buried deep. Weight pressed flush. Teeth sunk in. 

With this body he’s wrapped in that writhes underneath him.

Her body.

Kind, warm, soft Lennie. Who brought laughter and coffee and scent back into his life again.

Lennie with her wild hair and mirth that collects in the creases at the corners of her eyes.

And Joel wants so desperately to take his time but that Joel can’t come to the phone right now because her hands have worked up under his t-shirt and her nails bite into his back, and her heel is digging into his ass encouraging him to “move, Joel. God, please move.”

He rolls his hips slowly, rocking against her without pulling out, forehead pressed to hers, hissing through clenched teeth because she’s tight around him and it has been so long.

He starts up slow, rolling strokes that drag his cock over every sensitive spot inside her, each thrust longer. Faster.

“Feel…s…so good, Len,” he pants against her mouth and she slips her tongue against his to savor the compliment’s taste. He curls his hips with every stroke because he hasn’t forgotten.

Hasn’t forgotten how to pull a woman apart from the inside out.

Joel preemptively apologizes with a nip at her chin before he rights himself, smoothing his palms down over her ribs, rucking her dress up around her waist, gaze locking a moment at where his thick cock fills her. He curls strong fingers under the wings of her hip bones with a snarl, pulling and tipping her hips to seat himself ever deeper, chasing her high. 

One small hand reaches out for a wrist she can’t fully encircle, and the other slides up her chest to knead her own breast. Joel keens at the sight, fingers digging harder into the meat of her hips.

He grits his teeth, growling, pulling her against him and sending her back up the table with each thrust. He shifts her a fraction and the change in angle drags the crown of his cock over her g-spot. 

Lennie gasps and presses a palm to her mouth, twisting in his hold.

“No,” Joel growls and picks up his pace. “Let me hear you, Len.” One hand leaves her hips to spread low over her stomach, thumb rubbing circles against her clit.

Her eyes are shut tight with pleasure but his are locked on her face. He watches until her back arches with a moan and her hand slips from her mouth, fingers catching on her bottom lip before searching frantically for his skin. He leans forward and she grabs a fistful of his t-shirt, pulling him back down to her.

He braces one palm against the table, teeth clacking sharp against hers as he finds her mouth again. She cradles his face between her hands until she can’t meet his kisses anymore, tipping her head to the side and offering her collarbone to his teeth.

“Joel, Joel please, yes, yes, yes—” she pants as he adjusts his hand to rub at that sensitive bundle of nerves with his middle and ring fingers.

“Joel… Joel, Jo—oh fuck,” she cries out as her muscles clamp down tight around him, back arched, fingers of one hand clutching at his curls, the other digging into the back of his shoulder as her cunt pulses around his length and it trips him up and tips him over and Joel comes hard on a string of yes-laced profanity as both hands pull on her hips, snarling like some untamed thing, pressing deep and holding there, painting her walls in hot, thick ropes of his spend.

He stays a moment, damp breath filling the shell of her ear before he shifts to lick at the dip of her throat. Lennie lets go where her hand is cramped from fingers gripped in his hair like a tether to the very earth and lets her legs slip lazily from his waist one at a time, the toes of one foot finding the edge of the bench.

She uses the leverage to give a mischievous roll of her hips and Joel moans and smiles, burying his nose in the valley of her breasts where the wrap of her dress has loosened. 

She sweeps fingers down his neck under the collar of his t-shirt, humming with pleasure as Joel sucks kisses into her sternum, teeth gently sinking into the curve of her breast.

And then his head clears.

“Fuck.”

Lennie’s eyes snap open. 

“Fuck, Lennie…” his voice is an octave higher.

And her heart jumps straight into her own anxieties before it preemptively drops out of her chest. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t…I shouldn’t have…fuck,” and despite his fervor he can’t catch the moan from his throat as he slips his softening cock from her warmth. “I…”

She shudders and prepares for the confession she knows must be coming. The unburdening of himself as he admits the mistake of taking her in his arms. 

The we shouldn’t have done that.

The it happened too fast.

The I didn’t mean to.

I didn’t mean you.

For the tucking in of himself and his shirttails and the back of his hand wiped over his lips and the thud of boots and the slam of a door. 

It all plays out behind her eyelids and the prickly promise of tears turns to a burn.

Lennie bites her lip because she refuses to let them fall. 

If this is that he can’t have any more of her.

Her hands drop from his skin, eyes shut tight to hold in the last time she looked at him and thought he was beautiful. 

Emptiness returns to the spaces between her ribs. The vacuum that threatens to collapse her back in on herself.

Maybe she was wrong about Joel Miller. 

She reaches to pull down the hem of her dress but he’s in the way, his bare stomach pressed soft against hers and for a moment she wants to shove him off where seconds before she was desperate for the rush of his skin.

Joel rights himself, taking Lennie up with him, helping her to cover herself with her dress. 

He notes how she tucks it between her thighs.

Closing herself off to him. 

And he discretely reaches down to tuck himself away.

Lennie can’t meet his gaze, staring over his shoulder instead at her jars stacked on the far wall behind him before they start to swirl along with her stomach and she shuts her eyes tight again.

But she’s aware of the broad palms that skitter nervously up her spine. Of gentle fingers that stroke her sides. Of how he delicately brushes errant curls off of her forehead before he cups her face in his warm, rough hands.

Of how his body doesn’t leave hers

He hasn’t sprung away like a thing burned.

“Lennie, look at me.”

Joel presses a soft kiss to her parted lips and for a moment she hopes behind closed lids. 

“Please, Len,” he whispers against her mouth and when she does his big brown eyes are full of fear.

And she reckons it must be here on her face too.

And for a moment neither one speaks because they each think that their fear is the other’s truth.

That in the blinding clarity of the afterglow he realized he didn’t want this and he’s two steps away from being out a door that he’ll never walk through again.

That he took pleasure without permission and defiled something sacred when he didn’t pull out and it means she’ll never let him have this—her—again.

And Joel speaks first because Joel’s not a man who doesn’t own up to his mistakes. 

“Lennie, I couldn’t catch myself in time. What can I do, tell me, and I’ll do it. What do you need, say the word. Stay right there and let me get it for you…”

It comes out in a rush but it comes out firm. He’s heard rumors of seeds and teas and he hates that he’s never paid attention because he’s always pulled out. Always. Except of course this time with a woman he’d like to not fuck up with before it’s even started. 

But Lennie does this, Lennie knows, and maybe some things are just for girls but he did it this time and he’s going to make it right.

And Lennie does the last thing in the world that Joel expects.

She laughs. 

Soft and breathy on a sigh of relief at Joel’s confession and he feels her tension melt where his chest is still molded to hers.

“Joel,” her forehead knocks gently against his. “Joel, you’re fine,” she whispers, smiling as she reaches to cover his hands with her own, tipping her face to kiss into his palm.

She’s liquid with relief against him again now, arms winding around his neck, “we’re fine” tucked against the shell of his ear.

“How.”

“I promise,” it’s not an answer but she sucks her promise into his lips and the feel of her is again so divine that he doesn’t catch himself, pressing her tighter to him as though her promise could seep into his bones and make him believe.

“You’re sure.”

Perhaps some things will remain just for girls to know after all.

“I’m sure, Joel.”

He pulls back, still holding her waist in the span of his hands, voice earnest when he continues.

“You were scared, Len.”

She takes his scruffy jaw between her palms.

“Not of that, Joel. Not of that.”

He nuzzles at her nose, whispering against her mouth, “of what, Len?” Joel cradles her skull in and sucks lazily at her full bottom lip before peppering her neck with kisses. “Tell me. Let me fix it. For you.”

She leans back a hair to stare into his eyes.

“Will you come upstairs with me?” 

And her voice is so small when she says it. Like she’s asking for something she’s sure he won’t give and if she says it softly enough it’ll feel like she hasn’t said it at all when he says no. 

It’ll be so miniscule that they can both just forget about the whole thing.

And she braces for all of it.

Gotta get goin’.

‘S late.

Ellie will be wonderin’.

But Joel’s flushed cheeks go round with a smile and his eyes glitter with mirth looking for all the world like a kid on Christmas morning.

He breaks from her hold to sit down on the bench. Fingers make quick work of unlacing his boots, pausing after he toes one off to lay a nip at her thigh, toeing the other off in seconds. 

Joel helps her off the table by the hips when he stands.

“Lead the way, Len.”

next

Taglist: @iamskyereads @harriedandharassed

Old chapters are hosted on the OFFS Library page. New chapters will be posted to Ohforficsake - follow me over there for future updates.

Shoot me a message @ohforficsake or comment under this post if you would like to be added to the taglist for updates! Thanks so much for reading.

[imjustheretoseetheprivateblogs]

R x J Week 2024 Day 1: Pride

@senshixshitennouweeks

Five days. Five whole days. One work week.

That was how long they’d been fighting.

Or at least, Usagi thought that Rei and Jad had been fighting. Really, she didn’t even know what the start of it was.

She’d heard second hand from Minako that the two had been shouting at one another early last week and that was all Usagi needed to know.

Which, unfortunately, meant she would have to ask one of them to get to the root of the problem. And from the way Jad had been kneading that dough for the past five minutes…

Usagi reached over and tapped him on the shoulder.

The scowl that met her called to mind the time when he had been under the control of the Dark Kingdom, but it quickly melted away when he realized just who it was.

“Usagi,” he said, surprise coloring his features, “I was expecting—what are you doing here?”

“Oh, I just wanted to say hi,” Usagi said, “You know, I was in the area.”

Jad frowned, returning to his previous task.

“In Rei’s kitchen?”

“I was… hungry…”

A pregnant pause stretched across the room, to the point where Usagi wanted to tug her own pigtails to relieve the tension.

“Well, lunch probably won’t be ready for about another hour,” Jad said, “so you’re in for a wait.”

“I’m fine with that.”

Anyone who knew Usagi would know she wouldn’t be fine with that. If she had truly been hungry, that is. She had, in fact, just come from an early lunch with Mamoru, which they had only had to fortify themselves for what they were currently doing.

Another pause, more tension. Probably best to rip the band aid off.

“So,” Usagi began, hands clasped behind her back, “how’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“You’re sure? No stomach problems, nothing too stressy going on?”

“Can’t think of anything.”

He didn’t even look up! Usagi fought down a pout.

“If anything was wrong, you’d tell one of us, right?”

“You mean like a certain someone refusing to apologize?”

Usagi wasn’t sure if this was progress, but hopefully it was.

“Maybe…”

Jad put plastic wrap over the dough he’d been working over and moved to another counter where a knife and vegetables waited for him.

“When Rei’s ready to apologize, she knows where to find me,” he said, dicing a red onion.

“But what if you apologized first?” Usagi asked, moving so she was just at Jad’s immediate left, “Then everything would be fine and none of our meetings would have any really weird tension…”

“I’m not apologizing when she’s the one at fault here.”

Usagi’s face fell. Plan A was a bust, it seemed.

“Can you at least talk to her? I know you care so much about each other and I hate seeing my friends fight.”

For a moment, Jad paused and Usagi thought she had a breakthrough. Instead, Jad returned to his task.

“Please!” Usagi said, “for me?”

Jad said nothing, focusing instead on his veggie slicing.

“Oh, come on! I know you heard me!”

Still, nothing.

“Vegetables aren’t that interesting!”

As if in answer, Jad moved to the fridge and removed a package of hamburger from it.

Usagi sighed and left the kitchen. Hopefully, Mamoru was having better luck with Rei.

+

“When Jad’s ready to apologize, he knows where to find me.”

Mamoru ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Rei had been holed up beside the sacred fire for every day since her apparent argument with Jad (At least according to the other senshi).

Mamoru could understand the desire for solitude after feeling hurt, but this felt ridiculous.

“Can you at least tell me what he did to make you so upset?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“What if he doesn’t know?”

Rei didn’t say anything after that, seemingly staring at the sacred fire.

Most people would have thought she was just haughtily ignoring him at that point.

Most people couldn’t feel human emotions like raindrops on their skin.

Anger, confusion, sadness, they all flickered from Rei like ashes. And for some reason, maybe it was psychic powers, maybe it was a gut feeling, but Mamoru knew Rei wouldn’t elaborate any further.

+

The two of them collapsed on the couch in Mamoru’s apartment. How a conversation with friends could be so draining was beyond either of them.

“So,” Usagi began, “how’s Rei?”

Mamoru sighed.

“Angry. Too proud to admit anything.”

Usagi’s frown deepened.

“And Jad’s the same way.”

Mamoru sighed. He should have expected. Those two really were made for each other.

“I hope he wasn’t too rude to you,” he said, putting his arm around Usagi's shoulder. She snuggled all the closer.

"He was a perfect gentleman... just like he is with Rei."

"I'm glad you're still optimistic about them."

"They'll work it out," Usagi said, "you'll see."

[palialaina]

Sometimes being friends with Eshe is just straight up weird.

Actually, I'm genuinely confused as to when this happened...

So there I am, minding my own business, waving to people as I make my way through the village, and I stop to chat with Eshe cause... well, she's not ever going to be my best friend, but she's not actually all that terrible.

(I actually feel kind of sorry for her. Do the Majiri not believe in divorce? Ew.)

Anyways, so, she's tense and it shows, and she brushes straight past the usual small talk and basically demands if I know how to cook. Which.. yes, but like, not fancy cook?

Apparently she's having the Duchess over for a meal (again, I really don't like Kenli's sister. She seems like a terrible person actually.), but because she doesn't have a cook, and she doesn't trust Reth to make a perfect meal, she uh... well, insisted I do it.

It's not like the dishes were hard; Akwindu Chappa and Palian Onion Soup are kind of some of my staple meals! (Look, if Hassian will insist we hunt the things, I'm going to turn the meat into food, okay?) But like... I heavily question why she invited the Duchess over in the first place.

I suppose we can't exactly help who we care about, even if it's bad for us. But at least I'd have the sense to not invite someone who's hurt me in the past to come back into my life.

Though, she probably doesn't have a choice. She's the magistrate, and the Duchess rules the whole area, I guess.

She got huffy at me about not properly plating the food, but like... Sorrynotsorry Eshe, I don't have your fancy dishes.

She naturally, she gave me one. What exactly I'm supposed to do with it, I have no idea. Do people display plates? I stuck it on a shelf in my temple, on the Embra side because it matched the colors over there.

Tish was selling the sideboard, so that looks a little better. Not amazing, but not terrible, I suppose. I also decided I wanted to put the illuminated text that Caleri gave me forever ago in here too, but it doesn't quite have a spot of its own yet.

It's been sort of lazy, do not much days since I finished all of this. I keep wondering what will happen next. There's more constellations, but who's going to bring us to the next one? I know there's one in Bahari, so maybe... Najuma? I hope not Tamala. She still makes my skin crawl, and I'm more likely to be snippy at her than help her after the stress she put Hassian over.

Just because I wasn't around to see it doesn't mean I can't get grumpy on his behalf!

Oh, though I should take him some of hte leftover awkindu chappa. Maybe we can grab Jel and make a picnic of it~

[rui-drawsbox]

i saw that you animate using krita? i use krita too but im not really familiar with how to. animate. at all. i was just wondering how you do it (like basic steps or smth!!) you dont have to reply to this ask at all if its annoying tho!!

hoho yes ifc i love talking about myself and the things i do hehehe★★★

still i dont guarantee any type of quality bc 1. Im bad at explaining things in general 2. im no english grammar expert haha 3. tbh the only parts of krita i understand are the basic animations, i dont even know how to configure the cube haha and 4. it's 1AM, it's the second time i write all of this bc i did ctrl+z in accident and 90% of the mf post dissapeared and im goddam furious hahahaha.

now, with no more further ado, lets begin with my class!

First of all, i recommend you to save your workspace and put the Animation one that come by default, right here:

Looks a little messy, right? Worry not! Just configure everything in the Dockers until you're satisfied: (yes i dont have windows activated, fightme microsoft)

Now, i always use the default Animation Template (Animation-Japanese-En), but they usually come with lots of layers/groups that we don't really need, so i always delete them until the Layout Paper is the only group. Then i create a group for the Characters and another layer for the backgrounds (we'll get there later!)

And before actually getting in the timeline and shi, letme explain two points, they're important i swear!

Onion Skins menu: (at the right bottom of the screen)

Here you can configure all that has to do with seeing the past/next frame in the timeline for when you're drawing. The bars show how many past/future frames you want to see and their opacity, you can also change their colors. Once you're done with the config, you can just close it, to open it again just use the weird striped drop shaped button or choose it from the Dockers.

And the Animation Settings menu: at the right of the Onion Skins button.

Here you can see the starting frame from your project and the last one, but we're focusing in the Frame Rate. It comes with 24 FPS by default, but for simple animatics like mines 8 FPS are more than enough.

Now, going with the actual animation things.

To start drawing you don't actually need to make a first frame, but i think is more practical make that type of start an habit to yk, dodge bad moments haha

This move also works for imported images, since they come as layers and we need to make them actual frames by creating another frame at their right.

Talking about imported images, all my backgrounds are done in Sai2 since i feel more comfortable drawing there haha.

When we import more than one image, they become separated layers, and to combine them all in one we must make them frames and move all to one timeline (?)

+ if you dont pin the layer in the timeline they dissapear from it, but you can just select it again from the layer menu and they will appear again (you gotta pin it so they dont go).

now some personal preferences,,, i don't actually organize my timeline in any specific way, the only thing i want is having all the important layers at the display, so i re-use layers for different things (like the arashi/izumi layer is also used for tsukasa's hair that i forgot to draw in the first scene haha)

Still, to simplify and organize things a little more you can always color the timeline as you want, selecting a single frame or many as you want!

My last tip is that Copy a Keyframe is nOT the same as Clone one. Copy will make them a complete separate frame, while Cloning one will make them into another frame, but whatever you do will affect the original frame. I learned that by force :)

That's all i honestly know about animating in Krita, in terms of theory i have no idea what im doing 120% of the time, so forgive me if its messy or hard to understand hahaha.

That's all! 2AM! It only took me one hour to re-write all of that letsgoo

Seeya★★

With love, Rui, almost having a breakdown for pressing ctrl z ★★★★

[new-royston-cursebreakers]

Get to Know My OC

I'm so honored that @gummybugg tagged me in this! I love these kinds of things, and I'll take any excuse to answer questions about/from the POV of my OCs! Even if it takes me a week; sorry about that ^^; find @gummybugg's post here and I'll be tagging @moondust-bard and @sunnyanddumb98 with no pressure of course!

I choose Cricket! Specifically, Cricket a week before the book begins!

I hold my hand close to the floor, allowing Cricket Collins, a young boy standing only about eleven inches tall, to hop up into my palm. Smiling down at him, I gently move him up to a desk, where a plush chair sized for him has been placed. He hops off my hand and trots over to the chair, plopping down, snuggling in, and pulling his brown jacket a bit tighter around himself. He’s dressed in multiple layers, since he doesn’t generate as much body heat being so small, and his fluffy brown hair’s combed back neatly.

“Are you ready to start the interview, Cricket?” I ask.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he shrugs, but his smile gives away his excitement.

1. Are you named after anyone?

“My first name, Adam, doesn’t really come from anyone, my parents just liked it. But my Jewish name is Mordechai, from the Scroll of Esther! Oh, and a couple other Mordechais, too—my parents told me…I think one of them led a rebellion in the Holocaust…? Oh, and another—I remember him, Mordechai Vanunu…right? I dunno, it was a lot to take in when my parents were telling me about it.”

2. When was the last time you cried?

Cricket hesitates for a moment before answering. At a subtle nod from me, he takes a deep breath and speaks.

“Last time was, well, when I was cutting onions for bigos,” he chuckles. “But the last time I actually, like, sad-cried? It was…the day after my parents left. I went into their old room and laid down in their bed and just cried. I must’ve cried the whole day. I was so dizzy when I got back up! Anyway, I closed that door and I haven’t gone in there since, just to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

3. Do you have kids?

Cricket laughs, gazing up at me with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m fourteen! Ask me again in ten years!”

4. Do you use sarcasm?

“I mean, maybe sometimes.” He shrugs. “I’m not too good at it. At using it or picking up on it. Why say things that aren’t true?”

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

“Usually what they’re doing, I guess? I try not to judge people by their looks too much.”

6. What's your eye color?

“Brown.”

“What color brown?” I prompt.

“Darker than my skin or my hair,” Cricket says. “Real dark.”

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

“Oh, happy endings, definitely! I don’t like it when it’s just a bunch of bad things happening and then the story ends, y’know? There’s always gotta be a way to move forward!”

8. Any special talents?

“Well, Auster says I have a talent for making friends, but anyone can do that, y’know? Here’s the talent I’m really proud of!”

He works up some spit in his mouth, takes a deep breath, and emits a long, shrill cricket chirp. Grinning, he continues.

“Pretty cool, huh? I’ve even attracted some field crickets to the yard before!”

9. Where were you born?

“I was born right here in New Royston! Neither of my parents were, but I was, and I’ve never known any other home.” He seems quite proud of this.

10. What are your hobbies?

“I don’t have a lot of them. I’m usually pretty busy just making sure the house is okay, making food, stuff like that. Sometimes I go help out on the Fitzhenrys’ bug farm, sometimes I just go hang out with friends. I’m content with that.”

11. Have you any pets?

“No, but I’ve always wanted to get myself some kind of pet bug! Maybe a tailless whip scorpion, or a Madagascar hissing cockroach, or some kind of rhino beetle! If I were bigger, I’d definitely want more than one, but right now, I think I could barely handle one!” 

12. What sports do you play/have played?

“There aren’t a lot of sports you can play in New Royston, thanks to the whole size thing. Our high school doesn’t even have any sports! But I did like playing capture the flag in elementary school at recess.”

13. How tall are you?

“Last time I checked, I’m eleven inches and three quarters! I’ve been getting bigger with my parents saving up money. As for my real height, I, uh…well, I dunno. I’ve never been outside of New Royston’s borders before…”

14. Favorite subject in school?

“I like science—I like learning about the world. And even with stuff like chemistry and physics that use a lot of math, it’s math that I can apply to the real world, so I understand it a lot better than ‘real’ math classes. I think my favorite is biology, though.”

15. Dream job?

“Definitely an entomologist. I’d love to be one of those people that takes care of bugs and shows them off in shows and teaches people about them. Bugs can be so cool and helpful, and it’s just a shame that so many people are scared of them!”

With the interview done, I offer my hand to help Cricket off the desk, but he doesn’t take it. Instead, he chirps “Watch this!” and heads over to the edge of the desk, pacing along it, gazing down at the ground as a cat would before it jumps. Then, he vaults off the desk, flipping himself over midair and landing on his shoulder blade, somersaulting into a standing position.

“Wish me luck at school next week!” He calls, waving and darting away.

[kiatheinsomniac]

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐍𝐄'𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇-𝐔𝐏!*˚ .♡⋆ˊˎ -

𓆩♡𓆪 𝐒𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄! @insane-horror-movie-addict

Hi there darling! I'd like to participate in the Valentines day event if that's okay! Thank you very much for your time and if you'd like to send a match-up over to my account, i'll gladly do one for you! (If you have any questions then feel free to dm me!) Fandoms: Resident Evil 8 and Tolkien (preferably no dwarves....sorry lol) Important info: Bisexual (male matches for this please!), She/her Personality info: Entp, Leo sun, Aries Moon, Leo Rising, Gryffindor. -I can be either two ways when you first meet me. Sarcastic and laid back or a little rocky. Some people at first can see me as a bit of a...well...asshole, but I assure you i'm not that bad. I just come off a little strong sometimes. When you get to know me though, I am someone who is blunt, still very sarcastic, protective, and a little fiery but i'm also such a big goof. Like an idiot goof. So I'm not all that bad lol! I also have a non caring personality for the most part...sometimes its a bit of a mask though. Speaking of which, I'm kinda like an onion (gosh I hate using that metaphor.) I have layers and the more you get to know me, the more you'll peel away. I hate being vulnerable and stray away from emotions, so I can be a bit cynical and I am soooo stubborn holy crap, but I am working on that... Hobbies: Lets see here....I did year around, competitive swimming for ten years, so swimming is a passion of mine and forever will be. I now do Martial Arts and i'm a high belt now. I enjoy just physical activity in general, but I also like music. Music is a love of mine. Plus I like simple things such as a good book, writing (I want to be a journalist), horror movies, and going for walks at night....oh and I adore the beach! Dislikes: Spiders, I am terrified, petrified even of spiders. Physical features: I'm 5'3...5'4 on a good day, pale skin with brown freckles everywhere, I have very thick brown hair that goes a little past my shoulders and it has a sort of auburn color to it actually?, i'm very skinny, like a twig, very little to no curves, big brown eyes. Aesthetics: Grungecore? its hard to explain.....honestly I am my own aesthetic at this point

ੈ♡˳ 𝐄𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄!

♡ Initially, Éomer's attention is drawn in by your grunge style - you look fierce and he finds it really attractive! He's got thick skin so he's not fazed by your sarcasm and bluntless - in fact he quite likes it and when you're joking around together, he matches your energy completely!

♡ He's super interested in your martial arts! He'll ask you to teach him not only because he's intrigued but because it gives him an opportunity to spend time with you and learn more about your interests!

♡ He's always up for reading your writing and if he ever comes across a book he thinks you'll like (especially a horror as he knows how you like the genre) he'll buy it for you! It's worth every penny to see the way your face lights up when he gives it to you - it's the most precious sight in the world to him.

ੈ♡˳ 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐈𝐓 𝐀 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄?

♡ Éomer knows how active you are so for your date he takes the two of you out horse riding in the evening, going on into the night. He takes you up a high trail and the two of you stop on a cliff side to watch the sun set behind the mountains, the lights of Rohan twinkling below you in the distance.

♡ He would insist on huddling up close to you to assure you keep warm and the two of you would end up walking further up the trail (he knows how much you love your night walks, even if he worries for your safety sometimes when you do) and then laying down on the grass to stargaze.

♡ He takes you back by sharing the same horse with you sitting in front of him so that his arms are on either side of you and he can feel your back pressed to his chest. He goes back as slowly as possible so that you have more time together and his heart just melts when you fall asleep leaning back against him, exhausted from the long day. He hopes to spend more evenings with you like this.

missed the match-up event? try ships instead!

☾ ⋆ ﾟlike my work? why not:  ∘ buy me a coffee?  ∘ commission me? ∘ join my taglist  ∘ consider following/reblogging

[fdarnall]

Darnall’s Famous Dinner Salad

There’s nothing like a great salad to add to your dinner.

Ingredients:

Cup chopped Bell pepper; green is nice but using other colors has a good look. Where I shop, they usually have a package of three peppers: Red, Yellow, and Orange.

⅓ Cup chopped White onions or Green onions

Cup frozen peas; there is no need to thaw. Just use them right out of the freezer.

2 tbsp. Salad pickles, for example one or two of these:

Roasted Red Bell Peper strips.

Pickled Red Onions

Sweet Bread and Butter pickle chips

Marinated Artichoke Hearts

Or something else. Shop the pickle aisle in your store.

4-5 Cherry tomatoes  (optional)

chopped Celery (optional)

⅓ cup Snow Pea Pods – cut up (Optional)

2 tbsp Raisins

⅓ cup cucumber (Optional)  I like to peal these, but some leave the skins on.

⅓ cup Bean sprouts (Optional)

Spices: Lemon Pepper (or just black pepper) and Celery seeds

Garnish with Tortilla strips. Use the Tri-color variety if you can find them. Use just a couple of fingers full.

A few croutons

Mix the ingredients together and serve.

Notes:

No salad dressing is needed with this salad.

I use the kitchen scissors to cut up the celery, green onions, and the snow pea pods when I use these.

When shopping be on the lookout for other vegetables that you can add to this salad.

I never really make this the same way twice in a row.

If you use the picked red onions, use these sparingly since they have a very strong taste.

❦

[artscholartracy]

Summer

Summer, after Giuseppe Arcimboldo at the Ringling Museum

Below is the rest of the set and where they are housed.

Spring, 1563 Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

Summer, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Autumn, 1573, Louvre, Paris

Winter, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

    Okay, so when I heard I would be revisiting Ringling Museum again, I knew which piece of art I wanted to see again and that was Summer recreated after artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. I LOVE this picture and then of course, after researching a little, I found I love Arcimboldo’s other “portraits” too.

The Visual Analysis:

     Summer is an oil on canvas painting approximately 39⅛ x 30½ in. unframed. I did not have a tape measure with me so I used my arms, there for I would say the picture is two arms (elbow to fingertip) long and three arms tall. The lighting is low so the picture takes on a darker tone. It does make the face stand out this way. It is painted with yellows, red, blues, greens and browns. The background is in black. It portrays a person looking to the left and the person is made of fruits and vegetables; green grapes, plums, mulberries, melon, hazelnuts, assorted pears, cherries, peaches, corn, garlic bulbs, onions, pea pods, eggplant, various squashes, cucumber, artichokes, and wheat. For example, the nose is what I think is a pickle. The mouth is made from cherries for the lips and peas as teeth. The person is in the middle of the canvas making it a focal point. Proportion is key to making everything fit and work together.

     When I look at this picture it brings a smile to my face. The other pictures in the museum are nice and interesting, but this one is the one that catches my eye every time. I think it is because it is different than all the others that I am drawn to it.

A little bit of history:

     The Seasons or The Four Seasons is a set of four paintings produced in 1563, 1572 and 1573 by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Each shows a profile portrait made up of fruit, vegetables and plants relating to the relevant season. The set was accompanied by a poem by Giovanni Battista Fonteo (1546–1580) explaining their allegorical meaning.  I am still looking for a copy of this poem, I would really like to read and hear the views regarding the pictures.

   Only Winter and Summer survive from the original work – these are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The Louvre has a full set of the copies made by the painter for Maximilian to send to Augustus of Saxony – these have a floral frame not used in the original version. Spring also survives from a set copied for Philip II of Spain – it is now in the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid.

   Spring is represented by the image of a woman made up of a wide variety of flowers, with her head facing left. The whole figure is composed of flowers, the skin of the face and lips are rose petals and buds, the hair is a colorful and lush bouquet, the eyes are belladonna berries. A daisy necklace adorns the neck, while the body is covered in a vast jungle of leaves of different shapes.

   Summer is also depicted by a woman who, unlike Spring, is facing right and is made up, not of flowers, but of fruits and vegetables. Cherries adorn the border of her hair and also make up her upper lip; her cheek is made of a peach, her nose of a cucumber, her ear of an eggplant and her eyebrow of an ear of wheat. Her dress is made of straw, with, on the Louvre copy, the inscription GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO F (F standing for FECIT) on the collar and the year 1563 on the shoulder. An artichoke decorates her chest.

  Autumn is represented by a surly man with rough features looking to the left. The neck, made up of two pears and some vegetables, emerges from a partially destroyed vat, whose wooden slats are bound together with willow branches. His face is made of apples and pears, especially the cheek and nose, his chin is a pomegranate, while the ear is a mushroom, with a fig-shaped earring. The lips and mouth are made of chestnuts. His hair is made up of bunches of grapes and his bonnet of a pumpkin.

   Winter is represented as an old man, whose skin is a gnarled trunk, with the abrasions and swellings of the wood representing the skin wrinkles of old age. The beard, thin and poorly groomed, is composed of small branches and roots; the mouth of two mushrooms. The eye is a black cleft in the log and the ear what remains of a broken branch; his hair is a tangle of branches, accompanied on the back by a series of small leaves. His bare figure is animated only by the colors of lemon and orange, hanging on a branch from the man's chest, citrus being the only winter fruit in Italy. The man's dress is a simple straw mat: in the original version of the painting the old man wore a cape on which was inscribed an M and a crown, in this case certainly a memory of Maximilian II. Winter, the first season of the year in the Roman Calendar and therefore the most important of the four, was associated with the emperor even more directly among contemporaries.

    Arcimboldo, was a master of allegory. He painted each portrait in the Four Seasons series using vegetation associated with that time of year. While his paintings amused and fascinated wealthy courtiers with their apparent whimsy, they also appealed to the intellect. For this set, Arcimboldo suggested that each season corresponds to a stage of human life: Spring stands for youth; Winter, old age; and Summer shows a man in his prime. The series also carried a specific political message—the paintings were meant to symbolically glorify the Emperor. As an Emperor ruled over human affairs, he could also be said to run the greater world, including the seasons. The harmonious combinations of fruit and vegetables reflect the harmony that exists under the Emperor’s rule. Each head also wears something that can be seen as a wreath or a crown. Because of the underlying political messages, these paintings were the perfect, flattering gift for the German Emperors to give to other courts.

[repairingangelsworld]

Cara Mari Piazza

Natural dyer artist working in New York City.

There are many plant dye artists around the world, but Piazza particularly drew me into her practice. I came across an article that I listed down below where she got interviewed about her practice. She quoted "What provides us with the most colour are actuallt shells, rinds and barks from nature - think avocado pis, pomegranate rinds, onion skins - things that would typically be thrown away can be harvested as dye."

She explained how it was natures way of telling us that we should eat what we are meant to eat and dye what we are meant to dye! This really made sense to me in a way where it wasn't something that I had thought about in the beginning as there are foods like beetroot and turmeric that don't have long lasting dye.

The techniques used that are mentioned in her bio which i am interested in are alchemical dye sessions, ancient shibori techniques and bundle dyeing. This is interesting as i've only tried the bundle dyeing technique and briefly tried flower hammering. I want to learn a bit more about the other 2 techniques and maybe give them a go.

There is something soothing and beautiful about plant dye and after reading Piazza's article and bio, I feel like i have gained a whole other perspective on the spiritual and connection side of it.

The act of nature so selflessly giving natural materials to us is such a humbling feeling. Knowing that it is priceless to harvest your plants is a precious and never ending cherishing gift that the earth Papatuanuku has given to us. All she asks for is your permission to take what you have harvested and to thank her. To me this process is very sacred and spiritual. The harvesting and then asking permission is a whole other process that alot of people don't take into consideration. The journey is just as important as the end product!

These 3 photos i love so much! The natural colours and the way she just threw on the wet plant dye is just so beautiful. The gradient between colours is something i really want to try as well as dyeing with darker tones. There is just endless experimentation to look forward to. So many plants and so many things that I have yet to try.

THE DIALECT OF DYE 

Natural dyeing has its own language. A cheat sheet: 

Scouring: Pre-washing fibers to strip the fabrics of residue, dirt and oils to achieve a solid color. 

Mordant: A chemical substance, typically an inorganic oxide, that combines with a dye or stain and fixes the dyestuff to the cloth. 

Tannin: An astringent property of seed pods, barks and nuts used in the dyeing and mordanting process. 

Natural dyestuff: A natural material usually comprised of barks, seeds, petals, plants that yields a dye color. 

Cellulose fibers: Fibers created from plants (cotton, hemp, linen, jute, ramie and lyocell. 

Protein fibers: Fibers created from animals (silk and wool). 

Crocking: The transfer of dye from processed fiber onto other surfaces. 

pH-neutral soap: A gentle, nonreactive soap that is suggested for the wash care of natural dyes. 

Tonal variance: Areas of the garment that may vary in hue, due to the organic nature of dyestuffs. 

(copy and pasted from this website)

[ashmcgivern]

After spending more time with it I’ve decided I’m gonna get a refund. It’s just not sufficent for animation. Main gripes are

Timeline is in seconds and not frames. There’s no way to toggle this.

Timeline UI is TINY. Impossible to see.

Creating new drawings/keyframes is kind of a nightmare

No free transform/select tools in the Drawing view.

Retiming frames is done with touch gestures that don’t always work properly

Onion skin is affected by every single frame instead of every drawing (meaning that if I have a drawing held for 10 frames then the onion skin counts those frames as blank)

It’s never clear how many frames a drawing is exposed for

You have to manually scribble color in on a separate layer and cant set reference layers

Can’t export as a gif

It’s in raster (which I can forgive, but may as well add it to the list)

I want to know why Dreams prioritized having fancy features like their Performing Mode (which is just a tweened/keyed mesh warp), fancy brushes, motion fx, typography, realtime rendering…. when it’s missing basic animation features.

If you want a good animation program for iPad, go get Calipeg. It’s got all the bells and whistles AND files can be exported to TVPaint, Harmony, and After Effects. If you don’t want to pay for Calipeg, Rough Animator is $5 and also very good, if not a bit bare bones.

Extremely disappointed, I was really rooting for Dreams, but it just looks like they’ve made a program that caters to illustrators rather than animators. I can see it being useful for some people, but it’s not built with animators in mind. It’s built with illustrators and motion graphics in mind.

My initial impressions of Procreate Dreams isn’t good yall. I’m gonna give it a day to see if they address some of my gripes, but honestly, timeline and exposure manipulation is a bitch. If things don’t change in a day, I’ll upload the rant video I sent my friends about it.