#it has a plain color background so it was pretty easy to just cover the consonants

[the-disemconsonanter]

o o i a ae?

graph of what being hungry is like with adhd

[marveloustimestwo]

Hi Robin! Can I ask/get some headcanons with James, Sirius and Remus (separate)? How would he react if his darling wears his sweater?

Hi! Thank you for the request :)

Warnings: Yandere themes, a brief mention of scars during Remus' section.

James Potter:

Dear god would he act so smug when he finds you wearing his sweater.

James owns quite a few sweaters, but he's not all that neat. He always has at least one of his sweaters lying around. On his bed, on the floor, tucked unfolded into his dresser, and he won't really keep track of them until he needs one.

Because of this, it's very easy to just pick one of them up and he won't notice for a while.

Up until he sees you wearing one of them, and he goes, "Is that mine???"

Very confused for a second and wondering when you could've taken it (and considering how often he actually looks at his clothes before throwing them on, could have been weeks.)

But after confirming it is in fact his, James will have this smug smirk plastered over his face in an instant.

James is more the type to loudly brag about his obsession in whatever way he can. If he can find a way to shove it in everybody's faces that you like him back, he'll take it.

After all, James can be pretty possessive. Forcing everybody else to acknowledge that you're his not only makes them all back-off but also traps you with him in a way.

You can't leave him if everyone else is too afraid to take you in, right?

But anyway, the fact that you're very obviously wearing one of his sweaters makes James so happy.

It gives him another thing to say "That's right! They're my partner, not yours!"

This boy will be shoving his sweaters at you from here on out. He almost refuses to let you wear anything else.

Sirius Black:

Sirius is also one who is very smug upon seeing you in any article of his clothing.

Unlike James or Remus, Sirius doesn't own too many sweaters. His family prefers him to look a certain way so that he can represent his family well, so many of his clothes are formal and expensive.

The clothes he bought on his own are usually considered pretty rugged and bad-boyish just so he could spite his family.

Despite that, I could see Sirius owning a few particular sweaters.

One is in the colors of Gryffindor (another thing he purchased to spite his parents), a couple simple plain colored ones, and a couple that goes under his protective gear during his Quidditch games.

The first and last ones are the ones he'd be the most pleased to see you wearing.

The first one because you're wearing his house colors, which is even better if you're in a different house. The second one because it has his name and Quidditch number on it.

Out of the three, Sirius has the worst possessive streak. James is a very close second, but Sirius isn't afraid to bully, jinx, and even physically harm others to sink in the message that you're his and no one else's.

You wearing one of his sweaters, a few of which actually state his name, not only further convinces Sirus that you're his, but convinces everyone else of that too.

It's more ammo for Sirius to use against others as to why they need to stay away from you.

It's a deadly confirmation for Sirius, one that would be much better for you if avoided.

Remus Lupin:

Like James, it's always easy to steal one of Remus' sweaters without him noticing for a few days. Unlike James, it's not because he's messy.

Quite the opposite, actually. Remus is very organized, he just has a lot of sweaters. He loves them because they're warm, comfy, and they cover up many of the scars/wounds he gets from turning during the full moon.

So when he first sees you wearing one of his many sweaters, it takes him by surprise at first.

Unlike his friends, Remus isn't as outwardly smug about you wearing something of his.

James and Sirius have always been the ones to show off their love for you, the ones who shove it in everybody's faces.

Remus prefers to fade into the background and let his friends hog all the attention.

A downside of this is that some people either don't think that you and he are together because they might not see the signs, or they think that they can openly flirt with you because they think Remus doesn't have the guts to say anything about it.

He almost always does, especially if you look to be uncomfortable with the interaction.

But Remus is happy with this compromise. You get a comfy sweater and look cute while also subtly showing off that you're his.

Extra: Poly Marauders

The way that these three would be throwing their sweaters at you after they see you in one of theirs is off the charts.

While they're not as jealous of each other as they would be of anyone else, the jealousy is still there. It's just not threatening to jinx each other beyond repair type jealousy.

Moreso it becomes a competition for them to see which one of their sweaters you wear the most. (Funny thing is Remus actually keeps tally just to piss James and Sirius off with how often he's convinced you to wear his.)

They would offer to let you keep the sweaters you borrow, but they fear that it would lose the impact of others seeing that you're theirs.

Don't worry though, darling, they all have plenty of sweaters to spare.

[djbunnie]

Puppy Love (Damirae Disney AU)

(The movie opens on the skyline of a neighborhood in Gotham and pans down to focus on Titus, and his human pet, Damian Wayne, living inside their academy dorm.)

Titus: (narrating) "My story begins in Gotham, not so very long ago, and yet so much has happened since then, that it seems like an eternity. At that time, I lived with my pet in a bachelor dorm just off of gotham academy campus park. It was a beautiful spring day, a tedious time of the year for bachelors." (Damian is seen sitting at his desk and writing down english class book report.)" Oh, that’s my pet, Damian Wayne, an academic scholar of sorts. I’m the one with black fur." (Titus is then shown resting on a couch by the window.) "My name’s Titus. As far as I could see, the old notion that a bachelor’s life was so glamorous and carefree was all nonsense. It was downright dull." (Titus leans up on all fours and stretches while yawning. He watches Damian review his notes and continue flipping through pages of the book, as we then see Damian in the living room with discarded homework and notes across the chair and floor and a library book in one of the seats.) "It was plain to see that my pet needed someone. But if it were left up to Damian, we’d be bachelors forever. He was married to his work. Oh, he’s intelligent enough, as humans go. And I think you could say, Damian is a rather handsome animal in his way. I could see no reason why my pet didn’t deserve an attractive mate. At least I was determined to do my best." (Titus stares at a cover of one of Damian's roommate Conner Kent pin-up magazines and pushes it aside with his nose.) "Of course, dogs are a pretty poor judge of human beauty." (Titus then looks at the cover of Damian roommate Connor Kent Lilliput magazine issue depicting a sexy blonde in a green and pink swimsuit against a blue background.) "But I had a rough idea of what to look for." (Titus sees a shaggy saluki and her beatnik human pet walk to the park.) "Hmm! Unusual breed. Very unusual. Hmm! Oh, surely not." (He then sees a small, stout pug and her similarly dignified human pet walk the opposite direction.) "Well now, what have we here? Hmm. Well, a little too short coupled. Nope!" (A purple-colored poodle with black-haired bangs and her sophisticated owner pass by.) "I say! Well, I do say! Now there’s a fancy breed. Hmm. Perhaps a little too fancy. Yes, much too fancy." (A cocker spaniel and her elderly owner ride along on their bicycle.) "Too old." (A little girl in yellow and her yellow labrador puppy walk down the street.) "Too young. It was a problem, a real problem. Well, now that’s a bit more like it!" (Titus sees their ideal wives: An Saluki with a red and gold collar named Rita and her human owner, Rachel.) "The most beautiful creature on four legs! Now, if only the girl-Well! She’s very lovely too. It was almost too good to be true." (Rachel and Rita walk to gotham academy campus Park.) "I’d never find another pair like that, not if I looked for 100 years. Ah, they’re heading for the park. A perfect meeting place if I can only arrange it. Uh-oh, but Damian never stopped work ‘till after 5:00. That would be too late." (Titus sets the clock hands five minutes after 5:00 with his nose, rushes to Damians study, and prances and barks at Damian to get his attention.) 

Damian: "After 5:00 already? Fancy that." (He puts on his trench vest and tie.) "All right, titus. All right, boy." (As soon as Damian puts the leash on titus, he takes off, heaving Damian through the front door. The scene slides away to see them traveling quickly through the Campus Park.) "Titus, boy, take it easy! What’s all the hurry? Titus, boy, slow down." (Titus looks around the area and sees the pug from recently barking at a few pigeons to chase them away. The two bachelors. cross a bridge past the saluki and her master painting this scene of the park. Titus continues) 

Titus: (narrating) "I was afraid we’d missed them. Perhaps they passed on by the park. Then, suddenly… I spotted them." (As told, Titus sees Raven reading a book on a park bench with Rita sitting next to her.) "It was a perfect situation if I planned it right. I couldn’t depend on Damian. I knew what he’d do. He’d settle on the grass, read his manga and that would be it." (Damian sits on a bank of the gotham academy River to look at the scenery with Titus sitting next to him.) "No, it was all up to me. Well. At first I had no particular plan, just anything to attract attention. You know, stir things up a bit." (Titus goes ahead and grabs Damian manga.) 

Damian: "Titus, you silly old thing!" (titus playfully crouches down on all fours and leaps away.) "C’mon! C’mon, let’s have it, boy. Titus! Titus!" (Rita and Rachel look at Damian and Titus fooling around with little amusement, as Damian retrieves his manga.) 

Titus: (narrating) "For a while, it seemed to work. At least they had seen one another. Things were going along first-rate." (Titus looks at Damian and then looks at Rachel back-and-forth, until he does a take.) "But, for some strange reason, they left!" (Titus sees Rachel and Rita returning home and tries to make a break for it, until Damian pounces on Titus to stop him.) 

Damian: "C’mon, you old renegade. We’re going home." 

Titus: (narrating) "But I wasn’t giving up. I was determined that somehow they just had to meet." (Titus heaves Damian and forces him to meet Rachel just in time.) 

Damian: "Oh!" 

Rachel: "Ohhh!" 

Damian: "I beg your pardon. Please excuse me." 

Rachel: "I must say, what on earth!" (Titus is overly focused on his goal, that he accidentally ties their legs up with his leash.) 

Damian: "Oh, really. Good heavens." 

Rachel: "Oh, dear." (Rita becomes alarmed at this and tries to free her mistress by holding onto her deass with her teeth, only to make things worse.) 

Damian: "Ohh!" 

Rachel: "Ahh, ahh!" (Rita accidentally rips off part of her mistress' dress, as Damian and Rachel lose their balance and land into a nearby pond.) 

Damian: (groaning) "Oh, oh." 

Rachel: (disappointed) "Oh, my new dress and my makeup! Ah, ah…" (Rachel stands back up, followed by Damian.) 

Damian: (pleading) "I’m terribly sorry. Please let me help you. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s come over him." (Titus looks at Rita and tries to apologize for humiliating himself and Damian, but Rita turns away from him out of disgust.) "I’m so sorry. He’s never acted this way before." 

Rachel: (irritated) "Please, just go away! You’ve done enough. Please?" 

Damian: (hands her a hankie) "Oh. Oh, I say. Here, take mine." 

Rachel: "Oh." (Rachel and Damian share a laugh, as Rita looks at Titus lovingly. Titus' plan of getting Damian to meet Rachel works.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After rewatching 101 Dalmatians, I just can't help but think, would it be awesome if this is how Damian and Raven met. but instead as adults, i think High school Romance. I think it would be really cool if Raven was a normal girl whose dream is to become a writer/ comic author. after winning a writing competition. She was rewarded with a scholarship to attend the Gotham academy. I also thought it would be really cool if Gotham academy allows students to bring pets, live in dorms, and have a lot of freedom. Basically strangers to lovers. I would love to revamp this in the future.

[authoressofdarkness]

His Perfect Model - Chapter 1

Tony doesn’t need the money from porn shoots, Lord knows. It’s just a fun, extremely well paying side gig. But when he somehow acquires permanent... ah, custody... of the omega from his latest shoot, he knows he’s found his perfect model. And their fun together is only beginning. It may take him some time to convince Peter of that, but really, he’s not too worried.

Read on AO3 here. Notes, warnings, and Chapter 1 under the cut.

Notes: Hello hello! I'm back again! This is another random plot bunny that I've been fidgeting with for a while, but I was eventually convinced to get it up sooner rather than later, so here it is! This first chapter is very explicit, and it probably will be rather smutty most of the way through. Not sure how long this will be yet or what it will deal with, but just for transparency, there may be talk of past trauma that could extend to noncon, dubcon, kidnapping, human trafficking, and more. I'll tag each chapter accordingly as we get there, but none of it should be too explicit. Also, anyone familiar with GMSTS will be familiar with how I write ABO, but, as simply as possible, omegas have vaginas, alphas have cocks, and betas are what we would consider "binary." Again, I say so ahead of time just in the interest of transparency so I don't accidentally trigger anyone's dysphoria. Aaaanyway, if you've made it through my rambling and are still interested, yay! Thank you for being here, read on, and I hope you enjoy! <3

He tries not to judge.

That was probably why he gets hired for so many gigs. That and his insane amount of talent, but — well. Anyone could have that amount of talent with working with equipment if they tried. Now the fact that he builds his own… that is something special, he knows.

And, really, his technical prowess was what pays his bills more than anything, and is what made him rich. That, and his father’s name, but he tries to keep that part more under wraps. He’d turned away the responsibility that normally came with being a Stark a long time ago; but the intelligence and the mechanical prowess is practically in his blood. Unable to be rejected.

Anyway, the point is, he doesn’t need to do porn shoots; yet he still enjoys taking these side jobs. He always had, even on his way to the top, and he never made any attempt to hide it.

He doesn’t just shoot porn, of course. He’d lend his camera skills to anyone who asks and has the money to back up the offer. But of course the dirty jobs tend to be his favorites. Any alpha that says they don’t like to pose an omega how they like and look at their pretty pussy for any amount of time — and get paid the big bucks to do it — was certainly a liar.

And yeah, he takes some weird jobs included in that. But he doesn’t ask many questions except on the preferences for stylings of the job, and he’s kinky enough himself to never dream of judging the extremism of it, so… yeah, he makes pretty good money.

Today might be testing the extent of it, though.

The scene he is shooting today isn’t particularly extreme or out of the ordinary, on first glance. The omega was to be strapped to a chair with a wand tied in place to tease his pussy, and Tony is supposed to capture it in photo and on video as his torture goes through stages of multiple denials until he’s hypersensitive and begging to stop. The rest was put as to be determined based on the way it comes out.

It is far from the craziest thing he’s ever shot, and he planned it out easily enough, with a few of his favorite toys and set pieces, and he’s easily ready to go.

The weird part starts when the omega gets there.

It’s apparent immediately that this is no porn star. Aside from his experience in the field and the number of them he actually knew from it, Peter doesn’t carry himself like one. He is small and shy, with a lithe, gorgeous body, as Tony can see from the moment the two gruff alphas accompanying him strip him out of the poor excuse for a covering the omega had been wearing. All he was left in then was a slip, and it’s sheer fabric did nothing to hide the pretty nude form underneath.

Most people arrived in normal clothes and then would either change or strip.

The second thing was that he is already bound. Again, unusual. Clearly he hadn’t driven himself, of course, but… this must be a really elaborate scene for him to already be tied up. And the rope isn’t even the good stuff; it’s plain and grainy, certainly hurting his wrists and not at all his color. Tony always used rope that complimented the style of the scene and the person’s skin. It would be a waste not to.

Peter is gorgeous, and he could have used a lot of colors, admittedly. But the boy is delicate and pale — his pussy much the same in the photos — and so he’d chosen a light pink, one that didn’t wash out his already pale form and almost matched the pretty color of the soft bits he’d been paid to pay special attention to. It’s easy enough to match the background of the scene and the colors of the toys and rope together, thematically.

But that aside, all of the choices up to this point were strange. Stranger than he’s used to. But he makes it a point not to say anything. He’s not being paid to judge.

Even if Peter looks almost scared of the two men he came in with. Even if something rings off about this whole gig.

Tony isn’t stupid, but he doesn’t care much for the loss of business — at least — pushing for the truth would cause. So he pushes the thoughts down and finally approaches the omega.

“Hi, princess. Gentlemen.” He kneels down to be at Peter’s level. “My name’s Tony. I’m going to be the one taking your photos, honey. Can I get you anything before we start? A water? Bathroom break?” The omega silently shakes his head. “Alright. Let's get started then.” He holds out a hand to help him up.

Peter takes it, and Tony helps him to his feet and guides him over to the chair. “Now we’re going to start with some photos on the floor and make our way into the chair. I’m going to change out your ropes. I want you to leave the slip on, for now.” It’s white, a nice color to highlight the details of the creamy skin underneath, and doesn’t contrast with his ropes, either.

He cuts the bonds on the omega’s wrists and reties them in front of him with the pink rope, then has him lay down on the floor, propping his ankles up on the edge of the chair so the slip falls back to expose creamy thighs and stomach and the top of that tantalizing slit from above his pressed-together thighs.

Tony suppresses the urge to purr. “Perfect.” He moves behind the chair and starts taking pictures, ignoring the stir of arousal in his gut at the sight of the gorgeous omega as he does, throwing out occasional changes in position for him to follow.

Peter, for his part, is pretty demure throughout all the photos. He’s quiet — whether shy or afraid to speak, Tony doesn’t ask — but he doesn’t look sullen or make any faces to spoil the photos. He just complies with Tony’s directions, usually silently or with an occasional “yes, sir,” allowing Tony to direct and shoot him in a dozen different positions before allowing him to actually sit in the chair.

Feet on the chair. Legs crossed. Legs open. Spread your folds with your bound hands. One leg up, then the other. Knees bent. To your chest, pussy exposed wide without your fingers. Pull the sheer over it for a few shots. Hold the wand to it. Hands above your head. Hold still while I get shots of it resting there. Tied with the rope like it will be in the video. Lick the wand. Close your eyes and hold it there. Take off the slip. Repeat a few sultry shots without it.

Finally, he picks up the slip and helps the omega to his feet. “You can sit in the chair now. Put the slip back on for a few minutes.”

Peter nods and does as he’s told, and Tony watches, unable to help himself. He doesn’t find himself incredibly attracted to a lot of his clients, at least after so long of doing it, and what with his tastes being so specific… but Peter seemed to hit everything on the head, and god, it was a bit of a problem for him. He’s supposed to be setting up his camera right now, but instead he’s admiring the curve of the omega’s spine and his plump ass as he heads for the chair he’s going to tie him to and-

He snaps out of it. He’s going to shoot the video he’s being paid to shoot, and that’s it. No fantasies allowed. At least not until after when he’s jerking off to the memory of this.

He sets up his video camera, then returns to the little omega, waiting patiently for him to come to him so they could shoot the scene. Tony grabs some more of the pink rope, setting about tying the pretty thing down, wrists to the arms, ankles to the legs, back to the back, and the wand added with a loop through the middle tying his back to the chair, letting it sit perfectly against Peter’s pretty pussy. He tops it off with a blindfold, and purrs at the completed look.

“Perfect. I’m going to get a few more shots before we start filming. Just relax.” He can smell the omega starting to get slick, even just from the wand resting against his pussy. He definitely knows what’s coming. Even though it’s not Tony’s idea, or Tony’s omega, even, he’s getting slightly excited at the thought of being in control and being the one to do this to him.

He gets a lot more excited when they actually start.

He does. He can’t help it. From the moment he turns the toy on and watches the omega’s head loll back in pleasure, eyes fluttering under the blindfold, he’s rock hard in his pants, watching, smelling the omega’s slick as he goes from slightly wet to absolutely drenched and dripping down his own thighs by the third denial. And his moans… the way he meekly whines out for alpha and those little cries of pleasepleaseplease! when he’s on the cusp of orgasm… it’s pornographic, there’s no other word for how obscene and arousing it is, matched only by the way his lithe body squirms in his bonds, fabric around his eyes darkening from tears-

By the fifth denial, Tony is convinced he could probably come in his pants right now from this, if he let himself. He’s half-ass tempted to. The alphas that had brought him in have stepped outside, and Peter is slumped as much as he can be and panting in the chair, still blindfolded, just waiting for him to turn it back on. It would be so easy to rub himself to a quick and dirty orgasm out of any of their lines of sight.

He doesn’t. He turns the toy back on and lets his cock twitch and strain in his pants at the sound of Peter’s broken cry instead, finding this edging to be just as satisfying for him as how it’ll probably end for Peter. At least it’s fair.

One of the alphas that brought him in returns sometime around the eighth denial. He joins him off to the side this time.

“How many?” He sounds almost bored, eyeing the crying and squirming omega with minimal interest.

Tony tried to keep his voice even as he answers, despite the arousal threatening to roughen it. “When I turn it on again, it’ll be nine.”

“Good.” He nods, looking satisfied.

There’s a long moment of silence except for the pitiful whimpering of the omega. Tony breaks it again. “How many times am I supposed to deny him?”

“At least ten.”

“And then?”

The other alpha turns to him. “That depends on you, I think.”

“On me?” He can’t hide his surprise. The paperwork had said to be determined, yes, but he assumed it was to be determined based on what Peter could take. “What do you mean?”

The older alpha gives him a once over and purposefully scents the air before answering. “You want him. Don’t you?”

It’s not like there’s any way of hiding it, but his cheeks still tint pink. “Yes. Who wouldn’t?”

“Well, you have a chance at him before anyone else.” The alpha tilts his head. “How much are you willing to pay?”

“Excuse me?” Tony straightens. “Pay for what?”

“Him.” The alpha tosses his head in Peter’s direction.

Tony lets out a little breath. God, is it tempting, but he doesn’t need anyone else used whore, no matter how pretty he may be. “He’s pretty, I grant you, but I’m not paying to fuck an omega used by how many others before me. Thanks, but no thanks.” It sounded crude, but really. Why would he take a risk like that?

“He hasn’t been. He’s fresh meat.” The other male shrugs. “The shoot is for material to advertise him. He goes online for sale tonight… unless you pay me for him right now.”

Tony doesn’t need him to say it flat out to understand that his suspicions were right — there’s definitely something illegal going on here. And he has a choice.

But what kind of choice is it, really? He only knows two people’s names out of what is surely a ring, and in all likelihood, they’re fake names. These two alphas probably wouldn’t have shared this with him if they weren’t confident that he wants Peter enough to take it. And even the fact they were here and they did this shoot would be enough to get him in trouble, even if he turned it in himself. Not to mention the fact that they know his real identity. These two men or someone else would surely come back after him if he tried to turn them in — if they didn’t kill him flat out.

But if he bought Peter and kept quiet… it was better for him, better for business, and surely better for Peter. He couldn’t be as bad as whoever the boy would end up being sold to on the black market.

Tony meets his eyes. “How much?”

The alpha grins, pretending to think about it. “To have first go round at him? A couple grand. I’ll go back outside and let you have him until sundown, if you give us our material and the cash. To keep him? Well, I still want the photos for promotional material, but… a mil or two.”

Two whole million. For a pure, untouched, gorgeous, terrified omega straight out of his wet dreams.

Tony swallows. It’s hardly a decision. Not when he’s smelling how wet and ready Peter is sitting a few feet away and he knows he could have the money out of the bank as quick as a phone call. It’s not as if he doesn’t have it. “How soon do you want the cash?”

~~~

By the time Peter reaches the tenth denial, Tony officially owns him.

The two other alphas leave with a flash drive with the photos, the money in an account, and the promise that they’ll get the finished product of the video soon.

Soon, but not today, or the next couple, probably. He’s going to be a bit busy.

He fixes the angle of the camera so it’s situated mostly below the neck; the focus of it, of course, on the omega’s creamy open thighs, and the wet pussy forced open between them with the wand. Then he moves around, approaching the omega from the back while he’s slumped in the chair, panting and crying weakly.

He slides the blindfold off the omega’s wet eyes from behind, and Peter immediately straightens, tugging at his bonds. “H-hello? Alpha?” His voice is thick and raspy from crying.

“Hi, honey,” Tony purrs, setting his hands on the omega’s shoulders, enjoying the way he jumps at the touch as he runs them down his body. Deft fingers free the wand from its loop, and Peter sobs in relief.

“Oh alpha, thank you, gods- ngh- “

Peter starts to thank him for removing the wand, but chokes off with a broken cry when it returns, this time in the alpha’s hand. Tony smiles at the response as Peter’s head lolls back into his shoulder, turning it up a setting and shushing him gently at the sob that tears from Peter’s lips again.

He runs his other hand back up Peter’s body and settles it against his chin, grip firm on his throat, forcing him to keep his head back and on his shoulder. He drops his lips to the omega’s ear. “You can sob and struggle all you want to. I’m not going to let you come. And I’m not going to stop torturing you until you stop all of it. Don’t cry, don’t struggle, don’t beg me to let you ruin yourself. When you start saying please and thank you for the pleasure and for what I’m doing to you, and be a respectful, obedient omega, we might stop.”

“It hurts-“ Peter whimpers. “Alpha, daddy , please… I’ll do anything- oh- “ His face presses against Tony’s chest with a tortured cry. His thighs tremble viciously against Tony’s hand, back arching a little over the chair.

Tony feels a pang in his chest, but presses on. They have to finish this video before he starts going soft, at least. “You’ll sit still and be quiet. Here. I’ll even help you.” The hand not holding the wand in place comes up and covers his mouth, holding his head firmly against his shoulder. “Now be good, and I’ll make it stop.”

It takes time. Another few denials, kind of time, but it doesn’t matter. He has as long as needed. He’d given the omega an order, and he’d learn to listen, or they’d keep going all night.

Eventually, shaking and exhausted, Peter goes limp against him, eyes closed, pitiful little sobs audible but no words even trying to come from behind the alpha’s hand, still clamped on his mouth. Tony makes a triumphant little sound, and pulls the wand away. “Look at me, omega.”

Peter’s eyes flutter open, red and wet, fixing on Tony.

“Since you’ve listened, now, we’re going to be done. I’m going to take my hand off your mouth, and I want you to thank me. Don’t stop thanking me, and don’t say please, again, or we’ll stop until you can get control of yourself. Am I clear?” A nod against his hand. “Good.” He lets him go.

Peter takes a small breath. “Thank you.” His voice is barely a hoarse whisper.

“You’re welcome, omega.” Tony presses a kiss to his neck and lets the wand trail back up Peter’s thigh, suppressing a smirk at the way his breath hitches again. “Again.”

“Thank you, Alpha.”

“Good boy. Remember, don’t beg. Just be grateful.” He pauses, then slides the blindfold back on his eyes. He knows they want his full body in this shot, but he isn’t too keen on the possibility of the omega being recognized, either, knowing what he does now. Then he steps away just enough to tilt the camera back up, allowing it to get Peter’s face, and a small portion of his own neck and torso behind him.

When he returns, he takes his chin, turning his head toward the lens. “Look toward the camera, now. Think about how many people are going to see this, honey, and try show them how good you are. Let everyone see how pretty you look when you’re coming, just this once, before I take it all for myself.”

“Yes, alpha. Thank you, alpha.”

“Good boy.” With that, he turns on the wand again.

The omega’s body jumps visibly in the camera lens when the toy finds his swollen clit again. He lets out a broken little cry, but his hips don’t move, even as he starts to tremble again immediately. “Alpha- feels so good, Alpha, thank you- so close, Alpha, so close, thank you- oh god, oh- ngh- “

The force of the orgasm rocks his little body, and he nearly screams at the intensity before going completely limp in the chair again, clearly seeing stars, seeming to have blacked out.

Tony flicks the toy off and lets Peter’s head go, watching it fall to his chest as the omega pants and struggles to regain his senses. He walks over to the camera, taking it off its stand and coming closer.

He trails his fingers from the inside of Peter’s bound leg, up his core, pausing for just a moment to tease that oversensitive little bud, tearing a strangled cry out of Peter that he shushes, and then clear up to his face. He cups his cheek, stroking it as the omega’s unfocused eyes try to open under the fabric, clearly barely holding on to consciousness.

“You know you want one,” he murmurs, just loud enough to be heard. “So come get it.”

Then he shuts the camera off, setting it aside and turning completely back to Peter. It was time to get the omega home.

Taglist: @snowstark @serrabloodsong​

Let me know if you would like to be added! <3

[sevlgi]

match

requested: no

group: mamamoo

pairing: moonbyul x fem!reader

genre: fluff, angst

contents: soulmate!au, idol!moonbyul, cashier!reader

warnings: none

synopsis: Moonbyul has long since given up on finding her soulmate, but that might change when she sees the cute girl at the new coffee shop.

a/n: this is the first drabble I’m writing, so please let me know if you like it! requests are open!

word count: 1.2k

It was Valentine’s Day, and Byulyi was alone.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounded -- the purple-haired girl was perfectly fine with writing song lyrics at her desk, a now-cold drink next to her and music playing lowly in the background. Still, she admitted that it sounded rather pitiful to be home alone on a holiday of love and cheer.

She couldn’t help wanting to hold out for her soulmate, though. As she doodled hearts on her notebook alongside scribbled-out lyrics and thoughts, she twirled her lock of Y/H/C hair around the index finger of her free hand. Everyone had a lock of hair that always matched the color of their soulmate’s hair; it was probably meant to help people find their true match in life. The color of Byul’s lock was pretty, sure, but it was far too ordinary to ever help her find her soulmate.

Still, she was content with it, just like she was content with her peaceful quiet time. As always, though, her bliss was interrupted by the loud bang of her front door being flung open. “Byul! It’s me!”

“That’s not helpful,” Byulyi called back halfheartedly, regretting giving her spare key to her boisterous Mamamoo leader, Yongsun; she was proven right by the blonde girl practically skipping into her room. “What’re you doing here, Yongsun?”

Sitting down on Byul’s desk, Yongsun pouted cutely, jutting out her bottom lip. The younger girl simply ignored her. “You don’t sound happy to see me. Why aren’t you happy to see your beloved leader? You look lonely.”

Byul scoffed, looking up at the other girl with an exasperated sigh. “No, you’re lonely and want my attention, right? We’re the only two members who haven’t found our soulmates yet, so Wheein and Hwasa are out and can’t deal with you.”

Yongsun shrugged, giving a brilliant smile. It was then that Byul realized she had a mask hanging around her neck and a big black jacket on, her customary disguise when she wanted to go out. “And that’s why we’re going out!” At another sigh from the younger girl, Yongsun continued, “There’s a nice dessert shop that opened around the corner. Why don’t we go together? Screw soulmates, we’ll have fun pigging out on sweets.”

It was too tempting of an offer, especially when the blonde offered to pay for everything. “Fine,” Byulyi said, standing and grabbing the mask that Yongsun was holding out. “But I’m ordering the most expensive things on the menu.”

“This is it, I think.”

Byulyi squinted skeptically at the dingy front of the shop. The plain brown walls and foggy glass door didn’t look like a dessert shop, but the neon sign in the window proved Yongsun right. “Are you sure?” She didn’t get a response, Yongsun already skipping through the door; the purple-haired girl followed with a sigh, tugging her mask up.

As soon as she stepped inside, she was hit with the heavenly smell of sugar and cream; on the inside, the shop was much more welcoming, with pretty blue walls and checkered linoleum floors, pastel furniture arranged neatly and aesthetic photos scattered about. However, the prettiest part of the shop was undoubtedly the gorgeous girl behind the counter.

“Hi, welcome!” You bowed and smiled at the new customers, unfazed by the bulky coats they wore, the black hats concealing their hair, and the masks covering half their faces; it was usual in this part of Seoul, and your manager assured you that most people who dressed that way were celebrities, not burglars. “You can take a look at the menus over there.”

Yongsun took one, but Byulyi didn’t move an inch, her eyes glued to you. She was enraptured by everything about you, from the sparkle in your eyes to the way your nose scrunched a bit as you smiled to the way your hair fell delicately over your shoulders. Shit. Suddenly, Byul realized that your hair was the same color as the lock she had hidden beneath her hat. It might not be her, lots of people have hair this color...

“I’m ready to order,” Yongsun grinned, and you turned towards the blonde to reveal a small but intricate silvery purple flower by your ear, a flower that looked to be made of meticulously arranged hair. “A rose and peach jelly with extra boba, please.”

“Sure. And you?” You turned to Byul now, and she flushed a bit at your gaze.

“Ah...” The purple-haired girl suddenly regretted not looking at the menu, but her eyes were still glued to the flower by your ear. “Whatever you recommend.”

You smiled a bit and punched something in to your cash register. “Alright. Can I get a name for the order?”

Yongsun was about to speak when Byulyi cut her off. “Byul is fine.” Grabbing the blonde’s elbow, the younger girl tugged her to a table and hissed, “She’s my soulmate.”

“Not every pretty girl is your soulmate, Byul,” Yongsun sighed, pulling her mask down when you disappeared back to the kitchen.

Fumbling to take her hair down and to pull her mask off as well, Byulyi grabbed the lock of hair that matched your hair color and showed it to her leader. “No, see? It’s the same color as her hair, and she made a flower with a lock of purple hair. She’s my soulmate!”

“Then ask her out,” Yongsun grinned, perching her elbows on the table to smirk at the younger girl. “At least you got a pretty one.”

Byulyi scowled and leaned back to run a hand through her hair. “It’s not that easy. What if she doesn’t want a soulmate, or what if she’s straight? What if she just doesn’t like me, or what if she’s taken already? Or-”

“Byul?” you called out at the counter, interrupting Byulyi’s tirade. Yongsun shoved the purple-haired girl towards you, not bothering to mention that Byulyi had taken her mask and hat off, revealing her identity. Your eyes widened as she approached. “Oh, wow, Moonbyul... I’m a big fan of you.”

“Ah, thanks...” She was used to hearing those words, but you saying them managed to bring a flush to her cheeks. She struggled to find the courage to ask you to coffee, to a movie, anything, but she only managed to blurt out, “Is that flower made of hair?”

Your fingers crept towards the small purple adornment, grinning when you realized it matched Byul’s purple waves. “Oh, this? Yeah, it’s my soulmate lock. I think it’s quite a pretty color, and it matches your hair,” you smiled. “Now, if only your lock matched mine, then I’d really be lucky!”

“See, that’s the thing.” Byul held out her lock of hair, your eyes widening comically. “It does. Um, moffee?” She cringed and flushed brilliant red as you stifled a laugh at her stutter. “Oh, god, I meant to ask you out to coffee or a movie.”

You smiled at her again, Byul’s heart fluttering when you wrote your number down on a napkin and pressed it into her hand. “Yeah, I figured. And coffee sounds great, if you wanna come around after my shift ends in an hour.”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

[duckseamail]

Wallets, Nail Polish and Coffee

This is a short flash fiction assignment for my English class. It’s about 500 words and the prompt I was given was: [A] traveling, drops a purse of money unnoticed. [B], who has long desired to know A, picks up the purse and restores it.

The wallet sits forlornly on the counter. The person who owns it has just left out the door holding their coffee. Julia carefully takes it and brings it to the back room to keep it safe. The customer that left it is a regular. They’ve been coming to this particular Starbucks almost every day at 2:00 for almost a month now. 

She doesn’t work the register, but Julia always notices that they make sure to thank her when she hands them the coffee cup. Their nails are painted a different color every few days. Sometimes it’s just plain nail polish like light green, or purple. Every now and then, there is a design. Today their thumb had an itty bitty flower bouquet painted on a background of very pale pink.

Something Julia has always wanted to do but could never figure out is nail art. She can paint the nails on her left hand neatly enough if she takes her time, but her right hand is a lost cause. Julia always ends up getting her fingertips covered in paint. So, nail art is out of the question. But, maybe, if she had a friend who could teach her…

She gets back to behind the counter just in time for her coworker to hand her the next cup with the shorthand for the order written on it. As she begins getting the blender ready, Julia thinks about the wallet. The person would definitely need it back, so she might see them again before tomorrow. It would be an easy way to start a conversation (mostly because it was necessary to speak to let them know she had found the wallet).

Fifteen minutes later and Julia had made her way through making two more drink orders. She’s just about to start cleaning up some of the spilled coffee when the door at the front of the shop flings open. The customer from earlier is back, their wavy brown hair swept around and frazzled. They probably ran all the way back here when they realized their wallet was missing. 

Julia tentatively waves at them to get their attention.

They rush over to the end of the counter where Julia places finished drinks and say, “Hi again, you wouldn’t happen to have seen a wallet anywhere since I last left? It’s brown and sort of small.”

“Yeah, I did see it. I put it in the back for safe keeping, but I’ll go get it.” Julia says, then she turns and rushes to get the wallet before she can hear the person’s reply.

A moment later, safely alone, Julia grabs the wallet and rubs her thumb back and forth across the outside, gathering her courage. She slowly walks back out to return it, and when she holds the wallet out to its owner, she says, “I like your nail polish. It’s pretty.”

Their smile lights up their face and they reflexively examine their nails. “Heh, thank you! I love trying out new designs. I’ll do a new one tonight and I can show you tomorrow if you like?” 

Quickly, Julia nods and says, “That’d be nice.”

Now, their brilliant smile is trained on her and they thank Julia one last time before leaving the store. 

Working at Starbucks isn’t always the most fun job in the world, Julia thinks, but she’s glad for the chance to make a new friend. And with the promise of another interaction the next day, she rushes to catch up with the three drink orders that are now waiting to be made. 

[boydsfm]

❛ ✶ ( ALEX WOLFF , CIS MALE , HE/HIM )  —  did you see LUCAS BOYD walking around campus earlier ? i hear a lot of people talking about the NINETEEN year old SOPHOMORE . from what i know , they are studying COMPUTER SCIENCE and are a part of PHI KAPPA DELTA . they come across as + KIND-HEARTED but also - TIMID , which makes since because on their instagram ( LUCAS.V.BOYD ) it says they are a VIRGO . when i see them , i think of A DESK COVERED IN EMPTY COFFEE MUGS, DANDELIONS GROWING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK, THE UGLIEST GODDAMN SWEATERS YOU’VE EVER SEEN. the most interesting thing i’ve heard about them though , is the fact that REDACTED  , but don’t tell anyone i told you that . ooc info . ally . 22 . est . she/her .

hello hello hellooooooooooooooo. i’m ally, i’m from canada, and i’m addicted to tik tok i’m so excited to be here!! this has been an opportunity to bring back an old and beloved muse of mine, one lucas victor boyd ! if you like this, i’ll hyu on discord, or you can hmu at known simp harry hook#3923. 

statistics.

full name. lucas victor boyd  nickname(s). just lucas. not luke or lou, just lucas.  occupation. undergraduate student, beaumont campus tech support  age. nineteen. date of birth. september 2nd, 2001.  nationality. american. ethnicity. ashkenazi jewish, scottish. orientation. gay. gender & pronouns. cis male; he/him/his.

height. 6′0”. weight. 145 lbs. eye color. hazel. hair color + style. dark brown; usually messy and curly. he gets it cut short at the beginning of the semester and then by the end its a mop. really doesn’t style it.   dominant hand. right-handed. distinguishing features. distinctive nose, lanky figure, messy curls, undereye bags, that cute li’l mole. 

background. (tw alcoholism, death of a parent) 

SO. lucas was born in portland, maine, to a pretty lower middle class family. his father left when he was two years old, and he was largely raised by his mother, florence weber. 

florence was a hardworking and loving mother, but she was also quite depressed her entire life. she was a recovered alcoholic when she met judas, lucas’s father, but once he left, she slowly slid back into her old habits. 

by the time lucas was eight, he was having to start to pick up some household responsibilities. cooking, cleaning, packing his own lunch. waking his mom up in time for her shifts at target. 

by the time he was in middle school, he’d learned how to forge her signature on cheques, he’d applied for unemployment for her after she got fired, and he was taking any odd job to make money. 

school was his favorite distraction; he was always a brilliant kid, and if it weren’t for the fact he was already a terribly shy and awkward kid, he could have skipped a couple grades. he threw himself into schoolwork to avoid everything; his mother’s worsening condition, his crippling loneliness, his fear that he might be as gay as every one of his bullies insisted. 

this was, also, around when he picked up his most lucrative but troublesome odd job; hacking into the school board network to get test answers. he could get fifty dollars per person per test, and he was able to buy groceries besides beans and rice, was able to buy new clothes for himself and his mom. he felt awful about it every day, but... he still did it.

(death tw) at sixteen, when he found his mom motionless and cold on the floor of their apartment, he buried himself in his work, too. he couldn’t help but feel guilty, though; it was his work, his taking care of everything that had allowed his mom to keep her addiction up for this long.

so, yeah. there’s a very good reason why he doesn’t go back to portland anymore. he spent last summer in cambridge. well, that and his Secret. 

since the beginning of his freshman year, lucas has had something of a glow-up. he signed up for the school’s counselling services before he even got to campus, and he’s been making great strides. 

additionally, he pledged phi kappa delta, which... he never saw himself pledging a frat, ever in his life. but all the guys there were so... cool. and so supportive and nice and... and they’re like the brothers lucas never had. having that little family has helped him gain that much more confidence in himself. 

personality. 

if there was an onion headline for lucas’s life it would be Nervous Wreck Slowly Becomes a Functional Human Being.

very virgo, very type a. but also a pisces moon cancer rising. so he needs everything to be in alphabetical order or he’ll cry.

ever since he’s started college, he’s transitioned from being As Plain As Possible to being more outwardly soft as he’s gained confidence in himself. he wears the dorky sweaters and neat socks he likes, he has a small collection of plants on his desk, he knits scarves for his friends. big hufflepuff energy. again, this comfort largely comes from the acceptance he’s found at phi kappa delta.

slowly getting over his Big Anxiety. slowly learning how to talk to people. still awkward at parties. still has panic attacks every day during exam season. but he adores his therapist and takes his zoloft every day and he’s… he’s doing alright.

there are things he is sure of. his intelligence, his diligence, his ability to get shit done. he’s recently mastered asking fellow customers to please be kind to servicepeople.

still he’s that guy who doesn’t want to tell the waiter they got his order wrong.

he’s literally highkey fucking brilliant. he’s literally at the top of his class in one of the most difficult programs at one of the most difficult universities in the country. 

a chronic people pleaser up until the point that it breaks his moral code. like if you want him to help you cheat or help you toy with someone he will put his foot down. he’ll do it very softly, but he won’t budge.

(though he is known to do mathematics and computer science homework for his friends when they’re overtired. he’s always the one to offer in that case, though.)

the rare gay who is extremely capable in math. legit he gets so excited about math it’s actually really cute.

theres a part of him that still believes in magic, to some capacity. he still wishes on shooting stars and pennies on the ground and dandelions. 

his greatest strength and fatal flaw is that he sees the best in people. even if he knows you tried to hurt him, he will give chance after chance.

(but he works in tech support rn So. he’s slowly losing his belief in humanity.) 

in conclusion, here are some tik toks that describe lucas 

him in kindergarten

he can’t write i’m so sorry

 just.... the Vibes 

wanted connections. 

skinny love. lucas is extremely shy, especially in romantic situations. he cannot flirt to save his goddamned life. he also probably thinks this person is out of his league. (honestly i want a romantic plot for him so bad gimME) 

close friends. GIVE HIM FRIENDS FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD he’s such a good friend he just wants to love people.

lawyer for real life. based off this john mulaney bit. someone who reminds lucas that someone is mistreating him.

lab partner. idk man i just like that easy camaraderie. or maybe they make lucas do all the work in which case he will eventually snap.

tutoree. someone that lucas basically helps out of the good of his heart.

bad influence. someone get this boy TURNT

manipulator. lucas does have a bit of a backbone, but he is incredibly naive and very easily manipulated. basically he will do your stats assignments for you if you say he’s your friend.

academic rival. lucas is not typically an antagonistic person, but having someone be so obviously smarter than him grinds his gears a little bit. his mood when talking to this person is :))))))))))

literally anything pls i’m desperate and he’s baby

[japanne]

Making Comics Process 2020

Someone mentioned in a comment on some page that the brief thumbnails I was posting would be interesting to see as a comics making compilation, so I decided to make a current one (the last one I did was from 2015 or something??  I was still doing my pencils and inks on real paper).

So let’s commence using chapter 47, Page 12 as the example.  

I usually do something a little differently every time I do a chapter, but one thing that has never changed over the almost 20 years I’ve been doing this, is my affinity for using Microsoft Excel to organize my chapter writing.

This details the page in question.  I’ve got a basic description of the events in the first column, the year in the second, the chapter in the third, and details in the fourth.  (I pulled out the rest of the scene so as not to spoil it).

After the writing for a scene, it’s time for thumbnails!  I still enjoy doing these in a notebook.

I use a dedicated spiral notebook, split my page into quarters, write in the dialogue, and maybe adjust it at this time if I need to.  I changed Collamair’s dialogue to: “Oh.  Whoops.  Sorry.  This is my room.  I forgot to give you one, didn’t I?” (you can also see I misnumbered my pages somewhere earlier so 11 here is really the comic’s 12th).

I use the frixion erasable pens for this, so if there’s small changes to make I’ll just erase and fix.  For major changes I’ll just move onto the next open page space.  You must not remember to set hot things on your pages or the ink will fade.  Put it in the freezer to try and return it!

 Following the success of paper thumbnails it’s time to move to Clip Studio Paint.  At this early stage I do a couple of chapter wide passes.  

1. Create all the page files with the grey and red bordered template page I have.

2. Put a ruler on that file rough in the sizes of the panels.  Think about panels that might go for full bleed and delete the template border as a note for myself.

3. Put in the text.

4. Translate thumbnails digitally which brings us here:

I shifted Collamair’s dialogue a little more, and I flipped the last Collamair from my thumbnail.  For some reason he was facing the opposite direction, even though it’s a general rule to keep your characters facing the same way if possible in a conversation.

After the first pass of real rough sketches are laid in, I do a second slightly more detailed pencil pass

I’ll get all the expressions in, and the outlines of the clothes on the characters.  I’ll adjust the size of the people and the position of the text bubbles.  And this is as detailed as I get for my pencils.

I will also mention here, I’m not sure if I forgot to include this or actively decided not to, but “Colly and Struan laughing and having a good time” got dropped at some point???  Who knows when or why now???

Once I’m done with these sketch layers, I merge them together and start inking.  This is done in a scene by scene basis.  First I’ll open all the files for a given scene, flip all the canvases and draw the faces of the characters.

Then I’ll flip them back to look for weird parts and ink the rest of their bodies.

After inks are done, I’ll make another very rough sketch pass on the old sketch layer for the backgrounds.

Then, again, scene by scene, I’ll go through and ink them.  These backgrounds were blissfully easy.

I started something new this chapter.  I saw a video on twitter randomly talking about how to make panels with Clip Studio, and it’s SO EASY.  So I started doing those in this program as well.  That was one of the last 2 things I used to do in Photoshop.  

After all the inking and the panels are done, it’s time to color.  I have a shitty swatch file that you can see below where I keep track of colors for outfits and backgrounds in every chapter.  

The second new thing I started to do was flats in Clip Studio.  I’m excited about it so I broke it down a little bit in detail.  Below is a Struan that I have used the fill bucket tool on a new layer with the inks marked as a reference.  I do this for backgrounds and foregrounds.  You can see just plain old fill bucket leaves some stray pixels that are hard to get, especially in Struan’s sleeves here.

Well, worry not, for there is something else I saw on twitter, the Filter>Correct Line>Adjust Line Width

When you do that you can see the color overflows the lines a little bit.  But all the internal white pixels are gone.

NEXT!  you take you fill bucket with the color marked “clear” and some area scaling, and you just click a bunch of times in your panels outside of the characters.

Ta-daaaaahh.  There’s a few places where a little bit of manual cleanup is needed, around his elbows, but this method appears to be much faster than the old B-Pelt method I was using in PS, and I am happy with it!!

Here’s the fully flatted page with this method used on the bgs and fgs. Eyes are also added in, but on their own layer so they don’t get desaturated at all. And Colly’s shirt has his pattern to add at some point.

When flats are done, it’s time to move, scene by scene, through the shading process.  I’ve started using “Hard Light” blending for the shading since the last chapter, so this is also pretty new!

The bg and fg again get their own shading layer.  I’ll cover the bg in the shade color and then paint or gradient fill the highlights in over that.  I might add on some other extra mode for fancier lighting or if I want to shift all the colors, but I always add on an adjustment layer for desaturation at the end. 

Brushes that I use are almost all from Frenden.  The pencils are blue and red “real” and  “layouts.”  Faux-rel Painter Scratchboard is my inking pen.  Most of the shading is Concept Craig normal and Wet.  Hair highlights are Painterly (Wet), and I also use the default soft airbrush on a variety of things.  The plaid is “real pencil.”

And here’s a final view of the total layers I’ve used for this page, and also the ridiculous palette file if you’re interested in that!  

[libertasrpg]

We welcome Adam Flayman to the city. He’s 23 years old and is a assistant store manager. Adam is often mistaken for Rhenzy Feliz. He’s open.

→ Background Information

All Adam has ever wanted is an easy life. His parents had a rather turbulent marriage so he sought quiet and peace at every given opportunity to escape the noise of home. That didn’t mean that they weren’t loving though. On the odd days without an argument, the Flayman’s adored their little boy. Family day trips were phenomenal, with Adam being spoiled the entire time. Then at the end of the day Adam would immediately retire his room. This is how he’s been ever since. Even in University, he’d be happy to go and hang out for friends with a couple of hours but then would need just as many hours in his room to recover. Adam does like socialising, it just takes a lot out of him.

→ Relocation Explanation

Adam started working on the bee farms the moment he left school, and he was happy with that. He watched over time though as his friend became more and more unhappy with it. While Adam didn’t personally have an issue with the job, he knew that Barry wanted to move on to bigger and better thing. What he didn’t expect however was for Barry to want to leave town completely. Taking the way the neighbourhood was treating him into account though, it made sense. Eventually Adam realised that this, too, was perhaps his chance to start afresh so decided to move with Barry to Libertas.

→ Living Situation

They hadn’t previously lived together but Adam and Barry decided to get a place together when moving to Libertas. Inevitably it was going to be a bizarre clash of their own stuff but it’s not entirely awful. There’s an interesting variety of books on the shelves, from Adam’s biographies to Barry’s activism guides. Adam doesn’t mind it, but what he has put his foot down with is Barry plastering the walls with his placards from protests. He understands they’re important to Barry, but he has to draw the line there. Similarly, his own room is rather plain. There aren’t very many decorations or pictures to be honest. Adam just doesn’t see the point in things like color schemes or trinkets. A bedroom is just for sleeping in after all.

→ His Personality

Structure is incredibly important to Adam. Whether it’s a set of instructions set in place, or a the law. They help keep things simple, keep things safe. Rules and regulations are there for a reason. Adam never really bothers to even consider what might be outside the box. He’s often teased for being such a square. That doesn’t really bother him though. Adam can think of plenty to do within the rules. He’s incredibly clever and likes to cover as much ground as possible when thinking of solutions to issues. He’s always particularly keen to put his mind to use when solving the problems of friends. Though his set-in-stone ways sometimes make him seem cold, Adam is actually very friendly. He always makes a good first impression.

→ His Qualities

Intelligent, mature, courteous, friendly

Unimaginative, disciplinarian, close-minded

→ His Relationships

Barry Benson (Best friend & roommate): Adam and Barry have been friends since they were younger. They’ve seen each other through every up and down there could be. Had they met later in life, they may very well have not bonded. Thankfully they did meet as kids though and they’ve had each others backs since. They have changed over the years and are different people now to who they were back then, but Adam still supports Barry any way he can. After all, Adam knows Barry can change the world.

Vanessa Bloome (Frenemy): There is something about the situation with Vanessa and Barry that Adam just does not like. He’s ended up seeing the woman more and more now that she’s playing such a role in Barry’s life, and Adam isn’t really happy about it. He plays nice to her face for his friend’s sake obviously, but he can’t help but feel they’re just not meant to be. Vanessa was in a relationship with Ken when they first met after all!

Ken Summers (Enemy): There’s only so much you need to know about someone before you can tell that they’re just a cruel person. Adam hadn’t even met Ken before he knew that he didn’t like him. Vanessa and Ken’s relationship to the side, Adam just knows that Ken isn’t a good guy and that’s that. There’s a bad air about him that Adam just doesn’t trust.

→ Possible Connections

Simon Catbe (Acquaintance): As an assistant manager, one of Adam’s jobs is typically collecting the post for the manager. It’s a pretty underwhelming task as a whole but some of the mail team are pretty friendly so Adam doesn’t mind. Plus if he does happen to strike up a conversation with them, it means he can get out of doing office work.

Perrie Van Winkel (Acquaintance): Adam is a bit of a worrier and the slightest ache or pain in his joins, and he heads straight to the physio to make sure there isn’t anything seriously wrong. Thankfully she’s usually happy to humour him and rule out anything bad.

Winnie Sanders (Acquaintance): When Adam first moved to the city, he did briefly consider taking the easy option and becoming a bee keeper again. He had plenty of experience in the field after all. Adam did talk to one or two people about the job before deciding not to go through with it.

→ Faceclaim Change:

Allowed | Not allowed | POC must | Discuss with admin

Suggestions: TBA

Adam is based on Adam from Bee Movie.

[p-artsypants]

Longest Night (16) Struggling

Marinette had thought Highschool had been hard. Right now, in this moment, she'd give anything to go back to those petty arguments and gossip fueled drama. But she couldn't. Instead, she and Adrien were trapped here, being punished, humiliated, tortured, for being heroes, all broadcasted for the world to see. At least she and her kitty were in this together. For now. Whump!Fic

Ao3 | FF.net

Note: This chapter has brief mentions of the previous two chapters. We are in the viewer’s perspective.

—

Hawkmoth. We need to talk. —Salo.

Alya stared at the sentence over and over, her breath hitching in her throat. How could this happen? It couldn’t! It just couldn’t!

“I have to remove this link!” Alya stated. “Max, can I get on your computer?”

“Of course,” he stated, taking out his laptop. “It’s pretty obvious how she posted that. You are using a public server through blogspot, after all.”

“Can you prevent her from doing it again?” She asked, logging into her account.

“Of course. No problem.”

Incorrect username.

Alya clenched her fists. “That bitch kicked me out!”

“Now now, hold on.” Max assured, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Let Markov try.”

“Of course, this will be easy. One moment please.” Markov plugged into the computer, and in a few seconds, the Ladyblog’s dashboard appeared.

“Wonderful! I’ll change my email and password too. After I delete this post!”

It was right up top, in the most plain and boring formatting. Just a white box with black text.

“Huh.” Alya said aloud, staring at it.

“What’s wrong, Al?” Asked Nino.

“There’s no trash icon. No comment section, no share icon, nothing. I can’t edit it or delete it.”

“Allow me,” stated Markov again.

A red triangle with an exclamation point came up on his face. “Whoopsies, we don’t have access to the post.”

“Whaddya mean we don’t have access!? This is my blog, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no.” Said Max. “Everything around this post is your blog. But this box itself is not.”

“Huh?”

“Think of it…as Salo cut a hole in your website and has this in the background, showing through.”

“You can do that?” Asked Nino.

“Not easily, by any means. It’s extremely complicated. I’ve never tried it myself. No need to.”

“So…what do we do?” Alya crossed her arms, looking anxious.

Max screwed up his lip in thought, turning the laptop towards himself. He typed away, a next window coming up. In a flash of textual garbage, too complexed for anyone else to understand, he had a diagnosis. “Okay…well, the post has a slightly different URL, that’s associated with the blog. But it’s being hosted on a private server, which I can’t access. At least not yet. I can try to take it down, but it will take me a few hours, at least.”

“But we don’t have a few hours! Hawkmoth could see this post at any second!”

“I understand. The other thing we could do, is delete the blog in its entirety. Then the post won’t have a URL to associate with and will be unviewable.”

Delete the Ladyblog.

Alya felt sick.

What was two years of hard work in exchange for her friend’s safety? She still had all the videos, all the pictures, she could make a new website, right? One that got Marinette’s approval before every posting.

“Okay—“

“Wait,” said Nino. “Shouldn’t we see where the link goes first? What if it helps the police find them?”

Alya gasped slightly. “I’m glad you thought of that!”

“Markov, initiate Backdraft operations.” Max said.

“Backdraft initiated.”

“What’s backdraft?” Asked Alya.

“It’s simply a protocol I use if I think my presence is being tracked, or I may be counter hacked. It’s basically a fancy firewall.”

“Oh, I see.”

With the class gathered around, Max clicked on the link.

Another window popped up, with a loading wheel. It spun for a moment, then a big red ‘X’ covered the screen and the window closed.

“Hmm…how very interesting.”

“What the heck was that?” Asked Kim, resting his chin on Max’s head like a pest.

“Believe it or not, that was a video chat. But it uses facial recognition to get in.”

“So it’s not going to be helpful to us at all. Huh?”

“I can try to track it. Though it may be difficult since the page closes so quickly.”

Nino whispered as quietly as possible. “Didn’t the detective say he wanted to use your blog to help with the investigation?”

Alya scrunched up her face. Now she had to make two decisions. Stop Hawkmoth, or take the chance and maybe get a lead on Salo.

Any normal person would have gone with the absolute, but Alya was desperate.

“Leave the blog up. Do you think you can track the link?”

“I’ll give it my best shot.” Said Max, honestly.

Alya gave a twitch of a smile.

Something about her conversation with Hawkmoth earlier niggled in her brain. He had addressed her by her name, not as an Akuma. And when she asked him to leave, he left.

Of course, there was no trusting the man, that was obvious, but as far as villains go, she was much more willing to deal with him than Salo.

Alya shook her head. That was an insane thought.

Then the bell rang, and lunch was officially over. Alya and Nino found their seats, now feeling keenly aware that Adrien and Marinette were both absent from class.

“Oh,” said Nino, holding up a pink backpack. “She left it here. Adrien’s is here too.”

Alya smiled fondly. “We’ll carry them back with us.”

—

Miss Bustier was nothing if not understanding. None of the students had their homework done from yesterday, so she just cancelled the assignment. Alya and Nino weren’t given the missed work from this morning either.  

She had a feeling they probably wouldn’t be doing it anyways.

Alya had her phone out all day, plugged into a portable charger.

She constantly refreshed the page, hoping for something different.

But no. For hours now, Adrien and Marinette has been hanging by the wrists from chains.

Near the end of the day, Alya looked over to see Marinette speaking to the camera.

She rewound, found the time stamp and raised her hand.

“Yes Alya?”

“Marinette’s saying something! She’s speaking to us!”

“Are you sure?” Miss Bustier asked.

Nino was already next to her, looking at the screen.

“She’s looking right at the camera. I don’t think she’s talking to Adrien.”

“Can I turn on the projector?” Asked Max.

“Well…” Miss Bustier saw the first broadcast. She had turned away the moment Marinette was demanded to strip. She hadn’t watched anything since, and didn’t know if it was safe to show the students.

But looking around, she saw that they were all worried, and eager to see what Marinette had to say.

And so she nodded at Max.

In a matter of seconds, the website was up, and Adrien and Marinette’s states were now visible to the room.

There was a round of gasps.

No one had watched the stream this morning.

“Is that…is that Adrien?” Chloe asked, with choking breath.

Regardless of the state of room, Alya hit play.

Marinette looked around, and then looked directly at the camera. She gave a tired little smile.

“Hey,” she spoke in an absolutely broken voice. “If you’re watching this, you…you’re probably feeling a little hopeless. I don’t blame you. I feel…pretty hopeless too. I mean, I’m…I’m stuck. I’m not sure how I’m going to get out of this. But…but Ladybug always saves the day, right?” She glanced away, choosing her words. “My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I’m 17 years old, and my favorite color is pink. I’m the daughter of the best bakers in Paris, though I might be a little bias.” She smiled slightly. “Before I became Ladybug, I was a normal girl, with a normal life. What made me extraordinary, was my willingness to help others, and my kindness. So Paris, I have a favor to ask:

“Be helpful and kind. Go out of your way do something nice for someone once a day. If you can do this for me, then I know Paris will be safe until we return.”

“I promise.” Alya heard Chloe whisper.

She glanced over to Adrien, then off screen, and then back at the camera. “Maman, Papa...I’m really really sorry I had to hide this from you. I didn’t want to, and some days I thought about how much easer it would be if I just told you. How I could explain the lateness and absences, and my bad grades. But I just had to let you think I was a bad kid. It was for your safety, after all...but despite my best efforts, this still happened, and now you’re in danger. Please get somewhere safe. Leave Paris if you have to. I love you so much. I promise I’ll be out soon.”

Her brow crinkled, as she hesitated. Then, “Alya, I’m sorry too. You…you probably feel kinda betrayed right now. But, like I said, it was for your own safety. You were put in peril so many times because of me. How many more would that have been if Hawkmoth thought you knew my identity? After everything, I hope you finally believe me now...sorry, that was harsh. I...I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me. Deal?”

Alya broke down sobbing. If there was anything else to be heard, she missed it. Of course she forgave Marinette! How could she not? Marinette picked her as Rena Rouge, time and time again!

And what did she do in return?

Stab her in the back.

Some best friend she was.

“Al…” Nino comforted. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright!” Alya shouted, startling everyone. She hated how much of a mess she was. She was supposed to be a superhero, damnit! But at this rate, Hawkmoth would try to akumatize her again.

“She’s right, you know.” Said Miss Bustier, rubbing a hand under her eye. “It’s not alright.” She cleared her throat and spoke to the class. “I know things seem bleak right now. And it’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to grieve and to hurt. But it’s never okay to hurt others to make yourself feel better. That’s exactly what Salo is doing. That’s what Hawkmoth has done for years. I know it hurts, and things seem hopeless. But we need to listen to Marinette, to Ladybug. Go out of your way to be kind to someone.”

Alya breathed a sigh. Miss Bustier always knew what to say to make things better.

“Alya, can you come stand with me please?”

She nodded, getting to her feet. Up front, Miss Bustier hugged her, and held her around the waist, as she beckoned each one of her students forward.

“Alya, you’re so smart.”

“You’ve got a wicked sense of humor!”

“You’re really perceptive, and notice things that others don’t!”

“You always put in that extra bit of work to make a project look amazing!”

On and on, each student complimented her, as was custom in Miss Bustier’s class. But all of them were genuine, not just going through the motions.

Except maybe Lila, but still, it was hard to tell. “You are really dedicated to your blog, and put everything on it, to make it just right.”

Alya swallowed. That comment fell flat in comparison to the others.

Chloe came up, a scowl directed in Lila’s direction, then she grabbed Alya by the upper arms. “You are fiercely protective to your friends. No matter who they are. If you feel friendly towards them, you protect them. And that’s something I’ve always admired about you.”

Alya wanted to cry again, but she spared Chloe the satisfaction. “You’re just trying to be nice.”

“Me? Nice? As if!” She scoffed, but they both knew it was true.

“The reason we do these activities,” explained Miss Bustier, “is so that when you see someone having hard time, you take the time to cheer them up. It should be an automatic response.”

“For Marinette and Adrien!” Cheered Kim in the back.

“For Marinette and Adrien!”

—

After school, Alya and Nino gathered their stuff from their lockers. It was time to head back to the Agreste Mansion, for their own safety. Though, the temptation to go out and patrol was strong. Yet the heat was still on, and it wasn’t smart to risk it just quite yet.

“Alya?” A soft voice asked.

It was Choe. And she looked shy. Sabrina was no where to be seen.

“Hey Chloe,” Alya said pleasantly. It felt better to just be nice, like Miss Bustier suggested.

“I…” Chloe started, then she turned away. It took a few tries, each time she started differently. Then, she finally managed out. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What?”

“I…I don’t know what to do. Normally, when I want something, daddy just buys it for me. He takes care of everything. I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t have what I wanted. But…but I can’t do that with this. I begged daddy to save them. Both of them. And he tried! He talked to the chief of police and they got in contact with Europol…but basically…there’s nothing they can do. So…I have to do it myself. I have to save them.”

Alya scoffed slightly. “You can’t save them yourself.”

“I have too.” Chloe said right back, her daily stubbornness shining through. “You don’t understand!”

“Chloe…”

“I found the Bee Miraculous. Marinette dropped it, and I found it. Despite all my mistakes, all my insults and my cruelty, Marinette…Marinette let me become Queen Bee. Several times. She threw a party for me, when I felt like no one liked me. She went out of her way to help me reconnect with my mother. And…” She started to sob.

Chloe, it’s me, Ladybug. You can trust me, you can tell me the truth.

You have a purpose.

“She spoke to me in a way no one else had before. She was so…so nice! And she meant it! Only Adrien ever treated me like that! But I was never mean to him!” She sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “That’s why I have to save them! She has to know how sorry I am! How much I appreciate her! And how much Ladybug still means to me!”

Alya was touched. “Why you telling me this?”

“Because you’re the Ladyblogger, duh! You’ve got to know something! Don’t you have a hint to who Rena Rouge are Carapace are? Any way to contact them? I want to help them! As Queen Bee!”

Alya screwed up her lip. “And you don’t care about the attention of being a superhero in the limelight again?”

“Puh-lease, if I cared about attention, I wouldn’t look like this!” She gestured to herself.

Nino snickered. “I didn’t even think you owned a track suit.”

“How do you think I stay in peak physical form? By Instagraming all day?!”

“Still…”

“Fine! It’s Givenchy! Give me a break!”

Alya and Nino shared a look of understanding. Now was the time to use all the help they could get. Alya reached into her bag and pulled out a little black box. “Chloe Bourgeois. This is the Miraculous of the Bee. You will use it for good. Until such a time that Ladybug and Chat Noir are safe, you will keep it safe and protect it.”

“And you won’t put it on your snap story!” Nino added, harshly.

Chloe took the box, reverently. “Are…are you sure?”

“The guardian gave it to us, and told us to give it to you when we felt it was safe.”

Chloe, smiling, opened the lid, and a glittering yellow light appeared.

“Hello my queen!” Pollen sang.

“Pollen!” She scooped her up and held her to her cheek. Then she looked back to Alya and Nino. “When do we start our patrol?”

Alya laughed, happy to see Chloe so eager. “Soon. But we have some catch up to play.”

—

It had never been this hard to akumatize someone.

Granted, Chloe Bourgeois had put up a great fight. But it was nothing like this.

Hawkmoth had assumed Alya would be the perfect candidate to become an Akuma. In all the times he had been around her, granted it was only a handful, she had been absolutely devastated.

Lady WiFi had been amazing, and given her powers of pausing, she would have been great.

But, she was not cooperative. Sure, maybe he could have pushed her a little more, put on the pressure. But it didn’t feel right.

Nothing about this felt right.

And that’s what made him so conflicted.

Because we was willing to do whatever it took to get Emilie back. Exploiting people who were having the worst day, who were in unbearable pain.

So why the hesitation now? This was Adrien, the light of his life. The only family he had left. He loved his son, although he often had a hard time showing it.

He reached out to Nino Lahiffe, who, admittedly, was not as visibly upset as Alya had been, but his hurt was still present. Nino was unbearably calm as he asked Hawkmoth to ‘kindly f—- off.’

Next was Chloe Bourgeois. Surely she would agree, right? She loved Adrien!

Oh but she was nearly feral trying to get rid of him. She yanked on her hair and screamed and cried.

He left quickly, feeling her pain as his own.

He looked at Tom and Sabine, but didn’t have the heart to even try. Ladybug’s parents, now that was cruel.

He was beginning to run out of victims. Gorilla? Nathalie? Himself?

Lila Rossi! She was always ready and willing to be akumatized!

But then, he remembered with growing horror that she hated Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She may try to save Adrien, but she’d leave Marinette all alone to suffer. And that was almost worse.

He dropped his transformation, a dropped to his knees.

“Master? Please don’t cry.”

“I disgust myself.” He whined in the back of his throat. “Why…why can’t I do it? What makes this so different? Am I not desperate enough? Do I not love Adrien enough?!"

Noroo swooped in and nuzzled against Gabriel’s cheek. “You love Adrien plenty. Don’t beat yourself up over having sympathy for others in pain.”

Gabriel swallowed, digesting the kwami’s words. “I suppose...that means there’s hope for me yet.”

The elevator rose, bringing Nathalie into the room. “Sir, Madame Cheng has something to show you on the stream.”

“She found something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we’ll continue this later Noroo, let’s go.”

—

Sabine stood in the lobby, her phone in hand. Thankfully, the stream could be rewound to repeat anything that had happened. And so when Gabriel finally emerged from his office, she went to him, thrust the phone in his face, and pressed play.

“Notausgang.”

“Pardon?”

“Notausgang. Does that word sound familiar?”

“No...it sounds German though. Why?”

“It’s written on the wall behind you.”

“Like Graffiti?”

“No...it looks like it’s supposed to be there. Like a sign.”

“A German sign on the wall? You don’t think...we’re in Germany, do you?”

“I have no clue where we are, but...why else would there be German on the wall?”

“Well, maybe we’re still in France. Maybe not Paris, but Alsace-Lorraine or...”

“Notausgang is German for ‘Emergency Exit’. It’s everywhere in Germany.” Gabriel responded. “Not so much in Alsace-Lorraine. If there’s no French by it, it’s safe to assume they are in Germany.”

Sabine choked. “Oh no…no no no…”

Gabriel rested a calm hand on her arm. “Sabine, it’s alright. This is good. We know we’re looking in the wrong place, and we can tell the detective what we learned. Okay?”

She nodded, wiping her cheeks. “I just…they’re so far…I feel so helpless!”

“I feel the same.” He assured.  

And he did. Not only did he have no clue where they were in Germany, but his akumas couldn’t reach farther than Paris. Even if he were to go to Germany, he’d have to spend days hopping around from city to city. And that wasn’t suspicious at all.

Still…if that’s what it took.

First, they’d talk to the detective. Then they’d plan the next move.

[iolitewitchcraft]

@kikihollix I’ll answer these two together since they’re pretty closely related! (I also love the examples you gave because they cover almost the full range of what I'll talk about!)

The names we’re discussing here are, for the most part, varietal names. Think of crystals like plants: they have a group (genus), a species, and maybe a variety. To use two random examples, compare the naming of the Summer Damask, a variety of the Damask rose, a species of the rose genus (Rose x. damascena var. damascena), with rubellite, a variety of elbaite, a species of the tourmaline group. (Now if only minerals had a nice tidy binomial nomenclature system...)

Varietal names are assigned to varieties of a mineral, which are defined by a unique color, pattern, texture, habit, or other characteristic or combination thereof. The names of varieties usually describe this characteristic that makes them unique. Ruby is a good example of this - it’s been used for thousands of years, and originates from the Latin rubeus, meaning “red”. And sure enough, ruby is a red variety of corundum! Today, when naming varieties, we use similar methods - a newly discovered color of aventurine might be called “red aventurine”, and a red elbaite can be referred to as “rubellite”, a name which has the same Latin roots as ruby. Varieties are also frequently named after the locale in which they were discovered or the person who discovered them. 

In the past few decades, the new age movement has coined a massive number of new varietal names. These may be based on the crystal’s magical/metaphysical properties, a magical/historical/mythical figure/place/idea associated with the crystal, or often just a ~magical sounding~ word! For the most part, these varietal names are a sales tool. Amethyst is one such name that has been around for a lot longer - it refers to purple quartz’s supposed ability to ward off drunkenness. Spirit quartz is a more modern varietal name used to describe a central quartz crystal with a coating of druze, and admittedly, it’s much easier to just say “spirit quartz” than try to describe the formation! But it’s also a lot easier to SELL “spirit quartz” than it is to sell “a central quartz crystal with a coating of druze”. So yes, it’s definitely a marketing tool.

As a side note, tanzanite is another name totally born from consumerism. It’s a variety of zoisite, but it wouldn’t be easy to sell a gem with a name that sounds like “suicide”! So Tiffany & Co. chose to name the blue variety of zoisite “tanzanite” after its country of discovery, giving it an “exotic” feeling that would help it sell better.

Spectrolite, on the other hand, is a flowery-sounding name that actually does describe a particular “grade” of labradorite. The name spectrolite was coined in the 1940s-1950s for labradorite with a dark grey or black bodycolor and especially vibrant labradorescence, typically from Finland. This combination of dark background with bright spectral colors is very desirable in labradorite, so using the varietal name “spectrolite” is a quick way to communicate that the labradorite in question is of good quality.

To give a few more examples of names describing quality, I’ll turn to the world’s two most precious gems: diamonds and jade. Diamonds haven’t always been graded on today’s D-to-Z color scale. Today, diamonds in the “white” color range are assigned a letter grade (or a number depending on the lab) that quickly and precisely describes the presence or absence of color, with the highest grade, D, being completely colorless, and the lowest grade, Z, being quite obviously yellow. But this scale is quite recent - and before, diamonds were described with names such as “river”, “top crystal”, and “Wesselton”. These names were also to communicate the color of the diamond, but it’s a headache trying to remember which name means what (just try guessing which of those is considered the best)!

Jade, however, doesn’t have a convenient letter-grading scale. I won’t claim to understand the finer points of jade grading at all - it’s something that is deeply a part of East Asian culture. While technically accessible to us in the West, the intricacies of grading and the cultural significance of jade are difficult to understand (and you’d probably need a solid grasp on the Chinese language to even begin to do so). However, there are names that have translated to English to communicate different colors and qualities of jade, the most widely known being imperial jade, the very highest quality of jadeite. Other such names include lavender, ice, mutton-fat, moss-in-snow, and melon jade. 

In the above cases, I think the different names assigned to all these stones are totally acceptable - they’re used widely by people in the crystal/mineral/jewelry industries to help communicate some aspect of a stone’s appearance. The real problem is when the names become misleading (such as “smoky topaz” being used to describe smoky quartz, not a topaz at all), or when many names are assigned to a single stone (azeztulite, for example, is just plain quartz!). When this type of naming occurs, it’s entirely to increase sales of a gemstone or crystal, often deceptively. You might sell a quartz crystal for a dollar, but slap an “azeztulite” label on it and suddenly it’s worth ten (or rather, $36.99 on Amazon. Seriously, it’s there). I do take issue with these names, partly because I totally fell for them before studying crystals from a more scientific standpoint, and I know a lot of other folks do too.

[marvelous-avengers]

In Bloom - 3

summary: Bucky’s got some scars in more places than he cares to admit, and thinks some art is the key to helping him recover. What he doesn’t expect is for a certain tattoo artist to settle his soul. Modern AU with tattoo artist!reader

pairing: Bucky Barnes x TattooArtist!Reader

warnings: angst, talks of depression, therapy and recovery, slow burn lovin, some fluffy fluff and heart skipping

a/n: i feel like it’s been forever since i updated this (it has been) and i originally wanted to wait until i got more chapters written but decided against it. i’ve been going through a lot lately and haven’t written as much, so i’m trying to get back out on the horse and write. i really love this series and where i plan to take it, and i have a couple days off so hopefully i can find time to write. anyway, here’s chapter 3! enjoy, like, reblog, please leave feedback <3

Saturday rolls around and his nerves are making him an anxious mess.

In his session this week, he had told his therapist about the decision. Saying it out loud had only made him smile, and the man in the plain grey suit had nodded along with him.

“Do you think this is a good decision?”

“Yes,” he voices before he can stop himself, fingers grabbing at the material of his jeans. The question wasn’t meant to be accusatory or mean, but Bucky feels like he has to defend his decision. To his therapist, to himself, who knows. He sure doesn’t. “I’ve thought about it a few times, but as I keep saying it out loud, it just makes it sound...better.”

He relaxes when the man across from him smiles and nods, and they move on.

That was yesterday. He was calm and collected, almost gleeful as he went about the rest of his day. Sam, a mutual friend of his and Steve’s, had stopped by and he was surprised to see Bucky so happy.

“Damn,” he remarked after Bucky had let him in. He set the take out on the table and Bucky went about grabbing plates and utensils. “You’re this excited about it, I almost don’t want to tease you about being so smiley.”

Bucky shakes his head, thankful for the easy mood that Sam brings with him. Although their friendship was based on jokes and teasing, Sam knew when he needed to stop pushing Bucky’s buttons. Sam never treated him any differently than he had before he had served, and for that, Bucky was thankful.

“What are you going to get?” he asks, shoving a mouthful of noodles in his mouth.

Bucky shrugs, pushing some food on his plate around. “Not sure yet. Hopefully this consultation will help me figure it out. But I know I want something.” He thinks back to the Instagram page, which he looks at almost daily, and to the pictures he has saved. It’s mostly floral pieces, but he would never tell Sam that, knowing that he would never hear the end of it from his friend.

“Is she cute?”

Bucky almost chokes on his food and Sam smirks at him. “What?”

Sam’s smirk gets bigger. “The tattoo artist. It’s a girl, right? Is she cute?”

Bucky blinks once, twice. “Wha–I don’t, I don’t know. There weren’t any pictures of her on the page. Why does it matter?”

Sam shrugs and pulls out his phone. “It doesn’t, maybe.” Bucky narrows his eyes at his friend as he fiddles with his phone for another minute before grinning. “Boom!” He meets Bucky’s eyes and there is a mischievous glint in them. “I found her personal page. She’s cute. Wanna see?”

“No.” Bucky says it almost too quickly, his mind betraying him. He can’t think about that yet. He had stopped himself from snooping into it too much, afraid where his mind will go if he saw her. He didn’t want to ruin anything that hasn’t even started yet.

Sam scoffs and puts his phone away. “Chill out man, I’m just playin’ with you. But you better let me know how it goes tomorrow.” Bucky only rolled his eyes, knowing that Sam didn’t mean the actual consultation.

But when this morning rolled around, Bucky couldn’t get out of his head if he wanted to. He woke up with a start, his mind already racing and reeling. He had to get up, had to get himself ready for the day. He was already too anxious and he had only been up for a few minutes. His actions were too rushed, his morning routine seemingly taking not enough time. To stall himself, he trimmed his growing scruff–he had gotten so good at it without a mirror that he didn’t have to remove the towel that was still hanging over it in the bathroom.

He was ready too early, his mind going through so many possible awful situations that could happen today.

What if he was late to the appointment? What if he picked something he didn’t like? What if he picked something he would later hate? What if he started having a panic attack while in the chair? What if he couldn’t do it? What if it just couldn’t be done?

But the one that stuck out in his head the most, the one that he was absolutely terrified of: she could see his arm, his scars, all the battles that he had been through mentally and physically, and decide right then and there that he was not worth her time. The thought makes his heart clench painfully in his chest.

He feels his heartbeat increase, sees his hands start to shake slightly as he clenches them and unclenches them. He grips the sink, holding onto the cold porcelain as if it was his lifeline for the moment, taking breaths to steady his overactive body. He backs up and leans against the wall, breathing in and out, wrapping his arms around his own body. He slides down the wall until he’s in a sitting position, and with a shaky breath, leans his head against the wall. He tries to control his breathing, closes his eyes and lets out a sigh. After a few minutes, he feels his heart start to calm, if only slightly.

It picks up again when he realizes what time it is and that he should leave, or he’ll miss his appointment.

Another minute passes as he checks himself, over-analyzing everything he’s wearing before shoving his self-conscious thoughts to the back of his mind, grabbing his things and heading out.

The drive to the shop isn’t long, but somehow too long and too short at the same time. It’s in a small lot, nestled in between a bookstore and a pharmacy and a few other shops. He takes notice of the strange combo as he pulls into a parking space, shutting off the engine and letting it fizzle out. He knows that he’s still a few minutes early, just on the borderline between over ecstatic and appropriate. He uses this to calm himself down. He takes in a deep breathe.

In and out. In and out.

He lets the air out of his lungs as his eyes roam over the sign that hangs above the awning to the shop.

Odin’s Garden

He knows that it’s now or never as he tries to keep his bad thoughts at bay, acutely aware of the time on the dashboard. Part of him wishes that he had accepted Steve’s offer to accompany him, his friend always pushing his buttons in the right way. The other part of him, the more practiced part of him, the trained part of him, is glad that he will hopefully get through this on his own. Eventually.

With shaky hands, he gets out of the car and starts towards the glass front of the shop, clicking the lock button for his car three times out of habit. When he opens the glass door with equally shaky hands, a small chime signals his arrival. There’s soft music playing in the background, interrupted only by the buzzing of the machines. Sketches and paintings cover the walls, a large plant rests in the corner on the wall opposite the door, and a couple large photo albums are scattered about the countertop that is at the front of the shop. He looks passed it to see a couple open stations with chairs, and an artist that is currently bent over, tattooing the back of someone’s leg.

“Hello!”

The booming voice makes Bucky jump slightly, nerves on edge. He looks over to see a large man with blond hair that reaches his shoulders, part of it pulled back. He’s wearing a loose tank top and a leather vest, exposing his muscular arms, the right one covered entirely in tattoos.  Bucky glances quickly, and notices that it looks like some kind of story, characters and shapes in beautiful colors going from his shoulder to his wrist.

The giant steps up to the small desk behind the counter. “What can I help you with today?” He takes a lollipop from the glass bowl that sits on the counter and fiddles with the wrapper before popping it in his mouth.

“I, uh–” Bucky swallows, subconsciously wringing his hands, “I have an appointment, with Y/N.”

“Ah!” He smiles with the lollipop in his mouth. “Yes! Let me go get her.” The man steps away from the desk to head to the back of the shop, where Bucky can see a window that looks into another room, probably an office, he guesses. His eyes roam the space, checking for any and all exits out of habit. One in the front, one in the back. There is another closed door in the back, a small fridge in the corner with a table with three chairs around it. It’s a pretty open space, but Bucky isn’t sure if that relaxes him or makes him even more nervous.

The buzzing of the machine acts as white noise against the music and the voices in the background. Bucky takes a moment to look at all the drawings around the shop, some framed and others hanging free. There is so much work on the walls, ranging from floral pieces and butterflies, calligraphy, to people and things. He can easily spot the differences between artists in each of the pieces.

He was staring at a big, bright cartoon painting near the desk when he hears footsteps approaching. He looks over and a small wave of calm washes over him. It’s gotta be you, he thinks.

You’re walking towards him from the back of the shop and you smile. “Hi, I’m Y/N. You must be James.” You come around the desk and stretch your hand out, which he immediately takes. He takes note of how soft your skin is compared to his rough palms. It makes something soften in his chest.

“That’s me,” he says, hoping his voice sounds as even as he thinks it does. He takes in your form, takes in the black bandana tied around your head with the cutest little knot, the loose tee bunched up just slightly at your side, the loose jeans with rips in them, the black converse on your feet. In reality, it takes him maybe half a second but he still feels like it’s too long. Your eyes remain on his face, bright, and something turns in his stomach, but he doesn’t hate it. He gulps.

Your smile is still easy as you let go of his hand and motion for him to follow you. You move to the back of the shop and tap your fingertips against the table as you walk around it. He sits in a chair and you open the fridge.

“Would you like some water?”

“Yes, thank you.”

You grab two small bottles and then plop down in the seat adjacent to him, sliding him one. Bucky holds the small bottle in between his hands, the plastic cool against his skin. He takes a breath in and releases a shaky one. When he looks up from the table, you are smiling softly at him.

It stirs something deep inside him.

“I’m sorry,” he suddenly blurts out, and you only furrow your brows at him. His fingers play with the paper wrapping around the bottle, tearing it slightly. “I’m not good at this.”

Your lips are still curved up at the sides and you shrug slightly. “It’s okay. Today we are just going to talk, get to know each other a bit and maybe get an idea or two. Nothing too big, right?”

Bucky is looking at you and you are so kind and gentle with him and so he nods. “Yeah.”

You smile wider and take a sip of your water. He thinks about how bright your smile makes your face. “Good. So did you have any ideas?”

His mind automatically goes to your artist page online, to the intricate designs, soft colors, and the beautiful pieces. “Kind of. I actually really love all the flowers that you do.” The thought of having a flourishing piece of color on his arm makes him blush, but in a good way. In a happy way.

Your nose scrunches in the cutest way when your grin widens, if that’s even possible. Dear god. “Thank you. Floral pieces are some of my favorite to do, it’s what a lot of people come to me for. Do you have any specific flowers in mind?”

“Roses, sunflowers, daffodils, maybe orchids. My ma really liked those, always tried to have some flowers in the house.” It feels so easy to talk to you; his mouth just kind of moves and he goes along with it.

Your face softens at the mention of his mother, and you tilt your head slightly. “All wonderful choices. And lots of great colors to work with. Any definites? Black and white or color?”

He pauses. Blinks. “I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s okay. I can draw a rough sketch out based on those three, do a couple options and see what you like best. Then we can go from there. No tattoo until you are completely happy with the design. Sound good?”

His chest feels the tiniest bit lighter. That’s it? He releases a breath and nods. “Yes. Thank you.”

Your face is still so bright and so gentle. “Of course. Now, where do you want it?”

He stops. Gulps down the saliva in his throat. “My arm.”

You only nod. “Okay, where?” Your hand reaches out to the space between you, and Bucky almost flinches until you stop in the space between you, inches away from him, fingers poised in the air as you motion to his bicep, “here,” and then to his forearm, “or here?”

It takes Bucky only half a second to tell himself to calm down, to realize that you hadn’t actually touched him, but it feels too long to his nervous brain. It takes him the rest of the second to realize he needs to explain himself better. “I would really like to have it start at my shoulder and go down to my elbow, at least. Maybe a full arm piece, but I haven’t decided that yet.”

You nod, again, looking over his arm and Bucky is itching in his three-quarter sleeve under your gaze. “That’s okay. You can always add on more later. Do you have any other tattoos? Skin or blood issues? Anything I should be concerned about?”

The pause Bucky takes is a little longer this time, but you are patient, hands folded atop the table as you look at him. For a moment, he wonders how he got so lucky to have found you. So patient, so kind.

But then he realizes that he needs to speak. This is it. “I, uh,” he takes a sip of his water to quench his Sahara desert of a mouth, and gulps. “I have a lot of scars, actually.”

There’s a crease between your brows just the slightest. “Oh, really?”

He nods, hesitancy creeping into his voice. He feels his heartbeat increase. “Yes.”

You tilt your head, curious, but your eyes never leave his face. “That’s okay. How old are they? And where are they?”

“They, uh,” Bucky rakes a hand through his hair as he pauses, mouth dry. “They’re a few years old at this point. They’re on my shoulder.” His hand automatically goes to grip at his shoulder, and he pushes his fingers into his muscle to ground himself.

You nod, thoughtful, and play with your fingers as you speak. “That’s okay. The older the scars are, the better. As long as they aren’t fairly recent, everything should be fine. The skin might be a little tougher, but other than that, everything should be okay.” Before Bucky can speak again, you say, “I won’t ask you about them, or to see them today. It’s obviously a very tough thing for you and I respect your privacy and for coming in today to see me. Is this a cover-up piece?”

Bucky is slightly speechless. He wets his lips, hands wrung together in front of him. “Yes. In a way.” He pauses, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. You sit and wait for him to finish his thought. He can’t stop staring at your eyes. “It’s partially a cover-up and partially just for me. I wanted something good to combat the bad. To help me feel better about everything that I’ve been through.”

Your face is soft, smile gentle as it quirks up. “That’s beautiful, James.”

You are, he thinks but instead he blurts “Bucky,” out of nowhere. He feels his face heat up, and clears his throat as your eyebrows pinch together. “Please, call me Bucky.”

You nod and grace him with another smile. He feels the burning heat in the tips of his ears. “Okay. Well Bucky, it’s a beautiful reason and a beautiful idea. I would be more than honored to do it for you.” You stand up and he follows you back to the front of the shop, where you stop next to the desk. You stand in front of him, and the sunshine coming in from the windows gives you a lovely glow. “I’ll work on a few designs for you and send you something in about a week or two, and we can go from there. Sound good?”

Bucky can only nod, the tightness leaving his chest as he shakes your hand goodbye. You watch him leave the shop and he lets out a breath as he gets back in his car. He watches the shop for a minute, sees you through the window as you fix some papers and disappear to the back of the shop.

The vice around his chest leaves him entirely as he drives home and steps into his apartment. Steve is there when he arrives, reading on the couch.

“Hey, how’d it go?” He asks as Bucky steps into the living room.

It’s the first time Bucky actually thinks about the meeting. He was too preoccupied with the color of your eyes and the light on your skin to give Steve a proper answer at first.

“It went really well, actually,” he says, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch. Steve dog-ears his page and closes his book on his lap, watching his friend closely, sees the relaxed expression on his face. “It went really well.”

“That’s great, Buck. I’m proud of you.” He takes a sip of his water, letting Bucky gather his thoughts. “So, what’s next?”

“She’s gonna draw some things up and send me the designs,” he answers, already thinking of the colors and petals that will one day be adorning his arm, your gentle fingers on his skin. He feels his lips curl up just the slightest. “I’m excited for it.”

Steve’s smile is wide, happy to see Bucky excited about something. “That’s great! I’m excited to see how it turns out.”

So am I, Bucky thinks.

He can’t wait to hear from you again.

tags:

@buckyhalf @softlybarnes @sgtjbuccky @barnesrogersvstheworld @sweetboybucky @captainrogerss @buckyywiththegoodhair @delos-mio @kentuckybarnes @evanstar @evanstarff

@bitchingwintersoldier @theunicornotaku @beansstan @aveatquevale-@faithfullpanicmoon @aljadams369 @callmedaddys-blog @dontneedbiologytoadopt

[thetenthdoctorscompanion]

UMBRELLA ACADEMY CHARACTER POSTERS - TUTORIAL/RESOURCES

So since the giveaway, I’ve gotten a couple messages inquiring how I made my character posters for Umbrella Academy OCs. I figured I’d throw a quick walk through together in case anyone wants to make their own and isn’t sure how to start.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t work for the Netflix graphics department, so obviously this design isn’t mine. If you make one of these posters, I don’t need credit. If you use my blank template, maybe give it a reblog for others to find it, but I don’t need or expect anything. Thanks in advance.

So to start off, there’s a couple things you’re going to need for this edit. I use Photoshop for all of my editing, but there are plenty of good editing websites out there where you should be able to put the pieces together. Before you start, you probably want to collect the following:

poster base/background

picture of your character

super adjective (ex: quiet, cursed, strong, bitter, high, etc.)

OPTIONAL: background symbol/number

OPTIONAL: umbrella picture

PART ONE: YOUR BASE

To start off, you’re gonna need your full stripe-y background. So full disclosure, I didn’t start from scratch. I took one of the licensed promo posters and selected the thin strip of stripes at the top, made it a new layer, and then stretched it to cover up the entire original poster. I also duplicated that layer to add a “sprayed strokes” filter on top, just to give the lines that unfinished texture they have in the regular posters. If you want to skip that step, here’s the plain background I started with.

PART TWO: YOUR CHARACTER

The next thing you’ll want to add is you - your OC, your selfie, whatever you’re making the poster for. Wait that’s a good idea, I want to make a poster of me. File that idea for later.

This is a pretty personal step, so there’s not much I can do to help you. If you’re keeping to the promo poster style, you’ll want to stick to pictures where the person is looking into the camera. I searched for other character promotional footage or photoshoots. I tried to restrict myself to pictures that framed at least from the hips up. This is important so your character doesn’t take up too much of the width of the poster and hide the striped background. And obviously, you’ll want to make sure the image is large so the quality is conserved in the poster.

(Additional Note: If your character is someone who was in the Umbrella Academy, you might want to keep an eye on their hands in the photos. Almost everyone [with the exception of Klaus] has an umbrella in their poster if they were part of the team, but I’ll get to this bit in more detail later.)

So you’ll add whatever character to the poster, and use a standard mask to get rid of the background. I usually use the lasso tool with my feathering on 1 pixel.

PART THREE: TOP TEXT

Pretty easy step. The “super superlative” at the top of the poster should be black, Impact font. Whatever word you pick: keep it short, and keep it one adjective. The longer the word, the smaller you’ll have to make it to fit on the poster, and the less bold it will look in the finished product. You’ll want that layer to be behind your character.

OPTIONAL STEP: BACKGROUND SYMBOL/NUMBER

This is another personal step. If your character was one of the Hargreeves children, they’ve probably got a number assigned to them. In the promotional posters, these numbers are displayed in the background behind the characters. (If there isn’t a number for your character, you can skip this step. Characters like Hazel and Cha Cha simply have striped backgrounds, and that’s just fine.)

The font used in the real posters is not any default font that I could match. For my posters, I used white Arial Black. Resize until it’s as large as you’d like (probably at least 1/3 the height of the poster) and drag to whichever side of your character you’d prefer. This layer should also be behind the person in your image. Then you want to convert your text layer to a workable layer (rasterize) and trim the edges.

OPTIONAL STEP: UMBRELLA

Oof, okay this one can be tough. As I said earlier, most of the Umbrella Academy team members appeared with an umbrella in their poster. With the exception of Klaus, the lil deviant, and Ben who is too dead to hold one. It’s not a necessary part of the poster, but it does take it up a notch if you’ve got the time, patience, and program to do a little more work.

Obviously, this picture of Eliza Dushku does not come with umbrella. I had to do a lot of Googling for “closed umbrella” or “woman holding umbrella” in order to find positions that would work with each photo or hands I could sub out in the picture. Once you’ve found one you want to use, you can mask the layers and adjust the color appropriately. 

This one didn’t work too well cause I had already cropped her legs, but you get the idea.

PART FOUR: BACKGROUND STRIPES

Now for the fun, up for interpretation part! Playing around with that background bit. If you’re working with a plain background, you can select uneven sections of the stripes to delete, so they don’t all reach the bottom. If you’re working with a number, you should already have rasterized the layer. You can go ahead and select some uneven sections so those black lines drip down through the number.

PART FIVE: FOREGROUND STRIPES

There are...probably better ways to do this. But alas, what I have for you is a semi-cheap, time-saving way. We’ve deleted some stripes in the back, now it’s time to stretch some of the stripes down in front. But as the stripe extends over your character, it inverts color. So what I ended up doing was *~* MAKING A NEW LAYER *~* on top, and painting with a white brush where I wanted these lines to go.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT FORGET TO MAKE A NEW LAYER FIRST. YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOU DON’T.

After that I used the rectangle marquee to trim the brush strokes, i.e. extend the negative space from the stripes above. Then trim the ends of the lines where you want them to stop, and the tops of the lines where your character’s outline begins.

VOILA! YOU’VE DONE IT! THAT RIGHT THERE IS A POSTER!

Anyway, I hope this was helpful for some people. I spent about an hour and a half longer on this tutorial than I intended. Whoopsie doodles. Please reblog if this helped, and/or shoot me a message with questions.

[leswansong]

Marichat May - Kitty Cats & Ballet Shoes

Day Two: Greek AU

[ A03 ]

   Adrien sat high above the theatre seating, he scanned the swarm of ballerina’s trying to find the one with the midnight blue hair and deep bluebell eyes. He smiled when he found her standing at the back of the crowd. He felt sorry for the way he had treated her the previous week; under normal circumstances, he would have let her pass but he knew she had seen him in his perch so he had pulled her into the closest room he could see. He didn’t mean to scare her it was only after he went home and laid down to get some sleep did he realize how petrified she might have been in that moment. He wanted to apologize to her but knew that if he ran into her again she would be even more terrified and to make things worse she sadly hadn’t gotten any roles in the Production she was auditioning for but at least she bounced back quickly.

   He had never heard of this production maybe it was because it was actually an opera instead of a ballet. His mother never liked the opera so he had never seen one maybe this would be a good place to start. Pulling out the small flyer that was in his pocket, the name of the production was in bold letters across the top with a brief explanation of the plot, it was only a temporary flyer but it did the job. He would have to look into it when he got home.

   He tried to pull his eyes off the girl as she started her dance but he failed, his eyes were glued to her through every leap and twirl she made. Although she had a background role he could see she was putting her heart and soul into each and every move, he started to really hate what he had done to her in that moment. He pulled his eyes off of her and it seemed to break the trance she had put him inn he leapt across the metal crosswalks that the stage lights sat on, they swayed slightly from the movement but no one bellow was able to see him moving across them. Slowly he descended down the metal steps to an empty backstage, everyone was on the stage but he still checked to see if anyone was there he definitely didn’t want a repeat of the last time.

    Adrien quickly made his way through the building heading to an area less travelled by members of the cast and crew. He knew exactly what he was looking for, a locked door hidden among all the dressing room doors because that was where the safe was hidden. The girl had been right ‘Le Grande Gazelle Blanche’ did only come out at Christmas for the yearly production of The Nut Cracker but he knew of another time, one less known to the public. Once a year a gala was held for the dance company to show off their latest cast for the role of ‘Clara’ to the members of the rich and elite and to also rub it into the other dance companies.

   Finding the corridor he was looking for he turned off the lights to it plunging it into his preferred darkness, slowly walking down the corridor he tried every door, they all opened apart from one, the door he was looking for. He smirked to himself and forced the door open only to be confronted with the sight of a dressing room, it confused him, he left the light off, his night vision made everything as light as day. He slowly tipped toed around the room inspecting the contents, he started to suspect that his information was wrong and he was in the place but it didn’t hurt to look.

   His eyes scanned the room looking for somewhere a safe could be hidden, the necklace wouldn’t be their yet but he needed to scope the safe out, he went straight for a large painting on the wall, it was a little cliché but that was where people usually hid safes his father included. He pulled it aside only to find a blank wall behind it, he sighed, things could never be that easy for him. He headed over to the wardrobe, throwing open the doors he pushed and pulled at the small amount of clothing it contained to get a better look at the back of it, the safe wasn’t there and he accidentally slammed the door shut in slight frustration. He looked around the room one last time for any place the safe could be, there was a curtain covering a wall in the corner to the right of the door, it was oddly placed in the small room, he was already walking towards it so he pushed the curtain aside revealing a small safe. It was much small than the one he was looking for but turning back at the torn apart room he might as well check it.

   His fingers tingled at the words used to summon his destructive ability, pressing his palm to the steel door, it crumbled beneath his touch and soon was a small pile of black dust on the floor. He shook his hand to get rid of any remaining dust left on his hands, he reached in and pulled out a small collection of letters, they were (if the dates were correct) at least eighty years old, he skimmed through them, he tried to hide the smile slowly spreading across his face the more he read the sweet words the receivers lover had written. His heart warmed as he read the last letter then placed them back into their home, he reached in one last time to make sure there was nothing left in there he had missed, his fingers brushed against a small wooden box, he pulled it from the dark and dusty hole to a larger dusty room. The square box held no design or pattern it was plain and simple, it was most likely a gift to the recipient of the letters. He opened it to reveal a set of earrings, the design resembled that of a Ladybug, he closed it and quickly pocketed it, what for he didn’t know, he just did.

   He turned to leave only to be blinded by the room filling with light, stumbling back in shock he let out a short hiss when tripped and stumbled eventually collided with the floor. The sound of someone giggling reached his ears, he mused on how sweet it sounded, he forced his eyes open to try and adjust them to the blinding light, he blinked his vision straight and she came into view. He could see the small beads of sweat that had formed across her forehead from her rehearsal. He smiled up at her with his usual dopey grin, it was her, her midnight hair had once again fallen from her tight bun, her costume was in better condition maybe because it was a loosely styled toga and not a tutu that was easily crushed against a wall. The girl instantly seemed to realize that there was a strange masked man in her very small dressing room, she backed away from him tripping on some of the clothing he had pulled out of the wardrobe, Adrien rose to his feet and walked over to her holding his hand out to help her back onto her feet.

   “It’s nice to see you again ma petite ballerine.”

   Her eyes grew wide in shock, he suddenly realized his mistake and all the color drained from his face. She pushed herself into a corner in an attempt to get away from him, he tried to take a step towards her but saw her visibly cower as he got closer, he paused, it hurt him the way she was acting but it all made sense he did push her up against the wall after she escaped his grasp.

   “I’m- I’m sorry, I know how this might seem like I’m stalking you but I swear I’m not… I promise.”

   She swallowed, still petrified she responded, “I don’t believe you.”

   He inhaled trying to find some way to prove to her that he wasn’t actually stalking her, he allowed his mind to say the first thing that popped into his head, “I- I know we’ve run into each other twice now and each time has been a terrifying experience of you but I swear this isn’t what it looks like.”

“You’re in my locked dressing room…” her voice wobbled over the words.

   “I-“ he racked his head for some way to respond, “Miss if you let me explain I-“

   “Marinette,” she winced realizing her mistake.

   He smiled, “that’s a pretty name,” he commented, “I’m going to shut the door,” he announced to her, “that way we can talk, okay?

   She froze when he stepped back towards the door, he stopped in his tracks and waited for her to give him some kind of sign that he could proceed with his plan, her eyes were transfixed on the door.

   “Marinette?” he queried, her eyes moved from the door to him then back to the door, “may I close the door?”

   She looked back towards him and then slowly nodded her head, he smiled at her as he backed away. Adrien stuck his head out into the hall quickly checking it for people, there were a few people down the hall but they were too far away to notice him, he shut the door and turned back to her slowly helping her to her feet so she could sit on her roller chair in front of her dressing tables mirror.

   “So,” he asked moving in front of her, “I only have a few minutes but I’ll try to answer your questions.”

   Marinette muttered something beyond his range of hearing.

   “Sorry, I- I didn’t hear that.”

   She sighed, “What are-“ she groaned, “What’s your name?”

   He smiled, “Chat Noir.”

   “Right… What were you looking for?” she gestured to the rest of the room, he winced at the sight.

   “Sorry My-“ he pondered whether or not to tell her, “My info was off, I was told the… item… I was looking for was hidden in this room,” he explained, he was apparently going to be telling her the truth.

   “And I thought I told you that Christmas was months away,” she snapped back.

   He opened his mouth to respond only to be interrupted by the loud beeping coming from his ring, he groaned, “I’ll… be back.”

   He stepped out into the now empty corridor and as soon as he heard the door click into place behind him he took off running looking for the broom closet he had pulled Marinette into the week prior, he knew it was just down a small flight of stairs. He threw the door open and slammed his back against it to close it, he looked down at his ring a single paw print remained on the ring, he sighed and released his transformation. He tried to catch his breath, he truly thought he had more time and didn’t mean to cut it so close, he patted the walls beside him and eventually found the light switch, the light replaced the dark within the room.

   His Kwami, Plagg, let out a yawn, Adrien dug around in his bag for the small plastic container he had filled with Plagg’s cheese. The Kwami didn’t wait for Adrien to open it, he phased through it and started happily munching on the camembert cheese within. He sighed and placed the container on the shelf in front of him, waiting for Plagg to finish eating was the most painful and slowest thing in the world, he looked around the room in boredom clicking his tongue to pass the time.

   He tried to keep his mind away from Marinette, the horrible feeling of the way he had accidentally scared her stuck with him, nothing could shake the feeling in his gut. Plagg shot him a sympathetic look through the plastic walls, it was funny how in sync they were at times, Plagg seemed to know when he was spiraling into a deep pit of regret and could easily pull him out of it with a look.

   Deciding that Plagg had had more than enough time to eat his share of cheese, he picked up the container to see Plagg shove the last bite of cheese into his mouth, Adrien was kind enough to let him swallow that last piece before re-calling his transformation. The black suit reappeared over his everyday clothes, his suit felt like a second home with how much time he spent in it. His eyes readjusted to the enhanced vision, the scent of the cleaning products assaulted his overly sensitive nose. Marinette’s sweet floral perfume had helped combat the stench the last time he was in that small room, pinching his nose to try and block out the painful smell he fumbled for the door. Stepping out into the corridor he breathed in although not fresh air it was a lot better than the chemical filled one, he filled his lungs again then started down the hall and back up the stairs to Marinette.

   He knocked on the dressing room door before opening it, he looked around wildly at the room, it had been restored to its previous neat and tidy originally state, he was only gone for two to three minutes, how had she cleaned it up so quickly.

   “Hi…”

   She looked up at him in the refection of the small mirror, “Hi… Are- Are you okay?” the concern was evident in her voice.

   “Oh- yeah I’m… fine, I’ll explain later.”

   “Oh…”

   “Where were we?” He asked.

   “I- Uh- The necklace I think?”

   He tried thinking back to their conversation before he had to leave abruptly, “right…”

   “I think I told you that Christmas was months away… I don’t remember,” she mused trying to actually remember what she had said to him.

   “Well, I’m sorry for tearing your dressing room apart.”

   “What made you think the necklace was here if I remember correctly they transport the necklace from its secure vault for the production.”

   “Yes… but it gets taken out of its vault for something else and has even less security.

   “And how do you know about this ‘secret’ outing?”

   He smirked, “that is me for to know and for you to never find out.”

   “You said you would answer any of my questions and this is one of the questions.”

   He groaned, damn she was good, she was really going to get him to spill his whole plan. “Do I have to?”

   “If you don’t want anyone to find out you were here then yes.”

   “Fine…” If he was going to tell her he might as well tell her the entire story, “the necklace is taken out of its secure vault twice a year, one you know of-“

   “The Nutcracker.”

   He nodded his head, “Yes the Nutcracker and for an extremely exclusive gala held for the rich and powerful, the company uses it to show off their cast for ‘Clara’ and since the auditions were last week the gala should be held in the next two to three weeks.”

   “And you want to steal it before the gala?”

   He nodded his head again, “can’t steal it at Christmas, it’s to well-guarded. Can’t steal it from its vault cause that's a death wish. Can’t steal it at the gala because of all the eyes and because there is only a small pool of people the police need to look at and I don’t want to narrow… that… list…” He slowly cut off his sentence, he didn’t want to drag her any further than he had already had into his pit of lies and thievery.

   “You were saying?” she asked with an eyebrow raised.

   “I- I-“ he stuttered, “I can’t tell you that, I’m trying to keep you out of this… life.”

   “I can protect myself,” she angrily replied crossing her arms.

   He chuckled looking down at his feet, “I never said you couldn’t,” a faint dull pain resurfaced in his side from where she had elbowed him the week prior, he most definitely did not want to end up in a situation where he was up against her again.

   “Why do you want the necklace?”

   The question he had been waiting for her to ask all night, why, why did he want a rare and beautiful necklace all for himself.

   He looked up at her and smiled, “that is something I sadly can’t tell you that, sorry Marinette,” he took a step away from her to lean up against a wall.

   “What… What if I help you?”

   “Marinette, I can’t- I don’t think you can.”

   “Please,” she begged.

   He shut his eyes and sighed, “Why? what has this place done to you.”

   She chuckled, “It's not this place but the people within.”

   “And what have these… terrible people done to you.”

   “Well,” she started, “One pushed me into a tiny broom closet,” he froze and immediately went to apologize again for his actions, she stopped him with the wave of her hand, “Chat, I was kidding,” he tried to laugh it off but couldn’t find it in him, “Sorry, Chat I didn’t mean-“

   “It’s okay, just…”

   “I was never actually called for my audition for the role of ‘Clara’, I thought I had just missed my name being called in the mere moments I was…” she trailed off, Adrien knew where her mind had wandered off to because he had wandered off their too, “I found out later that a girl who had auditioned for it had paid off the judges so that I wouldn’t be called,” she continued, “that girl has had it out for me ever since I was nine and sadly I think she got the part.”

   The story sounded believable but something in him told him it was a lie, he tried to shake it but it followed him around like a bad smell, he was cautious in his response, “And you want some revenge?”

   She nodded her head.

   He shut his eyes not believing that he was even considering letting her into a plan that had taken several months to even get to this point, “Marinette I- I need to think this through and you have to understand, you… helping me, if you get caught its major jail time.”

   “I understand.”

   “I don’t think you do, getting caught is something that I have to constantly be aware of, that's why I shoved you into that… If you and I were ever caught together you would be under heavy scrutiny for everything that I have done.”

   Marinette stood up from her seat and turned to face him, she kicked the swivel chair she had been sitting in over to him for him to sit down, he frowned in confusion until she lifted herself up onto her dressing room table, she motioned for him to sit down on the chair, he sighed but followed her command.

   “I understand all that I just…” she started to explain, “the girl and this other girl have had it out for me for a very long time and honestly I really just want some payback. Chloe… I know right now that she definitely got the part, for the last few days she hasn’t stopped talking about that stupid necklace.”

   Adrien nodded his head along to her words.

   “Chloe’s hatred for me started when we were around nine, this was before I started to ballet professionally, I used to dance in many different styles,” she clarified, “There was this play, I can’t even remember if it was a play but Chloe and I auditioned for it and I ended up getting the lead and she was my understudy. I seem to remember that I didn’t really want that role but that's beside the point, Chloe has held this hatred for me getting a role she wanted against me for about-“ she quickly did some simple math’s on her fingers, “Ten years I think? but Chloe she has to know that I’ve wanted the role of ‘Clara’ since forever but now… I’m stuck in this stupid background character in this silly Creek play.”

   He could feel the anger in her voice with the last comment, he didn’t interrupt as she tried to regain her composure, her bright red anger filled cheeks slowly returned to their normal tanned white shade.

   “Sorry,” she apologized, “I just…”

   He reached out placing a hand on her lap, “Wanna talk about it?”

   She slowly shook her head, “No, just- I needed the money, I was banking on some sort of role in… I didn’t want to do this production, I’ve been doing small roles like this one since I started here and I just wanted something new.”

   “Tell me about this production,” he wanted to try and move the conversation away from the sensitive topic long enough for her to calm down.

   “Huh?”

   “The… I don’t know what it is I’ve only seen one or two rehearsals, tell me what it's about.”

   “It’s about the Greek Gods,” she clarified, “I… I haven’t been paying too much attention to it, I’ve been trying to get the dances down first and I usually only find out what the production is about when it’s opening night or If I’m lucky a full dress rehearsal without any problems.”

   “Wow… you mentioned another girl?”

   “Oh yeah… Lila,” she replied, “She is… Something else, Chloe is like the only other person that doesn’t believe her which is surprising I thought they would get along like a house on fire.”

   “What’s so bad about her?” he asked confused.

   “Lila or ‘Liela’ according to Chloe, it’s not a very creative name but it gets the point across.”

   “How bad-“ he tried to ask but found himself cut off.

   “Bad,” she replied, “Really bad, most of her lies are actually believable which makes it worse, those unfortunate few that aren’t accustomed to her are more likely to believe her, I… I almost believed her but something didn’t sit right. I confronted her about it, told her basically that she didn’t need to lie to have or make friends, I also told her something along the lines of stop or I’ll tell everyone, she told me to keep my mouth shut and just accept it, I said no and she been ‘trying’ to destroy me since.”

   “Wow…” he said in shock, “your life is a lot more exciting than mine,” he joked, a huge grin was plastered across his face.

   Marinette picked up the stuffed animal on the desk beside her and threw it at him, he raised his arms to block her attack, the animal bounced off and found its way onto the floor, he picked it up and brushed off the small amount of dirt on it. He smiled at the blue plastic cat eyes of a ginger cat, he handed it back to her and she placed it back on the desk beside her.

   “This Chloe, may I have her full name?”

   Names were a powerful thing to Adrien, Marinette strongly believed that this girl would be the one to play‘Clara’and if true having a head start might be a good idea.

   “Chloe Bourgeois and Lila Rossi,” Marinette replied without a second thought.

   “Bourgeois? The mayor's daughter?” he pretended to be surprised but with his complete knowledge of her, Chloe could no longer do anything to surprise him.

   “The one and only.”

   “Great.”

   “How is that Great?” she asked.

   “She’ll want her dress to be perfect for the gala if she does get the role which means she’ll want to see the necklace.”

   “So you’re going to stalk her?” Marinette stated in disbelief.

   He laughed and slowly shook his head, “stalk is a strong word Marinette, it’s more like ‘follow her movements very closely from the comfort of my own home to be sure’ while you stalk her around set.”

   “What!?!”

   “You wanted to help so I’m giving you something to do.”

   “But I…”

   “Follow her around set, you’ll know if she has been cast because they’ll pull her out of rehearsals or training, they’ll have fewer eyes out in the corridor and there aren’t that many guards well guarding it because hardly anyone knows,” he explained to her, he was really giving her a job that he would normally be doing, it was a small job and if she was really setting him up it wouldn’t reveal much of his plan to the authorities.

   “How do you know? I’m not putting my career on the line for some shoddy information.”

   That part was also true, she was putting her career on the line if she really was helping him. He really hated at that moment not knowing whether or not she could be trusted, he had been a lone cat for so long and really wanted someone else to share the load with him.

   “I got one of the people transporting it last year drunk in a bar, he could not hold his liquor well and all the other little details I got out of him that night checked out,” he stated bluntly.

   Marinette raised her eyebrows and his response, she quickly moved past it, “And when she is called, what do I do then?”

   “You got a phone?” He asked holding his hand out.

   Marinette got up and went to her gym bag pulling out all of her spare clothes to get to the bottom of the bag quicker. She fished it out and passed it over her shoulder to him, taking it from her he opened it, ’no password’ he mentally noted saving it for later, he quickly added his personal number instead of his burner, he looked at the odds of her ever getting his number and found the odds in his favor, he also didn’t always carry his burner with him and this was the kind of information he needed on demand. It was a stupid idea to give her his actual number but one he felt like he needed to do.

   “If she gets called out of class, rehearsal or anything, even if it's a false alarm call or text that number, even if it’s not Chloe and its someone else,” he explained to her handing back the phone.

   “That's it?” she queried.

   “For now, just text something to that number beforehand so that I know it's you.”

   “You often hand out your number to girls,” she teased.

   “Only you,” he teased back, “But no, sadly my work means I get random calls and texts from people to hire me.”

   “A thief for hire?” she questioned.

   He shook his head, “A thief only at night but honest work during the day.”

   Marinette tried her best to fight back a yawn at the moment.

   Adrien took this as his cue to leave, “you best head home, we’ll talk… later, okay?”

   She sleepily nodded her head and picked up her newly repacked gym bag. He opened the dressing room door for her and turned the light off behind them, he whispered a quick goodbye to her and headed straight for the roof, he scanned the streets below waiting for her to step out onto the street, it was late and he knew the dangers the night could bring for someone alone. He kept his distance, he wasn’t following her home just making sure that she reached it okay. Her walk was extremely boring, his eyes followed her up to her second-floor apartment, a light flicked on and her gym bag went sailing across the room eventually hitting a wall, he chuckled at the sight and she fell onto her sofa, she was home he told himself and he turned towards home, he had had a busy day and he was tired and Plagg was most likely tired too.

Made for @marichatmay

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[mysticsparklewings]

Roses in Your Eyes

Oh look, a not-Inktober thing! So after my first dive into The Realm of Gouache, I really wanted to play with the medium a little more and try doing some different things with it. More accurately, I wanted to try using the gouache more opaquely, since last time I took a more transparent/watercolor approach. Full disclosure, I actually had the sketch for this done before the gouache set even arrived to me. My original plan was to do the rose part of the "glasses" in the watercolor style from my In Bloom Le Plumes piece, maybe the leaves too, and then do the hair and possibly the skin in the more opaque gouache style. That was the plan so that I could try to get the most out of both sides to what gouache can do. But after I got the gouache and swatched it out, I wanted to try something a little more experimental before I jumped into this drawing so that I'd have a better handle on what I was actually working with. So that's where the first gouache painting came in. So it was after that when I made the decision to commit a little more closely to using gouache in it's more opaque form. The concept for the drawing is something of a play on the phrase "looking through rose-colored glasses," (or whatever the full version of that phrase is, you know what I mean). The original expression, as I'm sure we all know, means seeing something as being better than it actually is, usually because of personal bias. This idea takes it to a bit of an extreme; the glasses aren't just tinted in a rose color, they're straight-up roses. Instead of just viewing something as better than it actually is, the person is willfully ignoring or otherwise blinded to seeing things as they really are entirely. And possibly hurting themselves in the process, if the roses have thorns. (I didn't draw any but they could be there, unseen.) A couple of other notes on the drawing design before I move on: I went with buns in the hair since I usually draw loose/down hair and wanted to mix it up a bit, and to "close off" the drawing I added the leaves at the base of her neck, which also kind of double as a shirt-collar in terms of appearance, which I thought was neat. The leaves and the bit of vine across the nose, as may be obvious, are supposed to represent the frame and bridge of glasses. I transferred the lines from the sketch to piece of Strathmore mixed media paper since I didn't think I'd be using enough water or watercolor techniques to warrant breaking out some 100% cotton paper, but I wanted something thick enough to handle paint, and I thought the smooth-ish texture would suit the gouache based on what experimenting I'd already done. The roses for the eyes had no lines, and admittedly I probably could've gotten away with even fewer lines than the ones I did transfer since the gouache is opaque. I actually had a fair number of hairlines drawn in that got totally covered up since that was way easier than trying to carefully work around them. Anyway. For all the gouache parts, I started with a darker base color, since it's usually recommended that you work from dark to light in gouache, and then I'd go back in with 2-3 lighter colors on top to add shading/depth. The main issues I ran into were when the gouache color wasn't totally opaque, such as the rose base color (which is actually called "Rose," believe it or not) which gives me mixed feelings because on the one hand, it can look kind of interesting in giving you less structured, more unpredictable shading based on how you layer it, but also...well, it's not as opaque, so you have work with it slightly differently compared to the more opaque colors. The other issue was that I really struggled to have enough paint on my brush, particularly when doing tiny details, to get the full opacity and smooth color that I wanted, without leaving a glop of paint where it didn't need to be. Especially in areas like the hair that had a lot of fine tapering lines. I'm not sure how much of the problem is me and how my is or isn't my brushes or what, but this is something I occasionally have issues within acrylic painting too, but it felt way more prevalent here. I did manage to fix some areas that got away from me by layering darker colors back on top of the lighter ones, but then you also have areas like one of the loose hair strands around her chin that got away from me and I had to make noticeably longer than it originally was in order to fix it. (You can probably guess which one it was without me having to point it out for you.) I also had an "issue" in that it was seemingly very easy to mix up way too much of custom color, but that's more of a me problem than a problem with the paint. (And admittedly the above aren't necessarily paint-specific problems either.) Speaking of which, I'm still not sure if my "Titanium White" and "White" got mixed up or not, but since I suspect they did, I used the one I felt like looks more like the mixing white to do so. (Although admittedly I probably could've tried some mixing tests with both to see if I noticed a difference there whatever, perhaps some other time.) And I specifically avoided using black, since I thought it would be too harsh in mixes. For the hair, I just used one of the pre-mixed browns for my darkest and then used lighter colors and made my own lighter mixes to go over it. For the leaves, I actually mixed some of the Prussian Blue into one of the greens to make it darker. I think I may have benefitted from going a little lighter on how much of the blue went in, though. The roses were actually one of the more fun parts since they didn't have to be so precise or specific to make the look work. I started with a base of the Rose/hot pink color, mixed a lighter pink to make sections that probably should've been a little less light in color and slightly larger in shape, and then a slightly lighter pink than should have been lighter to layer on top of the already lighter pink parts. Partly because of some the issues I mentioned earlier and partly because I was just kinda going for whatever with only a minimal plan, I did have to go back and forth with the lights and darks in some areas on these, and I still don't think they look quite alike enough, even though I never intended to make them perfectly symmetrical. I also decided to not totally abandon gouache's watercolor properties with the background, since at this point I was thinking I didn't want to leave it plain white, but I also didn't want to do anything too complicated or intense that might take away from the rest of the art and the concept behind it. So I watered down some of the pink I used for the roses' base color and just kinda went over the background to my heart's content until I was happy with what the textures were doing since I knew it was unrealistic to expect to be able to get the background totally smooth trying to work around the rest of the drawing. Now, originally I was planning on painting in the skin with the gouache, however, I made the grave mistake of not thinking about it until after I'd pretty much finished with all the other painted parts, and I really did not feel like trying to paint around everything. And, honestly, I really did like the contrast of the white skin against the other colors. I did acknowledge that I could have mixed a gray from the gouache and shaded the white skin with that, but it felt like too much of a risk and still like too much of a hassle, so I conceited that I could bring other mediums into this since I'd already done my gouache-exclusive test piece. I grabbed a couple of very, very light gray Copic markers and added some very careful, very subtle shading to the skin. And you guys haven't seen the first time I used this mixed-media paper just yet (it's coming down the pipeline, I promise!), but for the second time I'm kind of in love with how it handles alcohol markers and I really need to try a more marker-heavy illustration on it sometime.   After all that though, it was still missing a couple of things. I ended up breaking out my white uni-ball Signo gel pen to line around the girl just so she really would pop off the background, opting for it instead of the white gouache because, again, that seemed like too much of a chore to try and do. And my white Sakura gelly roll tends to be a little more transparent compared to the Signo, and I really wanted the stronger, stark white look. Then after some thinking, I added the rose lines in the background using a pink and a green Sakura gelly rolls and the stencil I've toyed with using on other projects before. And overall it, it has its faults (especially if you look at it too closely), but I really like how the whole thing turned out. It has almost a surreal vibe to it that I think drives home the initial concept really nicely, and just, in general, it's very sweet colors but has a more eerie feel to it. (At least when I look at it, anyway.) It also very vaguely gives me Luna-Lovegood vibes, so of course, I like it for that alone. I'm not sure what I'm going to make with the gouache next, as so far it seems its planning requires a slightly different thought process than I'm used to, but I have some ideas and all this has succeeded in doing is making me want to use the gouache more.  This definitely isn't the last we'll be seeing of it, that's for sure! ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[yupuffin]

Why You Probably Think Nezumi’s Hair Looks Silly

(and why it’s probably not as bad as you think it is)

In the past I’ve written a few anime analysis posts with varying degrees of seriousness. My last post along these lines was not the most lighthearted read, but fortunately, this time around, I spontaneously got an idea for a less serious topic to write about. I managed to keep up with the anime JUNI TAISEN: ZODIAC WAR right on the tail end of its release, which I believe was crucial to my ultimate enjoyment of this series. What I did not manage to do was predict that Nezumi would end up my favorite character (although I’m certainly not complaining, given, for one, how much inspiration his narrative has given me for analytical posts such as this one).

Like most other viewers, I comfortably got to know Nezumi over the course of the story, but when the episode that focuses on his backstory rolled around, I was not sufficiently prepared for the most dramatic reveal of all!!: his true... hairstyle?

As usual, an obligatory warning for spoilers under the cut.

Let’s face it, the assumption that, under all of that armor, Nezumi is just a plain grey-haired anime boy is completely reasonable based on what we see of him i the first eleven episodes. Sure, we see that the armor on his head is shaped rather oddly, but -- I don’t know about you, but I merely assumed that its sole function was to provide a visual pun in reference to his zodiac animal and ability: the protruding portions are shaped like rodent ears, and match nicely with what I would guess is an ear cover shaped like a computer mouse (haha -- because of Hundred Click, and because he’s a rat). Alas, how very wrong I was, because it turns out, that part is actually --

...A HAIR PROTECTOR?

Okay, back up for a minute. What’s the deal with this?

As it is without the fwooshes (as I affectionately call the longer, flowing, reminiscent-of-rodent-ears portion of Nezumi’s hairstyle), short, solid-colored hair is a pretty typical style for any generic anime character, and based on what we can see when Nezumi is wearing his very stylish armor, we don’t really have any reason to think to ourselves, “Oh yeah, I bet his hair totally fwooshes out under those rat ears,” because we’ve never really seen it before -- or, if we have, characters with simple, short hair like you’d see on a normal person are much, MUCH more common. So, since that’s the basis of information we have to refer to, that’s what we conclude, and we never really give it a second thought until finally, in the very last episode, we see Nezumi in his civilian garb, and his hair, is in fact, very much not normal.

(Granted, there are slight visual indications of the presence of the fwooshes even when Nezumi is wearing his armor, or even the hooded sweatshirt he dons in the ending animation, but since we don’t have the expectation that there’s any ornamentation there to begin with, they are very easy to miss. That’s how the human brain works -- we tend not to notice things that we don’t expect to be there. This is effectively supported by one of my favorite studies of all time, which involves an animal whose close relative also participates in the Juni Taisen.)

Because Nezumi’s hairstyle is highly unusual and blatantly contradicts our expectations, it’s a big surprise when it’s finally revealed. From what I can tell based on the posts that were floating around on Tumblr, as well as other platforms, on the same day that the final episode of JUNI TAISEN was released, the overall response was one of shock. I recall reading the consensus that Nezumi’s hairstyle was thought of as “silly” (heck, I even said out loud to myself as I was watching the episode, in spite of how emotionally attached I was starting to get to him, “that looks stupid!”) and I distinctly remember reading a post that simply told Nezumi to “get a new haircut.” Again, given our previous assumptions and conclusions, this reaction is understandable. For eleven episodes prior, we got used to seeing Nezumi in cool-looking warrior armor, which, despite his meek disposition, makes him look strong and capable in battle on the outside. Hence, the flowing, delicate, arguably more feminine silhouette given by his everyday appearance is incredibly incongruous.

As anyone who has seen KADO: The Right Answer (another of my favorite anime to analyze, so shameless plug here) can certainly argue, properly executed surprises evoke a strong emotional response from the audience, and the artists behind JUNI TAISEN definitely did not design Nezumi thinking that the audience wouldn’t be at least a little bit surprised when they grew intimately familiar with an armor-clad Warrior of the Rat who was then revealed to be a normal schoolboy with strangely fwooshy hair in his everyday life. Hence, the pronounced and highly specific emotional reaction the audience experiences upon this reveal was evoked intentionally. However, the function of this response changes depending on your particular experience of the series.

The anime JUNI TAISEN: ZODIAC WAR is based on a one-shot manga released in January 2015 titled “The One Wish That Must Be Granted, and the Ninety-Nine That Can Be Done Without,” which, as you can probably guess from the shared name, encompasses what is essentially the exact same story retold in the twelfth episode of the JUNI TAISEN anime; hence, JUNI TAISEN functions as a sequel to the original manga, despite taking place beforehand from a chronological standpoint. As a result, the original manga is all about Nezumi; the readers have no previous experience to refer to when first diving in -- not even any background on the function of JUNI TAISEN in its dystopian society, or who any of the other characters are. In this case, Nezumi’s hairstyle does not exactly function as a surprise due to this lack of background. Instead, the added visual interest of Nezumi’s hair fwooshes make him less plain and more interesting to the reader. With normal hair, he would just be another main character anime schoolboy, and, because of his lack of other redeeming or heroic qualities (which makes him such an intriguing character in the narrative of a battle royale), there would not be much about him to make him memorable to the reader. (What he does have going for him is that his plainness and his general ambivalence towards the high school experience makes him particularly relatable to anyone who has also gone through that sort of thing.) Perhaps, in the case of the original manga, Nezumi’s hair was indeed simply an attention-grabbing visual quirk added mostly as a shoutout to his signature animal, the rat.

On the other hand, the JUNI TAISEN anime seems to be written under the assumption that the viewer is not already familiar with the original one-shot manga, hence the surprised reaction to Nezumi’s hairstyle reveal. This response adds some emotional interest and investment to an episode that would otherwise start out in a rather mundane fashion, and probably have the viewer thinking not much other than “Okay, here we go with yet another character introduction. I wonder what he’s going to wish for? Maybe, instead of watching, I’ll space out for the duration of the episode wondering what I would wish for.” This would be in stark contrast to the backstories of some of the other warriors, which tickled our emotions by making us feel for them to varying degrees. However, by instantly giving the audience a new, unexpected cue for a pronounced emotional response, Nezumi’s character design makes the viewers more emotionally vulnerable in preparation for the figurative roller coaster that is the twelfth episode. One of the major factors in my falling in love with Nezumi was the poignant expertise and effectiveness with which the narrative of “The One Wish That Must Be Granted, and the Ninety-Nine That Can Be Done Without” was composed to evoke very particular and measured emotional responses in the audience. We feel our pulses quicken as Nezumi frantically deliberates about which of his ninety-nine wishes would be the best one; our hearts sink when we witness Nezumi cry for the first time, begging that his one desire is to forget his experience of 139-plus horrifically violent deaths; and finally, we feel catharsis when Nezumi shows us his first smile, as though there was nothing more he ever wanted in the world.

Now, if the viewer was spacing out throughout this whole episode, none of this would have anywhere near as much of an emotional impact. Hence, as silly as it might look, the “surprise” factor behind Nezumi’s unusual hairstyle is actually critical for ensuring not only that the viewer is paying attention, but also that their emotions are activated and prepared to be fully invested in the story -- a necessity to experience full satisfaction at its deceptively meaningful conclusion.

And once you’ve recovered from that shock, maybe you’ll be like me and start to think that Nezumi’s hair actually looks kind of pretty.

That’s all I have for today on that subject! I hope you enjoyed reading this much more lighthearted analysis post. If you find this type of writing particularly interesting, feel free to take a look at some of my other anime analysis posts you may like. A few of them are linked in various places throughout this post, but here they all are in chronological order for your convenience:

 Why I Love Nezumi (and the ending to JUNI TAISEN in general)

 The Meaning of Meaninglessness in JUNI TAISEN: ZODIAC WAR and KADO: The Right Answer

Deus Ex Machina in KADO: The Right Answer, part 1

Deus Ex Machina in KADO: The Right Answer, part 2: Yaha-kui zaShunina as the Tragic Hero

*slaps roof of KADO* this bad boy can fit so much meaningful dialogue in it

JUNI TAISEN: ZODIAC WAR: Remember to Die

You can also find all of these by browsing through the “anime analysis” tag on my blog.

Additionally, my ask box is always open if you have any questions, want me to clarify something, have an idea about anything else you want me to write about, or if you just want to give me an excuse to gush about Nezumi for a little while!