#i've been using a mouse to draw for a couple years now

[strawberry-pretzels]

things that i did instead of studying for my quiz tomorrow

[lmfaohader]

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. Same as always. A little mouse standing under a light post. It's snowing, and he's always carrying an umbrella."

"Did he say anything to you in this one?"

"No. He just seemed very scared, and a little sad."

"Well give me the details and I'll add it to the drawing"

I retrieved my sketch book from my bag and turned to the ever familiar page I had been working on for a couple of days. In the middle of the page, a mouse. Oversized yellow clogs, red linen pants, and large black ears on the top of his head. Just as my friend, Jo, always described him. Cheery eyes that she normally described as "oddly sad for such a happy little mouse" and rosy plump cheeks. Beside him, a lamp post, that once I can get to painting (and get the right color), burning with a bright orange light. A pile of snow settled at its base. I took out my pencils, erasers, and blending stump as Jo described the mouse with more details. Today, his umbrella was black but seemingly used very often and the snow glittered when the moon rose above it.

Joanna is an extremely vivid dreamer. I've known her essentially my whole life and have listened to every dream she could ever recount, but lately they've been more and more life-like. It's almost as if she actually goes to wherever it is she's dreaming. Maybe it's her younger mind trying to escape from our reality. We are from the same town in London, and when my parents were called to defend our nation, Jo's mother offered to take me in until they returned. Things only got worse from there. The air raids and constant threats kept flooding into the city. After some time, Jo's mom believed that the city was no longer safe for us. She called upon an old college professor who she had remained in friendly contact with over the years who lived far off in the countryside. He gladly took us in. Jo was extremely upset about leaving, so to help her keep going I told her I would draw whatever she wanted. Now, I have half of a sketchbook filled with her dreams. They're always in immense detail, and are only finished when Jo gives it a seal of approval. They started off really normal. Her house, the view outside of the train window, a field of wildflowers, but the longer we're here the more she dreams of his made up land. A land where a talking lion is supposed to rule, but is being hunted and thwarted by an evil, ice witch. A little mouse who hides from the secret wolf police. A winter that has lasted for over a hundred years. That's the part of it that feels like she actually goes there, she knows some of the history. How the people are waiting for a prophecy to be fulfilled to end the long lasting winter and to find the lion who once ruled over the land.

I looked up to see the sun lowering over the countryside. Jo sat on the tree limb above me. Watching as the colors of the sky change.

"That's it" she said softly

"That's what?" I tried to follow her eyeline to see what she was seeing

"That's the color orange"

She was right. As the sun dipped below, the sky became a bright, burning orange. I tried to think of the time to try and return to this hour tomorrow to mix paints as Jo climbed down from the tree and sat beside me. She scanned my drawing. Ensuring that every detail matched precisely. I lifted the drawing a bit more so she could see.

"How's it looking?" I asked as eraser shavings fell off into the lawn

"It looks good. I think you've perfectly drawn him." she placed her hands against the ground and raised to her feet. "I'm excited to see this one painted. I think it'll be your best yet."

"My best yet huh?"

I closed the book and gathered my materials as we both made our way inside. It was always so quiet in the mansion. As big as it is, the only inhabitants are us, Ms. Macready, and Professor Kirke. It wasn't exactly kid friendly. The halls were lined with perfectly polished artifacts and antiques. An expensive seeming painting hung from nearly every wall. Precisely placed hall runners covering much of the hardwood surface. As soon as we came inside, we took off our shoes and made our way to our room. There were so many doors, and we didn't know what was inside most of them. We were only certain of where our room was and where the Professor's office was.

Professor Kirke was a kind man. Mostly enthusiastic, and extremely excited to have visitors. On the first few days we were here, he noticed our sadness and brought us into his office to tell us some stories from his youth about him and a friend. They seemed to cheer up Jo, for the most part. I just enjoy shutting my brain off and sitting in the comfort of his company. For whatever reason, Ms. Macready (Professor Kirke's housemaid) refuses to let us speak to him without being specifically requested. She says that his work is extremely important and he cannot be disrupted. So, the times we have gotten to speak to him have been scarce.

As we were approaching our room, a stern voice called to us.

"Girls, Professor Kirke would like to see you"

Appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, Ms. Macready stood at the top of the stairs leading to our room. Jo and I traded a knowing look, thanked her and made our way to the Professor's office. Upon arrival, I knocked on the door as Jo waited patiently behind me.

"Oh! Come in! It's open!"

We pushed open the door and entered the pristinely kept office. Neatly dusted, books alphabetized, pencils sharpened in their cup, leather chair shining from a real good polish. Professor Kirke smiled as we entered and gestured for us to take a seat in the brown plush chairs in front of his desk.

"I hope I have not disturbed your evening" he said as he closed the book he was studying and pushed it back into its spot. "But I had some news that pertained to the both of you since you bot-"

His sentence was cut short as his eyes landed on the sketchbook in my arms. I could feel my face get a bit hot. I had never really shown an adult my drawings. Only Jo had seen the contents of these pages before.

"Oh my, it seems we have an artist on our hands. May I?"

"Oh, yes you may" I spoke through a knot in my throat as I placed the book into his outstretched hand and felt suddenly as if my stomach plummeted.

Professor Kirke smiled gently at me as he placed the book onto his desk. He flipped to the first page. He studied it for a moment, then nodded and flipped onwards. With every page his smile grew. You could feel the child-like giddy as he moved onwards. My nervousness seemed to fade and become replaced with pride. I thought they were good, but it was really nice to see it written on someone's face.

"Lacey, these drawings ar-"

Professor Kirke's voice stopped abruptly. There was a sudden shift in his demeanor. The always happy and smiling professor was replaced with a shell. His eyes filled with a mixture of fear and sadness. His mouth slightly agape, as if frozen in place from speaking to me before. My mind raced to think of what drawing could possibly cause this reaction, but they were mostly buildings and scenescapes. He turned the book towards us and pushed it to where we could see it.

"How do you know of this place?" He asked as he pointed to a scenescape of a dark, frozen castle, covered in snow with icicles dripping from every ledge and a pack of wolves surrounding the drawbridge. Sculptures of animals made of ice sat right inside the front gate.

"Jo dreamed of it. She said it was the castle of the evil, ice witch. Right?" I looked to her for an explanation as Professor Kirke's head snapped in her direction.

"Elsa the White Witch" Jo responded, bringing the page closer to her, "she created the everlasting winter. She is their self proclaimed ruler, but they're just waiting for the prophecy to happen."

"You never said she had a name" I wracked my brain for any mention of this name before, but came up with nothing.

"I didn't learn it until recently," Jo shrugged and followed very matter of factly. "Or you would've"

"Did you say you learned this recently?" The Professor asked

"Yeah. Maybe a few nights ago."

"But where?"

"I go there in my dreams. That world needs help, and I've been trying to understand what's going on so that maybe I can help." she explained as she flipped through the sketchbook. "Lacey's drawings help me remember so I'm really starting to put it together now"

"How can you help a dreamland Jo?" I asked

"Don't sell her so short" Professor Kirke responded softly as he poured over the drawing. His sadness seemed to grow as he did.

"Just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it isn't real," Jo said. "I don't just make things up you know"

"I didn't mean it that way" I announced as I closed the book and took it back in my arms. "I don't think you make things up, but you yourself have to admit that it is extremely far-fetched."

"I don't admit anything" Jo snapped, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "I know what's real and what isn't Lacey. That place is real. I can feel it."

"She does explain it with great detail" the Professor chimed in motioning towards the book in my arms. "Otherwise you could not have such detailed drawings. Down to the color of the ice sculptures and the way the stars align in the sky."

I stared blankly at him. He spoke with confidence. Almost as if he understood her.

"Professor Kirke," I said, "do you believe this land exists?"

He stared back at me. His round spectacles dramatize his very determined look. I could see the spark in his eyes. As if hearing a call to action. He looked down at the sketchbook once more then shook his head slightly as if to awaken himself from whatever came over him. Jo sighed and I could feel her disappointment from the response. I sighed as well and began to rise from my seat to leave when Professor Kirke spoke again.

"There is another family coming to stay with us until everything in London calms down"

"Another family?" Jo asked, seeming to pep up a bit from her disappointment.

"Yes Jo" he replied, "Four children. Two older siblings more Lacey's age, and two younger children more your age. They should be here within the next few days. Perhaps, you both could make a friend or two."

I nodded to him, and then left for Jo and I's room. It wasn't much. Two twin beds, decorated with the same bland sheets. Jo's books sat on her bedside table, and a desk under the window overlooking the front of the mansion held many different colors of paint along with a couple of pencils and a clock. How else was I to make the color of the sky if I couldn't look at it? I slammed down into the chair and flipped through the sketchbook. Hoping anything would seem to line up. To tell a story. To help me understand what was going on. But I could find nothing in these scenescapes to give me answers. If only I could draw people, I thought to myself, maybe it'd be easier to understand. Maybe I could see what they see. After minutes of examining every page, every rock, every stream, every flake of snow I closed the book defeated. I looked out to the sky made navy blue in the light of the moon. Almost, like the sky above that little mouse.

-Lacey

You can find the rest of this story on my Wattpad @ stfumendes it’s titled Disnia. There will be three books and love interest for both boys. 💕

[diezmil10000]

2023 art summary + thoughts on my own art progress under the cut!!

(template by HedgeCatDragonix on deviantart)

so i've been doing this for 10 years :P

i'm not posting these pics in high quality, they're somewhere on the internet if you want to scavange for a bit. i didn't start taking art seriously until late 2015 and i honestly don't like looking back at old drawings. i still like my 2022 art summary but it wasn't until this year that i'm proud of all my finished artworks.

my art journey is complicated. i'm not one of those artists who can say they've been drawing for all their lifes. i used to trace pokémon in my school agendas but that was it. around 2013, a couple of friends invited me to their Skype server where we used to draw each other's ocs and make art memes and stuff - it was fun and cringe in the most positive way i can say it :] i didn't know shit about art and i took pride in drawing on MS Paint with a mouse just because it was hard.

(all of my drawings until may 2018 were made with a mouse)

when i was 15 yo i got into Love Live! and i decided to get better at art because i didn't want lesbian fanart to be made only by creepy cishet men. at some point i watched this video from Sycra and it rewired my brain. i understood that i needed to actually practise and understand what i was doing, and that i wasn't going to improve just by observing. its follow-up video also helped me a lot, i remember watching it on the day it was posted jskhfdjdfd.

and so fast forward until 2021 approx. i spent all of those years practising drawing in my traditional sketchbooks, so my improvement was steady. the only problem, and in retrospective i see it as a Big Problem, is that i was grinding mindlessly. by that i mean that i copied artists i liked and i drew again and again stuff i was bad at, but i didn't think too deeply about it or analysed my own art to look for faster ways to improve it. i also don't take feedback well so i didn't ask for it either, which further slowed down my progress.

on top of it, that just made me better at drawing, not at illustration. i firmly believe that a good drawing is hard to ruin but i could have made my illustrations way more interesting if i had started going wild with colors and effects way earlier. i don't exactly regret my choices because at the end of the day it's just my hobby, and i've been praised for drawing a lot and for challenging myself to practise drawing traditionally, so i want this to be read as introspection rather than complaints!!

the reason why 2021 was a big change in my art is because in november i did this monstrosity:

i got an Android tablet to be able to draw in class and took the challenge alongside my friend Nico, who also did their own Huevember. hola si estás leyendo esto Nico, aunque lo dudo :) i can't say that any of the drawings made me better at anatomy, or composition, or colors. i can't say that they solidified my knowledge, either. but they planted a seed in my brain that would fully bloom in late 2022, which is the seed of hating the finished result of some pieces so much that i forced myself to improve.

everyone has their own motivation to get better at art and i've always thought that mine was a healthy one (i want to draw more lesbians, that's all). however, i've had a very solid 2023 and now i don't cringe at any of my pieces, plus i can notice any mistakes they have without wanting to delete them from existence - and i could only get there because at the end of 2022 i told myself i wouldn't make any more ugly illustrations. like, period. i didn't want to get anxious every time i had to look back on my own art.

i also learned that no ammount of compliments from others would magically make me like a piece i see as mid at best. of course, i appreciate every single nice comment i get (genuinely, i get very happy knowing that other people love my work), but gratitude doesn't fix a skill issue.

so, late 2022, many things happened. first i got cancelled on twitter over a drawing of my beloved mizuki from project sekai (this info will be relevant later). then i spent a whole month doing this other monstrosity that is to this day the best thing i've ever done. i haven't peaked it (yet):

this comic actually made me improve and solidify my skills. it wasn't a class assignment, or a collaboration, or anything more than a headcanon i shared with a friend - it was pure brainrot over Revue Starlight and it made me put all my cunt into it. this was also the point at which i started filling in blacks with the bucket tool instead of picking a very dark color, which is a big part of my current style :3

the thing about people cancelling me is that i had to distance myself from fandoms and eventually change accunts, which also affected how i perceived my own art. even if i draw for myself, at the end of the day i still draw characters that are loved by many people, so i disabled comments and stopped interacting with other artists of my fandom circles. that led me to go on hiatus at the start of 2023, knowing that it was time for a fresh start (my art accounts were 5 years old anyway).

that period of time made me think a lot about my finished pieces. since i wouldn't post them until i had a new account, i would stare at them for longer than ever or make small changes even if days had already passed. letting my mind rest from illustrations i had been working on and knowing i could change them whenever i wanted was a big step forward.

i realised that for the past years i had been in a hurry to post my drawings as soon as i was done with them instead of appreciating them. that was a turning point for my mindset. this was also past the time i decided to stop making ugly art, but i hadn't really taken any measures to get better. so i changed the wording of the challenge: i can make ugly art but i can't post it if i don't like it.

it doesn't sound epic, but for some reason it worked. every time i was in the middle of making a drawing that looked kind of ugly, i changed it until it looked right. not perfect, but good enough to avoid cringing in the future. some times i had to redraw it from scratch with a more interesting pose. some times i needed to add a background or a graphic element to make the characters pop. and somewhere on that period, i went wild with colors and effects, and a lot of times that saved a piece that would otherwise be boring.

i have to thank Revolutionary Girl Utena and Revue Starlight for making me experiment a lot during my hiatus. both pieces of media, one being the daugher of the other, give artists so many visual metaphors and interesting topics to work with. the revstar brainrot had been there since the junnana comic, but rgu was something i had been meaning to rewatch for a couple of years and it hit me like a fucking train. it also made me create one of the comics i'm the most proud about:

then i got into homestuck and my art got. well. stuck!! >D< but it was okay because i wasn't making ugly drawings anymore. i was putting into practise a lot of things i had been learning or experimenting with, especially regarding colors and character interactions. and the yuri was delicious hmmmmmmm.

the rest of 2023 was very linear in terms of art but not so much in terms of fandoms (?). which is fine, honestly, but i was also glad to get back into Fire Emblem: Three Houses in late that year because when i first got into it in 2019 i didn't have the skill to draw everything i wanted to draw. and i still haven't drawn all the yuri scenarios that i've been cooking in my mind, but i have until forever to do it!!

so for 2024 i want to study some stuff i feel i'm still lacking in. i think i've always had a good eye for composition, but i've never actually pushed it in my finished illustrations - they depend a lot on the poses because i've always been prioritising drawing over everything else. that needs to change this year.

i also want to get better at drawing characters from extreme angles. i've always felt like my poses are a bit flat and i think i can study photos taken with wide angle lenses to improve at that.

and of course i still want to draw faster, which is something i've always struggled with. i think i have a good rhythm of "producing" art (excuse me for the poor wording), but i'm still too slow for the kind of artstyle i want to achieve, which includes having a looser lineart and less details in irrelevant areas of the drawings. i think that overdoing the lineart actually hurts my illustrations, because everything ends up pulling the viewer's attention with the same energy. i also think messy artstyles are neat.

i promise i'm not crazy and i don't hate what i do. in fact, it's precisely because this year i managed to make some pieces with that kind of feel that i know where i want to aim. special mention to the junnana comic because i haven't been able to replicate that lineart ever since.

examples:

as for the stuff i like about my current artstyle, i definitely want to keep the way i color!! and by that i mean the method i have for applying filters that make my colors pop. i could maybe play more with textures too.

i also like the way i depict intimacy, and people have praised it too. thank you for noticing. it's the yearning that's doing it, not me. but i don't think i'll ever change the content (?) of my art, i eat breathe and speak in yuri. if anything, there are still some ways of conveying feelings that i haven't been able to draw because i lack the skill to do so, but i'll keep trying ;)

i honestly didn't expect this post to be this long. i've been writing for hours now and i'm not sure my thoughts are coherent for anyone that isn't me. i also can't grasp the idea that some people know me from fanart i did in 2016 while others started following me last month, time is wild and it's an extra dimension of complexity that i don't know how to account for when i write stuff like this.

but again, as i do with art, i've written this for myself. it's been nice to put my thoughts in order. i think i've only talked about art in depth with like 5 people and it's always been in casual conversation. no creo que estéis leyendo pero Nahia y Henar os amo y he aprendido mucho de vosotras.

thank you for reading until the end if you have. i hope you have not only a nice day but a nice year. let's meet again in the future.

[wyervan]

hiiii just wanna start off by saying I love your art style and general vibes ✨️ I'm a stay-at-home partner always in search of fun things to do, and I've recently gotten back into art after not engaging with it since I was a kid (largely because your sun n moon fixation rubbed off on me 😭). I've never tried digital art and it looks cool! Do you have any advice for a beginner like me?

Oh it makes me so happy when people say I inspired them to start creating again 😭 The DCA and the fandom brought me out of my own years-long artistic funk last spring. Clown power, yeehonk 🤠 🤡

I’m planning a significantly longer post in response to an ask I got ages ago all how I learned to draw the way I do, so lookout for that.

But in the meantime, here’s a couple things I can think of off the top of my head:

Specific tools don’t matter much. I currently use Procreate and would recommend it if you have an IPad. It’s an extremely simple but effective program.

On desktop, I use Clip Studio Pro, but Krita is another program I’ve used and liked AND it’s completely free.

I do also have loads of experience with Photoshop and other Adobe products but can’t recommend them at the price, not to mention they’re not super beginner friendly.

Hardware-wise, I almost exclusively use my IPad to draw because it’s so portable. I also have a Huion Kamvas pen tablet monitor that hooks up to my desktop. But I started doing digital art with a dinky lil Wacom tablet that was less than $100. There’s definitely a bit of a disconnect at first, not looking at where you’re drawing but rather on a screen, but you get used to it.

Bottom line is to use whatever tools are convenient and comfortable for you! I even know of a great artist that exclusively draws with their mouse. I realized I hated sitting at a desk and that stopped me from practicing digitally. I got an IPad and now it’s much easier for me to work comfortably on what I love.

Point two I’d like to make is take advantage of the capabilities of working digitally. This means using the godsent undo button to your heart’s content. Download fun brushes to play with and add texture. Use perspective grids. Turn on line stabilization so your strokes are extra smooth. Like what you’ve sketched so far but want to try something different? Duplicate the layer and work from there so you can go back to the old version if you change your mind. Radically change the colors or values with adjustment layers. Use clipping masks. Abuse the liquify tool.

A lot of this might sound like gobbledygook to a digital art beginner but just googling any of this terminology will get you loads of tutorials and information for your specific setup. Also I’m happy to go into details about specific digital art techniques I’ve picked up with over a decade and a half of experience.

Finally, and most importantly—make what you want to see in the world AND what feels good to make. This ofc is not exclusive to digital art, but I always want to stress this to new artists. I realized after I got into the DCA fandom that I had been letting shame, fear, and perfectionism keep me from creating the content I was really interested in making. But then man, idk. Frickin’ robot clowns amirite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it’s like there was a secret agent sent into my brain and he uploaded a DCA virus into my mainframe or smth idk hacker style. tktktktkt. they’re in.

Anyway. Hope this helps! Feel free to send another message if u have more questions :3

[ryuichirou]

Replies

A couple of shorter ones!

Anonymous asked:

Legit crying over how friggin cute your new Idia piece is!!!!!!!!! They're both so happy!!!!!!!! ;~; My mortal body can't contain my joy.

Hehehe thank you!!! I am so happy you liked it!

Since we’re watching the event + watched Lilo and Stitch, and I remembered how much I loved that creature lol I’m sad Idia didn’t get to play with him, so… at least I’ll draw them together…

eh-nonnie-mouse asked:

How do you make Idia look so cute? Can I hug squish both Stich and Idia at the same time? 🥺

Hope life is going well and you and Katsu are happy and hale! Winter is coming so I hope you both stay cozy and don't get sick.

Ahh thank you so much!! Please hug them as much as you want! Whenever people think my Idia is cute, I get the smuggest face in the world lol

Life’s okay, better than it used to be earlier this year at least. Thank you so much for your kind words!! We’ll do our best to stay cozy and healthy <3

Please stay healthy and happy too!

Anonymous asked:

Which of the shroud parent's top?

Haven’t seen them yet, but I am 99% sure that it’s the mom lol Papa Shroud feels too Idia-coded…

Anonymous asked:

I've been wondering something for a while now. Would female Idia be a dandere or a tsundere? And on that topic, what about female Azul?

I don’t think their personalities would change, Anon… And I wouldn’t consider Idia to be a dandere or a tsundere 🤔 He has his tsundere moments from time to time, but I don’t know what kind of type to force on him/her.

To me, fem!Idia is Fukawa Touko in a lot of ways attitude-wise lol

And fem!Azul also has her tsundere moments, but for the majority of time she is… an oujou? Not really, probably a hime. A bossy and capricious one.

[maurofonseca]

Are you working on any personal projects? Any comics from you on the horizon?

Hopefully!

I've got a main idea of comics I want to do, but I'm gonna take longer talking about it, so I'll first mention a couple others-

I've in the past drawn a lot of like, online meme characters. Not this exactly, but stuff like "Earth-chan". Lately been thinking about revisiting that, making them my own characters, changing designs and names, and working from that for small slice-of-life things.

I've got a friend I collab with on ideas, and I asked him ideas for short stories. Planning to draw a couple of his ideas, both for portfolio and because he does good stuff.

However, the main thing, of course, is my ideas involving my characters Lalla Shepherd, Jackie Pollard, Lily Rock, etc etc.

Gonna go on at length about it now, so putting it under a read more.

I've got a setting of characters etc I've nurtured for a few years now. It's a setting of cartoon animal people, adventure, fighting, etc. Very much trying to replicate the Disney comics I grew up on, stuff like Barks, Cavazzano, Gottfredson, but also stuff like Tintin, Indiana Jones, Sonic the Comic. It's set in a fantasy version of Earth circa the 1960s, by which I mean it's just Earth, but everything's been renamed for denial purposes, a layer of distance. If I want "London" to be the 60s but "Lisbon" to be the 80s, I get to do so, because it's not really London or Lisbon, it's Fumdon and St. Vincent, right? If I want there to be a war in the backstory, it can be WW1, WW2, Korean War, and Vietnam War all at once, because it's not really any of those, it's a fantasy one. Kinda what Pokémon does with its regions.

The idea is to do multiple stories, small stories, short stories, in this setting. Again, like the comics I grew up on- adventure stories of 10 pages, rather than epics of 1000.

You can read an early first go at an introduction to it here. It's kind of outdated, in aesthetics at least, but it's still overall matching what I plan.

The starting point is, there's these three characters- Lalla Shepherd, a racer and former soldier dealing with what happened to her during the War, Jackie Pollard, a girl with a mysterious past who appears in Fumdon looking for a job and with an amazing aim; and Lily Rock, a supremely confident fighter who's travelled the world and is sent to Fumdon to cover the upcoming Tournament. Said Tournament is going to be a combat tournament held in Fumdon but part of the culture of a separate small nation-estate, as a diplomatic move between countries. This is attracting weirdos and people with ill intent, so our three main characters get made into a team of sheriffs to deal with it in the months leading to the event proper.

The tournament is primarily just a plot excuse though- it'll be happening "soon" for as long as needed. It's a near-future event that excuses why any character would be appearing now and making their entrance in the public stage, no matter how weird they might be.

It's also about a bootlegging criminal in another country, whose wares get stolen by a wannabe gentleman thief, and how that drags a lot of other characters into that story.

Open and obvious about it, it's primarily made of me seeing characters and ideas in other stuff, and going "I want to make my own version". Very Alan Moore League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in that sense- "I want to make fanfiction where James Bond fights The Avengers (the british spy team) and Mina Murray (from Dracula), but I don't have the rights for them, so I'll switch names around etc." Very cape comic books in that sense too- "we want to tell a story about Superman, but we're Marvel, so we make a Superman pastiche called Hyperion".

Part of it was influenced by the upcoming wave of public domain stuff in the US. As you can see by my drawings, it was planning to use specific characters like Mickey Mouse, but then I got confirmation that that's really really not gonna work internationally. Ah well.

Some of you might've been here long enough to recognise a lot of these ideas and characters were part of an abandoned webcomic I was doing before, 4QC. Well yeah, this is me trying to make that one work and avoid the pitfalls that killed it lol.

Dunno, hope that's enough context. I'm hoping I can get a new story of this, a remake of the old one I did maybe, out before the end of the year; and then to do a lot more next year, using the money I'm saving from Sonic work this year.

[lacepockets]

That Time I Helped A Book Get Published

I've been what you would classify as "an artist" for pretty much my entire life. Or, at least, as long as I could hold a pencil. As soon as I even vaguely figured out how to make a picture transfer from my brain onto paper (or whatever surface, including the walls, and woe betide anyone who tries to clean that away), I completely unloaded on the world.

Not much of my art survived until now, but here's a few from I think around when I was 8 or 9 years old. Forever stuck in the 3/4 angle facing viewer left.

That said, I was never much of a fanartist; I've always preferred to create original characters, either that exist in series I was a fan of (which I GUESS is a type of fanart? but not really what people think of when they say fanart) or I would make up entire worlds and populate them. I would make up stories to go with this too, and often made either comics or pseudo-books out of them which I just stapled together. Some things never change, really.

I would even LARP my stories all by myself (I was every character), complete with costumes and background music that was usually comprised of the soundtracks of Disney movies, video games, and later anime, which I would blast from my awesome 1990s audio player.

(I also had a Discman eventually but I have more memories of this thing)

When I learned how to, I would even make like mixtapes from the songs I used to make up my story's soundtrack. I would pretend(?) that these stories were "real" as in they were actual cartoons or whatever that I was a fan of. I didn't have any friends so it's not like I shared these things with anyone, but that didn't really stop me. I simply talked to myself about them and wrote my own critic reviews and "episode summaries".

I really do not know how I was not screened for autism when I was a child, but whatever, I'm here now.

Drawing and making up stories and such took up pretty much all of my time that wasn't already taken up by video games or books.

I was even drawing in class. To be honest I was a terrible student — I never really paid attention to anything unless it happened to be about something I was already hyperinterested in, and I subsequently did not give a flying hoot about grades. Instead of doing classwork or, yknow, listening to my teachers, I would be drawing. Some teachers caught on to the fact that I was drawing, and for those classes I switched to pretending to be taking notes or doing work but I was actually writing about my OCs.

Anyway, all this is to say, one of my teachers really liked my drawings, even though they weren't really any better than typical child doodles in my opinion.

I don't fully remember what grade this was, maybe 2nd or 3rd? This teacher was supportive of my drawings even though it was technically disruptive of my learning. She'd ask to see what I was drawing and would talk to me about it, though I wasn't ever really keen on talking about it with her, and sometimes she asked me to draw something for her. She really liked Mickey Mouse so it was usually him.

One day this teacher told me she was writing a children's book, but she needed an artist to illustrate it. So she asked me if I wanted to be the illustrator for her book. I said yes, and she and I worked together on the book for I think a couple months? I can't fully say what the book was about, all I remember is that it was about a little girl with freakishly big pigtails. I don't even remember the title, I wish I could.

The book was eventually published.

It's really funny to think that there's a book out there that my 2nd or 3rd grade teacher wrote and little baby me illustrated, and I just have zero memory of what it is. I sometimes wonder how many people have read the book or bought it for their kids or something and I am just completely ignorant of it.

[megpie71]

Couple of warning signs of RSI (these are the ones my body gives me - yours may be slightly different, but I'm including them on the off-chance they'll help someone).

The skin on the back of your hand starts feeling tingly and vaguely itchy (as though it's moving around more than usual). Rubbing can soothe it, but it comes back within about twenty minutes.

Tense feeling in the muscles up at the junction of your forearm and elbow (the one on top of your arm when your palm is facing down)

"Loose" feeling in your wrists (this may be specific to me - I have one "trick" wrist where the tendons tend to let things get out of alignment when I'm tired, stressed, or overworked).

Things that help:

Take regular breaks. I'm going to put in a plug for a little piece of freeware called "Workrave" which is designed to help people with RSI - it basically sets intervals for you to take breaks, and enforces them by taking away your ability to do keyboard and mouse work while the break is in progress. I have mine set up for a 30 second break every 20 minutes, and a 5 minute break every 45 minutes, as well as limiting my overall keyboard time to a certain amount (8 hours at work, 12 hours at home).

If you're working by hand rather than by keyboard, put your writing or drawing surface at an incline. Writing desks actually used to be built on an incline, but it changed with the growth of typewriter use (having something like about 5kg of metal sliding down an inclined surface into your lap wasn't something people appreciated, for some strange reason). If you're looking for an easy way of doing this, get a lever-arch binder, and use that as your resting surface to lean your writing or drawing surface on.

If you're a person with what's referred to as "big naturals" then a split-profile keyboard can be a big help in avoiding the worst of RSI, simply because instead of trying to type through or under your boobs with your wrists at a skew, you're able to reach around them and type with your wrists mainly straight.

Likewise, a vertical mouse can help a lot. I've been using a vertical mouse for about two years now at work and at home, since I first wound up with RSI at the end of 2020, and it's been a real help with not winding up with the sort of strain I used to get.

Keep your keyboard and mouse (and other utensils) close to your body - you shouldn't be reaching and straining to complete everyday movements.

I hope all of this helps. Best of luck to those doing NaNoWriMo, and don't forget to take breaks from keyboarding.

Take frequent breaks (drink water too!) and do your goddamn wrist stretches

Image (source)

[snaptrappressabandonedblog]

FCBD 2024 Haul Review

It's Free Comic Book Day yet again! I was actually pretty excited for this one, as for the first time in a good couple of years I was able to go out to a few stores with my partner and one of my best friends. I've been wanting to use this space as an actual blog a lot more, so I figured this might be fun to do. I'm gonna go through my stack of free stuff and give some thoughts on each of these! I'll also be giving totally arbitrary ratings, basically to indicate whether or not I would be interested in picking up more of these series.

UNICO AWAKENING (Scholastic) 7/10 Samuel Sattin and Gurihiru, based on the original manga by Osamu Tezuka

So, I've always wanted to get into Tezuka's work as a big Astro Boy fan, but I find it kind of hard to engage with a lot of the time in the same way that golden age American comics are. The dialogue feels kind of clunky when translated to english, and there are a lot of moments of... unsavory themes and ideas, to say the least. I'd never read or even heard of Unico, but you can tell just from the cover that it's a Tezuka creation. That all said, I thought this preview of the upcoming graphic novel was really charming! The story is really simple but engaging, and Gurihiru's art is just absolutely adorable. If I see it at a bookstore or my LCS, I just might pick this one up. If you've got a young kid who's into fantasy or things like My Little Pony, give this one a try.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (IDW Publishing) 9/10 Various, anthology

I'm a pretty big fan of the IDW TMNT series, but I kind of fell off of it a ways before #100, so I'm about 65 issues behind. I was interested to see what the series would do with its post-issue 150 relaunch, which is apparently set in the same continuity but begins a new story to get new readers interested and re-engage old readers. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was really excited when I saw Nightwatcher on the cover! I love the 2007 TMNT movie, and I think Raphael being a lone vigilante with a superhero name and armor is a cool concept in itself, so I was pumped to see the character return in a new piece of media. The first story in this one-shot, which is a short preview of the upcoming Nightwatcher solo book, was really really good. I really enjoyed the art, which felt painterly and solid in a way that not a lot of TMNT stuff is (to the point that the colors reminded me a lot of Mouse Guard) and the writing was really cool. I love the narration about the concept of the "other," and the tone and themes felt really compelling in the current political atmosphere. The second story, Splinter's Day Off, was not quite as engaging but still really enjoyable. The story was really cute, and I've been a fan of Andy Kuhn's art since he first worked on the IDW Turtles books. Overall, a pretty good pickup! Got me very interested in seeing what the next chapter of IDW Turtles will look like. ENERGON UNIVERSE 2024 SPECIAL (Image Comics/Skybound) 7/10 Daniel Warren Johnson, Ryan Ottley, Robert Kirkman, Lorenzo De Felici, Joshua Williamson, and Jason Howard

I've been keeping up with the Energon Universe Transformers comic since its launch, and as someone who could not care less about G1 Transformers, I absolutely adore it. Daniel Warren Johnson is a modern master of comics action, and each issue is more engaging than the last. That said, I haven't read any of the other stuff set in this new universe. Void Rivals doesn't look all that interesting (although I read two issues because I heard Jetfire appears in it), and I'm under the age of 45 so I'm completely incapable of caring about GI Joe in any capacity. Now that the intro is out of the way, I really liked the Transformers part of this. Ryan Ottley is one of my favorite artists in the industry, and his work is great here as always, but I can't help but feel he's trying to imitate Johnson's style and it's kind of holding him back. The way he draws the mouths of the Cybertronian characters is really weird, and sometimes the lines feel a bit too stiff and scratchy. The story was engaging, though, and beyond those critiques, this is truly fantastic Transformers art. The cover is also absolutely spectacular. The art in the other two stories is great too, but seeing as I don't know anything about the ongoing story of either series, this really didn't hook me in beyond an appearance by Hot Rod in the Void Rivals section. Remember, folks: If you have strongly-held opinions about G1 Transformers or GI Joe, it's about time you got your regular colonoscopy.

ABSOLUTE POWER SPECIAL EDITION (DC Comics) 3/10 Mark Waid and Mikel Janin

I gotta be honest, my eyes completely glazed over trying to read this. I just absolutely cannot give a shit about DC's big event comics anymore. This was basically white noise in printed form. The character of Failsafe is kinda neat, I like the Zur-En-Arrh Batman stuff, but all of this bullshit technobabble was just completely indecipherable to me. That said, the art was very, very good in both of the little preview stories here. I'm sure the comic itself will be written well, but I cannot bring myself to care about the fate of the DC universe. The advertisement for season 2 of My Adventures with Superman on the back cover was more exciting.

ASTERIX (Papercutz) 6/10 R. Goscinny and A. Uderzo

Asterix is just one of those things that, as an American, I have never been exposed to in any capacity, and to be honest, it never really interested me like other European comics like Valerian or Tintin did. It kind of just struck me as newspaper comics-style fun, and I can now confirm that I was right! The cartooning here is really great, the illustrations are super lively and engaging and the character designs themselves are instantly iconic. Like I said, I've never read Asterix before, but that design is so distinct that I already knew WHO Asterix is. The writing here is not really for me. It's probably just a matter of humor written originally in French not really crossing language and cultural borders seamlessly, and this also seems to be aimed at a younger crowd, which is totally fine! It's just not really for me. I did think the detail of the Greeks speaking in that Greek diner menu font was very cute. I'm always a sucker for a good lettering gag.

ARCHIE HORROR PRESENTS: THE CURSED LIBRARY PRELUDE (Archie Comics) 6/10 Various

I was a huge reader of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, to the point that I'd say they were more formative to my tastes as both a reader and creator of comics than almost anything else, but I've never really been interested enough in the world and characters of Archie proper to follow along with the comics consistently, though I've always had it in my periphery. I'd get the digests at the grocery store as a kid, I've got some old issues that my parents gave me, and I remember my sister being really into the Archie Marries Betty/Veronica comics when those were ongoing. After the reboot of all the Archie universe comics in the mid-2010s, I fell off completely. Riverdale didn't interest me at all, that Sabrina show on Netflix wasn't my bag, and the comics (besides Archie vs. Predator) were a complete blindspot to me for the years following that reboot. Archie's weird scramble for an identity as both a slice-of-life series and an unrelated horror series has been interesting to watch, though, especially knowing the history of the brand as the most squeaky-clean comics in America. Honestly though, the horror stuff just does absolutely nothing for me. Afterlife with Archie was kinda fun very briefly, but nothing else has really worked for me. This one-shot preview was interesting conceptually, but I feel like I'm missing too much setup to really get engaged by this, and it doesn't make me want to find out what I'm missing. The art is all very good though, and the writing is totally fine for what it is.

BARDA (DC Comics) 8/10 Ngozi Ukazu

Big Barda and Mister Miracle (Scott Free) are two of my absolute favorite DC characters, and Jack Kirby's Fourth World saga is among my favorite stories and concepts in comics ever. I love everything that Fourth World is, and almost everything that came out in the wake of it. I feel like if you want to make a new, good Fourth World story, you need to have either a really solid grasp on Kirby's ideas and aesthetics, or something totally new and unique to call your own while using the world and ideas as a springboard. This preview of the upcoming YA Barda Graphic Novel strikes me as the second of those two things more than the first. It's not trying to look exactly like Kirby's original designs, but it evokes the spirit of the thing well enough that I wasn't confused who anyone was. The art is adorably charming, and the story looks neat: A look at the meeting of Scott Free and Barda and the relationship that blooms out of that. I think this could turn out really fun and cute! I look forward to the graphic novel itself, which releases this summer.

BLOOD HUNT (Marvel Comics) 4/10 Jed McKay, Sara Pichelli, Federico Blee

Much like Absolute Power, this one left me feeling almost nothing. I think maybe I'm just too old for big superhero event comics, because they all kind of feel the same. They always end up being clones of older things like Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Clone Saga, Infinity Gauntlet, etc. This feels like your generic Secret Invasion type of deal, where an army of evil something or others (in this case, vampires) comes to earth to wipe out mankind and yadda yadda etc. etc. Admittedly, this one seems the slightest bit interesting as it pulls in both street-level heroes like Daredevil and Spider-Man and cosmic characters like the Fantastic Four to deal with the same threat on different scales. The appearance by literal, actual Dracula was kind of neat, and it's mostly just nice to see Marvel using Blade stuff for something again besides a video game or a reboot movie that's never coming out. The X-Men backup story was honestly so bland I forgot about it as soon as I set the issue down to write this. I liked the art, though, and Jubilee is one of my favorite X-Men so that was neat at least.

CONAN: BATTLE OF THE BLACK STONE (Titan Comics) 9/10 Jim Zub, Jonas Scharf

Now THIS is how you do a FCBD book! I've been on a huge Conan/sword and sorcery kick for like a year now, and this preview of an upcoming Conan story scratched that itch hardcore. I haven't been keeping up with Conan's comic exploits for quite a while; I read some of the later-era Dark Horse stuff, but once he went back to Marvel for a month and a half or whatever I lost interest. I may have to go back and pick up Titan's other Conan comics though, because this totally rocks. Jim Zub strikes the exact kind of action-fantasy tone a good Conan story requires, and Scharf's art is absolutely pitch-perfect. It's dark and gritty without getting muddy, high-contrast shadows and scratchy textures abound. The time-spanning nature of this story seems neat, and I look forward to the mystery unfolding in the series proper.

FLASH GORDON #0 (Mad Cave) 7/10 Jeremy Adams, Will Conrad

I liked this one! I have a passing knowledge of Flash Gordon thanks to my mom's love of the 80s movie and my love of Queen, but I've never been really familiar with the world and characters. This got me interested to see where Mad Cave is going to take the mythology, even if I was a little lost while reading it. I liked the art quite a bit, and I really love how they've gone about updating Flash Gordon's design to be a bit more modern, while retaining that pulpy look to everything that makes the series so charming.

GATCHAMAN #0 (Mad Cave) 6/10 Bunn, Orlando, Edwards, Batista, Hansen, Lobo

Gatchaman is another one of those things that just never really reached my sphere of comic book influence, but I've always really liked the costumes of the Science Ninja Team. I was pretty interested to see if this preview issue would get me hooked enough to want to follow up and read the ongoing series, but I'm not super sure that it did. I liked the science fiction stuff, the second short story in this anthology worked well, and the art was good in all three stories, but overall I just wasn't really hooked by it. I feel like if I had read this around age 15 I probably would have loved it, but it just wasn't for me right now. Also, Chris Samnee's art on the cover is absolutely fantastic and I'm slightly disappointed that he wasn't doing the interiors.

HELLBOY and STRANGER THINGS (Dark Horse Comics) 8/10 Mignola, Laszlo, Stewart/ Fridolfs and Case

Another two-series anthology here, and for once I actually really liked both parts! The first part, a Hellboy story involving a storyteller, is sort of just a visual retelling of Hellboy's story from start to finish, with each important chapter of the story in a beautiful panel drawn by Mark Laszlo. It's not really anything I haven't read before, but it was really charming and nice to look at. The second half, a Stranger Things story titled "Deliver Me From Evil," is a short centering on Jonathan and Argyle. Argyle was my least favorite part of the fourth season of ST, but he's grown on me over time and my love of this series made this a fun read. I kinda want to go back and read some of Dark Horse's other Stranger Things stories, because I just really love this world.

JOHNNY QUEST, THUNDERCATS AND SPACE GHOST (Dynamite Comics) 8/10 Casey, Piriz, Shalvey, Moss, Pepose, Lau

All of these series are based on cartoons from before my time, but I've always had a fondness for the old Hanna-Barbera superhero and action stuff, and I've always felt that Thundercats was far superior to He-Man in terms of aesthetics and lore. I really liked all three of these stories, and I feel like Johnny Quest in particular fills a "Challengers of the Unknown" shaped-void in the comics world, with a story about a group of normal people on a sci-fi adventure. Thundercats looks like a fun, semi-gritty reimagining of the original cartoon's origin stories, and the Space Ghost story seems like it'll be a good time, with the story following Jace before he becomes one of SG's sidekicks. I had no expectations for any of these, but they all look like a good bit of fun.

THE OVERSTREET GUIDE TO COLLECTING COMICS 6/10 Vaughn, Huesman and Gonzalez

If there's one thing I hate in this world, it's people who collect comics or toys or video games or whatever solely as an investment. It ruins the hobby for other people and turns what should be fun escapism into purely a matter of business. That said, I found this little publication from the famous Overstreet Price Guide company to be charming and a sweet look into the nature of collecting comics and supporting your LCS. I've never been someone who collects for the purpose of reselling, and I've never been insanely concerned with buying secondhand comics in mint condition, so a lot of this fell flat to me, but it was charming and it can give an outsider a fun look into the world of comics buying and collecting. The art is really good, and the writing is serviceable considering this is essentially intended to be an educational pamphlet.

MAD MAGAZINE 8/10 Various, reprints

I've been a MAD magazine fan for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my grandma got me a subscription for my birthday 5 years in a row, and I truly enjoyed every issue, even in the modern age where a lot of the humor can be defined as "Isn't it WACKY what celebrities are willing to say on Twitter???" But this was a refreshing look back at MAD's parodies of DC superheroes specifically, and it was extremely charming. It's all reprints of old material, and it's funny to see the specific things getting parodied at any given time, and the costumes in use for each parody. Not all of it lands, but it gave me enough laughs to justify the reading experience.

SPIDER-MAN and ULTIMATE UNIVERSE (Marvel Comics) 5/10 Wells, Stegman, Camp and Frigeri

Lastly, we have another Marvel job. I was, sadly, also not really enthused by this one at all. Everyone involved has done better work elsewhere, and this just feels like something to fill time in everyone's work schedules. The Spider-Man story is basically "What if Spider-Man was in Five Nights at Freddy's," and the Ultimates story was a little more engaging, if only because there are fun concepts at play. I actually do really like what Marvel is doing with this new Ultimate Universe, and I'm pretty interested to see where it goes. Sadly though, this was another pretty forgettable issue.

And that's it! I picked up a few more things, but I don't have strong enough opinions about pretty much any of it to warrant writing much more. I always recommend going to your LCS even if it's after Free Comic Book Day, because they usually have leftovers for months following the event, and they still give it away for free.

[wastelesscrafts]

I have a Patagonia Umbra Tanktop, I really love it cuz it's a style that came out when I was in highschool (~10 years ago) and got discontinued quickly and I managed to find one on Poshmark.

But the problem is, a mouse got to it in my closet and chewed two small holes and one slightly larger one near the hem on the left hip and I've been wearing it anyway, and there's now some runs coming off of the holes.

It's a micro knit fabric like a t-shirt, but it's 100% polyester (like a lot of patagonia tank tops)

The shirt is in like new condition otherwise, (it had tags on it when I got it and this was only a couple months ago, I've worn it maybe 5 times).

I was thinking about repairing the holes with darning/visible mending with some embroidered daisies over the holes, but the runs are pretty big now, about 2.5in (I wish I'd fixed it instead of waiting). I don't really want to do embroidery that big if I can avoid it.

I definitely don't want to do anything that involves cutting as this shirt is extremely rare/precious to me.

I'd love to hear any suggestions you have, (It's also not an area that needs to stretch at all, if that's helpful).

Mending a Patagonia top

Too bad about the hole!

The fact that the area doesn't need any stretch is helpful: this gives you more options as you don't need to take the stretch into account.

The runs are about 2.5 inch long, but what about width? If they're long but not wide, there might be enough fabric left to fix the rip with a ladder stitch. Add a blanket stitch to the wrong side of the fabric to strengthen your mend. You'll still see a line where you closed up the rip, but this'll probably be the least visible way to fix the holes.

(Image source) [ID: drawing demonstrating the ladder stitch. Text: "Ladder stitch for closing".]

If the holes are too big to just sew shut, both darning and patching are good options. Embroidery's a nice to way to hide your mend, but I get that you'd rather not want to draw attention to it. Use thread that matches the colour of your tank top to hide any darning, and use a fabric in a similar colour and weight as your tank to make your patch blend in.

Depending on the size and shape of the holes, fusible interfacing might also be an option to mend them in a fairly invisible way.

[herotome]

Devlog #54

Hi-ho, Wudge here. I promised I'd show some a cool GIF so...

Tadah!! A beautiful animation featuring @regal-bones!!!

She was absolutely DELIGHTFUL to work with, 10/10. if you’re ever looking for some radical DnD artwork or particle effect animations, I highly recommend her services!

The sprite, as always, is lined & colored by Remnantation. <3

(I'm gonna post this separate from the devlog here in a minute, just to try - bc I ought to post these standalone images without my big rants attached to them hahaha.)

Alright onto this week's update:

I've been writing moorreeee Jade! Starting to feel pretty okay about the transition between her scene and Dart's.

Caught up on a good handful of asks! \o/

And I've been working on a lot of dumb adult stuff behind the scenes - I don't know if I've mentioned them in detail, since I prefer to get them sorted quietly. Sometimes talking about these things is comforting, other times acknowledging them makes them even more stressful, you know?

••• Paypal is enforcing some changes in my country that makes it so I can't receive any incoming payments unless I have a registered business. So... I've been jumping through the hoops of trying to register a business. Not yet ready to share the business name (still gotta hoard all the usernames on all the platforms). The change won't take effect for another couple months... I'm hoping they don't make it too painful, because to my knowledge I've done everything I'm supposed to do and now I'm just waiting on them. e_e Blegh.

••• My drawing tablet-computer is about 3 years old and starting to show signs of, ah, physical wear and tear. This makes me sad because the SOFTWARE still works great, but the screen's got some black lines across the top (like rows pixels aren't loading?), the trackpad hasn't worked in over a year, sometimes the power button doesn't seem to work unless I press real hard.... I've tried to use some workarounds (ex, buying an external mouse) and I've been diligent about backing up my data, but it's starting to get to a point where I'm gonna need to get this little baby looked at. 😭 And they're probably gonna tell me to just get a new computer. 😭😭😭 Buuut who knows, fingers crossed these fixes are all minimal effort and I can keep the baby going for another 3 years?

••• As suchhh I've spent much of today troubleshooting and doing minor IT surgery (software updates, testing the net connection, disabling that ho Cortana, etc.) on my old laptop from... 2015. This will ensure I can keep working even when the baby is away. All that's left is making sure all my files are up-to-date on my SSD. 💫 I won't be able to work on any art, but I can at least keep writing and coding!

So ahh, thoughts and prayers and whatnot for my first world problems. ❤️ Would love to get the computer situation sorted, at least, by the end of the year.

I hope you’re all staying safe and keeping warm.

Much love,

Wudge.

[lemonmeringuecry]

The Cubs at Disneyland

Hi, so I've been trying to do this for awhile (ever since I drew Lo in a Mickey Mouse hoodie) but when the queen herself, miss Hazel, said she needs them to go to Disney... well I wrote this. And drew it. Because I'm me.

So anyway, here's the drawing and below is the fic

Tw for a couple mentions of food but I think that's it

Credit for everything @lumosinlove

Leo bounced a bit on the balls of his feet, goofy smile at full force while he waited to board the plane. He had grown up going to Disney World with his family. Living in Louisiana, Florida wasn’t too far away, and Eloise and Wyatt Knut didn’t let being adults stop them from enjoying the magic of Disney. When Leo was born, his parents were beyond excited about the prospect of going as a family, getting mickey ears, collecting pins, and making memories.

The first time he went, Leo was five, his favorite Disney movie was the lion king, and an expression of pure joy was permanent in his pale, blue eyes. Over the four days they were in the parks he got to go on rides, eat themed sweets, and meet his favorite characters.

After that first trip, Eloise started a scrap book. The book, titled ‘Disney World 2006’, was soon filled with pictures of Leo at the entrance gate, Leo with pineapple dole whip halfway to his mouth, and countless of all three of them taken by the photographers.

A favorite picture of Eloise’s was near the back, this one of her son with Simba. When Leo had spotted the cast member dressed as his favorite character, he all but threw himself at the lion costume clad employee. Leo’s mama had taken many pictures of the two lion cubs together and they were beyond adorable.

There are more scrap books from 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. Throughout the years of pictures Leo never looks less than ecstatic. Even though New Orleans will forever remain his favorite place in the world, Disney is a close second to home, which is why this trip with his boys is such a big deal for him.

The Lions are currently on a short break in the season after their game against the Coyotes and the cubs are going to spend a few days at Disneyland in Anaheim.

Finn reaches forward to grab Leo’s hand who is standing in line in front of him.

“Sunshine, are you excited?” He asks. Leo tilts his head around to look at his boyfriend and nods eagerly.

“We’ll take that as a yes,” logan chuckles sleepily from behind Finn where he is standing with his head resting on the red head’s back. Evidently waking up at 6:00 in the morning to drive to the airport wasn’t ideal for him.

Leo lets out a low, impatient groan, still bouncing, “I need to be there like right now. Can’t we get on the plane already?”.

“We haven’t even been waiting that long. I think they’re about to call our section though, Peanut,” Finn answers him, trying not to let his amusement show too much.

A crinkly noise cuts off Leo’s response, “Now boarding rows 1-10,” a voice says from over the loudspeaker. Leo stands up straighter and turns to his boyfriends, “that’s us!”

“I know Nutter-Butter, go on, let’s get you to Disney!” Finn says as he pats Leo’s butt lightly, moving him forward, onto the jet bridge.

The boys get settled into their seats, Finn by the window, Logan in the middle for maximum cuddles, and Leo on the aisle for the leg room. For the first half of the flight Logan sleeps while Finn and Leo share a movie, but all three boys are wide awake by the time the flight attendants come around with drinks for the second time. The rest of the flight is spent chatting about practices coming up after the break, things they need for the apartment, and what they are going to do first upon arriving.

Once getting off the plane in California, they take the shuttle from John Wayne Airport to the Disneyland hotels. They are staying in the Adventure Land tower, closest to the park. By this point all three boys are buzzing with the infectious happiness of Disney. After unpacking and getting settled into their hotel room, the cubs proceed with their plans of shopping and getting dinner in Downtown Disney. First thing on the agenda is to procure mouse ears. Logan, Finn, and Leo make their way to World of Disney in order to find the widest selection of ears. Leo has a collection of his own ears at home, including his favorite pride Minnie ears, but for this trip he wants to get new ones along with Logan and Finn. Leo and Finn decide on classic Mickey ear hats, while Logan picks out Minnie ears with a lavender bow. They all get sweatshirts too, as is custom.

After a pleasant evening of enjoying the atmosphere and getting dinner at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen (Leo’s offense towards their attempt at Cajun cuisine is only partially a joke), they call it night. They head back to the hotel, brush their teeth, put on pajamas, and cuddle up in bed. After a busy day the three boys quickly fall asleep, full of anticipation for the day ahead.

Something you should know about Leo is that when it comes to Disney, he is hard core. Their first morning there is an early entry in Disneyland park.

“Rise and shine, party people!” Leo calls as he entera the main part of the hotel room from the bathroom. Logan and Finn are just now waking up, but they aren’t remotely tired. The pure excitement radiating off their boyfriend is contagious as well as the promise of a day of fun.

“Butter baby, how long have you been up?” Finn’s question is alarmed yet distinctly amused.

“Since 5:30,” Leo responds off-handedly. Logan and Finn share a look, then turn it on Leo. Undeterred, Leo spins slowly in a circle in order to show off his carefully constructed outfit. He is wearing his favorite light wash Levi’s, paired with the crewneck he bought yesterday (light gray with vintage looking Mickey & friends). Underneath his sweatshirt he is wearing his Pizza Planet t-shirt, ready for when it gets hot later. Leo’s outfit is accessorized with his new Mickey ear hat, white air Jordan 1’s, and his Tinker Bell lanyard filled with pins from over the years.

“These things take time! Now y’all go get dressed, we have to be in line by 6:45,” Leo says. With that both Finn and Logan get out of bed and into their clothes in record time. On their way out of the room, they pick up their ears and backpacks from the desk by the TV.

After a brief stop at the Starbucks in Downtown Disney, the boys make it into the que of people lining up at the entrance gate. Once 7:00 hits, the lines start to move into the park. As Logan, Finn, and Leo enter, they gaze around in awe. At the end of Mainstreet sits Sleeping Beauty’s castle, tall and glorious. They walk hand in hand down the lane of colorful, old fashioned buildings, chatting excitedly about what to do first.

“Alright babes, what’s up on the agenda?” Finn asks.

“I don’t even know the options, what do you say Le?” Logan continues.

They end up heading over to Tomorrow Land first. They go on Star Tours and Space Mountain while the lines are short, then bounce around Fantasy land as they make their way across the park. Around 8:30 all three boys start to get hungry so they grab a bag or two of beignets from New Orleans Square. After breakfast, they hit their favorites in Adventure land (Finn fucking loves Indiana Jones), Frontier Land (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a fan favorite), and New Orleans Square (Logan might not stop singing ‘Yo Ho a Pirate’s Life for Me’ for weeks).

Around noon the cubs exit Disneyland Park and walk across to California Adventure. After lunch at Wine Country Trattoria the boys bop around Cars Land, Hollywood Land, Pacific Warf and Grizzly Peak. The lines are a lot longer now that it’s afternoon, so they take it in stride and spend their waiting time talking, cuddling, and playing games. They end up going on almost every ride as well as hitting the extra good ones twice like Incredicoaster and Guardians of the Galaxy (still a fan-fucking-tastic ride but Leo misses the Twilight Zone theme).

By the time they finish up in California Adventure for the day, it’s almost time for Fantasmic, and Leo has yet to tell his boys that he got them reserved seats. The cubs meander back to Disneyland but when they start to near Frontier Land Finn picks up the pace.

“Sweetheart, what’s the hurry?” Leo asks with a knowing smile.

“I wanna get good seats for Fantasmic, I haven’t seen it since I was little!” Finn replies.

“Orgasmic? I like the sound of that,” Logan slides in with a smirk.

“Baby, no!” His boyfriends exclaim at the same time. Logan giggles which gets Leo and Finn laughing as well.

“And Finn, I got us seat reservations for the show so no need to rush,” Leo tells him. Finn’s response is to jump on Leo with a fierce hug and a drawn out “Yay,”.

The cubs enjoy the water show immensely, all snuggled up and bundled in sweatshirts once again to fend off the cool evening air. They point out little details to each other with intertwined hands and gasp aloud at the pretty fireworks. Once Fantasmic is over they do a few more rides, then head back to the hotel, sleepy after a full day. The boys fall asleep quickly again, ready to do it all again the next day.

[themelancholyhill]

Thank you for sharing such a personal story regarding your illness. I think almost everyone could relate, regardless if our depression actually gives us physical symptoms. I know that for me, when I am in a depressive state, my entire body feels it. It doesn't feel numb, but it feels like all of my life source has been sucked out of me, and I am unable to do minor day to day tasks. Even without the advice of a healthcare professional, it is always a good idea to step away from something that causes you so much stress. I am saying all this to show solidarity, not to invalidate how you feel. I know we've only been talking like this for a while, but I do care about how you're doing. I hope you take good care of yourself, knowing what your triggers are is half the battle. There are definitely people that are only meant to be in our lives for a little while. I've come to terms with the fact that people come and go, and that as attached as I am with some of them, it doesn't mean the outcome would change. And that what's important is the enjoyment of knowing them when they still know you. I agree with your friend, that not everything in life can be explained. I also believe that not everything has a word complex enough to explain it. Just because you can't explain it doesn't disprove how you feel, or the fact that something happened, and in your case, a deep connection. I think I am a lot like you with friendships, us water signs feel things very intensely, and not everyone can meet us at our emotional level. I can imagine how you must be feeling right now, and I am aching right alongside you. I carry you in my thoughts, always.

Is your friend Aries too? So is mine. What is with these Aries men? Today, he wanted me to do a drawing for him for his social media account. I told him drawing is not my strong suit and that I'm much better with words and asked if he would like a poem instead. He said that the last time I wrote a poem for him I told him I never wanted to do it again. I explained that last time was a commission and that I don't consider this time to be a commission. He then said, jokingly, that he won't talk to me until I draw him a picture. My gut reaction was that two can play this game, but I am 100% serious. I do not like playing mind games with people, I consider it a waste of my time. Mind games are for people who want to mess around with other people, like how a cat messes with a mouse before it kills it. I do not play around and I do not like to be played. And even though he said it as a joke, and I am reacting to it as a joke too, a part of me is frustrated and annoyed. I replied to him after what he said with a joke and all he sent back was 🤫. I feel like we just patched things up recently, I really don't want to deal with more headaches with him. He knows I am not a good graphic artist, and him withholding friendship in order to gain something for his social media account leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I will actually enjoy this break from him. I don't like playing mind games, because I always win. ✖️

"My life source has been sucked out of me," I chose to open this reply by what you said because I can 100% relate to it. I've been feeling downright terrible these past couple of weeks and it feels like my body is about to collapse at any given moment. I haven't had a relapse in years, but I know that it'll pass as I stay away from what triggers my anxiety and stress. I'm not saying that he's causing me stress, but it's best to just let him go, and he's helping me with this by being this distant—I swear, he never stops to amaze me in a way.

Temporary people are part of life, but it hits hard when you meet wonderful people whom you think they'll stay for the long run, but they'll end up being just temporary. I just have to get used to his absence the same way I got used to having him around. It'll will take time, but part of healing is admitting that you need to move on, right?

As of now, I feel empty due to the feeling that something is missing, but it'll lessen with time. I guess this is what it takes to be a water sign—we feel things too much and too deeply.

Let's open a bracket for a sec. I have a friend, let's call her Ava to make it easier. Ava got dumped by her boyfriend because she told him that she suffers from chronic depression. But what baffles me is the way he went around to dump her. He went to Ava's friend and told her that he's dumping Ava just because he didn't want to hurt her! She's also a water sign btw. All that to say that some guys nowadays are not mature enough to face certain relationship situations—be it romantic or platonic. I sense that this is what happened with my friend, but I'm not sure and I don't wanna jump to conclusions.

Which brings me, he's Taurus and so an earth sign. I don't know much about it, but from what I gathered, based on our interactions, he's rather confusing and complicated. He seems like an introvert because he's shy and sensitive, but he also likes to hang out with his friends. His reactions are unpredictable and they never failed to confuse me.

As for your friend, I see that he's not that mature himself as least when it comes to his approach to certain situations. Distancing yourself is a good idea, and I think that this is what I had to do with my friend. But again, I guess we have to take things with a grain of salt, including people we deal with, while making sure that we're not taking advantage of. Sounds sad, but oh well 🤷🏻‍♀️

I can't thank you enough for all the support; it makes me feel less lonely.

[rayne-storm]

AUgust 6 - Gaming

Title: MOON QUEEN

Fandom: Hyperdrive

As always, Hyperdrive belongs to my beautiful and talented BFF @rad-infiniitum / @starburnedfarrago

This was just super fun to write, and although the logistics as presented are just absolutely whack, I hope you enjoy!!

She smiled as she hit the buttons with routine familiarity, starting her stream. She smiled gently as she addressed her followers and her little intro video played.

There was her channel name: STELLA-PY , and the letters rearranged themselves to some bubbly synth music to: LETS-PLAY and faded out to reveal the title card for the game that she was tackling today.

"Good afternoon, guys! It's me, Stella-Py!"

"Py" in this case was pronounced "Pie," and the comments she had received about the similarity mixed with her heavier frame were old news long ago. She kept herself in a small frame at the corner of the video, just because she knew she tended to make silly faces playing spookier games, and if anyone really got a sense of her size from that, she applauded their eye for detail. Any hate got pretty quickly removed from the chat thanks to a friend who maintained it, and her lovely (if few) fans.

"Today, we're doing something new and short, while I recover from the awful, awful fetus monster. This is one you guys have been telling me to try!"

She pulled up the application on her computer, and a solid wall of blue illuminated her screen. From the wall, white letters in a vintage font appeared one by one to reveal:

"QUEST FOR THE MOON QUEEN"

Stella smiled and let the elegant chiptunes that came after the letter play for a moment before starting to speak again.

"That's right, folks! Quest For The Moon Queen was published seven years ago to itch.io by an anonymous, indie developer that only called themself 'BL00 SCR33N.' It's remained relatively obscure since then, which is a shame because it looks so cute! From what I've seen, this is an adventure game where the player is this adorable little knight, trying to rescue and woo the titular Moon Queen. I'm super excited to get into it, and please make sure to put asterisks before any spoilers to hide them!"

She paused to let the chat catch up, answering a couple of questions about her day, how the baby cow was doing, and when she would do a baby cow reveal (the poll for the baby cow name was still going, Moomin being the leader by far). The chat satisfied, she hit ENTER on her keyboard, and the screen slowly darkened.

First came a little tutorial.

There was a little blue knight in front of a white screen, and little floating text walked the player through the various movements they could do. It was relatively simple, arrow keys to move, space to jump, and a couple of keys or mouse clicks to shoot a little spark.

After the tutorial came an adorable side-scrolling adventure where the little blue knight jumped over hurdles and shot sparks at bees and little black boomerang-like shapes.

Three levels of slightly increasing difficulty later, there was a boss fight.

The boss was labeled "THE DICTATOR" and a chiptune-version of ABBA's "Voulez-Vous?" played. The knight grew a little taller, and was faced suddenly by a giant black tarantula with a hundred glowing red eyes.

The sparks were ineffective, and Stella began to panic when she noticed a small sword icon. Interacting with that froze the boss and brought up an option screen:

"CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON"

MY STRENGTH

MY SPIRIT

Well, wasn't that unique?? Stella immediately chose to fight with "SPIRIT" and the scene dissolved into a cute little cutscene.

The little knight stood before THE DICTATOR, trembling only slightly in the presence of the fierce enemy.

"I must go!" The knight proclaimed in chiming little chirps

"But why?? You have served me loyally all this time!"

"I must find my own path, and you must care for your fallen kingdom."

The scene dissolved again, and the spider rolled over, defeated.

Stella felt there was more to the story, but could only really comment on how sweet that was.

"This is such a cute little game! You guys are the best, and if anyone has any idea how to get in contact with the person who developed this, please let them know that I love it so much!!"

The next levels were water-themed (of course), leading up to a new boss fight:

THE EXILE.

This boss was a massive squid, with pink tendrils that acted as hair. The blue Knight's sparks again were ineffective, and again Stella was presented a choice:

THE EXILE HAS REPLACED YOU. CHOOSE YOUR REACTION:

COMPASSION

CRUELTY

Stella again went for the softer route, and again, the screen dissolved.

Surprisingly, the squid-like creature shrunk to being smaller even than the Blue Knight.

"I am afraid, Knight."

"Why are you afraid? You have everything you could ever want, now."

"Because I am so small, and this world is so big."

The knight knelt and gently hugged the little creature.

"Take heart, EXILE, for there are many large things, but there is only one of you. Develop your skills, grow your talents, and the world will bend for you."

The EXILE bobbed happily, nodding.

"Thank you Knight! Good luck on your journey!!"

The EXILE swam away, and the Knight progressed.

So it went, with such bosses as:

THE CORINTHIAN, an eagle dressed like a glam-rocker, who the Knight could either PLUCK or APPLAUD. Applause led to the Knight clapping and giving the creature a CD to sing along to.

a giant troll THE BEAST that offered a stealth option to SNEAK around or SLAY.

THE PRETENDER, a shadowy silhouette of a woman, and the Knight could choose KILL or KINDNESS. Kindness led to the Knight patting the shadow on the back, and with each little pat more of the sprite filled in until the shadow became a dark-skinned woman in a space suit.

Finally, about two hours of play later, the knight was jumping on clouds and was faced with the final boss:

THE DEMON.

This boss was a massive metal insectoid, and Stella waited for the choice to appear, but a minute of waiting led to her health being knocked down halfway, and a message popping up:

NOT EVERY BATTLE HAS A SOLUTION. DRAW YOUR SWORD AND FIGHT.

That felt… wrong.

The chat was exploding to fight back as the monster hit the Knight, but she just couldn't.

Tears in her eyes, she removed her hands from the keyboard.

The health bar was knocked down to zero.

NOT EVERY BATTLE CAN BE WON the screen proclaimed, as it began to fade.

Suddenly, a shower of pink and green lights fluttered down.

The chat began to go crazy. This, it seemed, had never been discovered before. Everyone always fought the monster, and gained a trite little victory screen, the little Blue Knight doing a little dance.

This was something completely new.

NOT EVERY BATTLE CAN BE WON.

BUT SOMETIMES LOSING YOURSELF ALLOWS ANOTHER TO LIVE.

The metal shell of the boss began to melt, and out floated a beautiful woman, pale-skinned with pink and green hair, and nearly translucent green wings that shimmered and glowed.

She floated down to the body of the little fallen Knight and kissed his head. The knight slowly stood.

"Thank you, Blue Knight, for your compassion. Thank you for setting me free. You do not have to hide yourself any longer."

The armor melted away from the knight, and an adorable little creature with blue skin, long ears, and yellow eyes remained.

The descriptions of the characters changed. The Blue Knight became THE REGRETFUL SOUL, and what once was THE DEMON became…

THE MOON QUEEN.

"Thank you, my lady," the REGRETFUL SOUL chirped, and they took each other's hands.

The MOON QUEEN scooped up the little creature, and began to fly up the screen with him. As they reached the top, they turned and faced the screen.

THANK YOU, PLAYER, FOR ABSOLVING OUR GUILT AND SETTING US FREE.

The screen faded to black, and Stella initially thought it had completely ended. She was about to exit out of the program (still sobbing), when a little message slowly flowed up from the bottom:

TO LUNA.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

-NEIL

Stella couldn't help crying harder, and blubbered out her closing spiel. The chat still kept going absolutely crazy, some claiming that this was a hacked copy of the game, or that they totally knew about the secret ending. Suddenly a new kind of message began exploding:

The game was gone.

It wasn't on itch.io, or any other site that the chat could find.

What in the world…?

Stella figured that she would deal with the implications of that later, saying goodbye and logging out of her stream.

She gave herself a few more minutes to cry before she heard the soft ping of a new email.

She sighed and opened it, ready to be assaulted by some kind of anger (per usual when she streamed), and was surprised to see the sender was going by "BL00 SCR33N."

She opened the message, and it simply read:

"You saved the knight and the Moon Queen. Congratulations. Want to meet up?"

After that was a phone number.

This was a terrible idea.

She called.

[funesgoal]

Undercover | Will Halstead (part 2)

Pairing: Will Halstead x Ruzek!reader

Word count: 1,777

Summary: Y/N is Adam Ruzek's sister but she is also very good at being undercover. Her aptitudes are very good for a cop, except she isn't one. One night she chooses the erroneous target and everything starts to go wrong.

Warnings: none.

Part 1

The Chicago police intelligence unit used to catch every criminal that it set out to catch. The other officers thought it was easy, but they never saw the work before the arrest. Searching for information, gathering facts, talking to informants. None of the superiors took into consideration their hard work, which was not done alone. Each and every one of the detectives in charge of Sergeant Voight put in their greatest effort to make the teamwork pay off.

But on this particular day, Detective Jay Halstead could not concentrate. His phone kept vibrating in his pants pocket, and that was something everyone had noticed.

"Halstead, are you with us?" Voight's gaze settled on him.

"Of course, sergeant."

"Well, tell that to your cell phone."

The boy's face turned red instantly because of the embarrassment he felt about being exposed by the boss, in front of all his buddies. He took out his smartphone and hid it under his desk, ready to kill the one who kept calling.

He was surprised to see that it was his brother Will.

«Stop bothering» He wrote the text as fast as he could and sent it. He immediately got a response.

«We need to talk. NOW. »

Millions of ideas crossed his mind about what might be happening and none of them was good. It could be his father. Will wouldn't bother him if it wasn't something important. He knew very well that he was at his workplace.

His thoughts must have been transferred to his face because when he raised his head, everyone, in the room was looking at him.

"Jay, do you need to go outside?" This time Voight wasn't being ironic, he was being supportive. The ex-soldier nodded to go somewhere away from the rest. "Thank you, sergeant" he said.

Once alone, he started calling.

"Will" his voice came out like a sigh as soon as his brother answered the call, "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I don't know" he answered. Jay didn't know how to interpret his tone of voice. "I'm so angry, how could I be so stupid!"

"Wait, wait" he tried to calm him down. "What are you talking about?"

The man on the other end of the line kept yelling things the detective couldn't understand. He asked him to calm down, one more time. "I have to tell you everything."

"It's all right."

"I've been robbed" there was a deep silence on the call. "Not on the street, not in the hospital. In my house. By a girl I met in a club."

Jay rolled his eyes. "I really can't believe you called me to talk about this. Report the lost property and get over it. It'll give you experience."

"You don't get it. It wasn't just a robbery. It was all planned, Jay. She injected me with some kind of substance to put me to sleep. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. She's turned the whole department upside down."

The detective didn't even let him finish. "It's okay. We're working on a case now but when you finish your shift at the hospital come down to the station so we can try to reconstruct his face and get an arrest warrant. Are you happy with that?"

"I don't know" Will finished the call and of course he wasn't happy with his brother's response. Meanwhile, he went back to Voight and the rest of the team.

Erin Lindsey was standing in front of the board. The images that were on it had been taped there a few minutes ago. "Julio Mamani. He belongs to the Latin Gods. We've seen him and his people before, but they had always gone unnoticed. They've cooperated with the police a few times." She said, pointing to the man in the first photo.

She stepped forward and pointed to the next photo. "Andrés Rivera. He has worked with the Latin Gods, but he separated from them in 2016. Our informants say Mamani and Rivera had fought and Mamani forced him out of Chicago. But one of Antonio's informants claims she's seen him come back."

"Do you trust her, Antonio?" Hank asked the dark-haired detective.

He nodded. "She's never lied to me. Her information has always been true."

"The question is, why is Rivera back right now?" continued Erin, trying to develop the information as clearly as possible. "If he left almost without a fight before, what's so important that he came back to face Mamani?"

Adam Ruzek stepped forward so that he could ask. "And why do we think Rivera came back for Mamani? I mean, maybe he forgot something the last time he was in Chicago."

"We know from this" She pointed to a picture with very low quality. The first thing you saw at first glance was the pixels. You could see that it was a cargo truck. The second thing you could see was the kilos of cocaine that the members of Latin Gods were taking out of the truck. "This image was obtained by Mouse from the security camera of a nearby pharmacy. All this cocaine, we could count at least 20 kilos, belonged to Rivera. He's been smuggling it into Chicago's Mamani areas for at least three years."

"We think Rivera's back to take down Mamani" Antonio stood up and joined Erin. "We're not sure, as I said, it's a theory."

Olinsky, from his hidden desk, made an important point. "And if Rivera ends up with Mamani, a gang fight will break out."

"Exactly" Erin finished. "And we can't let that happen."

Hank Voight nodded. He stood up, ready to give the orders.

"Halstead and Lindsay, find out everything you can about Rivera. I want to know every step he's taken in the last four years" the sergeant pointed them out. Then he turned to Ruzek and Atwater. "You two concentrate on Mamani. Find out about the places he usually hangs out. If Rivera goes looking for him, he'll probably do the same. Al, come with me."

Sergeant Platt appeared in the room accompanied by a red-haired man. He was wearing medical clothing and his face was unsettled.

"Halstead, your brother is here," said the woman, then she turned and walked out.

"Yes, thank you, sergeant."

Will Halstead joined his brother. He welcomed him with a smile, mocking him. "So... How are you?"

"Stop mocking me, Jay. I'm telling you, I'm serious. "

They weren't alone in the room. Erin Lindsey and Kevin Atwater were with the brothers. They both said hello, curious to know what was going on. It was the woman who asked first. Jay went ahead and answered.

"My brother had a problem with a girl."

"It wasn't my problem!"

"Atwater, how many girls you meet in bars do you take home?"

He didn't want to answer, but he didn't have time because Will beat him to it.

"I met this girl at a club, we had a couple of drinks and went to my apartment. I woke up today with the whole place a mess and no credit cards. I took a blood test" he pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. "She injected me with midazolam."

"That's what you get for wanting to take every woman you see to the bed" he went back to bother him. "Kevin, could you help us make a portrait of her?"

Atwater nodded and got on with it. Erin took her notebook. "Tell us everything you remember about her."

"She was blonde, long hair, brown eyes. She must have been in her twenties, twenty-two. She was British. She said she arrived in Chicago just yesterday."

The woman was writing while the man was drawing on the tablet. Jay looked at him to ask him a question. "Did she tell you her name? Anything about where she was staying?"

Will snorted. He put his hands to his head, slowly denying. "She told me to call her «Agatha Christie» "

Then Jay and Kevin broke up in a fit of laughter. So much that Atwater had to put the tablet down to keep it from slipping out of his hands. Lindsey didn't copy them, though. "Come on, Erin. Don't pretend you're not amused."

"I am not really," she said, rereading her notes over and over again. "She just got to Chicago and the first thing she does is go to a club and make out with a guy?"

"That may not be your type, Erin, but hers is."

The woman bit her lower lip. She shook her head. "No, all of this is odd to me."

Atwater got in the way. "What do you think? Looked like her?" He showed him what the picture looked like. Will pointed out a couple of details and after the corrections, the man was sure of the picture.

"Yes, it looks like her" he suddenly seemed to remember something. He put his hand in one pocket and tried to find something, but without success, and then he went back to the other one.

Ruzek entered the room. He had a folder full of papers and looked ecstatic. "Hey, you won't believe what Mouse and I... Oh, hi, Will!" He walked over to the others and handed out different papers to the three detectives. "Well, what Mouse and I discovered. Every Friday night Mamani and a good number of the Latin Gods go to the West Meigs Casino. Apparently, they frequent certain prostitutes, one of whom is an informant for Antonio, which would serve as a starting point for us to go undercover."

"Great job, Ruzek" Kevin congratulated him.

"Wait, I haven't said the hard part yet. Mamani will be in a special room at the casino. The police could ask for a warrant, but, obviously, the Latin Gods wouldn't go if we did that. So, Mouse is trying to get away in and-What... How...Where did you get that, Will?"

Ruzek pointed to his right hand. The surgeon raised it in the air, showing what was in it.

"The girl left it at my house. She probably dropped it while she was putting away the money she stole from me."

"What are you talking about?" He said, but then he left his question behind. "You know what, never mind. That's a ticket to Room 11! Where Mamani will be!" the excitement was in the man's voice. "I have no idea how you got it, but now we just have to make enough copies. I'll go tell Mouse to do it. You're a genius, Will!"

Erin took one look at Jay. "You still think she had nothing to do with it?"

[soldierallen]

Married. 10

X

Warnings: a mention of "ending it all", some crying, a kissing, a big Decision.

Featuring: Evangeline Lilly, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Henry Cavill. (Also my wifi has been out and I wasn't able to post :( so you will get another chapter this week!)

Part 9:

It's been two weeks since that day at my house, time flies when your life is getting miserable.

These two men have carried me through storm after storm breakup after breakup, I owe them I have to choose between them I can't just sit here and make up in the air decisions - "ms, line 2 for you" her thoughts scattering quickly answering the phone

"Creative director's office y/n speaking who am I speaking with" she said very professionally

"Why aren't you answering my calls?"

Mom. Oh shit

"Mom I could explain, I've been in a really bad situation and I don't know what to do.." she said she wanted the pity because well she didn't want to argue with her mother so why not make her feel bad about it.

"Honey what's going on are you coming to Thanksgiving in a few days?"

"I am but, I have a problem the whole sebastian henry thing is getting out of control, I don't know who to take with me and- I can't come alone you know that" she felt her sigh at the other end of the line which made y/n roll her eyes "who do you love? That's all this comes down this sweetheart."

"It's not that simple" a women walked in putting files on the table walking out,

"Oh and you're brother is actually coming this year" .. did I ever mention I had a brother? Probably not but my brother hated all of my friends which were the four men I care about the most he told me it was "stupid" and "childish" to have a group of boys as my friends and then I proceeded to tell him to fuck himself, that became a really good argument for my dad to break up.

He was the golden son, nothing he ever did was wrong never got in trouble always did the right thing went to college got married and raised his kids and he has a goody two shoes life style unlike me, I live in New York city in an apartment complex that used to live paycheck to paycheck to get through the weeks, he never had it hard.

I drive and go to work live alone and only have men as my best friends, everyone thought I was gay for a while until I was with Tom they stopped questioning me.

"Oh great is he gonna rub in my face that hes better than me? Most likely. love you mom"

"I love you to, just remember whoever you bring better be the one." they hung up, what did she mean by that? The one?. Like.. the one I marry someday.

○○○○

"Hey stop doing that" my mother yelled at my brother Steven "why does she have to bring her stupid friends over to the house?!" Her brother was angry that she was having them sleep over and he wasn't allowed to have his friends sleep over tonight

"I can't have a group of 7 boys plus my son in the mix, she has four friends that are boys you have four friends that are boys you have to live with it!" She said "shes a GIRL, girls aren't suppose to have friends that are BOYS!" he was only two years older than y/n at the time which made him 15 & her and her friends 13

"Girls could be friends with boys!" She said

"No they can't they're only friends with you because they want to get in your pants!"

"Steven Michael Y/L/N go to your room you're grounded" he stomped his feet into the ground going up the stairs saying swearing words underneath his breath

"do you think that's true.." she sat at the bar stool waiting for her friends to arrive she was kinda weirded out and never thought about it like that.

"Honey, I don't think that I think your brother is jealous that you have better brothers than he'll ever be to you" she whispered.

○○○○

She sat at her desk trying to figure out who she was going to bring.

"God just give me a sign or a billboard or a brick though this glass window"

A knock on her door startled her she got up, a warm smile greeted her it was sebastian "hey, I'm having a party tomorrow and you should come.." he smiled "a party?" She left from behind her desk coming closer to him

"Yes the new house and everything so you should come" he said "did you come all the way from the other side of town to tell me you wanted me at your party?" She laughed

"Yeah kinda" he nervously laughed and she put her hand on his shoulder "I'll be there" "good I want you there and everybody else."

Was this faith trying to tell me something, when I asked for answers I got sebastian at the door was this it..

I told myself I'm tired of loving someone who doesn't even want to try and than he shows up my heart beats fast and my stomach twists

"I'll see you tomorrow at 8?" She nodded "hey where are you going?" "Back to work?" "that's a 24 minute drive from here"

"I know" he smiled sleepily and fixed his suit jacket "tomorrow" he pointed at her walking away she shook her head with a smile at his tactics, he was becoming his self again, it was enlightening.

Just then she felt the whole office tense up not really sure why she walked out into the hall watching everyone shift the once talking and joking in the office became...quiet only the noises of mouse clicks and keyboard taps in the air she was very confused at this point, she walked around the office looking for answers she saw her coworker Evangelina "hey what's going on" she whispered "something's going on in Robert's office I think you should...handle it" Evangelina was blunt & she liked that about her, y/n nodded her head and headed towards Downey's office hearing absolute ruckus she knocked on the door no answer, she knocked one more time.. nothing she knocked again and with a word "mr Downey it's me I'm coming in" when she walked in papers everywhere, a whiskey glass shattered into millions of pieces.

"Mr Downey what's going on"

"We lost the investment" he yelled, she never heard him yell like that and not at her at least, "huh?"

"You know that company stock we did last week? Mr Daddario told us to specifically not to do!" She nodded her head "well was lost it and y/n if it wasn't for you this wouldn't of happened!" He yelled "excuse me?" She was baffled, why would he blame this on her she only fixed the designs and had nothing to do with the money or any other way this place operates.

"You told me not to fire you the day he called and I should've" his words felt like slashes to the back "I lost one of the biggest- most important people to this company on a count of you! Because you were having trouble with the bosses daugther"

"All I asked for was for you not to fire me on a count of his daugther!, mr Downey I've never asked for this and for you to hang this over my head that you did me a favor" He rubbed his face in complete anger he put back on his glasses and folded his arms over his chest leaning against his desk

"I want you gone by tomorrow"

Her heart dropped, her hands started to shake and she felt her breathing hitch

"I want you gone by tomorrow you're fired, that pretty little office of yours will go to someone who actually deserves it." She didn't even know what to say or how to resolve this.

"Well I don't work for you anymore so this was long awaited, you are a TOOL ROBERT! You do nothing for this company you sit on your ass and make everyone do the work for you, you're ungrateful and deserve nothing lets see how good you do without me." And with that she left the whole office and down stairs office heard the entire thing, "Evangelina" she said she threw her creative director badge around her neck she caught it "have fun working with that lunatic." She went inside of her office grabbing a couple things, she opened her top draw with the key and there was two letters she never wanted to open because she was too content with the life she had,

The Times, had contacted her back when she applied months ago and she was so content she didn't open the letter that came only a week ago.

People's Maginze as well, the only problem with people's was she would have to move across country for that she didn't know if she could handle that

she came home and took a bath her eyes swollen from crying she never knew what to do with her anger she just got so mad she would cry.

She heard the door being unlocked and she drank her wine in the bath "whoever it is can you get me my towel from in my room because honestly I wasn't expecting any guests!" She yelled out, she heard a small chuckle and paper bags fall onto the table "you know any other person would've been startled that someone could walk in at any moment" "well if it wasn't you or Henry or Sebastian or Anthony, I guess I would be dead" she drank her wine and Chris walked in with a blue long towel she put down her glass she motioned for him to turn around and that he did and she got out wrapping herself in a towel she drained the water

"Jenn will be here soon" he announced

"I got fired today"

He whipped around "you're kidding?" Chris said he gave her a comforting hug and let go

"Nope," she sipped her drink "Downey fired me on a count of the daddarios just like I said" she walked out the bathroom him following her right behind "that imbecil, I always hated that guy he's always been too big for his britches" Chris was never one to get mad unless he saw the people he cared about hurt, "I told you what was going to happen what am I gonna do now!" she opened her draws as

"You still have that Times Letter, open it." He said

"What if I get REJECTED I can't handle that OH AND EVEN BETTER Steven is coming to Thanksgiving!"

Chris sat on her door frame he opened his mouth to talk when she cut him off

" I have to choose between Henry and sebastian! I don't want to END IT ALL today!" She grabbed underwear and just when Chris was about to talk again she cut him off one more time

"AND TO THINK THINGS WERE JUST GETTING BETTER AND AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS" she used her hands to talk waving her underwear all around making Chris laugh he stopped her failing arms "stop throwing your underwear all over the place and get dressed come in the living room & let's work this out." She laughed with a smile "thank you for being here for me" "always" he booped her nose which made her laugh instantly, An hour had passed the three hung out drank and they went home.

--

It was the night of sebastian's party, she didn't know how to dress for it so she did what any women would do wear a dress there's no going wrong with wearing a dress...

"I'm glad you made it" sebastian smiled kissing her cheek giving her butterflies, he felt them to, but this time y/n butterflies didn't feel the same like they always have when he did small things like that it felt - wrong.

"Anything for you" he held her hand inside his house filled with a crowd of people he introduced her to some coworkers and a few of his friends, and he lead her outside she looked out into his backyard it looked almost exactly like his parents backyard the pool was shaped the same and his pool floaties were of weird things like a unicorn and a banana it was strange.

Two lawn chairs sat out by the pool it was dark, the moon was just perfectly bright the pool was warm and it just seemed... perfect

"What are we doing out here" she asked moving her hair out of her eyes "this is something you've never seen before I made this backyard look like my parents backyard, this is the place I always come to in my head when I need a moment, I know things for you aren't so great" they sat down on the grass,and she picked at the grown slightly listening to him talk

"But I want you to know this is a safe place, no arguing fighting or anything if you ever need some place to go this is the backyard you lost your virginity in" he smirked "you caught me?" She didn't even know he knew about that

"Of course I caught you, one minute your nagging me about smoking and drinking - which after that night I stopped for three years" he tipped his head to her and she smiled showing off her teeth which made him smile "to the next minute I come back in my backyard to see you having sex with some guy"

"Charlie watts" she added

"The kid who dressed up like harry potter that night?" She nodded her head drinking the sour red liquid in her cup, "I can't beileve you lost it to him" "what did you want me to lose it to you? You aren't interested and you made that very clear" she put the cup down "I would've wanted it to be one of the four" she was very confused "all of us love you, having you lose it to someone who really loves and cares about you would've made it that much better"

"So did you all think that way?" "No I was the only one who said it" Sebastian said "Well I never told anyone and he didn't either but I lost my lip virginity to Chris actually" she laughed "you're kidding" he laughed loudly, it was just the two of them in that moment nobody inside that house music was loud but it wasn't loud enough for her to notice.

"Oh I can't wait to bug him about that!"

"I promised I wouldn't tell!" "Well you told!" Sebastian saw y/n's phone on the lawn chair next to her car keys and the only thought in his mind... push her in the pool

"How much you like that dress you're wearing?" He asked, she wasn't waiting for that at all

"it's nice I guess I didn't know how to dress to this thing I mean honestly I didn't even think I would've came because of whole getting fired -" as she spoke she wasn't realizing what was happening as sebastian pushed her into the pool she fell in with a laugh "you know you were always a little bitch" she said wiping her eyes and pushing her hair out of face "yeah people have told me that" he peeled his shirt off his body and took his shoes off and jumped in to making the water splash on her "couldn't you just ASK me to get in the pool you know I would've" she swam closer to him he pushed his hair back his lips dripping with water as he spoke "y/n I want you to have fun, you never have fun anymore it's always work, it never got you anywhere I want you to feel something" he got closer to her as well "what am I suppose to feel" she asked

"happiness, love. that's what you deserve" his face got closer to hers, she was ready for this to be the first time her lips were on his, his wet face dripped onto her skin "if you don't want this stop me."

In a slow whisper "I want this"she said their lips touched together so lightly it felt like heaven to him his hands were on her hips she was leaned against the wall of pool, it felt as if their lips matched a perfect rhythm, finally

He detached his lips from hers, his lips on her neck making a small red blotch this was what she waited for, and it felt... Wrong, like she had been betraying henry. her hand on his skin felt so new to him he'd never felt like this before it was so amazing finally after months having her in his arms kissing her loving her the way she should be loved.

She didn't love him, she loved Henry. The kiss didn't really feel the way she wanted it to be.

Sebastian heard the glass door opening, she didn't, he didn't really care who it was to be completely honest he's got the girl.

"I see you two have forgiven each other, I thought it was take some time but a week?" The voice she knew all too well, a voice she heard for months on end giving her support sounded so hurt and upset, she knew she fucked up.

"Henry" she pulled away from sebastian, Henry is right here, he looked like he was getting choked up she saw it in his eyes she tried to quickly get herself out of the pool and he turned around walking back to the glass doors, "Henry wait" she yelled her soaking wet body following him

he knew she wasn't going to pick him Chris and Jenn gave him false hope again, he thought he could catch sebastian in the act kissing another women and to start something when he got a bit closer revealing it was her this whole time, he was crushed.

She kept yelling after him he wouldn't answer he wasn't mad or angry he was trying to hold back his hurt.

she followed him onto the porch "Henry" after her fourth yell of his name he turned around, the sound of party loud she closed the door behind her hearing muffled noise. "you love him, you'll never love me the way you love him and I just have to except it and all these months I finally thought shes done with him and this is my chance i got the girl" he said he stopped half way looking at her dripping everywhere she walked down the stairs

"Yeah however I needed to know what i wanted, who I wanted."

"And you've made your choice I get it." he opened the door to his car about to get in

"I did, henry it's you." He stopped his movements looking at her through the window of the door he shut the door loudly walking closer to her, as she looked at him getting closer

"Don't say things like that when am in a time of hurt, I'm losing you - you can't just say things like that I care about you and I put you before everyone else." His voice was slow and sounded so hurt

"tonight I made my decision, Henry since this whole time I thought it's always been him I never truly loved him and now I know I needed this one night of reassurance that it was over, and I love someone else it's you it's always been you" he hesitated what he was about to do watching him kiss her he didn't feel right kissing her however it was something that had to be done he pulled in her soaking wet body into his, his white t shirt making an imprint of her body, she kissed him with so much passion she thought she would explode,

Sebastian said he wants her to feel happiness, love. she didn't feel that with him, she didnt feel anything with him it was so anticlimactic she thought this will be my choice I'll be with Sebastian like I've always wanted he will be with me and we're gonna spend the rest of our lives together when in reality.. the fire was dead and the feeling was lost maybe he felt something she didn't not anymore.

"Let's get you out of these clothes" he said out of breath, "my phone and keys are at the pool" he nodded "hurry" he pulled her forearm towards himself giving her one more kiss She had a few seconds to herself and shes never been more happy.

She saw sebastian drying himself off talking to some friends of his, it didn't even faze her she didn't want him anymore "hey" he said pulling her to the side for a second, "I heard everything" she nodded her head "you guys look great together I'm really sorry that I almost ruined it for you both" she hugged him "thank you" he squeezed her body tightly "go get him" he let go of her, he didn't want to let go of her and let her end up with Henry however she was happy and it's what she wanted that's all he wanted for her. She went and got her keys her phone

she looked at Henry through the driver's seat window opening the door he was just sitting there, he gave a small smile when she appeared "hey what's wrong" she rubbed his arm with worried eyes

"Nothing, not anymore." he kissed her lips once more she felt her stomach twist "I'll follow you home" he nodded, after a while they got to her apartment and she changed and gave Henry his blue hoodie he left here a few days ago she straddled his lap her hands on his shoulders his hands on her waist studying her weight he kissed her lovingly her hands ran through his hair and he loved the feeling he let out small moan which she wasn't expecting and she let go "you have a hair thing"

"I have a y/n thing" she laughed so hard she fell over to the side, he's so cheesy she thought. making him smile holding her body in place so she doesn't fall off the couch,

he's a one of a kind.

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