#it's finally finished i did this scene in january or something

[tsuki-in-faerun]

Brilliance

explicit, MDNI - no one under 18 years old please.

tav/astarion post-boss fight at cazador's. there's a lot to dig into beyond the canon when it comes to agency and a realistic path toward healing. in this series, this is tav and astarion's first time together. feat. a chopped and screwed version of the 'pale elf' ending quest dialogue.

gnc tav, unnamed tav, they/them pussy, gender neutral tits. karlach is ot3 with these two in the series but she's not involved in the smut this time.

“To the lives we lead To the dreams we chase To the moments that we make And the fucked up shit we can’t erase”

-Nate Wonder giving a toast on the outro of “Float” by Janelle Monae

The scene by the graveside turns into a picnic after you tell him you just want to spend some time together unwinding from the battle. Astarion feeds you grapes, one by one, and nicks the base of your thumb to feed himself. A taste of passion. When he has the audacity to call the others in camp ‘feral’ without both your guidance, you’re so caught off guard that you double up laughing. The sound of it bounces off every surface in the graveyard, surrounding you both. Astarion listens with a pensive expression to the cacophony of his lover’s laughter in the place where he was buried and reborn. A holy racket.

You both take comfort in a long embrace goodnight back at camp. There is still a pull between you when you separate, reaching for each other’s hands. Even when you let go, the Warding Bond you used during the fight surrounds each of you as you go to your rest. But tonight is a night for reflection. He deserves some space to process and, to be honest, you might need some, too.

Shadowheart and Karlach are sitting together by the fire. You go to meet them but the last few steps you take are shaky. Karlach springs into action, wrapping you in a great big bear hug. You cling to her, tears spilling over, as Shadowheart begins a healing hum.

“I had to let him go,” you cry. “In my heart, I mean. I had to be ready to lose him. I knew that loving him could only do so much. I was trying so hard not to spoil everything!”

Karlach rocks you, kisses your head. “You did good, soldier.” she says with patient tenderness. “You held it together, we got Astarion out of his bonds. And he made his choice to leave with us as a free man. Did something happen when you went off together?”

You sigh, smile with watery eyes. “A heart to heart. He says he’s ready to try living again, but it’s not hard to see that he’s still figuring things out. I almost felt like I was intruding.” A snort of frustration. “I have to keep telling myself that he wants me to be there. He brought me there; he wants to share this with me. I just… everything is so raw still. I feel like if I touch him we’ll both come away bleeding.” You swipe at your face but the tears don’t stop coming.

Shadowheart looks up at you. “I have some potted plants near my tent. Would you like me to bring one here?’

“That’s - a good idea, thank you - princess,” you hiccup and while Shadowheart jogs away from the fire, you turn to press your face against Karlach’s collarbone. She enfolds you in her arms, shushes and pets you.

Shadowheart comes back waddling a bit, but in a good solid horse stance, carrying the big potted palm. She sets it down next to you and brushes the dirt off her hands.

You sink to your knees in relief and wrap your arms around the ceramic.

Karlach sits down and throws her arms around the little palm tree as well.

Shadowheart kneels seiza beside you. You water the tree with your tears some. You keep your awareness with the droplets as they fall and absorb into the soil, letting your mind be still and slow like the water soaking into the roots of the plant. The roots draw moisture up and you are reminded of your own circulation and heartbeat, steadying now in your meditation. There is a silent reassurance emanating from your plant friend.

“Do you wanna talk anymore?” Karlach asks.

You stroke her shoulder, still holding the plant pot between you. “I’m so lucky to love this much,” you tell her, voice quavering. “But it - it hurts. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, my Heart. I’m just battle worn.”

You feel Shadowheart’s hand tracing comforting circles on your back. “It is difficult, as a healer, to keep repairing as quickly as the damage is inflicted.” She says quietly.

You sigh heavily and your head drops from exhaustion. “Yes. Especially when I’m taking damage, too. I’m glad we did the Bond, but being present with him in his body like that was… a lot.”

You manage to lift your gaze to look at your companions. “Thank you both for having my back and saving our lives.” Karlach lets go of the plant to come cuddle you instead. Her kisses on your face are a balm to your battered soul, and she showers you with gentle affection. You rest your weary head on Karlach’s warm shoulder and take one of Shadowheart’s hands in yours.

“You did so well around the wolves, princess.” You tell Shadowheart, giving her a squeeze. “How are you now?”

She sighs and tells you about how her fears have evolved following her confrontation with the Sharrans. The three of you chat about the day, about your journey so far, and comfort each other with open arms.

When it becomes hard to resist your eyes closing, Shadowheart piles her bedroll next to the one you share with Karlach and the animals wedge their way in.

***

As soon as your eyes open the next morning, you get up to seek out Astarion. You do your best to slip out from between Karlach and Shadowheart without waking them, but Karlach reaches for you as you get to your feet. You interlock your fingers with hers. “Tell him we love him, even if he pouts,” she yawns. You nod and press your lips to the back of her hand before taking your leave. You rinse your mouth with the dregs of last night’s tea and spit it into the ashes of the fire, slipping on your soft shoes.

Astarion is already in full armor when you go to him. You suddenly feel very conscious of the space between you. You ache to close the distance but some things need to be said first.

“Good morning,” you finally greet him. “How are you, beloved?”

He fidgets. “It feels ridiculous to still be thinking about Cazador. He’s gone, I’m here - I won.” A scowl. “But I keep reliving everything that happened. Playing it over and over again in my mind.”

“I don’t know if it’s quite as simple as ‘you won.’” You say slowly. “Even if the battle was just you avenging yourself against Cazador. But as it is, you also had to face the only family you know… that place. And your memories.”

You catch his eye. “Some of the people you thought you lost to Cazador might be free now.”

Astarion glances down and you can tell he’s wrestling with himself. “I freed them. But I also damned them.”

“You might have loved some of them, if circumstances had allowed.” His eyes snap to yours again. You smile at him. “The folk like Sebastian. I was moved.”

“Would you call it love?” Astarion puts his hands behind his head and shrugs. His tone is bitter. “Whatever I felt, when I felt anything at all, it was their doom. But I suppose that’s one of the consequences of freedom, isn’t it? Living with the choices you’ve made.”

You take a deep breath. “Living with the choices you’ve made can mean lots of things. Like this.” You offer your hands. Slowly, with care, he takes them.

“You can always get better at loving, Astarion, if that’s what you want. Even if the consequences of your choices are heavy, you’re not facing them alone. Every being here is at your side ’til the bitter end. And I do think that you will relish the chance to explore what you can be outside of pain and power plays.”

He shakes his head, agitated. His grip tightens. “Mmm. I- I came so close to losing everything back there. To losing myself. Back at the ritual, all I could see was the power on offer and the safety it promised. I was so blinded by it. Just as Cazador was.”

Astarion twines his fingers with yours.

“You saved me. I may not have appreciated it at the time, but I do now. Thank you.”

You look down at your hands clasped in front of you, heart full to overflowing. “I only did as my nature dictated. You were fighting your own battles and I was glad to have your back.”

“And if I had completed the ritual?”

You look up at him again. “You want to hear it now?”

His eyes are wide but his gaze is steady. “Yes.”

“I would have fought you til my last breath, beloved. Or yours. Your ambitions would have made a slave of me.”

He hesitates. “… And you’ve considered this before.”

“Many times.”

Astarion just spreads his hands, mouth open, speechless.

“I had to give you the best chance I could to find your feet.” You say quietly. “I told you I would do everything in my power to help you find peace and liberation. To determine the course of your own life. You deserve that as a thinking, feeling being, not just because you’re precious to me. Not just because you’ve suffered, either. You can’t tell me it wasn’t worth the risk when we are standing here together in the sunlight surrounded by people who love us.”

He starts to laugh incredulously, putting his head in his hands, a dazed expression on his face. He slaps a hand over his mouth, chortling, and looks at you with wide, staring eyes. “We are, at that. You… you kept your word.” He finally sees, really sees, where you are and the clan you’ve built around you.

Then he sighs and looks to the horizon, blinking in the light and shaking his head. “When I look at my future, anything and everything feels possible now. I can be whoever I decide Astarion is. And I get to share it, him, me… with you. As a partner. As an equal. This is a gift, you know. Thank you - I won’t forget it.”

You smile and sigh yourself. It’s hard to keep from welling up so you don’t try. An uneasy tension that has stretched between the two of you since your first meeting unbinds in this moment. You savor the release and let it give you strength.

The salt wind off the harbor blows strands of your hair around your face. Astarion reaches out to smooth them down. “Darling, did you rest in those braids?” He asks. “You’ve got flyaways all over the place.”

“I barely had enough energy to crawl into my bedroll last night.” You admit, reaching up to pat your head. “Did you do them so fancy yesterday because you were nervous? I don’t even know where to start taking them out, I can’t see the back of my head!”

“It was calming to have something tactile to focus on,” he admits. He steps closer, stroking your hair, caressing your face. “And you do cut a striking figure. I will never forget the image of you reaching out to me when I was trapped, my love.”

“I shall never forget the way you’re looking at me right now,” you say with the greatest affection. “Mmmm, kiss, please?”

Even his laugh is freer. “My sweet, I would like nothing better.”

He gathers you into his arms and you quickly realize how prickly his drow armor is when you’re just in your everyday clothes. “Ouch!”
 “Oops, sorry. Probably a design feature given the provenance.” He says.

You tilt your head playfully. “Hmm. How do you feel about getting more comfortable in your tent? Without the armor, I mean.”

He raises his eyebrows. “D’you mean?… sex, now?” You nod. “Sex. Now!”

He pulls you by the hand into his tent.

You hear Karlach yell across the camp. “So, who’s up for some pints?! Yenna, you feel like meeting a bard we know?” Everybody in the party sounds highly motivated to go day drinking.

Astarion closes the flap at the entrance and you get a chance to look around. There’s a very plush quilt on the ground along with several embroidered pillows, and a charcoal brazier is dying down to its last little embers after burning overnight.

You give him a stunned look.

“You stole my shit!”

You laugh like a loon as he just kind of blinks and shrugs. “Well, I was planning for a big night last night and I wanted you to be comfortable.”

“Beloved, please get out of that armor so I can kiss your face.”

He gives you his patented seductive smirk and gets to work undoing the buckles and straps holding everything together. Even with his practiced fingers, the pieces take some time to get off.

You sit down on your handmade quilt, and stretch your legs out in front of you, pointing and flexing your toes. You rearrange a couple of pillows behind your back and stretch your arms out overhead, leaning back into the motion. There’s a little nervous energy crackling in the air. After his pauldrons come up over his head, Astarion’s hair goes a little bit wild, like dandelion fluff, then the breastplate comes off and he’s down to his undershirt and trousers. He drops to his knees and crawls toward you, eyes smouldering. You bite your lip and feel a curl of satisfaction that doesn’t come from you. You become more aware of the edges of your auras blending together.

You don’t ground the sensation this time. You caress him without touching, a tendril of warmth pulled from the center of your heart winding through his awareness.

When you lean forward to brush your lips against his cheek, you feel the warmth in your heart begin to saturate your being. It emanates from you, radiates from you, and Astarion pulls away to look at you.

“Is this magic?”

“Erm, sort of. In the sense that connection is magical.” You say. “I… this is simply me with my shields down.”

He sits back on his heels, wearing an expression of scrutiny. He picks up one of your hands and kisses your fingertips, one by one. You flush, watching his face knowing that he can feel echos of your pleasure. Can he smell any changes in your scent? Hear your breathing and heartbeat get faster? Locking eyes with you, he bites down on the pad of your thumb with his blunt front teeth. You suck in a breath with a hiss, sitting straight up, chills running up and down your spine. Your flesh throbs between his teeth and you feel a flash of triumph from him before he lets go.

“And the effect goes both ways? You can feel me?”

“As long as you let me inside your defenses, yes. You have a potent presence, beloved.” He smirks in response.

Astarion moves in for a kiss through the haze of your arousal in the air. You can feel that he is pleased with himself, but his own passion only rises to meet yours as your lips touch, the kiss deepening immediately. You feel this facet of his hunger in a new way, it almost pulls at your bones. A longing to connect beneath the skin.

Every touch feels magnified. Like two stringed instruments vibrating to the same note, the edges of your individual perception blurs with his as the sensations you experience harmonize. Joining. Blending. Sharing. Your nerve endings sing to each other.

He breaks away to rest his forehead against yours. His head is buzzing. You take deep, slow breaths and empty your mind. You focus again on the warmth you feel for him in your heart.

“S-sorry.” His voice sounds worn somehow.

“Love you.” You feel him relax, sigh at your words. ”Not going anywhere.”

He holds still on hands and knees above your reclining body.

“Do you want soothing touch?”

“Mmm. Mmm-hmm. Ahem…yes.”

You nuzzle your face against Astarion’s. You stroke his upper arms and press your cheek to his cheek, slide your jaw along his like big cats scent marking. You rub your temples together and he inhales a whiff of your hair.

“thank you for saying the words,” you say softly next to his ear. “thank you for telling me what you want.”

You take his face in both your hands and whisper, “we can just be in each other’s energy, too. we don’t have to worry about what body parts go where. there’s no goal. there’s no rush. i want to know all of you.”

He raises his gaze to meet yours and you become aware of his lack of a heartbeat. A space that is at once full of shadows and empty of sensation exists between his lungs.

Your gentle smile carries the brightness of the sun and memories of golden afternoons. He half flinches, shudders, and you feel his hunger roar to life, filling the chasm in his chest with its reverberations.

Astarion’s scarlet eyes hold you. “I still want sex.” He says bluntly. “I need something. I need to be covered with you.”

Your heart is pounding and you can both hear it. “That - yes. Me, too.”

You watch his predator’s vision narrow focus on your face and the part of you that is a doorway to wild shape responds. You growl much more deeply than your vocal cords should allow.

Astarion growls with you and lays his body along the length of yours. Yes, there is sweetness between you, deep care, but also the blood of the hunt. Of the battlefield. Your life’s blood. You feel the connection pulsing in your veins. Even if his own heart is still something of a stranger to him, he is intimately familiar with his appetites. As are you. You press up into his chest to feel his voice rumbling through your flesh. He kisses your neck, sucks, licks, nibbles, pulling sensations out of you that feed his own desire, too, and you scratch your nails down his back, dragging at the cloth.

Now the energy is more like a push and pull. You caress his cheek with the back of your hand, kiss his brow and his eyelids, stroke the back of his neck. He leans into every touch, soaking in your body heat and your tenderness. When he kisses you again, you can taste the force that animates him in it. A yin to your yang.

“Mmmmmmmmm,” you hum with pleasure, warm and vibrant life force rippling from your voice. Astarion gasps, pupils dilated. You trace his bottom lip with your thumb and press the tip against one of his fangs. He feels the pain zap through you, watches it on your face, and kisses your wound before he takes your whole digit in his mouth. You spread your legs and start moving your pelvis against him and a garbled “Unh!” spills out from around your thumb. When he tastes you, you can feel your blood suffusing him and sharpening his senses. You feel him drinking your pleasure itself and the flavor of it washes over your tongue. It spreads warmth inside your chest like good liquor.

He releases your thumb to bend his head to your collarbone. He’s hungry for your soft places. Astarion makes sounds of delectation as he kisses his way down your shoulder, your arm, the crease of your elbow, inside your wrist, your palm. He sits up to pull his shirt off and then he holds you tight. His skin is cool at first. The touch of his torso against yours raises prickly gooseflesh and makes your nipples tighten. For his part, you can feel how welcoming he finds your heat as he snuggles in close.

It doesn’t take him long to warm. He’s been well-fed for quite some time now.

You flutter your eyelashes against his cheek and he chuffs a little laugh next to your ear.

“Darling, don’t be cute when I’m trying to ravage you.”

“Can you blame me for wanting to feel you with every part of my body?”

Astarion strokes your hair, sighs against your neck, nuzzling your face.

“I suppose when you put it like that… Should we get rid of the rest of these clothes?”

You look into his eyes and see happiness there. You kiss him, a bloom of heat that catches and spreads between you.

“Yes.”

You each sit up and undress, watching the other in the dappled shade of the tent.

His gaze has weight. You touch yourself where his eyes roam across your newly exposed skin. His nostrils flare and he raises his head. You can feel, and see as well, evidence of how exciting he finds this exploration. You can feel him basking in your joy.

He kisses you and you let your hands play across his chest, his shoulders. You scratch your nails lightly down his pecs and he takes your lower lip between his teeth, drawing a gasp from you. He bites down just a little bit too hard and you suddenly taste your own blood. The piercing pitch your voice hits when you cry out in pain makes him let go, startled backwards.

“Shit. Shit!” Astarion swears. His guards are still down. He’s surprised himself and you can feel the spikes of a rising panic. You hear Scratch barking and pawing at the tent flap and you reassure the dog in his language.

“Calm, beloved,” you tell Astarion, raising a hand to your bloody mouth. You close your eyes and hum a droning tone. The punctures close up under your fingers. The dull ache disappears.

When you look at him again, he’s still wide-eyed and he’s taking shallow breaths. He tentatively reaches out a hand to cup your cheek and you put your hand over his. You let the love in your heart swell and spill over as you press your face into his palm.

He blinks rapidly, holding himself rigid and still. You take measured, deep breaths, nuzzling into his hand. You can’t see the memories that are surfacing in him but you can feel how his nerves are steeling in the anticipation of pain.

“Beloved. Astarion.” Your voice still carries the resonance of your healing power. “My cherished one.” He seems to come alive to the here and now, meeting your eyes.

“I’m s-sorry,” he says roughly. Some of the warmth has retreated from his body.

“I’m ok. We’re ok. Are you intact, my love?”

He looks a little tired and waves of turbulent, mixed emotions under the surface of his gaze make your stomach flip flop. “You - it never wavers.”

“What?” You ask him softly, brow creased in concern.

“Your devotion.” Astarion sighs. “I couldn’t do anything right under Cazador and it gave him daily excuses to take it out of my hide. You keep reaching out, and trying to make things right.”

You turn your head and press a kiss in the hollow of the center of his palm.

“I do love you, you know.” He says with a slight tremor in his voice. “It scares the shit out of me.”

You stroke his forearm and lean into his hand on your cheek. “My brave, adventurous Star.”

Air escapes his lungs in a great whoosh. “Did I really hurt you?” He asks.

You smile. “Briefly. I’m all better now.”

Astarion smiles in return and his relief crashes over you like a tidal wave as your lips meet again. Not just relief at the forgiveness in this moment but relief from centuries of overwhelming pressure.

When his hands begin to trace the contours of your body they are warm, his touch sure. He runs his palms over your skin with smooth, flowing strokes, gripping and kneading where your flesh gives him purchase. He pulls at you and you mold yourself against him as best you can while you’re both sat down. The pace he sets is slow but the way he licks at the inside of your mouth, the way your head falls back as you open wide for his tongue, the pressure of his fingers on the back of your neck drawing you closer still hold an edge of ferocious need.

When he breaks away from you to let you catch your breath, you bury your face in the crook of his neck. One of your hands seeks his and your fingers twine together, separate. Now pressing palm to palm. Now clasped. He’s still got some lingering swirls of trepidation hovering about him, some shock, and some emotions dragged up from a darker time. But he’s happy, too.

You wonder at how dear Astarion’s face has become to you as he moves in for a kiss, and you feel a magnetic pull between the deepest parts of your bodies. Whatever restraint you had falls away under his insistent mouth and questing hands. He grows bolder the more he can sense you yielding to him. He is so very pleased with himself every time he kisses you to the point of breathlessness. When you next come up for air and try to get your bearings again, he eases an arm across your upper back.

“Lie back, love.” He urges.

Astarion supports your shoulders as you sink back onto the pillows and he settles in next to you. You take his free hand and brush feather-light kisses against his fingertips, one by one. He’s tracking your face, looking at you through lowered lashes. You place his hand over your heart and let go of the layers of protections you maintain. For this stolen moment of time together, you let go of your vigilance against the soul-snatchers you face, conflicts between the heavens and the hells with your whole band of travelers in the middle, the battles for collective survival. You open your heart to experience the breadth of love that exists beyond your body and Astarion is pulled along with you as he presses his hand into your heartbeat.

You are pollen riding the wind, swallowed up by velvet petals and leaving plants swollen with fruit. You are a salmon tasting traces of your home waters at the mouth of a river, gasping in the current, plunging forward toward your ultimate release. You are the streams fed full of snowmelt rising and overflowing their banks. You are lightning kissing sand. The sensuality of the universe enfolds you both. It lights you up.

You feel Astarion’s fingers flex against your chest. When your lips meet again, every lover in your lineage sighs with pleasure. It echoes in both your bodies, cell by cell. Your innate magic not only connects you to Astarion, but to every being who has joined like this across time. It’s his turn to gasp, out of breath and just this side of overstimulated. He stares into your eyes and it feels like his bruised and battered soul brushes up against yours. You smile at him. He smiles back, a bit incredulous.

He moves in slowly to share a kiss. He drinks in the energy you’ve raised together, moaning softly into your lips and around your tongue, growing even warmer under your hands. It feels like when he drains your blood but it’s as if you have oceans to give him, drawing from this collective well. He caresses the front of your body, sweeping his hand from sternum to collarbone. You arch up into his touch as he massages your chest, rolling your spine like the crest of a wave. He rolls right with you, lavishing smooth, flowing strokes over your tits, spanning your ribcage, and exploring the topography of your hips.

You splay one hand across his shoulder blades. His legs tangle with yours, your thighs slippery with sweat and desire. He abandons your lips to indulge his fascination with your neck. You sigh and cry out to him with birdsong in your voice. Astarion is so greedy for you. His hands are everywhere, petting, rubbing, squeezing, groping. Every part of you is alive to his touch.

“Beloved… please,” you catch yourself whimpering. The eddies of pleasure are gathering and building into a tempest.

“‘Please,’ what?” He pants against your skin. Your throat is going to be very colorful later, you can tell.

“I - OHhhhhh” is all you can manage to say as he tweaks your nipple. He rolls it between his finger and thumb, brushes it with his fingertips, palms it as he grabs a handful of your chest.

“OH!” You yelp. Astarion chuckles darkly, low in his throat. He languidly licks the column of your neck and holds you close while you writhe within the restraints of his arms. His hunger for you only grows the more you give yourself up him.

“Something in your blood is calling out to me,” he drawls. “You need only tell me what it is you’re craving, darling.”

You feel a rushing inward, the way starstuff surrenders to the join the core of a new sun being born.

“Oh-Open me!” You implore. “Join with me. Mmm, let me feel you.”

The look he gives you manages to be both tender and menacing at the same time. A snarl escapes him.

He relaxes his grip so that you can lie flat. One knee drops to the quilt and you throw the other leg over Astarion’s hip. He rubs the inside of your thigh, sliding his hand toward the source of your heat then away again. Your mouth drops open and you start to rock your pelvis toward his fingers. You look at him, his silver curls a darker gray where they’re stuck to his skin with perspiration. He’s intently watching the movement of your hips. You gently trace the taper of one ear with your index finger. His hand clamps around the meat at the top of your inner thigh, pulling you to press his whole body against your side. He lunges forward to suck your earlobe into his mouth, growling softly. He sounds so much louder, echoing in your head like thunder.

“Aahhh!” You exclaim, chest heaving. You’re able to raise one hip enough to plant the ball of your foot on the ground on the other side of his body. You use the leverage to grind your ass against his erection. He grunts, fingertips digging into the flesh near the apex of your thighs.

“ohhHHH beloved - PLEASE!” You’re begging but your voice is powerful. Resonant. Every wild shape you borrow roars their own demanding through you.

Astarion takes a shaky breath inward. “gods,” he mutters, taking the edge of your ear between his teeth and sliding the tip of his middle finger between your drooling pussy lips, gliding between them to circle your clit. There’s no friction but his motions are measured and deliberate. You spread your knees wider and match his movements with your pelvis. You stretch and bow your spine as he plucks his fingers across your clit.

“Delicious,” he sighs.

Astarion becomes enamored with the variety of noises you make as he changes the stimulation between your thighs. He moves his hips against the plush of your ass while he spreads your honey lips apart and shows off his dexterity. He uses his fingertips for a light touch, the flats to rub into swollen flesh. His whole hand massages you, slick with your juices, and you moan in rhythm with his strokes.

The pressure of his fingertips against your entrance makes you take a deep breath in. “Mmmmmmmm, yes. More.” He groans softly, making slow circles. He pushes, you pull, drawing his fingers deeper as your muscles relax. Your color is high in your cheeks as you toss your head to one side and bite your own hand. He inhales sharply and his hips snap once against yours. Even though you can feel the demanding of his desire through all your senses, Astarion is incredibly sensitive with his touch, waiting until he can feel you begin to thrust against his hand to work deeper inside you.

He reads you like you’ve made love together a thousand times. Every ripple of pleasure you feel, he amplifies. You contract around his fingers and he flexes just so. You moan and he answers you. Your posture grows tense and he twists his fingers as he languidly strokes inside you, watching your face. You’re riding his hand in earnest now, turning your head to meet his eyes. Astarion’s naked lust catches your breath in your chest. The handful of moments you’ve seen him so vulnerable are like precious jewels to be treasured and held up to the light.

“You’re intoxicating, sweetheart,” he says in a throaty voice. “More. Please.”

Your conscious thought is starting to get fuzzy around the edges. Every place his skin contacts yours is throbbing with heat. Behind his single-minded pursuit of rising sensation, you feel his yearning ache for relief. Yes, Astarion adores you in your pleasure. But something within 200 years of muscle memory will not allow him his release until you find your own fulfillment. All you have to do is surrender. You do so joyfully, with abandon, driving yourself onto his pumping fingers while one of your hands finds a hold in his hair.

“mm, mm, mm, mm mm mm mmf, mmmph mmmm ohhhHHHHH oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” you moan as you feel the gathering ferocity of your orgasm.

“Let go,” he rasps. “Give it to me. Give in to me.”

The first pulse throws your head back. Your hips find an angle just right for Astarion to hit every sensitive spot within you with each thrust and you love it, you love him. You love him. The force of your own feeling is like standing under a waterfall as you pulse and pulse again crying “oh beloved!”

Astarion curls his arm around your shoulders so he can angle your face toward him. He watches you for a moment before leaning in for a kiss, devouring your sweet sounds as you shake and fall apart. It feels like the energy is too big for your skin, bursting out of you and rocking your body in the process. Astarion breaks the kiss and whispers “more. don’t stop. more.” as he crooks his fingers inside you and you gush your waters over his hand while you struggle to take a breath.

The sounds that come out of you are guttural and ungraceful. The only thing registering in your awareness besides the throes of your own ecstasy is the feel of Astarion’s fingers inside you and pressure of his erection against your ass. He moves his hips in time with yours. The whooshing drumbeat of your heart is loud in your ears as you are finally able to steady your breath and just rock with him for a bit while the aftershocks run through you.

When you lay still, panting, you and Astarion are entwined. Legs, arms, cum-slicked fingers. He rubs the top of your foot with his own, painstakingly presses a line of kisses from just under your ear to the tip of your shoulder. His hunger creeps back into the edges of your perception.

You shiver a little.

“Want you,” you rouse yourself enough to say. “Tired. But, d’you --“ He captures your lips with a breathy groan and the kiss feeds you a taste of the burning ache consuming him.

“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Astarion manages to say, punctuated by kisses. “More.”

“Scootch.” You tell him.

You resettle yourselves so you are face-to-face. You’re a little askew on your pillow so you move a bit underneath the stretch of his body so you have better support under your neck and shoulders. Astarion grabs another pillow and puts it under your bum to angle your pelvis nicely.

As he lowers himself on top of you, you notice his elbows trembling just slightly under his own weight. You look at his face and his curls are shimmying a little bit as he tries to hide a shiver from you. He is pushing a lot of emotion behind the need for release and his nervous system is approaching overload.

You hum a little without any real power behind it and just the sound of your voice causes the shiver to die down. Astarion comes down onto his elbows and rests his forehead against yours. The volume of his thoughts gets louder at the contact. You can’t make out words through your connection, but the wash of sensation you receive is almost like being pulled apart. You initiate a meditative breath and run your healer’s hands up his chest with enough pressure to ease some of the tension he is holding. He’s not breathing in this moment.

You rub the back of his neck and press kisses against his jawline.

He is trying his best to put something to voice right now and you can feel the individual emotions more clearly as he sorts through them himself. Fear and desire are dueling within his breast, battling alongside the insistence of hunger borne of long starvation, rage at the injustice of having been denied, and a loneliness that seems to be integrated into the very core of him.

His face crumples a bit. “What if it’s not enough?” Astarion asks.

“If what is not enough?” You ask him back.

“Love.”

You look in his eyes and there is almost a preemptive despair. Now that you are within his grasp, now that his master is dead, now that the barriers between you are down, what if love is not enough to slake this need that has hollowed him down to the bone? What if it’s not enough to win against the Absolute?

You take a deep breath and smile gently. “We can only find out by going forward and loving each other anyway.”

Astarion closes his eyes and inhales, mimicking your calming strategies. When he opens them again, he focuses briefly on your gaze before going in for a kiss.

It is expressive in a way that he rarely allows himself to be in words. This isn’t his practiced passion, it’s a crashing of teeth and tongues, senses tumbling into the abyss where his heart should beat and taking you along for the ride. His fingers drag at your cheeks as the numbing darkness of undeath within him threatens to swallow your light. But there is some echo of love in there as well, despite it all. Of rest, of unburdening, of tender silence. At least enough to let you both exist as yourselves.

When he pulls away to look at you, your mouths are bloody.

You lick your lips and where your tongue touches, golden lines of healing light follow. “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Astarion’s eyes go wide before they fill with need. “Tav, please… more!”

Almost to yourself, you mutter, “yesyesyesyesyesyesyes,” while you drape your arms about his shoulders and bring your knees up to the level of his hips. He dips his head down to you for a kiss and his hips switch against yours aimlessly, just sliding sensitive flesh over sensitive flesh. He varies his movements depending on what sounds he wants to get out of you and you are more than happy to give voice to your pleasure.

When a long, delicious stroke makes you buck up against him, Astarion murmurs low in your ear, “Guide me, sweetheart.”

You bite your swollen lip and reach down to position the head of his cock at your entrance. The soft “ah!” he gasps at your touch sends another surge of arousal through you. There is some shifting to make sure your connection is angled comfortably before he eases his pelvis forward and, inch by inch, buries himself in the heat of your body.

Astarion has pushed himself back up onto his hands and uses his center of gravity to drive his thrust home, bottoming out. You’re gasping and panting as you open for him, taking your hands and physically spreading your pussy apart for him so you can get closer. You feel him sink even the tiniest bit deeper and it’s worth it for the way the sensations are magnified. He grunts and you see his neck muscles tense as his whole body involuntarily rocks into yours.

You reach up and bring his face down to you for a kiss.

It takes Astarion a while to adjust to his new sensitivity, so you move at your leisure. You let go of the chorus and cacophony of creation that is the backdrop to your every day reality. Instead you find your focus being drawn to the little ways of encouraging your mutual pleasure. You feel his attention going to your breath so you press your chest to his chest and sigh. He groans, snaking his arms around you to grab your ass. You feel your joints get looser with desire as your knees fall open more and your inner muscles shift around erection. He pulls out just an inch only to lunge forward, bringing one knee up under your thigh and using his hold on you to grind your pelvis into his.

You wrap your arms around his shoulders and hang on for dear life.

Astarion caresses you everywhere he can reach and you can feel him savoring the way your nerve endings light up under his touch. He kisses you deeply as you moan for him and then props himself up on his hands.

His first big thrust pushes the breath out of you. “Ha-ah!” escapes your open mouth. You can’t help tossing your head back into the pillows.

His cock flexes inside you and, reflexively, you grip him back. Your eyes roll up as the delicious drag of his pumping starts to drive you wild.

“Gods, Tav… you.. unh,” is about all that Astarion can manage to utter. You can feel the knot of tension building in his guts, the energy and gravity of it almost crackling. Even then, you can feel his determination to make you come again.

You feel a tidal wave of love swelling within you. The undeniable truth of it causes Astarion’s breath to catch and the rhythm of his strokes grows more urgent. It is, perhaps, the first time he really recognizes a similar feeling within himself and knows himself capable of the kind of love he has craved for centuries.

You cry out together. He brings his forehead down to meet yours as you pulse around him and spill over once more in your release. Your neck goes loose and you toss your head from side to side, moaning his name. He grunts as he works you through your orgasm, his throbbing hardness moving in and out of your flesh driving you to greater heights. You shudder under him as you spill over again and again and again.

“Tav… I can’t…” Astarion says through gritted teeth. His face is twisted with need.

You’re breathless at this point, but you know what to tell him. “Drink, beloved,” you gasp.

His eyes widen. He rears back a little and then strikes at your neck. You’re deep enough in your pleasure that the impact feels good. As your life’s blood flows into him, he gulps it down greedily and it feels like he grows even more engorged inside of you. With your thrumming heartbeat against his tongue and the taste of your essence in his mouth, you come together.

You reach down and grab the back of his thighs to pull him closer. Astarion’s back arches and you can hear the wet slap of your bodies as he pounds into you, teeth still clamped in the meat of your neck. He finally has to let go of his bite as he spurts the last throes of his orgasm deep in your body. “hah! hah! hah-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!” punctuates his thrusts.

He collapses on top of you, lying heart-to-heart and still open to you as you both bask in the afterglow.

You caress and pet each other, exhausted but still savoring this time of tenderness. At some point Astarion’s head plunks down on the pillow next to you. He cracks one crimson eye open to look at you. Your blood and his drool are dripping from his mouth onto your pillow. You see his throat work as he gulps, his open eye rolling back to show the white. His pink tongue licks every trace of you off his lips and fangs. Obscene.

He brings his hand up to your face, sweeping his thumb over your lips before kissing you again. There’s a subtle, soft sense of harmony between the two of you as you rest together, still entangled.

***

It’s very late in the afternoon before you feel like your legs are up to bearing your weight again. You pull on a shirt to wobble about camp and gather some supplies to wash with.

You and Astarion take turns wiping the sweat and various fluids off of each other’s bodies.

You’re rubbing the damp wash cloth across his upper back when he begins to talk.

“I’ve never bitten anyone accidentally,” he admitted. “Whenever I was close to living beings, every cell in my body would be screaming at me to feed and I’d simply snap at the air, or I’d go weak when I was seducing a mark and tried to steal a taste. So many times I wanted to tear into the person my body was fucking.”

Your mouth presses into a thin line but you say nothing at first. Instead you lean against him and put your arm around him. He blinks rapidly as the memories pass through him.

“Sweetheart, I still don’t fully understand how one goes about loving,” Astarion says. “But being able to be with you without the inner conflict goes a long way.”

You tuck his damp curls behind one ear. “Do you think we’ll get there, beloved?”

“This is the most hopeful I’ve felt, maybe ever, darling. I kind of hate it but here we are.”

You chuckle a little bit. “I can’t say I blame you in the slightest, but even so, I’m just so proud of you.”

He wrinkles his nose a bit before smirking at you. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

He picks up the wash cloth and rinses it in the basin, wringing it out before he starts to rub down your back in turn. You relax and let your mind go blank at the touch of your lover.

Until…

“Astarion. I’ve got an idea.”

***

You feel tired and a little clumsy as you and Astarion make your way back to the cemetery. He’s half holding you up. You lean your heads together and chatter quietly to each other about nonsense. The setting sun casts the stone streets in shades of blazing orange and dusky purple. You lean on him, savoring the strength he’s forged over your time together. You watch him take everything in, just being with no agenda, and you fervently wish for more time like this. Please, you pray, let this man know peace.

You stand holding each other in silence when you reach his graveside. He nuzzles your hairline.

“Do what you came here to do, darling.” He murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

You smile and press a kiss against his jaw, take his hand to steady yourself as you kneel next to the plot. Astarion sits next to you and leans up against your side.

You rake your fingers through the soil to break it up. Once the earth atop the grave is soft and crumbly, you reach into a pouch on your belt and bring forth a handful of seeds. You scatter them across the surface and then you and Astarion both press them into the ground. You conjure a brief rainfall over the plot, waiting for the moisture to soak in before calling on more primal magic.

Astarion twines his fingers with yours. The connection hasn’t really faded. Perhaps you’ll always be able to feel each other. You clear your throat, take a deep breath, and sing one note; a pure tone redolent with life energy.

The seeds vibrate with your voice. You both feel each tiny, individual life awaken and begin to unfurl. Little rootlets spread into a net and extend down through the earth, reaching for the heart of the planet. Baby cotyledon leaves appear, then the true leaves, the plants’ growth fueled by your energies and nature asserting its influence in the midst of the city. Central stalks rise, stretching toward the last of the light. Deep purple blooms appear amidst the whorls of lance-shaped leaves.

When you stop singing, a stand of basalm plants grows atop the grave. You gather three plants to make a healing potion that Astarion can carry into the final battle. He tosses the Szarr family ring into the thicket.

You’re able to get to your feet without his help. Being a vessel for the primal forces restores your energy somewhat. When you’re both standing again, he gives you a lingering kiss. Your hands carry the scent of the healing herbs as you run your fingers through his hair.

As you stroll arm in arm back to your camp, you lean on Astarion again, more for comfort than support this time. You walk in companionable silence as the twilight deepens.

***

He wraps himself around you when you both go to your rest. When visions of bloody corridors and long-starved, neglected undead interrupt your trance, he comes awake too. You reach for his face, eyes wide in the low light. Your hands touch his hair, his cheek, his neck.

“you’re here with me,” you whisper urgently, “you never have to go back there again. never again!”

“shhhhhhh, darling. i’m here with you. i’m not going anywhere.” He whispers back.

You clutch at his shoulders, nerves electrified. “you got out. you got out. you’re here with me. you got out.”

“sweetheart… we’re both intact. i’m here with you.” Astarion gives you gentle kisses on your flushed face, holds you firmly as you shiver. “i’m here with you. breathe.”

You close your eyes and take a deep breath. You release your hold on his shirt and meet his gaze. “200 years. and you got out,” you say with awe. “you’re here with me.”

He kisses your lips. “i found you. and i’m here. with you. because of you.” He whispers, kissing your tears away.

[giantmonsterpolls]

Some paintings of kaiju that I’ve done since falling head-over-heels for the genre! Some of them have been posted to Tumblr before, but not most of them.

The first one here is a painting of Titanus Tiamat’s comic design I did for a friend’s birthday back in September 2022! One of the first pieces of kaiju fanart I ever did.

A Rodan from October or November of the same year, drawn from vague memory and without reference.

My MonsterVerse OC, Titanus Renanin, while under Ghidorah’s control during the Mass Awakening. April 2023.

A chalk painting of MonsterVerse Rodan. Also April 2023.

The graphic novel version of Nimona’s kaiju form, done to commemorate the movie’s release. I’ve shared this one here on Tumblr before. June 2023.

Redraw of the GxK “handprint” poster with my fangoji, Ascended!Goji. November 2023.

A scene of the Frost-Vark from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I looked at a star chart to get the constellations right. December 2023/January 2024.

My “Ten Years of the MonsterVerse” piece which has already been shared here, inspired by cave paintings, plus the concept/technique-testing art for it which I dubbed “Feeding Frenzy”. May and March 2024, respectively.

A redraw of the “moonrise” scene from Gamera 3: Awakening of Iris, featuring my redesign of her for Godzilla: Ascension. The sketch for this one sat in my files for a year or so, before I finally got around to finishing it in under a day in June 2024.

A skyscape featuring Jean Jacket from Nope. While I haven’t seen the movie, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it and her. Titled this one “The Hills Have Eyes”. July 2024.

A “still frame” from my Ultra Series project, Ultrawyrm Mira. I believe I was inspired by that ad for an Ultraman card game? October 2024.

A painting of Otachi to celebrate Double Event Day, also previously shared here. January 2025.

And lastly, my fan-version of Ghidorah (right) and a friend’s (left) mutually enjoying some ionospheric lightning. This is my first painting explicitly tied to the community roleplay that my friendgroup in the community has (while this scene specifically isn’t in it, these two Ghidorahs spend a lot of time together and have… something approaching a friendly relationship.) February 2025.

[bengiyo]

Ben's Big BL Blurb 4: I Hope I See Jay Sorathon Again

New year, new blurb. Time to reflect on a few shows finishing, talk about some new shows, and see where we're at in January.

Haunted Hearts Sucked

Final Verdict: 5.5, Not Recommended. Y'all don't need to watch this weird mess of a show. Despite joking about "devirginizing" its lead multiple times, it was so chaste in the end. It also did some weird world shenanigans I was not feeling. The leads are supposed to be in another Oxin Films project soon, so we'll see if they're better there.

Caged Again Flopped

Final Verdict: 6, Recommended Only For Jay Sorathon. This one really hurts me, because I genuinely loved the first half of this show. Jay Sorathon as Junior was one of the most refreshing experiences I've had in a while. This young actor is charming in a way that felt different, and I found myself enjoying every scene he was in because he could deliver what he was asked to do. However, the show generally failed to do much with most of its themes, and I think it was a real waste of Nokia and Jaonine as a pair. There were interesting themes about how Junior and Sun wanted different things out of their relationship that didn't get resolved, so all of their skinship felt disconnected from the big themes they were teasing out.

I am sad that I cannot really recommend this as a complete viewing experience, but I do not want that to detract from how much I enjoyed the entire cast's chemistry. I just cannot pretend that this show didn't peak at the gif used above before floundering completely.

An Apology to City of Stars

Final Verdict: 8, Recommended. I skipped this show originally because I was overloaded and unmoved by the first episode. However, this show was actually one of the most consistent narratives we've had about the consequences of fan culture, sponsorship, and commercialization of queer actors we've had this year. Unlike Only Boo!, this show inflicted real consequences on Feuang for coming out to the point that he essentially had to change careers (which happens to real actors all the time, going back as far or further than William Haines).

The leads also kept having sex after getting together! A novel experience! I loved that Krom had almost no swag, and Feuang fell for him entire on family photos and his mom gushing over him. He really won as a tech worker. Watch this if you're interested in seeing a show with clear ideas about the entertainment industry and are willing to deal with some weak acting.

Our Youth Left Me A Bit Wanting

Final Verdict 8: Recommended With Reservations. I wrote my write up for this already, and will say here that I like parts of this show a lot even though I wasn't fully satisfied by the viewing experience.

See Your Love Got All The Important Things Right

Final Verdict: 8, Recommended for the Mains. I will admit that I didn't much care for the side couple, but I loved Shaopeng and Sean's relationship. I loved that this wasn't a story about fixing someone's hearing so they could be in a romance. I also love that one of our final scenes in Shaopeng's dad telling Sean's dad to go fuck himself. The leads reminded me of Jimmy and Tommy from Why R U and I loved their work together.

Love in the Air Koi Was a Genuine Delight

Final Verdict: 9, Highly Recommended. I liked it a lot. I think new and old fans will be able to enjoy it. I have high hopes about cross-cultural adaptations as a result.

Love is Like a Poison Was Spectacular

Final Verdict: 9.5, Highly Recommended. I had so much fun with this show. I love that this show blended multiple genres together, and I loved that Shiba was always in a legal drama. By blending this together this way, the show supports the idea that the different ways we love and see the world are not incompatible in relationships. Shiba and Haruto are one of the best couples we had this past year, because they each made the other better, and they each add something to their relationship. Also, this show was actively horny the entire time. Run, do not walk, to support this show (if you can) on Netflix.

Fragrance You Inherit Was The One of the Kindest Shows I've Ever Seen

Final Verdict: 9.5, Highly Recommended. Thanks to the constant efforts of @isaksbestpillow we were able to enjoy this incredible show. @twig-tea already wrote a great review. I will be thinking about Sakura and Touki for years. I will just add that I really loved that Hoshii was just a goofy dude that loved the women in his home. He respected both of them, and was just so happy to be included in their shenanigans. I cannot overstate how much the episode where we met him properly kicked this show into overdrive for me. I loved that he was a good dad and husband and that it was clear his wife and daughter felt safe and happy around him. I loved that this show was about kind people doing their best.

Okay, on to the currently airing stuff.

Your Sky is Faltering, but I Still Like It (8/12)

Look, I am just not keen on the Oh redemption arc. I'm also feeling the show dragging its feet at this point. I also am not sure what the relationship between the various sides are contributing to this story. That being said, I continue to enjoy the chemistry between the leads, and I am looking forward to seeing their dating era. This show has been riding the line on the bubble, and I am curious to see where it lands.

Ossan's Love Thailand (1/12)

I've grown to love Ossan's Love over the last year, and so I was cautiously optimistic about this adaptation. I don't think the humor is as tight or zippy as I would expect, and I think the branded pair component is hurting some of the initial setup. I also feel like the shower scene shifted in a way that doesn't entirely work. In addition, making Kongdetch a widower slows down his dramatic development. I'll check in again next month.

Call Me By No Name Started Weird (1/8)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

This show got off to a moody and somewhat intriguing start. I am looking forward to our little gamer's interactions with this possibly-fey creature for the coming weeks. It's difficult when the show starts coy.

When It Rains It Pours Has an Uphill Battle (1/7)

I am personally interested in the journey this show wants to go on as what will more than likely be a double cheating narrative. I like that the show started with boy guys in relationships they feel a bit frustrated with due to a lack of intimacy that is being actively ignored by their respective partners. I'm also intrigued because both partners seem like they're overall committed to our leads. This one started off in a mild note, so I'm curious how it holds audience attention. Still, both leads had sad masturbation scenes, one explicitly remembering when his partner used to fuck him, so it has my attention.

That's all for now! I'll check back in with one of these in a few weeks and we'll see where we're at.

[vagueeyes]

alright here goes, my in9 journey & self-reflection post.

warning: this is longgg and rambly. and personal.

i'd like to start off by detailing how i got to this point - so here's a timeline!

-the first time i heard of in9 was likely during one of my random wikipedia deep dives. i was definitely one of those people who thought a show called INSIDE NO. 9 was about politics, perhaps something like THE THICK OF IT?

-the first time i actually watched it, was in january 2021. the month before, i had started watching NO MORE JOCKEYS, which was recommended by the TASKMASTER subreddit, shortly after s10 had finished airing. and, well, i basically became obsessed with tim key - he's such a scamp!! after catching up on NMJ and also watching TM s1, i was looking into his filmography and noticed INSIDE NO. 9. from what i read about him, his performance in this was a recommended watch - so i looked online, found the show, and gave SARDINES a go.

-i don't actually remember much about the first watch other than thinking tim was great, and i did go ohhh at the twist.

-since i had nothing else to watch at the time, i also gave A QUIET NIGHT IN and TOM & GERRI a go. the former i remember liking because it appealed to my interest in silent film/comedy. the latter i was really engrossed in, but that final image of migg in the bathtub really haunted me - to the point where i took a break and figured i'd come back to the show when i was ready.

-well. i moved house that summer and promptly forgot to pick it up again.

-around this time i was watching BAKE OFF regularly and always tuned in to the celebrity episodes. when reece was announced as part of the line up, i definitely remember reading people being excited to watch him, because this wasn't something he normally does? i did watch his episode, having known/recognised him from in9, but i don't think i had any particular thought/opinion on him. (oh boy...)

-iirc steve was a guest on wilty in 2022 - this was also a show i regularly watched (and still do, unlike BAKE OFF). very much like reece on BAKE OFF, i tuned in to this episode recognising/knowing steve from in9, but again i did not have any actual opinion on him. the only thing i remember reading were people's comments about one of his anecdotes, saying "anyone who knows anything about steve and reece will know that story about pretending to be dead was true".

-now let's jump to late 2023! i read spoilers on who was going to be on TM s17, and at the time i remember thinking, "ah i recognise steve & john robbins, heard of nick mohammed because of TED LASSO, maybe i know who joanne mcnally is? never seen or heard of sophie willan".

-cut to april 2024 - i tuned in to s17 and basically instantly liked steve. this clever and deeply strange man!! by this time, i had already planned to come to the UK in may for a vacation.

-during my vacation - on may 8 at 9:58pm, i was about to go to bed in my hotel, but i decided to quickly scan the tv guide and happened to see that INSIDE NO. 9 was going to be on in 2 minutes. looking at the episode info, i googled and saw that this was the first episode of the ninth series, and apparently this was their last one! so i quickly decided to tune in to BOO TO A GOOSE.

-i remember my first watch of this ep - delighted to see susan wokoma, whom i loved in TM s16. really loved steve as wilma. funnily enough, was not paying much attention to reece, other than laughing at his funny lines. i had forgotten the show had "twists", so the twist in this one caught me by surprise!

-because i was vacationing for 2 weeks, i decided i would tune in to the next episode the following week. again because of TM, my first watch of THE TROLLEY PROBLEM was mainly thinking "wow steve is so good in this", but part way through, during the bathroom/mirror scene (you know the one), i sort of looked at reece a bit and thought "wait a second..."

-about two weeks after returning home, i decided to check when the last episode was airing, and figured i should catch up on episodes 3 and 4. MULBERRY CLOSE i instantly loved because of the static camera/hitchcock homage, and here is where my reece obsession started to creep up on me. what's really funny is it took me a while to realise who he was in this episode? for the first few minutes i legit thought damon was being played by stephen graham!! anyway, i was drawn in by that gruff but not mean-spirited aspect of the character (does that make sense?), and the way reece played him - i was especially impressed because you don't even really see him for like 80% of the time!

-over the next week following watching this episode, i started to look up reece on youtube (which is what i often do when i want to know more about someone), and saw this video (highly recommend all of misc.mp4's reece/steve/pembersmith vids):

and hellooo i instantly fell in love. i realise this is a persona and he plays it up, but he's just so funny and like, adorable??

-so then i decided to pick in9 back up from where i left off in 2021 - starting with LAST GASP, whilst waiting for the last two s9 episodes to air. and the rest is history!!

-the order in which i watched was basically: started bingeing in9 > paused at s5 to watch PSYCHOVILLE (whilst reading the wiki i decided i wanted to know the context before getting to DEATH BE NOT PROUD) > tuned in to CURSE OF THE NINTH > finished PSYCHOVILLE and in9 s5 > tuned in to PLODDING ON (you can imagine how many references i missed) > finished in9 and rewatched s9 > watched back the episodes i liked > binged TLOG

in terms of tumblr:

-during my teen years i was on Livejournal and mainly made icons, sometimes did those episode recap posts (featuring screencaps throughout - lmk if you know what i'm talking about!!). when that site went down and tumblr was a place to migrate to, i had a blog for a while in 2011, couldn't figure out what to do with it, deleted, came back a bit in 2014 to do screencaps posts - then i lost access to photoshop CS2, and basically didn't do any blogging or fandom-related stuff for a long time. i attempted to write stuff now and then (mostly "reviews" pfft), but couldn't really commit or keep it going. i always tried to come back to tumblr to do this, but never saw this as a place for text-heavy posts. (oh boy again...)

-one thing that's been constant though, was whenever i became hyperfixated on something (or someone), i always knew there would be people who felt the same & there would be posts about this on tumblr.

-so while i was watching in9, i did look at the sub but it seemed...inactive? then i looked at tumblr and quickly found blogs like @local-blog-for-local-people and basically started regularly checking it.

-and thennn when @in9-character-tournament started coming up in various blogs i was dipping in & out of (i could @ some of you but i don't wanna be a weirdo, or do i?), i thought "well i'd like to get in on this". so i officially created this blog on reece's birthday (LOL this was intentional but also easy to remember in terms of blog anniversaries 😉)!

-however, even then, i was too nervous/scared to really post anything. and i didn't even know what to post about! i got the scriptbooks in september and started reading them, at one point thinking "oh maybe i can talk about this". but what would i talk about? surely everyone knows everything and can articulate it better than i ever could?

-then in december when i read that r&s said they had no plans to record S/F, i panicked a bit. i had counted on them recording it and never even thought of going to see it live. the dates were weird imo and in past experience, winter/early spring might not be a great time to visit the UK, weather-wise. after mulling it over a bit, i checked the tickets website, saw it was nearly sold out, and decided to do some quick planning. the latest possible date & seat/price that seemed to be alright was march 27, 2025. well, i thought, "early spring in the UK could be nice?" i previously planned on coming in may, but decided to move everything up and take the plunge. this seemed like a once in a lifetime chance and i didn't want to miss out!

-when i bought the ticket and got the vacation planning started, a week or two later i saw @unreesonable rb the DEVIL OF CHRISTMAS commentary post where reece tells the story of where "you can almost see the pound signs in his eyes!" comes from. i had rewatched the episode on christmas with the scriptbook out to read along, and i remembered that that line wasn't scripted. so seeing the post i thought, "maybe i could rb and write this in the tags?" and there was the start of my blogging!

-my initial approach was to treat this as a media diary/stream of consciousness process thing, where i'd look up posts related to whatever i had just watched or was thinking about & rb that, putting any thoughts in the tags (and i guess that's what i'm still doing!). i wasn't completely sure i'd ever do "original" posts. at the beginning of the year i had started to read scriptbook 3, and had some ideas of what i could say. @insideno9bracket bracket was a terrific find - i followed what everyone was doing in terms of rb'ing to explain their vote/thought process, and here i feel is where i started to ease myself into the fandom. with @donotbelasagne's first stats post calling for propaganda posts in round 2, i thought, "well hey i can do some of that!"

-often i fluctuated between "should i post this? does anyone care? am i too boring or analytical about this?" and "wait why should i worry! this is my blog and i can do whatever i please, who cares if this gets 0 notes!" and other times i lurched from "please perceive me 🥺" and "oh god i'm being perceived, what do i do now!!"

-during the countdown to S/F i sometimes gave myself anxiety wondering whether i'd meet anyone in the fandom or whether i'd do stage door & what that would be like. in hindsight this was (reece voice/chuckle) ridiculous, given how calm & collected i ended up being on the day/days??

-S/F was not only an experience of seeing reece & steve live, it was also a chance to meet like-minded people irl. this was not something i ever thought i'd do! what's lovely is even meeting people i hadn't really interacted with much online (or even at all), it's like we all became friends the moment we saw each other!

i love how international this fandom is and that we were all brought together through our love of in9 + universe. everyone is so passionate and creative and funny!! i love (and am still a bit surprised) that steve being on tm/s9/S/F is what seemed to get people to create accounts and start blogging!

i feel like this is getting too long so i'll jump to the thanks (keeping it short tbh):

-i'd like to thank @silverview for being my first mutual (did i ever tell you you were?). reading about you meeting up with others in the fandom for S/F, i basically see you as our ambassador lol.

-huge thanks to @wintersoulwitch for running @unreesonable, what a treasure trove of a blog & i love all the digging & digital dumpster diving!!

-thank you to @local-blog-for-local-people, your blog is so organised and long-standing. i love looking through the tags/archive to see what people had posted in the past. (also i'm very flattered to see some of my own posts appear there!) sorry for spamming your activity with likes/rb's - but you know, i WILL keep doing this loll!!

-thank you again to everyone i met on april 5!! you guys are all so nice and beautiful!!! (i'm not @ing again so hopefully some of you see this lol)

and lastly, big big thanks to everyone who has ever read &/or interacted with my posts. S/F might mean the end of my journey in terms of experiencing in9-related things (& extended universe) for the first time, but i am NOT done posting about the show! as ken plume said in his pods with reece (which i highly recommend btw, if you haven't heard them - it's the most "as himself" as i've heard of reece):

ken: but, you know, there's still plenty of people that haven't discovered PSYCHOVILLE and INSIDE NO. 9 and should (reece: yeah, true) - so maybe that's it, maybe it's just building an awareness campaign for the stuff that already exists. reece: yeah. you set me thinking about the fact that it doesn't mean it's the end. it exists for people to find.

it's exciting that S/F is going on tour and that more people will get to see & experience the show. i hope this will bring more newcomers - either draw in people who have never seen in9 or the back catalogue to watch them, or even come to tumblr!

because if anything can harvest or keep a hyperfixation alive, it's tumblr. so i WILL keep posting about the show, reece & steve, the extended universe (whenever possible), until...i dunno, i run out of ideas? but i'm not even done yapping about guillem, and i've barely started on christian henson & yves. and the other directors! louise hooper, al campbell, george kane —

[roomwithanopenfire]

Stats Sunday

Happy March!! Thanks for the tag @nausikaaa! Unfortunately, my goal is to make this banner worse every month, so be prepared—we've only just begun.

Early post for me. I should be sleeping but I started making my graphs and then... well, here we are.

Here's my February Recap loll. Stats and graphs and musings incoming. (this post is so long but i promise there's a snippet in here)

Rest of post is under the cut. It is long. You've been warned.

I've posted two things last month! A valentine's day fic for Ebb/Fiona and Chapter 3 of the Way We Are. (Technically i posted 3 but this stranger things oneshot was posted on the 1st and written in January so it feels like January's accomplishment)

Total words written for February: 14405 (this beats Jan by 460 words!)

Days I met my writing goal (200 words): 20

Days I didn't write or edit anything: 4

Day I wrote the most: Feb 11th with 2249 (this beats last month's high score of 1717!)

Number of Fics worked on: 10 technically, but i have not been consistent with most of them. mainly worked on 3.

Daily Average: 514 words (but like last month i am highly inconsistent and my WC varies wildy depending on the day)

(I really like the little curve in the middle. also two the days that look like zero are actually 1 words, which is my placeholder if i spend all day editing)

And here's a pie chart to show my WC distribution across projects. Tbh a lot of these were fics that i've had in my fic ideas doc and all i did was make a google doc for them and word barf onto it my ideas, that's why there's so many small slices.

some slices are so small you don't even get to know my placeholder names. also i hope the title THTHIPWGI intrigues you, i'm always excited when i can title a fic right away and refer to it by a fun accyromn on my spreadsheet.

Other notable things from February:

I finished writing all of The Way We Are!! (kind of. i have one more scene to write. Monica's fault.)

I took over the @carry-on-sapphic-week event!! Check out the prompts if you haven't yet <3

I've received So Many beautiful valentines from the CO discord servers exchange. my mailbox and my heart has been full

The CO fandom was able to raise $500 for Fandom Trumps Hate!! (and I got to make a spreadsheet bc of this!!!) (also i won two auctions from this, one for each fandom i'm in)

My car battery died and I had to get a new one :/

I started a new journal!

I finally figured out how to spell February

my savage worlds campaign finally got our ship back and made it off this stupid planet that we've been on forever.

i've started watching Yellowjackets and I'm really enjoying it

I read so many CO AU fest fics and each one of them was so good. I think i've read all except one so far, and honestly this fest has been so fun i'm obsessed with you guys, you're are so talented.

SPEAKING of CO AU fest fics, @fiend-for-culture's fic, Everything In Between, is SO good, i've been thinking about it all week. you should read it (and leave a comment so i can read it bc i'm stalking the comments on this fic and there's not enough to sate me)

i have spring break in just one week!!

Okay, i promised you words, so here's a snip from my COBB.

“And I’m sorry,” Simon says. “For what?” “Driving you off yesterday.” “That wasn’t your fault. I was being terrible.” “Yeah,” Simon agrees. “But I shouldn’t have dismissed you like that.” I make a face. “I’m not having a heart-to-heart with you, Snow.” Simon groans. “Why do you have to do that?" "What" "Everytime I think we're making progress you say something nasty like that."

sorry this post is so long, thank you for reading if you made it this far

tags, hellos, and apologies:

@alexalexinii @aristocratic-otter @argumentativeantitheticalg @artsyunderstudy @arthurkko

@beastmonstertitan @blackberrysummerblog @best--dress @bookishbroadwayandblind @bookish-bogwitch

@the-beard-of-edward-teach @brilla-brilla-estrellita @cccloudsss @ciescen @confused-bi-queer

@cutestkilla @drowninginships @facewithoutheart @emeryhall @fiend-for-culture

@hushed-chorus @iamamythologicalcreature @ileadacharmedlife @theimpossibledemon @jyae23

@larkral @lovelettersto-mars @meanjeansjeans @m1ndwinder @monbons

@noblecorgi @orange-peony @prettygoododds @raenestee @rimeswithpurple

@run-for-chamo-miles @rbkzz @shrekgogurt @simonscones @skee3000

@supercutedinosaurs @sweetronancer @talentpiper11 @toc-the-scrambled @thewholelemon

@valeffelees @youarenevertooold @you-remind-me-of-the-babe

added some new ppl to this tag list, feel free to share a wip you're working on—art, fic, etc. it does not have to stats like mine is loll. i use wipsdays as my soapbox.

[skelleste]

2024 Art Summary

A selection of art from the past year. You can find a little about each image below.

Happy New Year (Again!)

Just like last time, it's time for another self-indulgent end-of-year post. A lot of things happened and unfortunately I don't feel that I made as much art as I did last year. I got bombarded with people asking me for art trades when I opened them last winter and I still haven't done most of them. I'm used to only a few randos that I mostly turn down requesting them, but having a bunch of friends ask all at once was a bit unexpected. If you're still waiting, I haven't forgotten and will make it eventually. Unfortunately I have the "I shouldn't draw for myself until I do my owed art" mentality most of the time and it just results in doing absolutely nothing because, quite frankly, I often don't want to draw other characters more than I want to draw my own. I'm going to have to be extremely selective about art trades going forward. I also moved this year for the first time ever, and that threw a big wrench in the works. The reason I moved so soon was because my insane sister was moving back in. She threatened to poop in my brother's bed (she's 22) and threatened both of us with violence and my parents were like "yeah that's fine". So uh, yeah, goodbye to living that sweet, sweet, chimpanzee lifestyle. All of that aside, I still made plenty of things, and I'll talk about a few of them here.

January

Some of the last comic panels I worked on before the art trade fiasco put working on the comic to a halt for almost a whole year. These are sketches, but the whole page is done now, of course. This was probably the most time-consuming panel so far, as I had to draw an indoor scene with 9 characters (technically 10 if you count Scott twice). I'm not sure if any of the panels that I have yet to work on will surpass this one in amount of time needed. There's a reason I made this one of the first scenes on the laundry list.

February

The first art trade. I had the pleasure of drawing Mumbo, Jumbo, Balder, and Dash for Chalkrub. I don't feel too great about the background, with its wonky perspective and odd colors, but everyone seems to like how it turned out anyway. It's my third most popular piece of art on this whole site as of writing this.

March

I made this for no reason other than I wanted to draw something edgy for edgy's sake. It had been a while since I made any art of this nature, and Ferdinand is my go to OC for it. My taste in art is not the same as what I draw. I make what I do because it's more about the enjoyment of the process than the aesthetic appeal of the final piece. When I focus on personal aesthetic appeal, I end up not drawing for 9 months at a time because I hate injuring my hand on inking all the time. So if you're some edgy artist and ever wondered why the fuck a cartoon shitposter extraordinaire follows you, there you go.

April

Another art trade, this time for 888goober888 on DeviantArt. A perfect example of a classic case of the eternal false promise "yeah I'll just finish this detail and then be done." And then there's 3,000 brushstrokes worth of individual grass blades. Tee hee.

May

This was a painting I started, and then put down because it was awful to work on, and then I picked it back up weeks later and finished it. The miseries I suffer for not trusting the process. It was a backburner project for a backburner project, which is the website. This painting is now the homepage background, ready to greet all visitors to my nonsense.

June

Commission for Porcumoose. I get the standard array of OC types in my commissions, because every client wants something different from the last. This time I felt very fortunate to draw something I personally like, and I this was my favorite commission from the whole year. This is my way of saying to the public at large "Please pay me to draw more spooky shit please please please".

July

Art Fight month again. I was planning on attempting longest chain with a friend, but he fell ill and we cancelled that plan. I decided to do a slow art year instead, which means fewer attacks with higher quality. My personal favorite from fighting for Team Stardust was this attack, Osireon (a fanmade eeveelution) for Sqveel. Thank you to everyone who attacked me! I always appreciate every single one. Next year is the big 10 year, and I plan on making it special.

August

August always begins with a week-long break from art for me, simply to rest after Art Fight. I also had a week-long vacation shortly thereafter, so half of my month was already spoken for. I had also started the process of moving and lost even more time to that. I can't recall exactly what all I made during then because it was very little, but one of them was certainly catgirl Maudlin. Here she is in all her glory.

September

This is when I moved, and I did not have access to the internet on my computer for a little while. I also spent much of my available drawing time working on a commission, so this was another month where I made very little for myself and cannot recall what little there was. Scatterbrain pineapple is going to teach you French while I jog my memory with blunt force and drywall.

October

Alright, now we're talking. On a whim I decided to participate in Goretober, because I couldn't stop thinking of stupid slapstick ideas and I thought someone scrolling through the tag and seeing this stupid shit randomly in the mix was funny. I was correct. I have one last prompt that I'll get to when I get to it, but aside from that one, this was my favorite drawing from the season. I think I've raised the bar on my own cursed content.

November

After Goretober, I took a break from regular drawing and leaned in favor of website progress. I made a handful of long-needed art assets, animated a custom cursor, created directories for future comic releases, and more. There is still much more to do, but a lot of the necessary code is sorted out.

December

Fuck those art trades (respectfully). I'll do them when I do them. I started working on the comic again for the first time since last February and I've already got a few more pages done. I don't really publicly talk about the comic very much, and yet I'll have random people take interest in the characters, the site, the prospect of a comic coming into existence, etc. and so I should really get on that. As much as the trades have been delayed, this is a project that was started much earlier and honestly could've been done by now if I didn't have to live for so long with people who are blasé about abusing each other. It needs to be completed.

These are just a small selection of my artworks throughout the past year. If you would like to see more, then you can peruse the blog. It's been my goal to get the comic done for the last two years, and we're going on year 3 now. Same old, same old. You'll see more art from me soon. I hope your new year is fruitful and full of peace. See you in 2025.

2023 || 2022

[bcacstuff]

It’s the end of an era: Sophie Skelton has starred as Brianna in Starz’s Scottish historical fantasy drama, Outlander, for 10 years. How does she feel about it all coming to an end? Mixed emotions, from the five stages of grief to feeling positive about ending on a high. For us viewers at home, however, there’s still plenty of time to say goodbye: the season 7B finale will air on 17 January 2025, while season 8 is slated to air in the second half of 2025. We sat down with Sophie to hear all about it – plus what the actress will star in next.

Interview: Sophie Skelton

Hi Sophie, how’s life going at the moment?

Good, thank you. I’m still processing 10 years of the end of an era! Caitríona [Balfe] and I have been talking about it for a while, because you go through the five stages of grief a little bit when you finish something like this. It’s such a rare occurrence for TV to go that long, and there’s no manual of how to deal with the end, so I think it was quite a roller coaster of, well, the grief process. But we’re both feeling quite at peace now. I for one feel like I’m in a good place – just winding down for Christmas so I can hit the ground running in 2025!

It’s the end of an era! How did it feel when you kind of got the news that Outlander season eight would be the end?

I think originally season 7 was going to be the end, and I’m just speculating here, but maybe part of the reason they split it into two is because they knew that season 8 was going to come. Maybe they were trying to bridge a gap with the strikes… I don’t know! But I feel like Brianna is in a really good place. I feel like I’ve done everything I can do with that character. She has been through more than most people would go through in multiple lifetimes. 

I think it’s always good to tap out while you’re ahead and not to milk something, so hopefully we’re ending on a high. Season 7B is great, but season 8 is honestly the best season – so I think it’s good to leave it there.

Are you all wrapped on season 8, too, then?

Officially, yeah. We were holding on by an emotional thread for a while, because we were sort of finishing, and then there was a second unit going, and then we had press, and then we had reshoots. But we are officially done. I think we’ve all had three wrap days, but the last one was really sweet. Caitríona wrapped and then she came in for my final scene, and then she hugged me, and that made me break down crying. Then she and I went to the next stage over for Sam [Heughan]’s final scene, which was the last one. Then we had a little hug, the three of us, so it was a really nice way to close it off. It felt very peaceful in the end. 

How would you describe Outlander season 7b?

For Brianna, honestly, quite lonely. It was an interesting season for me. We shot it about two years ago, so thinking back, I spent a large amount of the time with the kids. As they say, acting with animals and children are the two most challenging bits, and on Outlander we have a plethora of that going on! In terms of storyline, it’s one of the sides of Brianna that I really admire. She’s really come into herself as a mother, and seeing her click into action mode and the lengths she’ll go to to save her children is really admirable. Sometimes when she has to defend herself, she’s not as brazen, but as soon as it’s for someone else, especially her children, we see a side of Brianna that we haven’t seen before.

Rosa Morris (“Mandy”) and Sophie Skelton (“Brianna Fraser MacKenzie”) in Outlander season 7. (Starz)

You’ve played Brianna for a decade now. Is there anything special you do to get into character?

One thing we’re lucky with on Outlander is that the sets are so magnificent and vast. Whether we’re on location or they’ve built a fake village, as soon as you’re on set, you feel halfway into it. It’s the same with me having an American accent and the wig and the clothing – you’re halfway in already, so that does a bit of your prep for you. I know Brianna inside out now, so honestly, it’s quite easy to just stream into set. But to stop myself from coasting, I do research. And there were a lot of things I felt I could channel from my own life into Bri this season, so that helped.

Is there anything in season 7B you’re really excited for people to see?

I really enjoyed the scenes with Chris [Fulton], who plays Rob Cameron. That was a really fun dynamic. And as I say, because I spent a large amount of the second part with the kids, it was nice to have some adult energy. I really like his way of working. He’s quite similar to me in that you just don’t know what you’re going to get, and every take could be completely different. We really bounced off each other, and it kind of felt like being in a play, especially because some of our scenes were quite physical. There are a few more modern day action sequences from Brianna, too, which was a different form of stunts than we’ve done before. So I’m sure people will enjoy a little injection of 80s fight scenes.

Is there anything you can tease about Outlander season 8?

As ever with Outlander, there will be some reunions. There are probably going to be some deaths. The heartstrings are going to be a little bit torn… One of the most exciting things about it is that you’ve got so many old and new faces back. It just feels like a really big ensemble, and I think that that’s such a magnificent way to go out. It’s like a big bang.

Any standout moments from rehearsals or filming?

It’s quite rare that a lot of us get to do scenes together, so the dinner scenes where we have a large amount of the principal cast together are really fun. It always feels quite sentimental because they’re rare, and we never know if that’s going to be the last one. That wasn’t necessarily different, but season 8 had the extra layer of upcoming loss. But they’re always just lovely because Outlander is heavy, you know! We work in really tough weather conditions. We do long hours, we do long weeks, and we’re pretty much just in the dark, wind and rain of Scotland all the time. So when we get these indoor scenes where it’s really intimate, there’s candles, it’s all of us together, they’re really fond moments. It feels like you can really just relax and enjoy the day a little bit more, as opposed to battling all the elements constantly.

Are there any locations from filming that have stood out as a favorite, or anything that you would go back to in your own time?

The Clava Cairns are so beautiful. When you go there, honestly, it sounds quite corny, but you can feel the weight of the land. The air is dense. Not in a heavy way, but you can almost feel the energy of the history there. And the land is just so quiet. There’s always a beautiful moon or a beautiful sunrise. We actually had one scene there where the moon looked too fake. The real moon looked too fake! They had to blot it out and put a fake moon in, because they were like, ‘no one will believe this is real’. It’s always windy and icy cold and it’s brutal, but it’s absolutely stunning. Especially when we do night shoots there, the calm and the quiet and the stars… It’s just surreal.

Outlander is coming to an end, but the universe is going to continue in a different series. Are you excited to watch it? How did you feel about that when you heard the news?

It’s a funny thing with the prequel coming out, because we were on our final season when they filmed, so it was very different energies, having the two side by side. They’re all coming in fresh, whereas we’ve done 10 years of this. We want to make sure that we see it through and do it justice. We really wanted to make sure that our attention wasn’t split, so I don’t know too much about the prequel. 

I know that there are rumors of some other spin off series, too, and I know Diana might have written some other spin off books. It’s one of the biggest shows in the world, so I’m sure that those series will do super well. It’ll be exciting to see if there are any mini Briannas that spin off. It would be very interesting to see who takes her over at some point. 

Sophie Skelton (“Brianna Fraser MacKenzie”) in Outlander season 7. (Starz)

Looking at future projects, are there any genres you’re craving?

It’s not necessarily about genre for me; I think it’s more that I’m looking for completely different characters. A different accent, a completely different time period for a while, let’s get rid of the corset for a bit! But honestly, loads of different things. I started in musical theater on stage, so to do something in that realm would be amazing. I also love really gritty dramas – psychological stuff. Something like Black Swan would be the perfect merge of everything.

Have any of your other projects stood out to you as a career highlight?

I just finished quite a tricky shoot during the strike, a small independent movie called Row. It’s about the first team crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and semi based on a true story before it goes a lot more thriller-y. I’m playing this blonde hippie-ish girl from Surrey and filming was going to be in Malta, so I was like, ‘Yeah, cool, this is different to Outlander. Different accent, I’m on a boat in the middle of nowhere, but it’s Malta, great!’ There’s one scene where she’s in a bikini on the boat. Sounds fantastic! Then a couple of weeks before shooting, they said, ‘because of the strikes and everything else, we’re actually going to film it in John o’ Groats’ – which is pretty much the most northerly part of the UK. We had super bad weather – 100 mile per hour winds – so we had to stop shooting a lot and we got behind. We were just on a rowing boat in the middle of a water tank right next to the ocean on a cliff. It was intense. But honestly, I think the film is going to be beautiful. It looks really gritty. It’s so fun to play something different. I’m excited to see it.

Who has been your favourite actor to work with in the past?

I worked with Nick Cage ages ago, which was great. He was so lovely to me; that was a good shoot. On Outlander, working with Tobias Menzies was amazing. It was great to work with quite a lot of seasoned actors like Maria Doyle Kennedy, too.

Which co-star did you learn the most from?

Caitríona is amazing. She knows how to fight for her cast and crew, she will make sure that everyone’s looked after. There’s often a lot of hierarchy in TV and film. She’s number one, and she could easily stomp that around, but she doesn’t. She puts everybody on a level playing field and treats everyone the same. I really respect that.

Do you have a dream role?

I love biopics. I love going down a rabbit hole of research and having to perfect little tics that the real person has. I was thinking about La Vie en Rose the other day, the Edith Black one with Marion Cotillard. Something along that route would be really cool. And hey, if there’s ever an Audrey Hepburn biopic, I would love to do that.

Who is a writer or director you’d love to work with?

Jesse Armstong and the Duffer Brothers. I think their writing is just so smart. It flows beautifully, and it’s just so gritty.

How do you find balance in your personal and work lives?

Not sure if I’ve mastered that yet! I’ve always been a very hard worker. Even as a kid, I’d be in ballet every day, and 1000 hobbies. I’ve always managed to fit more in a day than most people. I’m not very good if I’m not busy, so I am trying to manage the shut off between the two now by writing music, doing art and playing piano.

How can we all live a little bit better?

Do small acts of self care for yourself all the time. Someone said it to me recently, and I hadn’t really realised it was a thing. They were like, ‘you’re very good at doing little things that set you up for success for your future self’. It sounds so silly, but it’s the smallest things, like putting stuff away the night before so you don’t wake up to a dirty kitchen in the morning, or just biting the bullet sometimes because you know that it’s going to matter more to your future self than it might do now. Small acts of kindness to yourself. Career wise, it’s so easy now to look on Instagram, for example, compare yourself and just feel shit, frankly. I just have this daily reminder: put on your blinkers and win your own race.

Sophie Skelton Recommends…

I’m currently watching… Shrinking

What I’m reading… The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen

The last thing I watched (and loved) was… Poor Things

What I’m most looking forward to seeing… Gladiator II and Conclave

Favourite film of all time… Good Will Hunting and Uptown Girls

Band/singer I always have on repeat… Taylor Swift

My ultimate cultural recommendation… Talking to different cultures about how they celebrate the festive season.

Cultural guilty pleasure… Going to the pub for a roast every Sunday – the bottle of red with it is the guilty part!

[yuurei20]

Greetings! How true is that Yana is not involved in the writing of all events? Or is it only for the most recent one, Playful land? I'm a little confused.

Hello hello! Yana shares via Twitter what parts of what cards/events/stories/etc she was involved in every time something new is released, so I went through tweets from January of 2020 to November of 2023 to compare and contrast how she has described her role throughout the years, and compiled them here!

⚠️JP-server Only Visuals Spoiled Under the Cut⚠️

Vocabulary Review

・シナリオ: The English word “scenario,” this is an industry term that means “a written outline of a film, novel, or stage work giving details of the plot and individual scenes. It describes the sequence of scene changes, dialogue, and actions.” If Yana says she was in charge of the scenario for something, it is probably ok to assume that it was her project.

・原画(genga): The original artwork/initial visual concept upon which the final work was based

Ex: In this tweet Yana says she was in charge of the scenario, costume design and original card artwork for Fairy Gala.

・担当(tantou): The person in charge of something

・ディレクション: The English word “direction.”

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that she was in charge of direction for Malleus’ Birthday Jacket card.

・D-6th: This is Yana’s personal studio, which existed long before Twst and is also in charge of producing her manga (there seems to be a lot of overlap between the team that creates Black Butler and the Twst team, which she will sometimes reference in tweets). This seems to mean that there were multiple people involved in the creation process. It is unclear if she includes herself amongst the "D-6th" team, as sometimes she will specify that something was by her, something was by D-6th, or something was by both her and D-6th.

・弊社(heisha): a polite way of saying “my company,” this references Yana’s studio D-6th. 

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that while she did the scenario herself, the backgrounds and prop designs were by her studio.

The Main Story

Starting with the release of part 1 of Book 3 on JP server, Yana explains that she did the scenario, original artwork for the SSR cards, directed the vignettes and was in charge of character design.

For Book 7 she says she did the scenario and original character art/character designs, while some prop designs and background visuals were done by her studio.

Card Art

For Ortho’s dorm uniform design Yana explains that both she and her studio did the original art from start to finish (she did the original concept and story for the vignette), while she alone was in charge of the before/after groovy art from start to finish for Idia’s dorm uniform card.

She did the art for Leona and Riddle’s tsumsted cards (and direction for the other cards in the series), Sebek’s dorm uniform art from start to finish and and did art direction for the cards in the 2022 New Year’s set, while costume design was done by her studio.

Rook’s Clubwear, Ortho’s Cerberus Gear, Lilia’s General card, Rollo’s card and Grim’s D100 card are all credited to both Yana and her studio.

(We got a rare comment with the release of Ortho’s Cerberus Gear where she said, “We have an artist working with us who spent almost 20 years doing backgrounds for a certain, extremely famous robot anime. She oversees a lot of the background art designing. The background for Ortho’s Cerberus Gear card, the aircraft catapult, the facility seen in the groovy art—that is all her work. It really captures the moment of take off! Professional background artists are truly amazing, capable of designing everything from S.T.Y.X.’s futuristic aircraft catapult to homages of famous watercolor masterpieces." That is one of the artists that Yana is referring to when a design is attributed to D-6th.)

Birthdays

Yana was credited with direction for the Birthday Boy series, while Ortho’s design and direction was credited to her studio.

Yana credited her studio with the Birthday Jacket designs and scenario creation, saying that she was in charge of direction for the series (with Ortho’s gear design, direction and room design all credited to her studio).

For the Broom/Bloom series Yana says that she participated in concept/costume design and was in charge of direction (with D-6th credited with the art direction and gear design for Ortho).

The art for the platinum series (including the backgrounds) is credited to the staff of D-6th, with Yana in charge of direction.

Events

Yana explains she did all the original art for all of the cards, the scenarios and direction for Beanfest, Fairy Gala and Phantom Bride (she also created the scenarios for all the vignettes).

She also created the story and did all of the card art and direction for Terror is Trending and Spectral Soiree.

For Port Fest she specified that she did the original art for Jack’s SSR and did direction for the remaining cards, crediting her studio with costume/background designs.

Yana created the scenario, character design, SSR card art (from start to finish) and did art direction for the R and SR cards of Glorious Masquerade, crediting herself and her studio with the costume/mask designs, background designs, and opening and ending screens.

She says she participated in card art direction for the R and SR cards in the Lost in the Book with Stitch event, crediting the costume designs, scenario creation, background visuals, SSR Lilia, SSR Floyd, original card art and creation to her studio.

Stage in Playfulland character design, costume design, scenario creation, card art direction, background visuals and Opening/Ending art are also all credited to both Yana and her studio.

Novel

Yana says she was in charge of the concept, the in-novel art, cover and fold-out art in the novels, while Hioki Jun (a Twst vignette/event scenario writer) is the author. 

Comic

The artist and designer behind the 1st and 3rd comic arcs are both from Yana’s studio D-6th, doing background and card art for Twst (and one of them also works on Black Butler).

Yana says that her role is overall collaboration, character design and character creation (she says that in addition to creating the basis for Trey’s parents she also designed Riddle’s mother, including her face, but they ultimately left her in silhouette).

It is difficult to tell what Yana means by “overall collaboration," but she has shared a tweet about drawing the characters out herself for the official artists to base their work on. (This might not apply to the artist of the Savanaclaw arc, who is not a member of D-6th)

[forabeatofadrum]

2024 Writing Round-Up

It's the last SSS/WW for the year and I have nothing to share, since I finished Ever After and am not itching to start something new (and I'm back on my Persona bullshit). Luckily, @that-disabled-princess tagged me in this writing round-up, so I am doing that instead. Please enjoy my bespoke banner.

I posted 10 works on AO3, with three being WIPs. I have published 85,165 words in 2024. Oh boy, let's get into it under the cut

I did actually publish stuff in January and February, but those were multichaptered things, and I am putting the works in the months I finished them/last updated them.

So, with that said, let's start in March!

MARCH 🪻

February Friday Event 2024 (Radio Silence, gen, WIP)

I have written 2 of the 4 prompts for the February Friday event. I started the other two, but I just.... haven't finished them. I should. I liked what I have written for it. Completing this fic wasn't a priority and it shows. Oof.

吃了吗? (Glee, Tike, 1.564 words)

Part of the series that explores the Asianness in Glee, and yes, it was me projecting on Tina again. Tina feels disconnected from her Korean heritage due to her adoption. Oop. I really, really liked this one and I think it's one of the best titles of the year. Yes, the title is Chinese, not Korean, since it mostly takes place in a Chinese restaurant. Mutual, 你吃饭了吗？

APRIL ❤️

All of me loves all of you (Class, Charlie/Matteusz, 2.598 words)

A story idea that I have had for years and I'm glad I finally wrote it down. Charlie is an alien, gasp! And he only looks human. In this fic, he shows Matteusz his alien self and reflects on his human disguise. I'm really, really happy with this one and it's one of the reasons that my love for Class reawakened this year.

MAY 🌻

Just Some Guy (Carry On, Snowbaz + Matt/Leslie, 15.664 words)

HONESTLY ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I HAVE EVER WRITTEN, if I may so myself. It's Snowbaz's 7.25's canon years at Watford from the perspective of someone who doesn't give a shit about them. I fucking love this fic. I fucking love MCD (Matt Christopher Davis) and I loved writing how disinterested he is in the whole Chosen One shenanigans. It makes for a fun fic, but it also makes sense if you look at the state of the world. So many people keep living ordinary lives while weird shit happens, and MCD is just ordinary. He's just some guy.

JULY 🌼

Find My Way (Legally Blonde, gen, 1.358 words)

I was on a Christian Borle binge during the summer, so I rewatched the musical Legally Blonde and this fic is a missing scene. Vivian realises what is happening and decides to break up with Warner and back-up Elle. I think it's neat.

OCTOBER 😺

What's in the name? (Glee, multi, WIP)

The first multichaptered installment of my Asianness in Glee series and it's all about names. It's partially me trying to make sense of some of Glee's choices, and me lifting from my life again. I have published Wes and Yu-Jin's and Tina's chapters. The one for Blaine is not written and I have started the one with Mike and Tina. I'm struggling with the latter, especially since I don't really understand Mike's circumstances either.

Ljubili se (Glee, Klaine, WIP)

Ah, yes, the fic that I love but also regret. I've started it for the 2023 Klaine December Challenge. I am just stuck on it, even though I have cool stuff written for it. I just don't know what to do with this one, to be honest. I want to finish it, but I have also realised that I don't like writing it anymore because I am so stuck on it. I am waiting for the inspiration to strike and for my passion to be re-ignited, because do I regret it? I also like writing it when I am writing it. And I am excited to share what I have for later chapters. There's a lil moment where Cooper tries to flirt with Denise and Quinn and Blaine are standing there like🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️. I will see where this fic will take me, I guess.

The Mars fic (Glee, Klaine, 56 words)

An inside joke that is a sequel to an inside joke! BOOP! I peaked here.

DECEMBER 🕯️

All's fair in love and war (Class, Charlie/Matteusz + Matteusz & Quill, 16.646 words)

The story that deserves better, since it has, like, 9 hits, but hey, that is what happens when you write for a small fandom. Which is a shame, cause this is also one of the best things I have written this year and I also enjoyed it a lot. I loved delving into the morality of the show Class through Matteusz, who is a middle man in-between two people with extreme conflicting opinions. And he loves both of them. Please watch Class, and read my fic after that!

Ever After (Glee, Klaine, 30.624 words)

The fic for the 2024 Klaine December Fanworks Challenge, which I did finish! Blaine is living in the kingdom of Daltonia, and Kurt is stranded in this place, so Blaine tries to help him get home.... to another world. I had a lot of fun, especially since I stopped Ljubili se for it, and it reminded how much I love writing Klaine. I also liked my world building here. I just think it is neat. I really enjoyed this one. I think I left some things open, since I didn't have room for more, but December was Ever After thought almost 24/7.

And now, the weather: @quizasvivamos @coffeegleek @caramelcoffeeaddict @raenestee @tectonicduck 

@nightimedreamersworld @urban-sith @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @bookish-bogwitch @confused-bi-queer

@special-bc-ur-part-of-it @larkral @cutestkilla​ @wellbelesbian​

@artsyunderstudy​ @facewithoutheart​ @shrekgogurt @rockitmans @bitbybitwrites 

@whatevertheweather @shame-is-a-wasted-emotion @esilher @kurtsascot @blackberrysummerblog 

@nightimedreamersghost @ivelovedhimthroughworse @thnxforknowingme @martsonmars

[hooked-on-elvis]

"He never used his star power — never. Maybe he should have."

Actress Millie Perkins on working with Elvis Presley

Millie Perkins (87 years old) was born in May 12, 1936 in Passaic, New Jersey. Perkins is now retired from working in film and television besides a modelling career as well. After playing the title role in the 1959 movie "THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK", "WILD IN THE COUNTRY" (1961) was Millie Perkins's second movie. She was just about Elvis' own age when they worked together. The filming for Wild In The Country took place between November 1960 and January 1961. Millie was a 24-year-old actress and Elvis turned 26 by the time the movie principal photography was finished in January 1961. In a 1990 interview she talked a bit about her impressions on Elvis Presley while working with him in the early 60s:

"Elvis turned out to be someone I liked very much. I felt there was a man with a heart and soul there who truly cared about people. Certainly he treated me as if he cared about me; there was a mutual respect between us. But his life was on a level that my life was not on. I was married to Dean Stockwell at the time, and he was — I felt like he was drifting. The guys were on the set every day, you know, wrestling on the floor. I didn’t even know what girls he was dating at the time, because it didn’t interest me, his personal life seemed so silly. And yet I knew he was a victim of it. I felt like Philip Dunne [Wild In The Country's director] fawned all over Elvis. Elvis’ attitude was — I saw Elvis looking around that set and summing up people faster than anyone else could have, and I felt that after a short period of time he was disappointed in Philip Dunne, but he was too polite and well behaved to say anything. He tried very hard to make this film better than his other movies, and you saw him trying and asking questions. And I just believe the sad thing is that [the director] did not have the ability to help Elvis through it. I remember doing this one scene; we were sitting in the truck, and we were supposed to be driving home from a dance or going to a dance, and in the script he was supposed to break into song, turn on the radio and start singing. And to me it was like, "Yuck," I was very young, and I thought, "My sisters are going to tease me, this is so embarrassing and tasteless." You see, I was a snob, too. But — and this was the nicest thing — while we were rehearsing, finally the director walked away, and Elvis looks at me and says, "God, this is so embarrassing. Nobody would ever do this in real life. Why are they making me do this?" So there we were, both of us having to do something and we just wanted to vomit. He never used his star power — never. Maybe he should have. Maybe he did it on some other level, but he sure didn’t do it on the set. I felt like he was younger than me, this very humble person who would make statements about what he believed in. And I would think, "He’s saying that to show me he’s a fine human being." All I know is that there was a person there with a refined heart and soul, and I say refined on any level you want to look at it. When you meet someone like that, you know they’re there, even if they’re sitting there eating fifteen lollipops — that’s beside the point. That’s just what they’re doing at that time, but that’s not the essence of the person. The essence of Elvis was as fine a person as I’ve ever met; he treated me as well as anyone has ever treated me in this business."

— Millie Perkins (Betty Lee Parsons in Wild In The Country) about working with Elvis Presley. This 1990's interview excerpt was taken from the book in which it was quoted, "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley" by Peter Guralnick (1998).

Millie Perkins as Betty Lee Parsons and Elvis Presley as Glenn Tyler in Wild In The Country (1961)

Millie Perkins as Anne Frank in George Stevens' "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959).

[yoonia]

Writing Update: 06.05.2024

It's time for my regular update report drop to let you know that I'm still alive! Below are the fics that I've been working on and will be releasing (hopefully this month):

Bedroom Hymns (myg x reader) ⏤ this month's target/estimated word count: chapter(s) 18, 19, 20; 16k words total ⏤ progress written: 6,4k words of the total word count goal (first draft writing) I keep jumping between scenes, so even if I'm close to finishing chapter 18 at the moment, I'm not sure if I'll be posting it soon since I've been moving to other scenes/chapters between writing this part. These next few chapters are going to be so much fun to read. I promise :)

Ever a Never After (jjk x reader; ksj x reader)  ⏤ this week's target/estimated word count: act 1; 12k words ⏤ progress written: 6,2k words (final draft writing) I switched my writing process with this one by finalising a scene before moving onto the next since I wanted to have an opening scene/prologue that is fun for everyone to read. I'm also using a couple of beta readers to help me work on this one which is why the process takes a bit longer than usual

Hot Mess (kth x reader) ⏤ estimated word count: 6-7k words ⏤ progress written: 2,5k words (first-second draft writing) Why did the number decrease, you ask? Because I've been re-writing it from the start lol. I actually finished this fic a while ago after sharing the progress back in January, but I didn't like the story flow and how everything went. So I scrapped everything and started over when I opened the draft again a couple of days ago. I'm pretty sure I can finish this one nicely this time

I'm going to continue working on these fics with the hope of dropping something new this week. See you then.

note | If you’re interested in being added into my permanent taglist, please enter your url on this link or if you want to be tagged for EANA, drop your url here. If you only want to be added on a specific update, please add your url and the fic you’re looking for in the replies below, and remember to make sure that your url can be easily found/tagged. You can also subscribe to my Patreon to gain access to my writing journal and watch my daily writing process.

xoxo, Dia

[hardtofindneuro]

hello friends, i am here to follow scoops’ idea, and other writers, in ranking my own fics from least favorite to my absolute favorite. sex-mas isn’t in here because shiv and i co-wrote it, but go check it out!

i’ve also been writing a lot behind the scenes. i have so many wips in progress but im excited to share those with y’all in 2025!! also just so everyone knows, im so shook by how much i wrote this year?? didn’t i take a break? like multiple breaks? how did i write 20 fics, plus literally 19 wips? i don’t know. i really don’t. so sorry this is long!!

in last place, 20th: wrong costume. i actually had fun writing this fic! it was just like, a little insane and i was laughing the entire time i wrote it. definitely just a fun little thing i wrote for halloween season while learning to love writing again.

19th: a new meaning to halloween. this was cute! i had fun writing this one too, but it was just a short thing i ended up throwing together for halloween again. i don’t dislike it at all, actually i really like it, but i wrote so many fics this year that were very meaningful to me so that’s why this is at the caboose. dnf mpreg and gender reveals are always fun to write though.

18th: teach me. listen, i know a lot of people loved this fic and it has a special place in my heart, but it’s not my favorite. i was pushing myself to write it and post it while going through some stuff, and my writing has changed a lot since then. this fic was based on a real life excel sheet shiver shared with me that she was sending tinder men, btw. yes, you read that correctly. shiver canon.

17th: take control. this was just fun to write inspired by dnf being in minecraft lol. this was the first time since like, january, that i wrote smut and it wasn’t so extremely painful. it was finally fun again to write it and i wasn’t having to push myself to do it.

16th: gift a kiss. dream’s birthday fic. i wrote this super last minute but it was still really fun to write!

15th: first times. another one i liked writing, inspired by the hurricane. i wrote this so fast it’s a little ridiculous tbh but i like the final version i posted. i loved watching dream’s hurricane stream lol

14th: same day, different george. this was cute and i enjoyed writing something for the little anniversary. can’t believe george has been in florida this long already!

13th: fear. this fic has a special place in my heart. it was personal in a way that most things aren’t for me, and i was terrified to post it so i kept it off twitter & whatnot but im proud of how it came out in the end.

12th: life is a hardship. another one that was really personal and close to the heart. learning a lot about self care and love this year, and i know these types of fics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but those who do like them seem to relate and find comfort in them which means a lot.

11th: it’s just hair. idk why i enjoyed this one so much. i think i just liked writing the dnf dynamic in this one and playing around with the idea of dream’s haircut to cope with the loss of curls, however i do like his hair now lol. it was just a shock before

10th: embrace the differences. this fic was just so out of my comfort zone i can’t believe i even got this idea out of the “idea” phase lol. it was a bit hard for me to finish but once i got into the groove, it was cool to play with it. i almost always write canon divergent so this was completely different and i’d love to try something like it again!

9th: it’s not a wedding. i don’t know why this was so hard to write but this took me so, so long but the end product was something i enjoyed. definitely fun to get started and i was glad to persevere on it, even though i was frustrated at the end.

8th: drowning. i just hold this this fic close to my heart. it was the first thing i wrote in second pov and again, not everyone’s taste, but something about writing in second pov makes it feel more personal to me and it was nice to switch it up. at this point, i was very unmotivated and the pov change made writing something i wanted to do again.

7th: label-less. not tons of aroace representation in fics so i thought it would be nice to give it some rep, especially because we all kind of have different views and experiences with it. i’m pretty open about my sexuality here but this was the first time i really wrote about it and it just kind of felt freeing, and during pride month!

6th: love big, love easy. hurt my heart in the way i love when angst hurts my heart to write. got to bring in old lore and stuff to play around.

5th: football BINGO. this was inspired by a tweet and that tik tok trend going around. top tier excitement and joy when writing this, just complete fluff which isn’t usual for me but i enjoyed this one for sure!

4th: going through the motions. this was the first thing i wrote and posted after all the drama in january, and march. it was also the first thing i really wrote and posted that was so personal, which was terrifying, but everyone was extremely kind to me about it and im proud that i took the risk to post it.

3rd: comeback, baby. literally so much fun to write. i had started this a million years ago and then george’s birthday stream ended up being so dnf insane that i ended up speedrunning the last 10k of it in less than a day. awesome stream and dream is insane for saying he was going to impregnate george. that’s all.

2nd: erase. this fic is just so personal and so different from my usual stuff. it’s not something many people read and that’s totally okay, but the people that did read it seemed to really be impacted by it and that’s all i could ever ask when anyone reads my fics. especially ones like this one.

and at number 1, surprise (not), is love you always. as many of you know, i decided to post this fic after my grandfather passed. this fic means the world to me and i recently just lost my grandma as well. i’m really hard on myself about pretty much everything but im truly proud of this fic. everything about posting this sucked and it really fucked me up, but it was worth the impact it made on others & how proud i am of it.

[myloveforhergoeson]

ash's january 2025 reading round up

find all the books and fics i read (or didn't read...) this month under the cut with a link to the synopsis and my reviews/ratings attached :)

this is just for fun! i'm not a professional, i just like to read <3

booklist:

a trilogy this time... but i only finished two of them this month. need everyone to be ok w some things rq...

The Fine Print by Lauren Asher

review: LISTEN i need a billionaire romance every now and then OKAY... this one in particular is insane though bc laruen asher clearly wanted to fuck walt disney and im so enthralled by her passion on this subject and how she ended up turning it into an entire book series. scene set: three brothers, evil alcoholic dad, newly dead grandfather who founded the kane coroporation - this universe's version of the disney company. streaming service, theme parks, movies and all. to cut their father out of the company these three brothers must complete the tasks in their grandfather's will to collectively earn more stock shares and oust their father from control. awesome. first book is about the youngest sibling, rowan, hardened by the rigid lines of toxic masculinity who is forced to go back to his creative and artistic roots to overhaul an old section of the park/spruce it into something new. on day one of this journey he runs into a spunky wannabe imagineer, zahra who spouts off all these criticisms of the company she works for and instantly he's attracted to her. which is so crazy. a unique story concept in the theme park i'll give her that. but the story was really choppy at parts. cringe dialogue. tongues battling for dominance. the best part was the way she radicalized him into like doubling employee wage and giving them all like the best tier of healthcare possible! go girl! help your fellow workers! kind of the epitome of the coolest chick you've ever met and she's just dating Some Guy. this time he just happened to be rich

rating: 3/5 times i thought "wow the author wants to be zahra so fucking bad:

Terms and Conditions by Lauren Asher

review: told you there were three! so obviously i had to read the second. oldest brother, declan, slated company CEO once the tasks from the will are complete. notable for being a huge dick, heart of ice, america's most eligible bachelor who wants nothing to do with anything besides business. so of course his task from his GRANDFATHER'S WILL is to marry a woman and have a kid with her. i was crying! so fucking funny! only getting laid because of your fucking grandpa! anyway. he and his assistant, iris, end up entering a marriage of convenience contract and. yall might kill me but this is one of my fav tropes ever sue me! but this is my book review so. i loved this one. declan and iris were so enjoyable to learn more about and see their relationship develop. the pacing wasn't as awkward as the first book and these two already had a working relationship prior to their story actually unfolding which helped very much. i'm so obsessed with iris, woman of all time, and how she was - even as his assistant - always on his same level. reading him finally fucking realizing that and trying to make up for all is previous wrongdoings > love it when a man has to repent. and it certainly doesn't hurt when he's filthy fucking rich. anyway. lovedd this one had all my fav things in it. and the ending did make me cry even if i hate to admit it.

rating 4/5 times i would have added distributing the wealth to charity on their marriage contract rules

fic list:

assorted works by @naquey / @allthistrashtalkmakemeitchin

Decdonna 1

Who Invited You?

Totally Just Directions

Cig

Homesick

Things You Like

JANUARY. THE MONTH OF DECDONNA..... oh my friend. i love your creative mind and how you weave all of your stories together.... donna is everything to me! getting to see her story unfold through these one-shots was such a pleasure. and THEN! she loves DECLAN? my DECLAN? im screaming. the way your write them is everything to me. knowing my work inspired others... i can't even begin to describe the feeling <3 AND THINGS YOU LIKE...... i can't believe i harped on about my billionaire romances you wrote me my own featuring james and roxy to help me out of my slump. i do not deserve you my friend... i simply don't <3

2. assorted works of @icegirl2772

Take A Shot In The Dark Ch. 18

RAHHHHH!!!!!!! first of all your work always leaves me speechless. it's so masterfully done, and i can tell just how much effort goes into each any every line but this chapter..... oh my god. even with the ending which had me HOLLERING.... btw........ each chapter makes me fall more and more in love with kaelyn and how her relationship with james keeps developing <333 so excited to see what comes next for those two!!!!!!!!

[chattercap]

Monthly Update: February 2025

Hello everyone, happy February!

I hope that everyone had a good start to the year! January ran past 💦 but I got quite a bit done this month!

What did I do last month?

My main project for the month was My Husband is a Stranger, and I got a bit done for it! I worked on the backgrounds and CGs, and I also finished the promo art and started putting together the Steam and itch pages. Lastly, I gave the demo script a final run-through for edits. For other projects, I received the final retakes for Hanasu, so all of the voice acting for the game is finalized!

However, most of the work that I did this month was actually… commissioning artists!

If you're familiar with me, you know that I do a lot of things solo. Part of it is because I like having a lot of creative control 😂 but after some reflection, I realized that part of it is also fear - fear that my projects aren't good enough, that people won't enjoy them, and if that's the case then at the very least I only want to waste my own time working on them 😂 And, of course, there's the financial consideration too; I don't have the confidence that I would be able to make much of the money back if I did invest a significant amount of money into my games. So I spent a long time just tinkering at things on my own, thinking "when I can finally make good games, then I'll look into hiring someone."

But that kind of mindset is no good, is it? 😂 You've gotta have some confidence in yourself!

After reviewing my project list for the year (and also coming up with yet another project that I want to tackle), I thought that 😅 unless I somehow doubled the hours I had in a day, I definitely wouldn't be able to finish them all. So I decided to take the plunge and set aside some money to put into my dev efforts this year. I spent most of my time this month researching freelancers, budgeting, writing up contracts, and preparing info for commissions.

First, I commissioned character designs, which is the first time I've done so! I always struggle with coming up with interesting designs 😅 and there are a couple projects that I'd like to work on later in the year with a simpler, more cartoony style. One is a project I'm calling Project S (a zombie murder mystery romcom) and another is Project C (time travel tragicomedy). I received the designs and I was EXTREMELY happy with them!

For GUI, I've commissioned artists for the Karamu trilogy, Project R, Project S, and Project C. I'm also in discussions for GUI for Actala and Project Y.

I've also started working with a background artist for Project R (as well as some extraneous backgrounds for My Husband is a Stranger), and I'm in discussions for backgrounds for Hanasu, Actala, and Project Y. Lastly, I commissioned the logo for Project S!

So lots of things went on behind the scenes this month! Hopefully this will make the dev process go a bit smoother, so that I'm able to release more games this year!

What will I do next month?

Next month, I'll be focusing on revisiting the code for My Husband is a Stranger, as well as finishing up the art assets for the demo. I'll also be working a bit on art assets for Project R (and possibly Project S) so that the GUI artists have something to work off of!

Thank you to everyone who's following along, and see you next month!

Chattercap

[mysticsparklewings]

Ohuhu Palette Generator

----------

Hey look, I am actually capable of finishing & posting something!

What can I say? Life was just too chaotic the past couple of months and something had to give. Art posts were unfortunately the easiest thing to cut. 😅 

Anyway. I have managed to chip away at a few projects in between other things, and this in particular was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision I spent most of January working on: A very basic website where you click a button (or two) and get a random assortment of Ohuhu marker colors to then use however you see fit! ✨

If you are interested in listening to me ramble about how exactly we got here, that's what the "Keep Reading" button is there for. 😉

Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

----------

Well Sparklers, this is certainly not how I expected to start off 2025 (nor did I plan to end 2024 as silently as I did as far as art posts go), but here we are! 🤗

Quick Recap: I made a very bare-bones website that will generate palettes of randomly selected Ohuhu markers colors for you!

I've probably said this somewhere before, but it bears repeating: I've been slowly but surely chipping away at various projects behind the scenes, a couple of the bigger more involved ones being related to yes, Ohuhu markers. [And for the record, no I really didn't forget about OhuHueVember, this past November just turned out to be one of the most chaotic and busiest of my entire life, and unfortunately putting art posts on Pause was what made the most sense at the time, and then December was just naturally busy what with Christmas and Family and all.]

A few days into the New Year, while I was taking a break and scrolling social media, since I am pretty deep into the wider Ohuhu Community at this point, I saw a kind of post that I've seen a few times before: Someone asking about generating color palettes of Ohuhu markers for coloring (as in adult coloring books). Usually, the "answer" to this is to use an existing color palette generator (of which there are many) and just manually match your markers to the colors, but that's not usually as easy of a solution as people are looking for.

I think there's at least one generator out there that can tell you Copic marker (and maybe Prismacolor pencil?) matches for the colors it generates, but it hasn't quite caught up with the boom in popularity that Ohuhu has had, so instead of matching to the color itself, you'd just be trying to match to the Copic color instead, which I would argue might actually be harder to do, even with some community resources that are out there.

The point is I know in the Coloring Community, people tend to like easy solutions and there really wasn't one for this specific problem. And I've known this for a while—since the first time I saw a post asking for something like that, which was many, many months ago (maybe even a year or more), but yet for some reason this most recent, totally inconspicuous post sighting was the straw the broke the camel's back and made me finally snap:

Surely there has to be something out there were you can put in a custom list of colors and it'll randomly spit like 5 of those colors back out at you. There are all kinds of random generator tools out there, surely at least one could do something like that, couldn't it?

So down the rabbit hole I went.

There wasn't a terribly straight line that lead me here and I went back and forth to a few things a few times, so I'll just give you a list of the highlights that had the most influence in how we got to this point:

I tried just about every keyword combination I could think of for "custom palette generator," "make your own palette generator," "make random color palettes," "color randomizer," etc. Even if it wasn't terribly fancy and the absolutely barest of bones of the concept I described. No real luck there, but it's very possible I just totally missed something.

I eventually checked Flippity.net because I love their Flippity Manipulatives tool (for digital Mini-Magnets), and their "Flippity Randomizer" would have worked except it has a very strong default color palette for what the final randomizer looks like. While it still would have been totally functional otherwise, I know the strong color mistmatch could very well be a dealbreaker for some people to not want to use it at all. (And, to be fair, the final Flippity links tend to be...long and suspicious looking if you've never seen one before.) You can use images with the Flippity Randomizer, but the thought of having to make 300+ separate small image files that would also need to include the color names and numbers directly in the image and then also put them in order in a Google Sheet sounded torturously tedious (even for me), so I filed that idea away as "Plan C" and kept looking.

Flippity did give me the idea to try looking for more generalized randomizers that could be re-purposed for what I wanted since theirs' was originally for making sentences. Through that, I finally stumbled upon perchance.org

Perchance all by itself was a big step in the right direction because it's entire purchase is making your own generators and you can use existing Perchance generators as a starting point to make new ones.

So imagine my delight to learn that there have been a few color generators already made with Perchance, and buried among them even a couple of Ohuhu ones!! 😃

But you'll notice my final generator isn't running through Perchance. Suffice to say, I know just enough about coding to be a menace, but not enough that I could truly say I ever really "know" what the heck I'm doing. My "coding experience" consists of:

Messing around with CSS and Journal Skins on deviantArt, back before the Eclipse update when those were still Things™

Many half-hearted attempts to make a Blogger blog, all of which were eventually deleted and lost to time

Creating and Maintaining Fandom Wiki pages (and, within the last couple of years, a whole Wiki for my own personal use)

Relatedly, I briefly tried messing around with some code on Toyhou.se but that ended up going nowhere

Playing with a premade theme here on Tumblr to make my page look nicer

And anyone with real coding experience might gather from that list that I certainly don't have the skills to build anything from scratch, but I can generally fumble around with existing code and figure out how to change things to make the end result look the way I want. So, as I said: I know just enough to be a menace.

This means that I started off by spending a lot of time hopping back and forth between different palette generators that had already been made with Perchance and Google while trying to combine various elements I liked in a way that ran smoothly...and also trying to not "break" anything so it would run at all.

I kept hitting walls with Perchance because, as I eventually figured out, I kept finding solutions and suggestions that were for "regular" HTML coding, not Perchance's specific variety.

After some Googling, this led me to move over to Glitch.com so that I could use regular HTML code but also still see the "live" results alongside the code, which was something I really liked about Perchance (and was familiar to me from Tumblr themes).

I also thought I'd end up making posting the final site through Glitch too, but we'll get to why that didn't happen in a bit.

The primary culprit that had me switch from Perchance to Glitch was the fact that I realized the code would be so much longer and probably what would be considered "messier," and I would guess more difficult to update at a moment's notice if I had to manually type 300+ color number codes, names, and hastily-selected hex codes (just to have a visual representation of the color) in there, let alone if I decided to basically do that twice to cover both the Honolulu and Oahu lines.

I keep a few different spreadsheets for Ohuhu markers already, so I wondered if there was a way to get the code to reference something like that instead to keep the code itself "cleaner" and maybe make edits/additions to the color list easier in the long-term. And lo and behold—There is! You can, apparently, paste in "CSV" Google Sheets links in a specific way into the code and it'll look at those instead of having to type everything directly into the code itself. I did have to make three separate spreadsheets—One for Honolulu, one for Oahu, and one for Kaala—but I was able to copy and paste a lot of the information I already had in my other spreadsheets into those, so overall that was still way easier than the alternative! The catch is that, as I alluded to, there might be a way to do that using Perchance, but the results I was finding were all for regular HTML code and I really did not feel like chasing down Perchance-specific instructions. So to Glitch I went.

Moving to Glitch did have the additional bonus of me being able to paste in the widget for my Ko-fi Page, which I only thought to do because I got a Ko-fi notification in the middle of working on the code and while I was checking that, I remembered: "Hey doesn't Ko-fi have like an HTML thingy you can put on your website?" [They have two, actually!] Anyway. I got what I'd already been working on moved over to Glitch, which was most of the basic set up for the page; I was just using a placeholder list of colors from OhuHueVember so I could get the Categories and page layout taken care of first. Then I did kinda the same thing—I set up the basis for the spreadsheets I'd need using the OhuHueVember list as placeholders since I already had hex codes picked out for them and wanted to make sure the whole spreadsheet thing was actually going to work before I went any farther.

Once I did verify that method was working, I got to take a very tedious detour and actually fill out the spreadsheets with the proper information. As I said, I was able to paste in a lot of what I needed from my other spreadsheets—The number codes and names for all the colors—but it was that last piece of information I needed for each color that ended up taking the longest: The hex codes. Since I wanted to have this thing at least functional sooner rather than later, I did not have time to go through and meticulously curate matching hex codes for each color like I did for OhuHueVember, and technically I couldn't have done that even if I wanted to for the Oahu and Kaala lines since my collection is all Honolulu. So I relied mostly on quick eyedropper color-picking from swatch photos from my collection and photos/images online for the rest.

From that, I know a lot of the hex codes are not good matches, but again: The point was to get everything functional first. Especially since I was able to switch to using spreadsheets to store the information, I can always (and intend to!) go back and update the hex codes to better matches later on.

Still: Once I got all the hex codes filled out, the most basic version of the generator was in fact functional! 🎉

That by itself was super exciting and I had to spend several minutes generating palettes just because I could now...But me being me, and not always knowing when to quit when I'm excited about a project...I wanted to do more, especially now that I was working in regular HTML coding.

So I spent the next couple of days trying to figure out how to add a Filter so people could narrow down the types of palettes a little more. My very first thought was Pastel, since I know soft/pastel palettes tend to be kind of popular in coloring communities, and then I figured if I was going to do Pastel, why not include bright "Vivid" pastels and dark "Moody" ones, too? [And a little later on I ended up adding a "Neutral" filter for greys + earth tones too, just because I could.]

Getting the little dropdown button in there for the Filter wasn't actually that bad, but getting it to actually filter like it was supposed to was another story. I lost count of how many times I accidentally broke the whole generate (mostly buttons not working like they should) while trying to get the filter to cooperate with me. 🫠

I did eventually....mostly get both the filters and the marker line buttons to work at the same time after enough trial and error, though.

And originally, this was the point in the story where I had to explain that I did run into issues with having "Kaala" + "Similiar Colors" in the dropdown selected at the same time causing the generator to freeze up about 7 out of 10 times, even though everything else was working fine, and I couldn't figure out how to fix it to save my life. 🙃

But! Shortly after I started writing this description I took a procrastination break and I went back in to try and clean up some of my notes I'd left in the code to tell the different sections apart...And I couldn't help myself. I had the code in front of me, so I started fiddling with it again.

Finally I hit the right keyword search I needed and was able to find a solution that actually worked and I could mostly just copy and paste in without breaking anything else in the process! 🙌

As I had suspected, the problem mostly stemmed from the fact that there are just a lot less Kaala colors to pick from—150, vs. the over 300 for either Oahu or Honolulu. So sometimes the generator would try to pull 3-8 "Similar Colors" and it just...couldn't because there weren't 3-8 colors that fit the "Similar" range it was calling for.

So I put in a few lines that basically force it to just use whatever colors are available even if it's not the intended 3-8...This does mean (as noted in the preview image and on the site itself) now you'll sometimes get just 1-2 colors with that specific combination (Kaala + "Similar Colors") but I think that works a whole lot better than the entire page bugging out.

But so, okay! Generator is (mostly) working as intended and I even added some extra things I hadn't originally planned on—I even got really crazy and tried adding some SEO things to the code because I found a template and you hear so much about how important that is now [I can't tell if it's really working or not, but it's in there)—Great! But there was one last thing that was bothering me...

Glitch has a limit of 1000 active hours per month on a project, and that includes both hours I spend editing the code and time people spend actually using it. Logically, do I really think I need to be worried that my very basic site that will only appeal to a very niche community within a niche community will come anywhere close to actually hitting 1000 hours of activity in a month? No.

But I also know this is the internet and sometimes you post things and they get way more attention than you expect (as sort of became the case with Ohuhu markers themselves), and to be fair I have no statistics whatsoever on the kind of time people usually spend on palette websites, so I really have no way to know if 1000 active hours is even an unrealistic expectation or not, in either direction.

Between that and past experiences with "Oh, I'll worry about that limitation later when it actually proves to be a problem," I decided to look into other options that wouldn't be limited by hours, and after a cursory look around, GitHub is probably way more complicated than what I really need, but it felt like the obvious choice. At least I'd actually heard of it before!

I can't edit the code "in real time" like I can with Glitch (at least not without signing up for a subscription, I don't think), but so far I can still edit in Glitch and just copy & paste the updated code into GitHub, so that'll work for me. And it might be for the better anyway since that's another layer between my trial-and-error editing and the final site, so if I go back and try to change or add to the site in the future (which I very well might) and I accidentally break more things, it won't effect the "live" site people are actually using. 😅

I must admit I kind of want to keep toying with the site to see just how far I can push it...And it's given me some ideas for other projects, too, but I have to draw the line in the sand somewhere so people can actually use it and it's not just a private project I tinker with sometimes for all eternity 😆 😊

At least I did accomplish what I originally set out to do + a few extra things, so I don't feel like it's really "missing" anything and it should be plenty usable even if it's not totally perfect. (And I'm speaking mostly of the imperfect hex codes when I say that, for the record.)

Like I said at the beginning: This is definitely not how I expected to start the year off, but I'm really happy with the end result and I'm cautiously optimistic about where/how things might go from here.

In any case, I hope any of your Sparklers that chose to try it out like/enjoy the generator too...Or at least that you got some enjoyment out of my rambling about it here. 😆 (Which I'm assuming you have if you managed to get this far....)

The Ko-fi widget is there on the final site, but I would like to get better at promoting myself and my work so it bears repeating: If you do like the generator and feel like sending a little monetary support my way, my Ko-fi Page has a few different ways you can do that. And if it means anything to anyone: My Ko-fi Supporters got a little early preview of the generator before today and if I add anything to it in the future, they'll probably get an early look at that too. 😉

I think that's going to do it for me here today, though. It's been a while since I made a "big" public post so I have to go get re-acquainted with my cross-posting process...Which I'm not really looking forward to, but oh well—has to be done!

I look forward to seeing you Sparklers again (hopefully) very soon...! 👋

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Website created by me, MysticSparklewings

The Generator/Website is not officially affiliated with or sponsored by Ohuhu

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

2023, it cannot be overstated, was a terrible year for me. We started out strong with an episode of True Love that turned out in fact to be entirely false and not reciprocated. (I've got over that, finally, but it was awkward... I posted about it a bit at the time, along with a lot of what I'm about to tell you.) Anyway, I also basically didn't eat for two weeks in January: only partially related to that. February was even more terrible, but with one bright spot: the terribleness pushed me to finally seek professional help for my longstanding anorexia. I was finally going to choose to recover and it would never bother me again.

Haha anyway I was also severely depressed and anxious so that happened. I had a good solid try at recovery and it seemed like it was going pretty well for a while, yay. Went back to uni after a year out, in the middle of the year. Ended up living with my brother 'just for the semester and after that you've got to find your own accommodation' (I'm still at his place). Anyway things got real bad and I honestly can't remember most of that patch, but I can still see the scars.

Anyway. You're probably wondering why I'm saying this stuff. In November, December, I can't remember precisely when, the Inklings Christmas challenge got posted.

Severely depressed, barely doing anything, only surviving and waiting for things to get better while doctors assessed me to figure out what was going on behind the major depressive disorder (spoiler: undiagnosed ASD), I said, well, why not. I still had remnants of my previous overachieving nature, so why not write something for all twelve days of Christmas, not just a single short story or scene? And I dug back in my memory for the fragments of a plot I worked out when I was twelve years old, remembered the characters, remembered that the main character was one I'd internally laughed about accidentally making autistic in the past.

So I went, what if I just pretend that the story I'd imagined was five years earlier, pretend that the novel I had never written was actually written, and write a slice-of-life sequel to it, featuring the same characters? I remember going to a session with my psych at the time and telling her about this story, but vaguely and quickly, because we were going to run out of time. I talked like I intended to and expected to finish it, but internally, I was going: I will not finish it. I've already proven that I cannot stick to things. (I have a lot of fragments of writing from that year which I will likely never finish, and which had no deeper structure than whatever occurred to my medication addled brain.)

And I went, what should I name this story? It's got to have the word Patience in there, because her name is Patience and it amuses me and amusement is running real freaking thin at the moment. I tried out several titles, none of which I can remember, and none of them suited. At last, because the word hope had been rotating within my brain for so long, I picked The Patience of Hope, and I drew graphics and titled all the chapters and did research to title them and I can't remember any of it anymore so I don't know why I gave them the titles I did.

I think I scheduled about chapter three before chapter one dropped on Christmas Day. I remember there being author's notes that at least hinted that I'd entirely pre-written it, because I'd intended to do so, when I wrote the author's note for the very first chapter. But most of them I wrote on the day they were supposed to drop.

I don't think anyone read it at the time; I certainly don't remember such a thing happening, though after it was completed people did read it, and do still. (It's still on my website, and also on my ao3 under the title mentioned above.) But I wrote it, this silly little thing that spawned a whole character and series of novellas I haven't finished yet. More than one character, actually; one of the main characters is Nathan, who didn't exist in my original concept at all. And another character mentioned is Hannah, her aunt, whose storyline is deeply personal to me.

I can't remember how long it is. The writing is at times very bad and the storyline vague and choppy. I had no true plans when I started writing that story: not even to finish it. It does qualify as a novella for length, but I forget where in that wide range it comes in. But I finished it.

That... meant the world to me, actually, in the state I was in. I finished it in January, and two weeks later I was being very seriously told by my doctor that if anything got any worse, in any way, I was to immediately present to emergency and request/demand admission. They didn't; I was prescribed medication that, this time, actually helped to manage the whole crisis thing going on, and I haven't been that close to an admission since (nor needed to be, not really).

So The Patience of Hope is very special to me, as you can see, because I completed it at a time I felt so strongly that I couldn't complete anything except - well, I don't suppose I have to elaborate. It's a fun, fluffy little story with underlying angst and stress and grief but above it all, it's cheerful. A romance begins, which surprised me, because I was literally just writing whatever came into my head, and apparently what came into my head was a character who hadn't been previously mentioned or thought of, asking Patience out on a date.

And the way Nathan accepts and understands and loves Patience for herself and not for what he hopes that she will be (if my phrasing seems odd, it's a Carpenters reference - "Love Me For What I Am") was healing to write. The entire story was written between when I started being assessed for ASD and when I was officially diagnosed, and I can really really see in Patience's words what I felt and still do sometimes feel - the hesitation and uncertainty and distrust of oneself. She was the first character I ever wrote who was stated to be autistic, though I'd written ones before deliberately making them autistic in my head, but they never said they were autistic on the page.

I don't remember the timeframe of the next bit, but there was a writing challenge to write a novel from start to finish in - six months, I think? It was a while. - and I saw it and went, oh, I could go back and write the novel about Patience that I first conceptualised.

Which I did, over the next few months. From start to finish, that draft is eighty-four thousand words in its current, unedited form, and I expect it to end up somewhere between eighty and ninety thousand - I always edit down on a sentence level, and up on a scene and chapter level, so it tends to balance out somewhat. Especially the earlier sections, it's pretty sparse before I hit my stride, and I also struggled to finish it in a way that felt satisfying to me, and I need to build up the community aspect more - and introduce her aunt Hannah more throughout.

What's the novel about, you may ask? And don't ask for the title, because I made a working title, and I haven't figured out a proper replacement yet. The novel is about Patience at a younger age, I forget what; early teens, I think, self-isolating and shy and scared and very very rigid. (It's a lot of fun comparing the Patience of this novel to the much more relaxed, but still characteristic Patience of The Patience of Hope five or seven years later. She's the same person, only grown up rather, and in a very positive way.)

In a mechanism I haven't yet worked out properly and will definitely be rewriting, she unexpectedly gains an adoptive sister, Rhona - named after a tea cosy in a pattern book I used when I was eleven or twelve to knit an atrocious and very wonky stuffed dog. Anyway, Rhona is a bit younger, a bit more extroverted, a bit prettier and a bit more new and exciting. And a bit disruptive to Patience's neatly ordered life.

Cue emotional explosions I'd compare to Holly and Lucy in Lockwood and Co., and say it was based on that, if I'd read that before I planned this book out. Rhona is doing her best to fit in to the family, but she's also showing up Patience's inability to fit in, so there's insecurity tying in to it.

Patience spends most of the book hating her with a passion of greater or lesser intensity despite everything Rhona tries to do to bridge the gap. And then, in a move unrepentantly stolen from Jean Webster's Dear Enemy, the house burns down. Oh, the horror! Oh, the shock! Oh, the fact that Patience was the only one within range of Rhona and had to drag her out! Oh, the hospital whump afterwards! *coughs* Forget I said that last one. Anyway Rhona gets off pretty lightly, while Patience... does not get off so lightly. She spends a while in hospital, but luckily, the combination of everything brings her and Rhona together finally, and they all live happily ever after.

Well, that's what the original plan said, anyway. Back when I was twelve and didn't know interpersonal dynamics.

While it's true that the house burning down and everything associated with that does help Patience and Rhona to get along better, that's not the end of the book. The house burns down at the turn between parts two and three, fifty-three thousand words in. Any mathematicians reading this will observe there are still thirty thousand words to go. There are nine chapters in each part.

The last three chapters total fifteen thousand words between them. My original plan calls for three thousand word chapters. Again, the mathematicians are going to observe that this doesn't add up. These chapters average out five thousand words each.

That's because I really wanted to mention one specific character earlier in the novel, who gets a passing and no longer timeline compliant mention in The Patience of Hope. Patience's aunt Hannah, who, yes, I named after myself, and who also struggles with anorexia nervosa.

Chapter twenty-five is titled, "A Will to Live". Originally intended to be about Patience's depression following her discharge from hospital after the house burned down, and then regaining her mental equilibrium, it became a bitter sarcasm that hurt every time I re-read the title while I was drafting it.

(I did cry quite a bit about this, including while actively writing. Sobbing and still writing the next sentence. I hope it comes across in the final work.)

Because Hannah does not win her battle. She is not a success story, or a happy ending, or a triumph. She dies alone in an apartment that hasn't been cleaned for weeks, fridge almost empty: two days before she's agreed to go into treatment. There are three big killers in anorexia: suicide, heart failure and malnutrition. And Hannah Shepherd dies of heart failure, leaving, as I heard in a video I strongly do not recommend, recently, "a bleeding, girl-shaped hole in her family".

It's traumatic and horrible and full of grief, but they manage somehow to go on. Patience is kept in the dark as to what's going on, at Hannah's request; she just knows that she died of some sickness. After all, she's at THE prime age to develop an eating disorder of her own, and even though you'd think someone dying would make you reconsider, unfortunately, eating disorders are mental illnesses and don't discriminate. (Besides, I wrote this story, and Karen Carpenter is a special interest of mine. Doesn't stop me relapsing.)

And then three chapters later (though, realistically, I'm going to rearrange the chapter balance to add at least one more here, since I struggled to fill a few of the chapters in terms of word count), the story's over, and everything is okay - just okay, not good, but with hope that it will be.

The first draft has been finished for - I don't know how long. Looking back to former posts makes it seem like I finished it on the last day of April last year, which would make it eight months and 21 days since I completed the draft. I think that's long enough to go back and redraft, don't you? I was working on continuing to draft Vaniah's story, but given that it's not singing to me right now, maybe I should jump in to editing this and see where I get to - I can always go back to Vaniah and Anneka instead, even though I've left them at a profoundly difficult spot. (While we're on the topic of dying from anorexia? Yeah. Except that is a story of recovery and hope.)

All that to say, you might hear more about Patience, and Rhona, and Jude, and Marcia, and Hannah, and Nathan, and everyone else that makes that story what it is, soon. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and I really do think Patience's story needs to be refined, so that eventually I can show the world. If anyone wants, I can pull out excerpts too, if I'm brave enough. Please tell me your favourite aspect of this story, whether the novel or The Patience of Hope or whatever it may be. Ask me questions. I can ramble. Please.