#im not happy with these so i kinda gave up

[positivelyholland]

Can we get a Styles-Swift reader! imagine in honor of Liam Payne?

Steady Hands in the Storm

Pairing: Harry Styles x daughter!reader

Genre: slight angst into fluff

Warnings: kinda a heavy one but it has a happy ending

A/N YALL IM BACK Word Count: 7,243

The house was unusually quiet. The kind of silence that feels heavy, pressing down on every surface. You sat at the kitchen table, absentmindedly stirring a spoon through your cup of tea. It had gone cold a while ago, but you hadn’t noticed. Not really. All your focus was on your father, who was sitting across from you.

He was hunched over, elbows on the table, his head in his hands. His curls looked messier than usual, like he hadn’t bothered to tame them today. You’d noticed the little things over the past few days—the way he moved slower, the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes anymore. Even the way his voice sounded softer, like the energy had drained out of him.

You knew why, of course. The news had hit everyone hard. Liam Payne, your dad’s former bandmate, had passed away unexpectedly. And even though it had been years since One Direction had been a band, those boys were still family to him. Losing Liam felt like losing a part of himself.

“Dad,” you said softly, your voice barely breaking the stillness.

He didn’t look up, but you saw his shoulders tense slightly.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse.

You sighed, setting your spoon down with a soft clink. You knew him well enough to understand that he wasn’t trying to shut you out. He just didn’t know how to put what he was feeling into words.

So, you decided to try a different approach.

“Do you remember that time Liam came over for Christmas when I was, like, six?” you said, leaning back in your chair. “He spent the whole day teaching me how to do a handstand in the living room. Mum was furious because we kept knocking over the decorations.”

That got a small huff of a laugh out of your dad, though he still didn’t lift his head.

“I thought she was going to banish him from the house forever,” you added with a grin.

“He kept apologizing every five minutes,” your dad muttered, finally looking up. His green eyes were red-rimmed, and you could tell he hadn’t slept much. “But then he’d just… try again. Said you were getting better every time.”

You smiled softly, nodding. “I did get better. All because of him.”

The room fell quiet again, but it didn’t feel as heavy this time. You could see your dad’s shoulders relax a little, his hands falling to rest on the table.

“He was so good with you,” Harry said after a moment. “Always patient. Always kind.”

You reached across the table, placing your hand over his. “He loved you, Dad. All of you. I think you meant as much to him as he did to you.”

Your dad swallowed hard, his jaw clenching as he tried to keep his emotions in check.

“It just… it doesn’t feel real,” he admitted, his voice cracking. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and… and he’ll call or text, and it’ll all have been some kind of awful dream.”

You squeezed his hand gently. “I know. But he wouldn’t want you to carry this alone. You’ve always told me that grief is lighter when you share it.”

He gave you a faint smile, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes but was a start.

“Why are you so wise for a teenager?” he asked, his voice tinged with warmth.

You shrugged, trying to keep the mood light. “I get it from Mum. Obviously.”

That earned you a soft chuckle, and for a moment, it felt like the cloud hanging over the room lifted just a little.

Over the next few days, you made it your mission to help your dad through his grief, even if he didn’t realize it. It was little things at first—making sure he ate, suggesting you watch one of Liam’s favorite movies together, or putting on some music to fill the silence.

But as time went on, you noticed that your dad seemed to be retreating into himself more. He’d spend hours in his studio, not working on anything, just sitting there with his guitar in his lap. You’d find him staring out the window, lost in thought, or holding his phone like he was waiting for a call that would never come.

It broke your heart to see him like this, so you decided to take a more direct approach.

One evening, you found him in the living room, staring at an old photo album. You sat down next to him without a word, leaning against his shoulder as you looked at the pictures. Most of them were from his One Direction days—grainy selfies, group shots from concerts, and candids of the boys goofing around backstage.

“Did you ever think those days would end?” you asked softly.

He shook his head. “Not really. We were so young, so caught up in it all. It felt like it would last forever.”

“But you’re still close,” you pointed out. “You and Louis talk all the time. And Niall sends those ridiculous videos that make you laugh so hard you cry.”

He smiled faintly at that. “Yeah. And Zayn… well, we’ve reconnected a bit over the years. It’s not the same as it was, but there’s still love there.”

You nodded, flipping the page to a picture of Liam holding a microphone, his face lit up with a big, toothy grin. “He’d be proud of you, you know. For everything you’ve done. For the way you’ve been there for everyone else, even when it’s hard for you.”

Your dad’s eyes filled with tears, and he quickly wiped them away, his hand trembling slightly.

“I just… I feel like I should’ve done more,” he admitted. “Checked in more often, made more of an effort to keep in touch. Maybe if I had, things would’ve been different.”

You shook your head firmly. “No, Dad. You can’t think like that. You loved him, and he knew that. Sometimes, life just… happens. It’s not anyone’s fault.”

He looked at you then, his eyes searching yours for some kind of reassurance. “How’d you get so good at this?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion.

“Years of listening to your music,” you teased, earning a watery laugh from him.

A few weeks later, your dad had a concert scheduled—a big one, with thousands of fans waiting to see him. You weren’t sure if he was ready to perform, but he insisted that the show must go on.

That night, as you stood backstage, you could feel the nervous energy radiating off him. He kept pacing, running his hands through his hair and mumbling to himself.

“Dad,” you said, stepping in front of him to stop his pacing. “You’ve got this.”

He looked down at you, his green eyes wide and uncertain. “What if I break down in the middle of it? What if I can’t do it?”

“You will,” you said confidently. “Because you’re doing this for him. And because he’d want you to.”

He took a deep breath, nodding slowly. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

As the lights dimmed and the crowd erupted into cheers, your dad turned to you one last time. “Stay close, yeah?”

“Always,” you promised.

The concert started off strong, with your dad pouring his heart into every song. The crowd loved him, cheering and singing along to every word. But it wasn’t until halfway through the set that he finally addressed the elephant in the room.

“This next one…” he began, his voice shaking slightly. “This next one is for someone very special to me. Someone who’s no longer with us, but who will always be a part of my heart.”

The stadium fell silent, the weight of his words sinking in.

“I miss you, mate,” he said softly, his voice cracking. “This one’s for you.”

He started to play, his voice raw with emotion as he sang a song he’d written just for Liam. The lyrics were beautiful, filled with love and pain and memories of the friendship they’d shared. By the time he finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house—including yours.

When he walked off stage, you were there waiting for him, your arms open wide. He pulled you into a tight hug, holding on like you were his lifeline.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice thick with gratitude. “For everything.”

You smiled against his shoulder, tears streaming down your face. “Always, Dad. Always.”

In that moment, you knew that while the pain of losing Liam would never fully go away, your dad would be okay. Because he wasn’t alone. He had you, and he had the love and memories of a bond that could never be broken.

And that was enough.

The End.

[curemi]

some simple Cure Sky poses 💙

[dizzybizz]

hawthorne sprite HAWTHORNE SPRITE!!!!!!!! yippee

[descendantofthesparrow]

Halloween C4 artworks-commissioned by @benjaycaptain for one of their fics.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[sweaty-toothed-mad-woman]

there’ll be happiness after you

but there was happiness because of you

both of these things can be true

there is happiness

past the blood and bruise

past the curses and cries

beyond the terror in the nightfall

haunted by the look in my eyes

that would’ve loved you for a lifetime

leave it all behind

and there is happiness

[lollytea]

I found some pictures of me from 2019 and I'm experiencing such indescribable emotions

[skeletalheartattack]

hi I like gelato a lot

[triglycercule]

HELP I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING HELP!!! HELP!!!!! its not don yet,,,,,, eoaugh. shoutout to like the 20 coloring/rendering tips and tutorial videos i watched you all did NOTHING to help. GOD. how hard is is to get a tutorial and help for something that actually ISNT naturally intuitive to me???

waaa waaa lineart hard 🥺🥺 waaa waaa sketching hard!!! ok man how about you struggle with figuring out basic color palettes (color is my absolute worst element of art ive yet to even improve on. this backfired on me i shouldve done more coloring pages when i was younger)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sorry if you've already mentioned but what (re?)ignited your love of comics/x-men/cherik? curious because there are so many different adaptations of them

i think im gonna speak for a few (or a lot of) people when i say that TL;DR the wolverine x deadpool movie that came out this summer is what pulled me back into comics and i COULD leave it there but i will go into excruciating and unnecessary detail instead because i love an origin story and i love oversharing.

under the cut tho because im nice sometimes (there's also wxdp doodles in here. if you want to see that)

ironically (and probably commonly), growing up i was more of an avengers kid. Kinda. Loosely <- binge watched the cartoons and movies and read copious amounts of comics and fics and i am hoarding fanart in my old dresser as we speak ok 'loosely' is a modest lie.

embarrassingly i remember getting into discus cause of captain america LMAO so yeah needless to say i was a Humble Fan- me joining my school's comic class/club didnt help either (shoutout to my teach from that she was the realest one out there for. A Multitude of reasons). she definitely is was inspires me to even draw still and make comics and i often think bout the tips i learned from her class tbh she was great

back to the movies t and comics tho, i got into em because my brother would offer to take me and that's how we'd hang out (i rarely saw movies in theaters and i even more rarely went anywhere as a teenager. still kinda like that today tbh ooops) and yk. it just snowballed after that.

my brother and i have always liked comics- he just more than me for a while (though he still very much loves comics and As We Know From My Posts we still talk about them whenever i see him To An Exhausting Degree)

durin then i was really into stony and i have a few surviving doodles i made but those are between me and god. and anyone who asks tbh LOL

'snap can you make this related to x-men again this is long' ok so fast forward to This Summer again I Still Don't Really See Movies but my brother offered to take me and this was the first time i'd actually seen an x-men movie in full

as a kid i only remember seeing the 'perfection' scene between erik and raven in first class while i was channel surfing. pretty sure i changed the channel after seeing mystique naked cause i was scared my parents would get mad at me if they caught me watching it LOL

BUT MOVING ON As A Kid i think it's also natural you'll sometimes watch 92 if it's on And I Did though evidently it didn't stick too hard (i do remember really liking beast and gambit though.... still do really): my knowledge of x-men was. INCREDIBLY sparse. like diabolically so so i didnt have too much expectations (aside from the fact i vaguely liked deadpool beforehand).

tbh i dont know why my bro never took me to see any of the x-men movies. it's not like he doesn't Also like x-men (90% sure nightcrawler's his favorite but my brother will be caught dead saying he has absolute favorites like that)- he owns a bitch load of deadpool comics/omnibus sets too (of which ive read over the years and reread this year) but Shrug moving on

Much Like Most Of The Internet i fell down the rabbit hole that way. i have some doodles i made a couple days after seeing WxDP that i now have an excuse to throw at all of you Look And Perceive

and so. As I Do. i got curious and told myself i'd binge watch all the x-men movies the week before i went back to school And Then I Did ft. My Brother Sometimes and then i said i'd binge watch all of '92 and And I Did That ft. My Brother Sometimes But Less So and now we're here. currently watching Evolution...

once i got to school i realized i lived near a comic shop and started getting into the comics that way (the first ones i got since going down this rabbit hole was Magneto Was Right!, The Resurrection of Magneto, and The Trial of Magneto. if you were curious !!!!! clearly i didnt care too much about context i just needed to see My Guy jelvejlkvj i have no regrets and Evidently ive read more since)

i'm pretty sure what dragged me into cherik specifically was the fact i saw a clip of The Famous ending to 92 where erik's aghast at the notion jean even has to question his love for charles. i think that was what officially had me refocus my lens on them: not a single poolverine thought after that LOL (all the cherik posting i saw on twitter definitely helped too but that was the nail in the coffin for any other interests i had: i was locked into cherik and x-men in general now)

that clip specifically, i was surprised at the fact they- frequently even- have the x-men franchise say erik loves charles and vice versa so bluntly. even if it's not meant to be romantic, i fear im just a fan of how casually the word's thrown around with them two and i got tender bout it all. Then Yk. i just live for the drama. the hilarity even. the sincerity .... they make me sick if i think of them too long so im gonna end it here

before i go tho ironically enough, the first x-men issue i owned was This one (story a this is that while stuck in some wacko dimension charles accidentally gets himself trapped in logan's mind while utilizing his astral projection. if you were curious). pretty sure i got it for free with another comic set i got years ago since our old comic shop loved to do that, but it's poetic aint it. maybe ill doodle something referencing it..

i should probably look into finishing this arc someday im Dummy curious to even know how it started and how it ends.....

[ethereal-bumble-bee]

GUESS WHO’S GETTING EVALUATED FOR AUTISM

[gu6chan]

maybe its sample bias but i think it's kinda funny how most people I've seen who've played drakengard because of nier are making ending e THE endgoal and more often than not the main if not only reason they're playing the game at all and when they finally get it they're like "this is it the single most impactful, greatest moment of all gaming. im wiping tears from my eyes this is it" and then you see the drakengard fans who've played drakengard because they like drakengard and you ask them about ending e and they're like "eh. it was okay, i guess"

[widevibratobitch]

actually im kinda happy with it lol probably because ive given up quite some time ago but yknow. its not that serious.

[godslittlesadge]

acquired veilguard through absolutely legitimate means just to play around with the customization soo here's my rook adir (based) and my inquisitor jonah (depressed)

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[gingaswag]

I GOT THE VAMPIRE JOB