#if i had two nickels for the times my drawings inspired writing i would have exactly 2

[a-s-levynn]

Hey Lev. So this picture of Tiny II inspired me to write you a little something. I just started writing. And i hope you like it. If you don’t that’s totally alright. And you don’t have to react to this at all.

But i really do hope you think it’s ok to write something for your art. I’m nervous. But i won’t do it Anon. So here we go.

Tiny Token go on an adventure.

Or how Tiny III had a stupid idea and everyone went with it!

Tiny Vessel was looking around. They thought it would be fun. They thought it was a good idea. Yeah, not really. Like who would think riding on a lake in a can of red bull wouldn‘t work out.

Ok he himself thought it looked ridiculous, wouldn‘t work at all, but it worked.

Tiny III really really wanted to do something fun. Wanted to enjoy the sunny day. He was giddy and excited to do something else. Tiny IV even baked cookies for them, they took one big cookie with them and thought it would be enough. They found 2 empty Red Bull cans cut in half and tied them together and out they went. It was way too much work for this, but they just had too. Everyone had his little can part and they thought it would work out!

But what did they forget? What was lying at the shore? The paddles!!!! Sure they had his tiny sword and Tiny IIs drumsticks, he wouldn‘t leave the house without them, but what can you do with those? Eat them? Haha, he absolutely would. No. But for paddling they were too thin.

So Tiny II was drumming at the side of the can and tried to remain calm. He didn't want to go in the first place. He has work to do. He was planning and imagining a new rhythm. He had to find the perfect bridge to the next part of Tiny Vessels newest creation. But now he was hanging over the edge of a stupid can boat and was floating around. Not what he was hoping for, when he woke up in the morning. Everything smelled like Red Bull. He forgot to drink one in the morning, his mood wasn’t the best.

Tiny III was still enjoying the ride and Tiny IV was just hanging on every enthusiastic word, which tumbled out his mouth. Tiny III was looking for fish and tried to get to the leaves floating around. He even threw some cookie crumbs in the water. Tiny IV tried to hold him, so he wouldn't fall down into the lake. His height wasn‘t helping in this short can and it couldn‘t be long, until he would fall into the water. But wasn’t he the cutest in his enthusiasm. Tiny IV would go with him wherever he wished.

Tiny Vessel was searching for something to paddle with, maybe they would find something on the water or they were lucky enough and the wind or even the tiny waves would bring them back to shore.

Oh, he really has to learn to not go with every idea Tiny III will present him with. But those puppy dog eyes were too much for him.

He tried to use his sword to paddle, but it was too thin. He couldn‘t get enough momentum to drag them around. He was slicing through the water and trying to find a solution, when he recognized something dark in the water. Probably a shadow from the clouds up in the sky.

Hopefully just the clouds. He tried to bend a little further over the edge of the can, but couldn‘t see anything at the moment. Maybe just his imagination.

Tiny IV and III were palavering about anything and everything and weren‘t even aware of their situation. They were just enjoying the ride and he was the only one being serious and concerned. Tiny II was still mumbling in his furious state, about stupid friends and stupid ideas, but he was here with them. They were together.

Vessel felt something under them, like something touched the can, slithered around it. Not really hard, but since he was tuned in on their situation, he felt it.

„Hey guys, please be quiet for a moment!“ No one was listening. „Guys, please, i think i felt something.“ Tiny III stopped bickering with Tiny IV, they turned around, looked at their friend and waited. Tiny II was still drumming. „Please, stop the drumming!“ Tiny III and IV were making hush noises and were even louder than the drumming. Tiny Vessel rolled his eyes, how had he deserved this. He loved them dearly, but that was too much. „Everyone, shut up!“

Oh, that was too harsh and loud. The boop came again. „Did you feel it?“ The Others were looking at him with big round eyes. „Ye.. Yeah!“ Tiny IV stuttered. „What was that?“ „I don‘t know. At first I thought the darkness I saw in the water was the shadow of a cloud.“ Tiny Vess whispered. „But now, i‘m really not sure at all.“

Everyone was looking down into the water, they were just poking their noses over the edges and tried to see it. But there wasn‘t anything to see. They were very concentrated and it was so quiet. They tried to breathe very slowly, so no one was making any noise.

The wind was picking up and the cans started rocking a little. This wasn‘t going as well as planned. The clouds were building up and the waves got bigger. Tiny IV was feeling really anxious and slid down to the bottom of his can. Tiny Vessel and Tiny II were looking at each other and their hearts started beating very fast. Tiny III was still looking into the water and what he saw was too much. A big open mouth was coming up through the water. He fell back into his own can and stayed at the bottom. Two down, two to go.

The open mouth broke through the surface and it was the biggest fish they ever saw. The fish jumped over the cans and fell back into the water on the other side. The fin hit the cans and they started rocking from side to side. This rocking in combination with the storm starting to build was too much. Tiny Vessel and Tiny II looked at each other with open mouths and started screaming. Water sloshed in the cans and everyone was getting wet.

What a wonderful day.

The only good part was that the cans started floating in the direction of the shore again. Everyone was hoping that it was enough to reach it.

„Did you guys see this? That was so cool. What a big mouth. This was the biggest one I ever saw. We really need to see it again!“ Tiny III said, while standing up and looking at the water again.

All the Others started shouting : „No, absolutely not!“

Tiny III was flabbergasted. Why not, this was fun!“ Tiny II was astonished. „Fun? There wasn‘t any fun in almost tipping over and drowning, if the cans had broken apart.“

Tiny III looked a little sheepish. He probably didn‘t recognize the danger they were in! What a trip.

Tiny IV stood up and took Tiny III into his arms. He didn‘t let him go for a long time. Just holding him and making sure he wasn‘t hurt. Patting down his lanky friend. Yes arms, where arms should be and legs down at the bottom. Good.

Tiny II smirked up at them and his temper cooled down a little. Tiny Vessel looked at all of them and was happy that he found those perfect little guys.

Ok back to the current situation. They were still not back at the shore, still not back to safety and they didn‘t find something to help them back to the land. Sure the waves the fish caused, were helping them, because they were going in the right direction.

BUT.

Still not there.

They weren‘t able to just lean over the edges and paddle with their hands, the cans were still too high and Tiny Vessel was afraid that the fish would come back. For Tiny III that would be fun and wonderful, but not for the others.

The approaching storm was giving Tiny Vess a good idea. “Hey Tiny II, can I get your jacket? It’s the one with the big hood, right?” “Yes, it is. What do you need it for?” “I just found the solution to our little problem.”

Tiny III and IV were looking at their friend and weren’t sure what he was thinking about.

“Do you want to catch the fish and use it to get to the shore?” Tiny III mused. “I can throw crumbs in the water again!”

“No! Again? Could it be that you really want to see this monster?” Tiny Vessel wasn’t amused.

Tiny II was laughing really hard about that. The picture. It would look so cool. Tiny Vess on top of the cans, holding the jacket at one end and the fish with the other end in his mouth and pulling them to the shore.

Tiny IV looked at him and he knew that his friend had the same idea.

“No, I want to use it as a sail. The wind is picking up and it could work!”

“What about your cloak, why can’t we use this? Why my jacket?”

“I don’t wear anything under it, you at least wear a shirt under your jacket.”

Grumpy Tiny II was mumbling and wasn’t really sure about it, but they needed to get home.

So Tiny Vessel gave one side of the jacket to Tiny III and they held the jacket up together. They are the bigger ones of their tiny group.

And it worked. The wind, almost stormy, started blowing the hood of the jacket up and Tiny IV and II held onto their friends. They gained traction and they almost flew in the direction of the land. They were approaching the shore really really fast. Tiny IV started shouting : “Stop, stop the boat. Lose the jacket or we will crash!” But it was too late. All four of them tumbled out of the cans when the boat crashed on top of some rocks.

They were lucky that the sand and the grass was so soft. One of the lot was laughing so hard, you won’t believe who.

Tiny III thought this was the best adventure they ever had. No one other than him believed it.

But all three would go on such a stupid adventure again, to make their lanky bassist happy.

Oh my gosh what an adventure!

And you know what, it is super brave of you to share your writing, especially when you are at the beginning of the journey! I tip my hat to you because it is absolutely daunting. And there was no way i'm not reacting to this because people need Tiny Adventuers in their lives and this is THE vibe.

The Tinies absolutely would forget their paddles on the shore and would use one of their hoods as sails. 😂 This was a wonderful read i'm so happy you decided to share it! I love this! ♥

And like.. writing a story inspired by visual art is the higest form of praise there is towards it. It is the most humbling but also ego boosting thing that could happen, like.. come on? Of course it is okay. I might cry a bit [meaning:a lot, but from happiness] but y'all don't have to know that.

I don't even know what to say. I'm vibrating since Kate's slasher drabble, and now this? Guys, there is so much emotion my shriveled little brain is able to handle 🫶🏻😭🫂

All that said, this is an accurate representation of me since yesterday:

You guys are for real? You are making fanart of a fanart basically. (which i also did but still) WHAT IS HAPPENING

[thatgreyjedi]

So I saw this template somewhere (I forgot who made it but kudos to them!!) and I thought it was a good thing to reflect on this year’s highlights of AO3!

Turns out, I wrote a lot more than I realized. So in addition, I’d like to draw some special attention to some of the accomplishments my fics achieved in my eyes this year!!

I Bet My Life-

After almost two years (including a 6 month hiatus in 2023, oops) I finally concluded my largest fic to date. I think my favorite moments that I wrote in this story was the interaction between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. When I first started writing the story, I knew I wanted a moment between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that would leave an impact on the narrative of the story and I think the master and apprentice duo meeting in a sort of between-life-and-death world (Kind of like the World between Worlds). I really enjoyed writing this scene because it allowed Obi-Wan to finally overcome his past and move forward on his path of training the future Jedi that will defeat the Sith. I also enjoyed writing the scenes with Reva and Cody because it highlighted their special father-daughter bond that wouldn’t have happened if they never met in the aftermath of Order 66. This fic will always hold a special place in my heart for several reasons, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to bring this emotionally heart-wrenching story with a heartwarming ending to so many people!!!

Dennis and Mac Have a Secret-

So my introduction to this fandom was kind of funny, meaning that I started watching this in order to ease my nerves about my upcoming AP tests (and it paid off because I ended up doing pretty well on them). Well, I ended up loving the show so much that I wrote a fic about it. Although it’s not one of my more successful fics I’ve written, this one holds a special place in my heart. I love how the direction of this story went and it truly showed that even some of the most vulgar, self-centered characters can be changed by one person in their life. For me, it’s a beautiful story of love coming in several different forms all tied together to create a bittersweet ending that is how Mac and Dennis finally get together (I won’t spoil too much, but it gets kind of sad at some points).

Lights Will Guide Us Home-

Similarly to IASIP, I fell head first into the 9-1-1 fandom and immediately became infatuated with it. However, this show has quickly became one of my favorite shows of all time and Buddie has became one of my favorite ships of all time! So, when I was waiting for S8 to drop, I decided to write my own sort of post-S7 fix-it story (let’s just say there were certain things about the end of S7 that made me mad and confused). So I combined my favorite trope of trapping characters in a cave together (if I had a nickel for every time I wrote about two characters trapped in a cave in life-threatening circumstances and they confess their feelings to each other, I’d have two nickels, which is really weird that it happened twice…) Regardless, I loved writing this one because it was something new, and I really enjoyed writing for these characters and all their dynamics and small little details. For me, 9-1-1 not only really inspired me in more than just the writing aspect as it gave me a fresh canvas for art pieces (which I’d been struggling to make for a while until now), but it also created memories with some of the most important people in my life (my family would sit down every night to binge episodes and we’d all share our theories/predictions together. Also, my best friend started watching at the same time and we’d talk about everything, including the Buddie moments). This show will hold a permanent spot in my heart for years to come.

Love Like This-

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one? So, one of the most common questions I had while watching this show is “Why doesn’t Buck have a kid of his own yet?” Sure, he basically co-parents Christopher with Eddie at this point, but like, I want to see Buck actually take care of a baby-baby. Hence, Ellowynn “Elly” Buckley(-Diaz) was born. But, I didn’t just stop at giving Buck his own kid, no no, obviously Eddie would baby trap himself the same way Buck did when he first met Chris about 7 years ago. Either way, I have so many ideas for this fic that I want to turn it into a series, but I needed to lay down the basic groundwork for it before I started adding one shots to it. Also, it has been SO MUCH FUN drawing this family dynamic!!! I’m excited to continue with this series and hopefully you guys will enjoy it too!

I think that my main takeaway from 2024 is to not be afraid to explore outside your comfort zone. If you would have asked me two years ago if I would have written outside the Star Wars fandom, I probably would have said never. However, I’ve learned that the most meaningful pieces that you create, whether it be a drawing or a written work, is something that holds value to what you love. It’s okay to expand out of what you’re known for because you can be defined more that just someone that writes for a specific fandom.

So, my advice to anyone who is new to Tumblr/AO3 going into 2024 and to those who maybe have been members for a while:

Create art that makes you happy.

And:

Don’t be afraid to be yourself.

Have a Happy and Safe Holiday Season (Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or an entirely different celebration!!!) and I hope you all have an awesome New Year!!!

With Love,

ThatGreyJedi

[walkman-cat]

1, 5, 6, 14, 17 for the artist asks! - @pigeonwit

PIDGE! hello!!

1. Show your most recent wip

ive gotta be real exams have beaten me to a pulp, so i haven’t done much art that isn’t non-doodley sketches as of late (my non-revising time is spent rewatching shows and playing video games :’)).

i do have this sketch of my post-seven year gap pearl fey design though, so here!

5. Anything you haven't drawn yet but want to?

here’s a non-exhaustive list wbwbw:

serizawa and tome

mp100 fanart in general wbwbw

Big Robots (like the pacific rim jaegers, evas, etc)

fish! i want to learn how to draw fish that look like actual fish

more of my ocs (i have to draw their new designs and costumes for the eidolon vetch lads.)

billie the kid fanart! i have this idea based on the behind the scenes photos of saint david i WILL get to it after exams it keeps hitting me when i least expect it

buildings and backgrounds. i am woefully lacking in this aspect :’)

6. Which artists inspire you right now?

here’s another non-exhaustive list!:

catmask/fourleafisland

ryoko kui

jc leyendecker

drawfee

cy-lindric

two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat

u3pxx

mintaii

the mp100 style (both ONE and the anime. the art is so good :’))

the monstergarden

my mutuals and friends!!

14. How has your art changed over the years?

I’ve been Seriously drawing since 2019, and Boy has my art changed a lot since then. To prevent incessant rambling, I made possibly the worst graphic known to man wbwbw.

(this is only for fully finished pieces. if i tried to make a graphic for sketches and the like we’d be here for hours and it would be Unintelligible lol) (this also shows off nearly all the prior orpheus designs wbwbw)

(the graphic also stops at january 2023 because my art hasn’t really changed Much since then, and you were there to see most of the changes wbwbwbw)!!

17. What inspires you?

many things! i get inspired to draw all the time (and then have to deal with not being able to draw because of time/energy/motivation/&c.)!

here’s yet another non-exhaustive list (because i like making lists wbwbw):

historical fashion! (this is one of my biggest inspirations wbwbw! fashion plates and extant garments and reconstructions and all that jazz! i love historical fashion!)

other people’s art (seeing how other people draw things is Neat and sometimes you just see the colours used in the folds of a white shirt and want to draw a lad in a shirt wbwbw)

poses (if i had a nickel for every time ive seen a pose and thought “i Need to draw this!!” i would have a Lot. Of nickels)(sometimes i draw my friends’ poses if they’re in neat so i can use them later)(i spent the entirety of my drama booster drawing pose studies of my friend Holmes because he kept changing the way he sat every other minute)

the media i’m into at any given time wbwbw . whatever im hyperfixated on will inspire me the most to draw— currently it’s mp100 (the show especially is just so well animated and the art is so funky its so !!!)— but also it can be a book ive read or movie i watched. oftentimes ill read a comic with good art and get inspired

fanfiction and other such writing

concept art

thankyou for the ask pidge! i hope your day is swell and that exams ease up on you!! <33

artist asks

[captainmalewriter]

Stranded Finale

Check out part four to this series here!

Weeks had gone by since Coal had been stopped by Grey and Drew. Now Coal was living inside an old fish tank Drew had laying around his garage. They had sealed the glass tank several times to ensure Coal couldn't escape. While Grey and Drew continued living their daily lives, Coal had essentially been reduced to the role of a house pet. But no matter how hard Coal protested, he had no choice but to accept it.

As for Grey and Drew, the two men had plenty of spare time to work on their own projects since the big fight. Grey used the time to properly heal Jessie's wounds from all the fighting. Grey refused to go into a hospital in fear of getting found out. So he took the role of medical expert himself. It was a slow process, but Grey had successfully healed Jessie's body. He had to, after all, he felt bad for letting Drew's best friend come into harm's way. Once Jessie was fully healed, Grey was back to all smiles with his human host.

Drew, on the other hand, had his hands full with figuring out a proper rocket design to get the aliens back home. It was winter already, and they still couldn't figure out just right the formula for space flight yet. Drew had mixed feelings about the whole mess. Between the frustration of making progress and the sorrow of helping Grey leave, Drew just couldn't find the inspiration to put his best effort forward.

So instead of forcing himself to work on spacecraft science, Drew decided to take another jab at figuring out alien technology. They had brought home the salvaged parts from the shipwreck along with the two USB drives Coal had on him. Drew was too freaked out to dissect the technology when there was a murderous man twice his size pressuring him, but now that Coal was locked up, Drew felt much more at ease.

It still took Drew a long time to figure out regardless. Grey tried to pitch in wherever he could, but social sciences were his specialty, not computer programming. But with enough time and effort, Drew was able to crack one of Coal's USB drives. It had an encrypted message stored on it. Drew gave it to Grey to translate it. The message read:

To my friends Date, Nickel, Aero, and Bin: I'm writing to you all from the planet Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. Remember our dear acquaintance Grey? He rented out a spaceship and took a joy ride to the tiny water planet. I hitched a ride with Grey and I've successfully landed on Earth on star date 070.040.XXX. While I was away from home, I've been busy preparing for my master plan to take over Earth. I've already taken over a human male to use a host and I have prepared a virus that'll allow us to take as much human currency as we desire. Once you all arrive on Earth, feel free to take your pick at whichever human you want. I personally recommend a strong male, as we'll be needing the strength to overpower the humans. Their technology is inferior, but with our intellect, we'll be able to easily overpower them. I request your assistance in taking over Earth, we will live luxuriously as the supreme overlords of the human race. I patiently await your arrival. Signed, Coal.

Grey and Drew stared at each other in utter horror. They both needed a minute to process what they had just read. Grey realized that it was his old childhood bully, Clay Fired Coal, who had followed him to Earth. Drew had to cope with how dangerously close Coal had gotten to sending off the message. Had Grey not arrived when he did... there was no telling what would happened if that transmission got sent off.

Grey pocketed the two USB drives to take back home with him. After unlocking the contents of one of them, Drew was too scared to find out what the other one contained. He'd rather live in ignorance.

With Coal's USB drives out of mind, Drew had returned his attention back to the drawing board. Grey was able to help out more now that Jessie's body was healed too. They used Grey's original spacecraft as a base for the new one. That was the easy part, the hard part was finding human machinery that could replicate the horsepower of alien machinery. They had to find a way to do that without burdening the spacecraft with excessive weight.

The design and manufacturing process was slow. Although it was a complex design that needed delicate, step by step building, both Grey and Drew were deliberately taking their time with it. Each day meant one step towards completing the spaceship, even if that step was as small as finding the right screws they'd need. The next day would then consist of buying those screws.

This was their building process for the next month and a half. Their working speed had slowed to a crawl. Both Grey and Drew knew why they were acting that way, but neither wanted to admit it. They both wanted to spend as much time together as possible before Grey left. They spent Thanksgiving together, they went snowboarding together, they cuddled during the long winter nights together; anything a couple would do, Grey and Drew did.

But unfortunately no matter how slow they were going, the spacecraft did eventually get built. The test launch was a success, and now Grey had everything he needed to return home the next day, December 31st.

The two spent well over an hour fucking the night before Grey's departure. Even the sex they shared, they took it nice and slow to avoid it coming to end. But even that too, after a certain number of kisses, hip thrusts, and moans, had to come to end. Grey and Drew laid in bed in each other's arms, covered in each other's cum. Neither of them slept that night either, instead opting to enjoy the little time they had remaining in each other's warm embrace.

Then, the morning sun had come and filled the room with light. Drew felt himself get teary eyed, for he knew the time to say goodbye was coming soon.

The two men rolled out of bed and got dressed in their winter gear. Then with both the spacecraft and Coal on hand, the two left for the mountains. Grey needed a high altitude launching point to ensure he'd have enough power to get home. It had taken them most of the day to get there after deliberately stalling yet again, but they got there. They had driven most of the way up, but the last piece had to be done by foot. Drew parked the car and hopped out. Grey did too, but he let out a sigh as he did so.

"You ready to go home?" Drew asked.

"No."

The two men then hiked the rest of the way up the mountain range. Neither man could look at the other in the eyes. They weren't ready to say their farewells, but it was what had to be done.

They made it to the top of the mountain, the highest point they could go. Drew set up the spacecraft while Grey secured Coal inside. Once all the preparations were complete, the two men found themselves staring at each other with a tender gaze.

"I guess... this is goodbye..." Drew started.

"Yeah..." Grey sniffled. He was visibly fighting back tears. "I'm gonna miss this planet... I'm gonna miss this body... And I'm gonna miss you, Drew..."

The two men gazed into each other eyes, then they both went in for a long kiss on the lips. The kiss lasted seconds before Drew pulled away. He held Grey's face in his hands. He then wiped away the tears in his eyes.

"C'mon my love, give me a smile, I want my last memory of you to be a happy one,"

Grey obliged, and smiled from ear to ear. Drew couldn't help but smile too, Grey's goofy grin always brought out the joy in him even on his darkest days.

The two had delayed the inevitable long enough. Drew stood close to Grey as he slithered out of Jessie's body. He caught Jessie as he fell forward unconscious, while Grey skittered down into the driver's seat of the spaceship. Grey wasted no time in powering up the engine for flight. The spaceship hovered off the ground slowly at first, but once it got a foot off the ground, the turbo blasters kicked in. The spaceship then took off into the night sky.

Tears rolled down Drew's cheeks as he watched Grey fly further and further away. Then, just before Grey had disappeared into the atmosphere, the clock had struck midnight. It was the new year, and the townsfolk below were celebrating. They were launching fireworks into the sky, and Drew cried happy tears at the sight of it. Grey got to leave seeing the one thing he came down to Earth to see, and he did so in the most glorious way possible.

"I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU, GREY HOWLING GREY!!" Drew shouted out at the top of his lungs. Grey had disappeared into the sky to go back home, never to be seen again.

...Meanwhile, Drew drove back home with a disgruntled Jessie in the passenger seat.

"Fuck man... my head's killing me..." Jessie said in a low voice.

"There's some ibuprofen and water in the glove box," Drew said in a stoic voice. Jessie noticed it and turned to him.

"Man, you're in a bad mood today. What's up with you?"

Drew hesitated before answering. He then just shrugged and said it was nothing.

"If you say so... Hey, Drew, is it New Year's already? I could've sworn it was the 4th of July yesterday... What happened to me?"

Drew took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at Jessie. Drew's heart fluttered at the sight of him. It was the same handsome face and toned body Drew had long loved since his teen years. But without Grey inside of him, Drew felt at odds with his emotions. Jessie, his best friend, was back to normal. Yet, Drew longed to see Grey again, even if it was just for one more minute. Drew got teary eyed again just thinking about him.

"It's a long story... I'll tell you all about it once we get home," Drew refocused his attention back on the road. He wiped away the tears with his sleeve before the waterworks started again. Drew then took a deep breath before speaking again.

"You believe in aliens, Jess? Cuz boyyy are you not gonna believe me when I tell you this one..."

[neonponders]

👀 👀 👀 👀  Oh jesus oh lord. Deeper Than Skin is finished so I’ll enable another wip.

@ghostofjellyfishforgotten I hope you don’t mind me using your tags on this vampire!Billy / blood donor!Steve post as inspiration! Your brain is just too big for me not to pass up an opportunity to write vampire shenanigans.

Read on ao3 ~

🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹

Steve didn’t judge people who worked as donors—

Fine, as an adult with a better awareness and compassion, Steve didn’t judge donors. He might’ve said some shitty things to Jonathan Byers when he worked to make his family extra money.

Honestly? Steve admired that. Jonathan being underage and having the guts to figure out how to get into the donation clinic, and then to let…

Steve knew he was a coward in a lot of ways. He knew it when he called Jonathan a queer who enjoyed leeches sucking on him. He knew it when he lost to the punches Byers threw. For a skinny, half empty blood bag, the guy could really hit. And Steve knew it when he almost ran away from Nancy and Jonathan fighting off the rogue vampire who kidnapped little Will Byers.

But Steve didn’t run away.

Just like he didn’t run away from the couch he sat on with his mother while his father explained…a situation that left Steve digging deeper and deeper into the gap between fear and bravery. Maybe call it disassociation. Or confused shock.

“You what?”

Harrington senior never took well to being interrupted. But he sighed from across the coffee table and reiterated, “The family is in debt.”

“No. You. You’re in debt. This is your problem.”

The man certainly didn’t take well to having his own mistakes shoved under his nose. “This isn’t for debate. This is the way things are and need to be.”

“No,” Steve repeated like a broken record clinging onto its song. “This is your fault. Who’s made me work minimum wage jobs to teach me a lesson? Who’s refused to pay for me to go to community college? Who hasn’t let me work in their company? And who made the shitty gambles with your company’s stocks? You shoved me out, so it’s definitely not my problem—”

“The contract has already been signed.”

Now his mother shifted her posture on the couch beside him. “Excuse me?”

Steve’s father moved his blunt nails over the armrest of his wingback, fidgeting. At least something put fear into the old bastard’s heart.

“There’s nothing I could do. The market has been evolving ever since vampires gained their rights and opened up their decades and centuries old bonds—”

“Vampire legislation passed over a century ago,” Mrs. Harrington purred. Sometimes the worst anger was the quiet kind. “You have no excuse. You lost the game, and you sold our son. Is that what we’re to believe?”

“That’s not possible,” Steve intercepted. “Slavery isn’t a thing anymore. Even I picked that up in history. And I would have to be there to sign the contract! It’s my—”

“Steve,” his father silenced. “When enough money is involved, anything is bought. And you’re not like anyone else.”

Mrs. Harrington fumed, “Do not talk to him like he’s a prize pony!”

“Except to a wealthy vampire, he is.”

Steve could only sit in weighted silence for a moment. He always joked to himself that he’d be disowned one of these days. For being a disappointment. For all of his bad grades. For giving his friends alcohol and cigarettes. For only being able to get jobs that required no qualifications or experience level at all. For discovering he liked kissing boys at the grimy music venues Robin took him to. Maybe living at home for too long. Or leaving the smell of burnt pancakes in the air too often because he always struggled with the first one—

“Vampire?” he croaked. For some reason it hadn’t dawned to him until now but…shit.

Holy shit.

Steve wasn’t being sold off to be some billionaire’s secretary for life. He was being…truly sold. Like…goodbye, Steve, who likes spring nights and summer mornings. His favorite food is breakfast and he wishes he kept with the music lessons his mom paid for instead of being peer pressured into sports. Whose best friend was Robin Buckley because she was brave and funny and stuck with him during his ironic and a little bit terrifying queer awakening…

Hello, Donor 0235. Blood type O. Allergic to nickel and checks off all vaccination requirements.

“Steve’s not wrong,” his mother echoed like a voice deep in a cave, drawing Steve out of his thoughts. “He is the one to sign the contract. Not you.”

“He is still classified as our dependent and on our insurance,” his father refused.

“So being an adult means nothing in this country?”

“They have our family records, Annette!” he exclaimed. “There is a dual government in this country even if nobody below upper-middle class sees it. The human government had to cede a great deal because the vampire population is massive. And they’ve kept track of all the Sanguis families! Name changes, and two World Wars did nothing to save us—”

“The what?” Steve all but whispered.

His mother rotated her hips to face him. “We only have legends about how it happened. Paleolithic gods making deals, vampires crossbreeding humans to make a certain kind of blood donor, human evolution after symbiotic deals were struck—but that doesn’t matter. The point is that there are people in this world with abilities that preserve themselves against vampires. That’s why you healed in less than two days after that silly fight by the movie theatre.”

His father intercepted, “The genes skipped your mother but fell to you.”

Steve’s eyes widened as his mother confirmed, “To protect us, girls have been promoted in the family tree for generations. Through marriage, their names could change, and make them harder to track.”

Steve countered toward his father, “So this really isn’t your place to sign my life away. Like five times over.”

“I quite agree,” his mother turned back to the man she’d married. The man who was supposed to protect her and her children with his name and promising, growing business.

At least Steve wasn’t the only failure in the family.

His father massaged his forehead and defended, “As I said. Humans’ government is far easier to corrupt our way into forgiving any debt. The vampires, however, are inconsolable. The bastard would have my business, the cars, our house, and taken his time discovering Steve on his own if I hadn’t—”

Steve took after his father, but he was his mother’s son as they both stood up from the couch, furious that this man had thrown his own kid under a vampire’s bus—

“Get out of the house, Steve.”

His head whipped around at her. “I-What?”

“Get out of the house,” she seethed, but not at him. “I don’t care where or what you do. Go.”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice but he hadn’t managed to grab his car keys or his shoes before the house and his ribcage trembled with his parents’ arguing. He went in his socks outside and put the shoes on in his car.

Then…he didn’t know where to go. Running the hell away seemed like the obvious solution, but if vampires really had such a network, what was the point? And if he left, what would happen to his mom?

Steve drove on autopilot to the video rental store. Robin. All he had was Robin, who took the lollipop out of her mouth when the bell on the door twittered. “Hey, dingus, it���s your day off—Steve?”

He couldn’t really remember driving. That probably should have raised more red flags than he already had, but for now, the black and neon carpeting of the Family Video was blurring and swirling…

“I’m gonna throw up,” he heard himself say.

And Robin in that distant, echoing cave his mother had spoken from, “Outside! STEVE!”

[signedaiko]

heyas! requesting a matchup :P for the mtmte/lost light universe, please.

lets's start with a side, decepticon. please and thank you.

my name is blu, i go by it/it's or they/them pronouns. i am afab, but identify as genderfluid, and am a bi-romantic asexual, with a girlfriend might i add. i have ADHD, borderline autism, dyslexia, generalized anxiety, and ocd (all professionally diagnosed). i enjoy transformers and the resident a lot :) as well as criminal minds. i have a dog named layla, and a sister (i will not be exposing her name). i used to have a white and blonde hamster, his name was hamilton (my dad called him hamington or hammie) may he rest in peace. if my favorite character helps in the matchup, then it would have to ultimately be rung. (not going to lie, overlord is a close second fave.)

personality, quoting my friend here; "Hmm, well your curious, funny, happy but kinda easy to annoy if it's about a certain topic that your passionate about, also passionate should be it's own trait. Oh, you're also super creative, and a bit too selfless with your money. (too rich 😢)" in my own words though, i am a totally unorganized person, i talk a lot, to nothing and nobody. i must always have something keeping me occupied or i will literally die of boredom. no joke. please get me a defibrillator cause i think my heart just stopped; i simp for character's, all the time. just ask my friends lolol. they will tell you just that.

hobbies, i like to draw( a very lot lolol), listen to depressing music for no reason. i do write fanfiction on wattpad and read fanfiction as well, plus i can scroll pinterest for hours on end if that counts.

appearance, i have a very tanned complexion, lots of scars from picking at scabs might i add. probably a band-aid or two on my body from freshly picked ones. lots of freckles, and some scabs on my hairline, too.😅 i have curly brunette hair (looks wavy but is actually just heavy) that's just almost at the base of my neck, it used to be bleached at the tips and cut pixie style. but, i'm growing it out now, since i want to have long hair after so long of keeping it short. i'm about 5'3" ft and i weigh 101.43 lbs, while being skinny enough in the torso so that you can see my ribcage. i have just above average sized thighs (i just had to add it XD) and, i have flat feet (a physical disorder). so, i actually stand a half inch shorter than i actually am.

You got…Tesarus!

He was also probably fucking around all bored when you met and decided adopting a human was the best decision. I like to think you went with it because anything was better than frolicking around doing nothing. Tesarus is a walking amusement park; not only is it fun to scale him, but he also needs constant stimuli. If you arent used to gore, you would be soon! You both get yelled at for picking at your skin/armour plating by Nickel because she is 'running out of bandaids' or 'having a hard time with the blow torch.' You are smaller than most humans, while he is larger than most cybertronians which is such an iconic duo. It honestly scares quite a few cons when they see a human anywhere near the DJD. In your spare time, you spread rumours about humans and what they do; in fact, you probably inspired the fear in them, to begin with " We...spit acid! " " Even better idea, you projectile spit metal-melting acid!!! " He will protect you from the DJD; they either learn to live with it or don't live at all (though that's more of an empty threat, no one cares enough to stop or kill you). Much like how you use Pinterest to browse fun ideas, you have a whole board of art that inspires some of his murder methods <3 goals?!

———-

Authors Note - I wish there was a complete list of every MTMTE character somewhere; even tfwiki gave up on that. Haha, it's hard to remember every character.

[limited-practice]

In The Bar of Bad Things part 4

Hubcap, Nickel, and Helex continue to have increasingly unpleasant and implausible times in an alien bar where nothing goes right for them.

@jet-teeth my continued thanks to you for the fantastic art you’ve drawn for this fic! It’s all perfect, PERFECT

art for chapter 1 is here, and the drawing for this chapter is at the end of this post.

This nonsense story is a lot of fun to write, and it’s the best thing to talk with people about it because that’s where I get most of my inspiration from. I’m always grateful to everyone who’s read it and talks with me about it it’s the best thing, thank you!

Chapter 1 is here on tumblr  and chapters 2, 3 and this one are on Ao3.

2904 words of sfw random antics at a bar where everything keeps going wrong are below the cut. 

“It's about time,” Nickel said. She felt someone come to a slow stop behind her, but she didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at them. “Did you get lost in that bathroom?”

“Ha, no! I didn't- didn’t get lost," Hubcap replied. He slid up next to her and plastered a too wide smile onto his face. He laced his fingers together tightly. “I’m here. I'm fine. I'm here and I’m fine."

“We heard some banging,” Helex said in a slow and knowing tone. “We thought you were having a Good Time after sending your message, if you know what I mean."

“WE did not think that,” Nickel said. “I didn’t think about him for a second after he left us.”

“Do you know what I mean?” Helex said, ignoring her. “Because I do. And so does Nickel. But you’re a small sheltered Autobot with no experience, so you probably don’t.”

“I, ha, wait,” Hubcap said. He tried to inject some steel into his voice. “How do you know I don’t have any experience? You could be setting yourself up for major embarrassment here. I could be embarrassed by you for a change.”

Helex gave him a fondly condescending look.

Nickel gave Helex her third best weary look. “He’s got a rotating cast of desperates all throughout the galaxy that message him for Good Times as soon as they can, so it’s safe to say he’s got some experience. We have more important things to do, so just ignore him. And do you know what I’m going to ignore? A continuation of this conversation.”

“But just because he has a list of admirers doesn’t mean he’s got experience with any of them,” Helex said, continuing the conversation. “Or anyone at all. Does it Nickel? Does it?”

Nickel gave him her second best weary look. She paused. She remembered how terrified Hubcap was about replying to his send nudes message. She fought not to think about it any more. She tapped her fingers against her leg. “No. No it doesn’t Helex. It doesn’t. Are you happy now?”

“I’m always happy.”

Helex picked up two full glasses. He drank from one and offered the other to Nickel. “Your one has little bubbles in it.”

He gently shook the drink to fizz it up further. “Look at them go!”

Nickel fought back a smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

She reached out a hand to take it.

WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!

“What the?" Nickel's head snapped up, the drink forgotten.

Everyone in the bar collectively snapped their heads up. Heads and eyes and sensors swivelled like searchlights to seek out where the blaring alarm was coming from and what it meant.

Helex drank Nickel’s drink in one gulp. He made a face. “I don’t like this.”

WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!

“It’s an alarm,” Nickel said. “You’re not supposed to like it.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “Is that the fire alarm?”

“Uh, no,” Hubcap said, twisting his fingers together and peering up at the ceiling anxiously. “That’s not the fire alarm.”

“Did you set off the fire alarm?” Nickel pointed a finger at Helex. “Did your smelter slow leak again and set something on fire?”

“No!” Helex held three innocent hands up. His fourth held another drink. “It’s not me! I promise!”

“Because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told you to see me as soon as you get a micro-fissure or a heat fracture in it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I've told you, I really have.”

“It wasn’t me! I’ve been standing next to you the entire time!”

“Just because you’re here now doesn’t mean you couldn’t have leaked elsewhere earlier, does it? Does it Helex? Does it?”

“I just said it’s not the fire alarm,” Hubcap muttered to his fingers. “But Primus forbid anyone should ever listen to--”

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

“I’m going to see who’s set the fire alarm off,” Nickel scowled. “That useless bartender had better turn it off soon because one, I can’t see a fire anywhere and two, it’s giving me a headache.”

She stalked away.

Hubcap glanced around. It wasn’t the fire alarm. The frequency sounded all wrong. It felt all wrong. There wasn’t an explosion or any type of mortal threat that he could see, but people were pouring out of the bar as if their life depended on it. The DJD and the Wreckers were nowhere to be seen. They must have been some of the first to evacuate. Which meant that whatever was happening or was about to happen would be serious and life-threatening and a horrible experience in general. Which meant they had to leave immediately. Hubcap made a sudden move towards the nearest exit, but he was stopped by one of Helex’s arms on his shoulder.

“If it’s not the fire alarm, what is it?” Helex asked.

“I don’t know,” Hubcap said, giving Helex’s hand a wary look. “But it’s something bad. It’s something serious. Something serious has happened and people have left. So we should leave too. We have to leave.”

He tried to take a step towards the exit.

Helex gently squeezed Hubcap’s shoulder.

All three layers of Hubcap’s plating buckled. An explosion of alarms erupted and spread throughout his system, warning him of imminent structural collapse and irreparable damage to most of his primary circuit field if this tremendous external pressure continued.

“Nickel’s not back yet,” Helex said.

>//> critical system breach in 6, 5, 4,

“We’ll wait as long as it takes for her!” Hubcap gasped. “I want nothing more in my short little life than to stay right here with you and wait for her but oh god please let go of me I don’t want to die like this!”

“Die?” Helex released Hubcap’s shoulder. He gave him what he considered to be a reassuring look. “You’re not going to die. Someone will put that scary fire out, don’t you worry.”

Hubcap massaged his near crippled shoulder. He muttered desperate thanks of praise to Primus and dark promises of revenge to Helex under his breath.

Helex bent his head down so that his mouth brushed Hubcap’s ear. “What?”

“Ahh!” Hubcap sprang back and gripped his shoulder harder.

“You’re weird,” Helex told him. “I like it.”

Helex looked around. “Where’s Nickel?”

“How should I know?” Hubcap snapped.

Helex flexed the fingers of his shoulder grabbing hand. “What?”

“I said I’m terribly sorry but I’m afraid I don’t know. But I do know that she’ll be fine, and that we’ll do absolutely everything in our power to find her and make sure she’s OK and we won’t, absolutely won’t, evacuate this death trap of a bar until she’s back with us despite the fact that she’s the most capable out of the three of us and could take out anyone with one eye closed and is the one who will outlive us by millions of years no matter what happens.”

Helex nodded slowly. “Do you know what this means?”

Hubcap's processor whirled “...that we’re...going to die while she looks in on us through a window and shakes her head in sadness but not surprise?”

“It means that we have more time for drinking!”

“Yeah, that was definitely going to be my next guess.”

Helex turned back towards the bar. Every inch of the enormous counter was taken up with different sized glasses filled with liquids in every colour imaginable. Some were fizzing, some were smoking, one was hardening into concrete and several were leaking.

“Look at what I ordered while you were having fun in the bathroom.”

“...how…” Hubcap began, as a sense of impending doom bit into his spine and slid down it using nothing but teeth, “...many drinks did you put on my tab?”

Helex took a sip of the drink he now held in a small hand. “Two of each per round.” The liquid slid down his throat, and he blinked in happy surprise. He held out the glass and peered into the roiling mustard coloured froth inside. “Oh that’s good.”

“I should hope so,” Hubcap said slowly, “Because that drink is going to cost me an arm and a leg.”

“It’s going to cost more than that.” Helex drained the glass. “Have you seen how much debt you’re in?”

“...excuse me?”

“It’s a lot.” Helex smiled. “I’ve crippled you.”

“What?”

“But only financially.”

“That’s so much worse!”

Hubcap whipped out his communicator and poked it hard. He brought up his bank account and typed in the password. He looked at the string of numbers that told him how much money he now owed. He made the soul searing sound of eternal pain that all of Helex’s victims made.

“Calm down,” Helex said. “I can’t hear the mysterious wailing alarm over you.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Helex put his glass down on the bar. “So. Did your weirdo friend respond to those pictures of questionable content you sent them?”

Hubcap looked at the horrific negative numbers screaming along the bottom of his bank account. They were neon red. They were pulsing. They were underlined. His mouth was open and his spark was fading.

“Well?” Helex prompted.

“How?” Hubcap whispered.

“How what?”

“How did you manage to drink so much?” Hubcap’s horrified eyes scanned the itemised charges and calculated the times they were bought. "Everything on the bar right now is your fourth round! I was only gone for a few minutes!"

Helex patted his smelter fondly. “She’s a thirsty girl.”

“I’m ruined,” Hubcap said to himself. “I can’t pay this back. I’ll have to take out a loan. I’ll have to take out several. I’ll have to rob someone and go on the run for the rest of my life.”

“I’ve already called the Debt Collector of Eternal Interest and Perpetual Payback to take you into Bank Custody.”

Hubcap’s head shot up. “What? Why?!”

Helex shrugged. “Owed her a favour.”

“Oh my god.”

“She’ll be here soon. I gave her our location and your description. And since she’s getting on in years, make sure you’re respectful and shriek extra loud when she starts stabbing you. Her hearing’s on the way out and her frame is frail.”

“Oh My God.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

“Why are you yelling so much?” Nickel asked.

“Ah!” Hubcap yelled, startled. He gripped his communicator hard.

“I can’t hear the alarm over your wailing.”

She looked at Helex. “It’s not the fire alarm. I checked. I asked the bartender what it was, but all he said was ‘it’s not the fire alarm’ before bolting out of the exit door.”

Helex nodded. “That’s what we thought.”

Nickel looked over Hubcap’s shoulder to see what was on his screen. She cackled loudly. “You’re so screwed.”

“I’ve already called the Debt Collector,” Helex said. “She’ll be here after she’s had a nap.”

“Someone her age needs her rest,” Nickel agreed. “When she gets here I’ll offer to give her a check-up free of charge.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“She works hard. And it’s difficult to get customers in her line of work these days. Hardly anyone has a lot of money now, which means they’re not in a lot of crippling debt that needs to be recovered. It was nice of you to give the work to her.”

“Do the two of you,” Hubcap said slowly, “Really not care that I’m about to get stabbed by a geriatric debt collector?”

“Don’t call her that,” Helex said. “Show some respect.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten into so much debt in the first place,” Nickel said flatly. “You need lessons on how to manage your finances. Swindle runs a basic course for absolute beginners you should go on.”

“I didn’t get into debt myself! Helex put me in it! He’s drinking this overpriced place dry and making me pay for it!”

Nickel’s expression didn’t change. “Because you said he could. Remember? You agreed to pay for all his drinks so he’d cover for you when you went to message your friend.”

Hubcap’s mouth opened to respond. It stayed open. “...I didn’t think he’d buy so many,” he said limply.

“There’s an old Earth saying about Assumptions,” Nickel said. “Swindle covers it in his course.”

“I am not paying Swindle money so he can trick me into giving him more.”

“How’s that worse than tricking yourself out of it?”

“You should definitely tell him this story,” Helex said. “He might name a case study after you. You know, the type of example that everyone laughs at but also takes seriously because they’d die ten times over if it ever happened to them.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

“That’s really goddamn annoying,” Nickel glared.

Helex nodded in agreement. He unravelled his long tongue and coiled it inside another foam coated glass. He slurped noisily as he cleaned it.

Hubcap put his hands on his head and remembered that there had been a few good times in his life.

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

“First of all,” Nickel said, “The fact that I can hear you over the sound of this alarm is disgusting. You’re disgusting.”

S L U R R R R R P

“And second of all, we need to get out of here. Everyone’s already left. I don’t know what that alarm’s for, but it can’t be anything good.”

Helex unravelled his tongue from the glass and sucked it back into his mouth. “It’s not all bad. It means no-one’s going to try and sneak one of my drinks off of the counter again. They screamed so loudly when I caught them!”

“Exit. Now.”

“I’m just saying--”

“You can stick your tongue in things when we get back to the ship,” Nickel ordered. “Now let’s go.”

Nickel strode towards the nearest exit. “Helex, contact the ship and give them our locations for transport. I’m not going to be stuck in this miserable place for whatever awful thing is about to happen. Hubcap, you figure out what the alarm is for. And stop crying.”

“...I’m not crying. I’m just...thinking. Concentrating. The air’s very dry in here and sometimes that makes my eyes water to compensate and--”

Just as Nickel reached the exit a set of huge black and yellow containment doors slammed shut in front of her face and blocked it.

“Dammit!”

She spun around and immediately headed to the secondary exit. Huge blast doors slammed down in front of those doors too.

Nickel clenched her hands into fists and groaned in deep frustration. “I can’t believe we’re stuck in this dump!”

“Shall we have another drink?” Helex asked.

“Stuck?” Hubcap said, as he tried to surreptitiously wipe his eyes. “We’re stuck in here? We’re actually stuck? In here? Stuck?”

“Stop repeating yourself and calm down. It’s really annoying.”

“Well excuse me for, you know, not being in the best frame of mind given everything that’s just previously happened to me.”

“Ooh, bubbles!” Helex chirped.

“We’re not drinking any more bubble drinks,” Nickel snapped. “We’re going to find a way out of here before whatever bad thing is going to happen to us happens to us, understood?”

“But if it’s stopped then maybe it won’t happen,” Hubcap said cautiously. He looked around the deserted bar, and scanned it with even greater attention and dread than he had examined his bank account. “Maybe it’s already happened. Or it’s been prevented. Or it was never actually going to happen in the first place, and that was just an unfortunate and unintended miscommunication of a defensive or offensive response to an external threat that never ended up materializing.”

“What in the goddamn hell are you babbling on about?” Nickel said. “I am one second away from charging a new spaceship to your account Hubcap. One second! And then I’m going to give Swindle a heads up that despite being broker than broke you’re a prime candidate for--”

“The alarm’s stopped,” Hubcap said bluntly. “Listen.”

Nickel listened. The wailing alarm had stopped. And in its place was a low, slow, grinding mechanical hum that was steadily getting louder and louder and louder.

“That’s not good,” she said.

Hubcap shook his head in agreement.

Tiny white stars drifted down in front of Nickel’s face. She locked eyes with Hubcap. They both followed its spiralling path down, down, down to the disgusting sticky floor where it popped silently at her feet.

She looked back up at Hubcap. Who was already looking up at the ceiling with a horrified expression on his face.

“Like I said, bubbles,” Helex beamed. He held out all four hands and turned his palms up to the ceiling. Small piles of happy popping bubbles collected in piles on them.

Nickel reluctantly looked up. She read the warning. “So that’s what the alarm was for,” she whispered.

A huge hatch covered the entirety of the ceiling. It was studded with jets and openings and switches. Stamped across it in twenty different languages were the words 'Hostile Suppressant Foam. Mechanical Grade. For Use In Emergencies Only. Never, Ever, EVER Ingest.’

The hatch slowly opened.

She heard Hubcap typing furiously on his communicator.

Orange warning lights strobed the room.

She heard Helex lick his lips and swallow.

The ever widening hatch began to rain foam down on them

A tidal wave of deadly foam slowly leaked out of the ever widening hatch directly above their heads.

“We are so screwed.”

[melissatucker]

Magical Ideas for Friday the 13th Full Moon

Good Morning Witches!!! Are you excited yet for this Friday! I know I am, I am practically vibrating! I know some people report issues with Friday the 13th (and Goddess bless our nurses and first responders because this might not be a good night for them), but I have always had the very best of luck on Friday the 13th and then to partner it with the full Harvest Moon is just a dream to me! I started sharing ideas I found on my page and had a lovely lady ask if I had any simple spell ideas for the full moon. Her question got my brain working into overdrive and I came up with a small handful of ideas. I hope everyone gets the most out of this full moon so I am sharing my ideas here for anybody that is looking for inspiration and are running low on time. As always I try and keep my workings super simple since I am a rather simple creature at heart. So cast away my Witchy brothers and sisters!!! And thank you to the lovely lady on my page for starting my brain on this creative track! It was fun and I appreciate the inspiration you brought me!

Ok so the first one I take absolutely no credit for, it’s from a Facebook page Luna and the Moon. In this you take 13 pennies, chant over them the following verse:

“Today I cast for money luck, As it is lucky, it will work today,

With these Pennies, I display, The money is on its way.

The 13th is lucky, on the Witches day.

These 13 pennies, will bring it my way.

This will harm non in anyway,

As it is lucky, if done on this day”.

Once the chant is said burry the pennies. Remember that in magic the intent is everything. You can have all the right ingredients and if your heart isn’t it in the spell will fall flat on its ass. So if you don’t have pennies because the Canadian Government phased them out ages ago, go with what you have. If you have dimes use them, nickels use them, quarters great! If you have currency from another country go ahead and use that. Mixed denominations, go for it! What really matters is the intent behind the spell!

A fun twist on this spell you could do could help not only yourself but 12 others! Charge slightly larger denomination coins such as loonies and toonies. Take the coins and stand under the light of the full moon. Hold them in your hands so that each coin absorbs the moonlight and chant something like:

“Money Flows

Income Grows

Blessings for me

Blessings for thee

Lucky Friday 13

Bring us money

With Harm to None

My charm is done”

Repeat the chant as often as you feel (or make up one that suits your personal style better). As you hold them visualize anybody who touches that coin being showered with abundance (including you!). Then the next morning give away 12 of them, either to friends or perhaps in charity drop boxes. You can even use pennies for this and give them as gifts to friends whenever they need some luck in their lives.

If you are working to improve yourself a super simple idea is to take out a pen and paper, if you want you can fancy this up with glittery paper, stickers and coloured pens. Once you have picked out your paper and pen think of thirteen things that you are working on improving in your life and write out 13 affirmations for those areas that you want to improve on. For example “I love healthy food and feed my body the fuel it needs” “I am excellent with money and love to add to my savings” “I love, I am loved”. My favourite author for affirmations is Louise Hay and her affirmations always seem to be direct and to the point (You can find some of them here if you are stuck looking for an affirmation: https://www.louisehay.com/101-best-louise-hay-positive-affirmations/ ).

Once you have selected your affirmations write them out nicely on your chosen paper. Take it outside under the light of the full moon, read each one to yourself and focus on the outcome of the affirmation. How will you feel with this affirmation coming true? Healthier, stronger, happier? Focus on each one for a moment then read the list aloud to the moon. Take your list inside and put it somewhere you will see if often. Try to say each affirmation at least 13 times a day. On the next full moon you can either keep the list and keep working on it or burn it and scatter the ashes to the wind.

One of the main themes of fall is releasing, letting go of the old so that we can rest and then begin anew. If there are some things in your life you want to let go of, such as bad habits or even people, you can do a short ritual to release them. Go to your nearest tree that is losing its leaves. Gently take 13 leaves that are ready to fall (or pick up 13 leaves off the ground). Take those leaves and using a marker write on each leaf 1 thing you are looking to release, be specific (like I release my addiction to double chocolate brownie ice cream). If the leaves are small just write one or two words that represent the thing you are releasing. Under the light of the full moon go to a crossroads (where two roads intersect). Stand as close to the center as you safely can and take each leaf one at a time. States something like “under the light of the blessed moon, I release the old to welcome the new” and then read each leaf. Then let the leaf fall to the ground and state “I release you”. Once all 13 are gone walk away and don’t look back. When you get home, if you wish, write down 13 things that will replace the 13 things that you have released.

And don’t overlook some of the simplest magic you can do under the moon. Make a batch of moon water charged under the full moon, then you can anoint anything you wish with this magical night’s power. Just fill up a jar with water, take the jar outside and make sure it is under the light of the moon. Hold it in your hands for a moment and thing of the moonlight charging the water, filling the water with its power and magic. Then leave the water out for like an hour. Bring it back inside, keep it somewhere handy and then you can use a few drops here and there. If you are a bit of a candle junkie like me and have 13 tea lights handy take them outside under the moon light. Let them soak up the moonlight and fill them with your intent that they are blessed and lucky. You can keep them for a special occasion or gift them to friends!

This full moon would also be a great day to make up or empower good luck charms. If you have handy a family good luck charm, like say a horseshoe take it under the moon and state what luck you wish it to bring to you. If you don’t have a family luck charm you could easily empower your favorite necklace or ring to bring you good fortune. Another things you could do is make up a good luck sachet or talisman for your home. Herbs such as Rosemary, Lavender, Cinnamon, Basil, Clove, Chamomile, Mint, Thyme and Ginger are all known to bring luck, good fortune and peace into your life and most can be found by raiding the spice rack! A lot of grocery stores also sell the plants for these so if you want you could pick one or two to purchase, bless it on the full moon and then let it grow!

If you just want to soak up the energy why not take a page from a friend of mine. She is going to curl up in a blanket, lay under the light of the full moon and have a good meditation session! You could also read some poetry or moon lore. A good one for the full moon would be something like the Charge of the Goddess. You could perform a Drawing Down of the Moon to soak up this amazing energy and reconnect with the Goddess. Grounding and centering would also be a powerful exercise to do on this night!  Bring out all your gemstones, ritual tools and statues, give them all a good clean and then set them under the full moon to recharge!

Whatever you decide to do this full moon I hope you take the time to soak up the energy and dream of a bright future!

[radmissfliss-blog]

Often I worry that, in my writing, my descriptions will come off as "clunky" or cumbersome to read- do you have any suggestions for more streamlined prose?

This is a lovely and difficult question. I think what makes it most difficult is that I’m operating without a sample of your particular writing so I’m not sure what about your style might be considered cumbersome to read, and I’m not sure if that means you’re being wordy, your word order is a little wonky, or you’ve got a pacing problem. It could be some combination of these things, or something else entirely, but I’m going to answer in the best way that I can.

The first thing that I’d do is ask what draft of your piece you are on? If you’re still writing your first draft, and you’re just testing the waters to see if the idea is solid, then that’s the kind of feedback you should be looking for. You can always come back and fix problems in later drafts - what you want to do first is get it finished.  Remember it’s always easier to pare down than it is to build up!

Assuming you’re revising a complete draft, you want to look at your descriptions and determine their relevance to the story. Some authors can get away with adding quite a bit of detail, and some can get away with adding very little detail. Your level of detail will vary, but finding the right balance can be tricky. You want to include descriptions that conjure up an image in readers’ minds but that don’t slow down the pacing of your work.

Pacing would be like the heartbeat of your piece - it speeds up when there is action and slows down when there is downtime. If it slows down too much, then the reader runs the risk of getting bored and putting your story down for some other activity. That’s why activities such as evacuation and rest are usually cut from stories. You can alter the pace of your stories in a few key ways.

Short sentences are a great way to increase the pace of a scene, especially when there are two characters engaged in snappy back-and-forth dialogue.  I feel the best action scenes are ones that make use of short, guttural or impactful sounding language. She thudded to the floor. He withered shuddering blows. They skidded to a halt.  Thudded, shuddering, and skidded all kind of have that onomatopoeia which is nice in the imagination.

Conversely, longer sentences can slow down the pace of your work, particularly when they lead into drawn out exposition or non-sequiturs. Using long sentences can be particularly useful in capturing certain stream-of-consciousness moments, or in giving lush descriptions of your setting. This gets complicated in its own right, though, and again largely leans upon personal taste. Essentially, you still want to keep your descriptions concise. Try to describe a scene by just talking about the things in your mental image of what’s happening that would immediately stick out if you were watching it in a movie or reading it in a comic book.

As an exercise, take a scene from a movie, preferably an opening wide shot or even the whole “Concerning Hobbits” sequence at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001 Wingnut/New Line) and try jotting down notes of the first things you see in each shot. You probably won’t get much of a detailed description and that’s all right. You can probably get enough information to start writing a coherent description with no more information than you need.

The sky over the green rolling hills of the Shire shone a bright blue. A road, winding round Bag End’s garden fence, led straight to the old gate that sported a sign reading “No Admittance - Except on Party Business!” On this day, though, none were on the road, for they were instead in the fields preparing decorations and setting up tents - at the speed with which Hobbits accomplish such tasks - to get ready for Bilbo Baggins’s one hundred and eleventh birthday party.

Tolkein would have, and did, handle this scene very differently. Of course I omitted Gandalf, who was the one who was present in the movie to perceive the sign, but this was more about the exercise of translating what you jotted in your notes into something on the page. I still urge you to try this and see what you come up with. It doesn’t have to be from Fellowship of the Ring!

The reason I bring up this particular work is that Tolkein quite notoriously gets away with having several-page-long non sequitur backstories about this event or that item or that Elf’s long lived lineage and service in the War of the Ring.  For that reason, I was never personally able to read The Lord of the Rings. But I’m not so brazen as to suggest that Tolkein was a poor writer for doing it! Some people really dig that level of detail. So remember who you’re writing for.

If you’re being too wordy, then it might be the number of adjectives you’re using, or the number of verbs you’re including in your sentences (if you’re describing an action scene). The verbs are largely a concern of pacing, and shorter more digestible sentences, especially in earlier drafts, will help make the action you are describing much clearer. Take, for example:

1.)

They somersaulted into the room while drawing their katanas, slashing expertly at the three ninjas who were pouncing through the air from above in a triangle death noose and stabbing with their finely sharpened sais. Their attack successful, the ninjas tumbled through the air, blood trailing from where they had cut open the stomachs of two of them while the third one smashed headlong into the wall.

2.)

They somersaulted into the room. Three ninjas armed with sais pounced on them as they entered. They recognized the attack immediately: it was the triangle death noose! They slashed expertly with their twin katanas at the ninjas, wounding two and sending the third tumbling into the wall. Traces of blood spattered onto the ground as they stood up to reposition for the next attack.

The second example is much more concise, flows better, and uses choppier language to set the pace. There’s no extra information in there, but you can get a pretty clear idea of what is going on. It’s okay to let the reader’s imagination run with the concept for a while.

Remember it wasn’t until Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that Hermione was finally portrayed as the woman of color she was supposed to have been the whole time - most audiences imagined her to be white. Some of this could be blamed on JKR’s description of Hermione, but by not pegging Hermione as a woman of color she kept the focus of her character on her intelligence and natural abilities - not these things because or despite the fact that she’s a person of color. Hermione wasn’t meant to make that kind of statement, and so her representation was subtle. To some extent, so was Dumbledore’s homosexuality. The difference being that there weren’t many situations where Hermione’s being a woman of color in magical England would likely have been an issue in the story - or at least that is JKR’s contention.

Another example of someone who was vague on descriptions is H.P. Lovecraft. He is famously bad at giving detailed descriptions, particularly in his early work, where you get babbling about pseudopods and formless shapes and sights that are indescribable (so indescribable that he won’t even try).  Later in his work he calmed down and started giving his nameless horrors names, I think in large part thanks to the influence of his wide epistolary network.  But Lovecraft is best known for using very ostentatious language. He was inspired by the late 19th century authors, particularly Edgar Allen Poe, and so mimicked that style more into the early 20th century when such ostentation was falling out of vogue with the common reader and you could pick up a weird fiction magazine for a nickel on the street corner.

So there is a lot to be said for style, and the authors that influence you, and how those things come together. An old Pixar trick is to take things about stories you like and didn’t like and determine what it is you liked and didn’t like about them - and if you didn’t like them what would you change to make it a story you did like. You can do the same thing on a smaller scale by looking at a paragraph or a sentence and figuring out whether you like or dislike a sentence and why. That’ll tell you a lot about the way you prefer to write.

Word order is something you should pick up from a style guide. I’m bad at describing it and okay at doing it. A bit dated, but Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style is a good book to read for any/all of this stuff. It’s not even very long, or at least the one I picked up at Half Price Books for $4 isn’t. It’ll be the best book on grammar you ever purchase.

Hope that answers your question! Let me know if I can provide any more follow up information!

[networkingdefinition]

Hummingbirds Quotes

Official Website: Hummingbirds Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();  • A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him. – Czeslaw Milosz • A rhododendron bud lavender-tipped. Soon a glory of blooms to clash with the cardinals and gladden the hummingbirds! – Dave Beard • Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers. – Nathalia Crane • After a few mouthfuls of moon-flavored air, even the stubbornly drowsy can find themselves wide-eyed.. All the normal noises of life were gone, leaving behind the secretive sounds, the shy sounds, the whispers and conversations of moss disputing with grass over some soft piece of earth, or the hummingbird snoring. – N.D. Wilson • And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect corner of the world-never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness. – Clive Barker • As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on. – Leslie Marmon Silko

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Hummingbird', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '68', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird? – Calvin Trillin • Charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing: like a sense of humor, if you think you’ve got it, you probably haven’t. – Laurel Lea • Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity Ive met as a result of Downton Abbey. – Lesley Nicol • Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he’ll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house. – Agnes de Mille • either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. – Henry Miller • Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain’t no bird that’s my equal. – Twilight – Kathryn Lasky • furious flutter awakened hummingbird heart hello hello love – Megan McCafferty • Gentle day’s flower – The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air. – Chogyam Trungpa • He has the attention span of a hummingbird. – Christopher Moore • He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that – his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths – but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.- Tom Robbins • He wasn’t that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird – Karen Chance • How do you view God in a desert? There’s two types of birds. There’s vultures, and there’s hummingbirds. One lives off dead carcasses, rotting meat. The other lives off the beautiful, sweet, nectar in a particular flower, on a particular desert plant, in the same desert. They both find what they’re looking for. Do you know – take it all the way back into the Old Testament – and the Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God. Allah, to a Muslim; to us, Abba Father, God. – Brian Houston • I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There’s a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song. – Leonard Cohen • I had the metabolism of a hummingbird on crack. – Ilona Andrews • I like snakes. I like hummingbirds. There’s nothing on earth I don’t like. Frogs. Salamanders. The bunnies, the giraffes, the hippopotamuses. – Ted Turner • I love devastating movies, documentaries and hummingbirds (yes, in that order). – Tig Notaro • I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs]. – Leonard Cohen • I’d like to be like a hummingbird. You see them every now and then. You don’t see them everywhere. – Shailene Woodley • I’d written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: ‘Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don’t listen to me’. – Leonard Cohen • I’m a Gibson guy. I play anything from Hummingbirds to J200s. – Corey Taylor • I’m more of a culture hummingbird. – Jai Rodriguez • In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching. – Francesca Lia Block • it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom seen or that we are too senseless to go insane. coffee. give us more of that NOTHING coffee. – Charles Bukowski • Most elegantly finished in all parts, [the hummingbird] is a miniature work of our Great Parent, who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the most beautiful of the winged species. – J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur • Much still remains to be learned about his sex life because the Hummingbird is quicker than the eye. – Will Cuppy • My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it’s operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance–this is why people tell me secrets–my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. – Dave Eggers • My mother’s eyes were large and brown, like my son’s, but unlike Sam’s, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can’t quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around. – Anne Lamott • My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. – Mary Oliver • One day a hummingbird flew in– It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella– –When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn’t believe I had it–but I could feel the intense life–so intense and so tiny– …You were like the humming bird to me… And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together– –It is not that I fear the knowing– It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me–it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive. – Georgia O’Keeffe • Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. – Derrick Jensen • Quick as a hummingbird…she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart. – James Oppenheim • Regularity chauvinists are people who insist that you have got to do the same thing every time, every day, which drives some of us nuts. Attention Deficit Disorder – we need a more positive term for that. Hummingbird mind, I should think. – Ted Nelson • Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded “Me and Bobbby McGee” on … Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes .. she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that. – Sam Andrew • Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur. – Mira Bartok • Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings – Ellen Hopkins • The first and most important thing for me is that people feel how beautiful fashion can be and that it is not just a case of well-made and expensive clothes. Fashion is so rich and it is such an amazing occupation because we can draw on so many different sources of inspiration – just as a hummingbird feeds on a multitude of flowers. – Dries van Noten • The retriever took each bit of meat from his master’s hand with a delicacy almost equal to that of a hummingbird sipping sugar water from a garden feeder, and when it was all gone, he gazed up at Dusty with an adoration that could not have been much less than the love with which the angels regard God. – Dean Koontz • There is a difference between our wisdom and nature’s simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. – Alison Hawthorne Deming • There’s as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. – Morris Sheppard • They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator. – David Attenborough • Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock ‘n’ roll things – country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin’ Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn’t even know where Alabama was. – Bob Dylan • We at Google have made tremendous advances in understanding language. Our knowledge graph has been fundamental to that. The new algorithm that we launched today called Hummingbird has been a great leap forward. – Amit Singhal • We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don’t rise to be literature, and I’m speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird. – Ben H. Winters • We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can. – Wangari Maathai • We’ve all led raucous lives, some of them inside, some of them out. But only the poem you leave behind is what’s important. Everyone knows this. The voyage into the interior is all that matters, Whatever your ride. Sometimes I can’t sit still for all the asininities I read. Give me the hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times His own weight a day just to stay alive. Now that’s a life on the edge. – Charles Wright • When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians. – Wynton Marsalis • when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. – Henry Miller • You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life-you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life. – Miguel Angel Ruiz • You are so high in the tree.If you jumpyou will live a full lifewhile falling.You will get marriedto a hummingbirdand raise beautiful part- hummingbirds. You will die of cancerin mid-air. I will not lie. It will be painful. You are a brave little boyor girl. – Zachary Schomburg

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[equitiesstocks]

Hummingbirds Quotes

Official Website: Hummingbirds Quotes

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();  • A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I know no one worth my envying him. – Czeslaw Milosz • A rhododendron bud lavender-tipped. Soon a glory of blooms to clash with the cardinals and gladden the hummingbirds! – Dave Beard • Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers. – Nathalia Crane • After a few mouthfuls of moon-flavored air, even the stubbornly drowsy can find themselves wide-eyed.. All the normal noises of life were gone, leaving behind the secretive sounds, the shy sounds, the whispers and conversations of moss disputing with grass over some soft piece of earth, or the hummingbird snoring. – N.D. Wilson • And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect corner of the world-never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness. – Clive Barker • As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on. – Leslie Marmon Silko

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Hummingbird', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '68', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_hummingbird img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird? – Calvin Trillin • Charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing: like a sense of humor, if you think you’ve got it, you probably haven’t. – Laurel Lea • Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity Ive met as a result of Downton Abbey. – Lesley Nicol • Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he’ll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house. – Agnes de Mille • either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. – Henry Miller • Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain’t no bird that’s my equal. – Twilight – Kathryn Lasky • furious flutter awakened hummingbird heart hello hello love – Megan McCafferty • Gentle day’s flower – The hummingbird competes With the stillness of the air. – Chogyam Trungpa • He has the attention span of a hummingbird. – Christopher Moore • He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that – his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths – but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.- Tom Robbins • He wasn’t that good looking, he had the social skills of a wet cat and the patience of a caffeinated hummingbird – Karen Chance • How do you view God in a desert? There’s two types of birds. There’s vultures, and there’s hummingbirds. One lives off dead carcasses, rotting meat. The other lives off the beautiful, sweet, nectar in a particular flower, on a particular desert plant, in the same desert. They both find what they’re looking for. Do you know – take it all the way back into the Old Testament – and the Muslim and you, we actually serve the same God. Allah, to a Muslim; to us, Abba Father, God. – Brian Houston • I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There’s a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song. – Leonard Cohen • I had the metabolism of a hummingbird on crack. – Ilona Andrews • I like snakes. I like hummingbirds. There’s nothing on earth I don’t like. Frogs. Salamanders. The bunnies, the giraffes, the hippopotamuses. – Ted Turner • I love devastating movies, documentaries and hummingbirds (yes, in that order). – Tig Notaro • I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs]. – Leonard Cohen • I’d like to be like a hummingbird. You see them every now and then. You don’t see them everywhere. – Shailene Woodley • I’d written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: ‘Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don’t listen to me’. – Leonard Cohen • I’m a Gibson guy. I play anything from Hummingbirds to J200s. – Corey Taylor • I’m more of a culture hummingbird. – Jai Rodriguez • In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching. – Francesca Lia Block • it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse or that the hummingbird is so seldom seen or that we are too senseless to go insane. coffee. give us more of that NOTHING coffee. – Charles Bukowski • Most elegantly finished in all parts, [the hummingbird] is a miniature work of our Great Parent, who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the most beautiful of the winged species. – J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur • Much still remains to be learned about his sex life because the Hummingbird is quicker than the eye. – Will Cuppy • My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it’s operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance–this is why people tell me secrets–my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. – Dave Eggers • My mother’s eyes were large and brown, like my son’s, but unlike Sam’s, they were always frantic, like a hummingbird who can’t quite find the flower but keeps jabbing around. – Anne Lamott • My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. – Mary Oliver • One day a hummingbird flew in– It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella– –When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn’t believe I had it–but I could feel the intense life–so intense and so tiny– …You were like the humming bird to me… And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together– –It is not that I fear the knowing– It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me–it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive. – Georgia O’Keeffe • Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. – Derrick Jensen • Quick as a hummingbird…she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart. – James Oppenheim • Regularity chauvinists are people who insist that you have got to do the same thing every time, every day, which drives some of us nuts. Attention Deficit Disorder – we need a more positive term for that. Hummingbird mind, I should think. – Ted Nelson • Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded “Me and Bobbby McGee” on … Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes .. she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that. – Sam Andrew • Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur. – Mira Bartok • Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings – Ellen Hopkins • The first and most important thing for me is that people feel how beautiful fashion can be and that it is not just a case of well-made and expensive clothes. Fashion is so rich and it is such an amazing occupation because we can draw on so many different sources of inspiration – just as a hummingbird feeds on a multitude of flowers. – Dries van Noten • The retriever took each bit of meat from his master’s hand with a delicacy almost equal to that of a hummingbird sipping sugar water from a garden feeder, and when it was all gone, he gazed up at Dusty with an adoration that could not have been much less than the love with which the angels regard God. – Dean Koontz • There is a difference between our wisdom and nature’s simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. – Alison Hawthorne Deming • There’s as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. – Morris Sheppard • They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator. – David Attenborough • Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock ‘n’ roll things – country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin’ Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn’t even know where Alabama was. – Bob Dylan • We at Google have made tremendous advances in understanding language. Our knowledge graph has been fundamental to that. The new algorithm that we launched today called Hummingbird has been a great leap forward. – Amit Singhal • We spend so much time, these days, on forms of literature that don’t rise to be literature, and I’m speaking about Twitter posts and quick and hot takes on different websites. We sort of zoom from thing to thing like a hummingbird. – Ben H. Winters • We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can. – Wangari Maathai • We’ve all led raucous lives, some of them inside, some of them out. But only the poem you leave behind is what’s important. Everyone knows this. The voyage into the interior is all that matters, Whatever your ride. Sometimes I can’t sit still for all the asininities I read. Give me the hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times His own weight a day just to stay alive. Now that’s a life on the edge. – Charles Wright • When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians. – Wynton Marsalis • when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. – Henry Miller • You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life-you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life. – Miguel Angel Ruiz • You are so high in the tree.If you jumpyou will live a full lifewhile falling.You will get marriedto a hummingbirdand raise beautiful part- hummingbirds. You will die of cancerin mid-air. I will not lie. It will be painful. You are a brave little boyor girl. – Zachary Schomburg

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[mredwinsmith]

The Visual Thrill of Color

Acrylic Painting Ideas for Beginners

Summer is in full swing! Let’s take advantage of it and put a little art in our lives! Chris Cozen is here with guidance on acrylic painting ideas for beginners, which means we can all jump in right now. There’s no professional experience or skill required! All you need is to get inspired with experimenting with lush color and bold color mixing, and set aside some time for yourself and your art projects! You’ll love the way you feel when you do — and the art you’ll end up making!

With Acrylic Artist Favorite Things for Summer you get a fun guide to making paintings all summer long. And this exclusive collection is built around Chris’s infectious enthusiasm for art and acrylics. It’s definitely catching! Enjoy!~Courtney

‘Reflections’ by Chris Cozen, who says to “limit your pigment choices but push and pull them to develop all their nuances.”

On Color and Acrylic Painting with Chris Cozen

Hello again! As always, I’m so pleased to be able to tell you all about my favorite subject–acrylics. I am all about color and that’s why I’m so happy that I finally be able to share all the bits and pieces I’ve learned with you!

Wheeling through color …

Color Wheels

When I explore in the studio, I often find myself making dozens of color wheels so that I can explore various red-blue-yellow pigment combinations. Each one is a marvel to me. What I learned from all the wheels is that acrylic color is infinitely malleable and easily tweaked and adjusted.

Color Journal

I also learned that you can get by with a lot fewer colors if you fully understand what the colors you already have can do. Until doing this I had never really considered keeping a color journal to record the discoveries I made as I intuitively mixed on my palette. I learned as I went along that a journal would help to encourage my own color explorations and push me to experiment more. I hope you will consider starting one of your own. I like using a bound journal with 140 lb. watercolor paper. This allows me to record water media explorations as well as straight acrylic without bleed-through. This sturdy paper holds up to collage, glazing and markers as well.

Paints for You

I always use Golden Artist Colors but will branch out to include other acrylic products or alcohol inks for fun. Artist quality paints have the most pigment per ounce and are the most cost effective in the long run.

If you’re just beginning, consider using “student grade” paint which has substantially better pigment strength than craft paints. No matter what paints you use, you’ve got to get to know your pigments. Some are good mixers and others not so much. Whenever you add Titanium white to any color you will create a tint. The transparent qualities of some pigments will also be affected by the addition of white shifting them to opaque or semi-transparent. This is a great exercise to add to your own color journal.

Chris’s color journal for acrylic painting. Colors used on left side are Nickel Azo Yellow, Quinacridone Red, Cobalt Turquoise, and Titan Buff; colors used on the right side are Napthol Red Light, Transparent Pyrrole Orange, Paynes Gray, Titan Buff.

Color All Around

I’m living in the Northeast right now, which is a long way from California, where I usually call home. I arrived here at the very beginning of spring. I was visually thrilled every time I went outdoors to see the variety of greens on display as the new leaves developed. Anything from gray green, to chartreuse, lime, blue-green and more. I ran to get my color wheels to see which pigments I could use to capture them. I keep them with my color journals so I’m always ready to record color when I see it. This kind of color exploration will really improve your ability to see and record the colors you experience.

Three Color Challenge

There are all kinds of ways that you can explore color in your journal! One of my favorites is to choose three colors that you don’t ordinarily use but already own and then find out what they can do.

+First combine each of the colors with white and with black to create tints and shades.

+Then start exploring what happens when you mix two of the colors together, then two more and then the last two.

+Each of these secondary colors can have tints and shades as well.

+If you like mixed media, add your painted papers and collage elements to your color journal, or use an image as a prompt to explore color.

+I often draw on the top surface of my color pages just for fun. Let YOUR fun be your guide! Enjoy the color wheels, color mixes, and “writing” in your art journal!

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