#knowing none of this would be in the story lol

[mouchiiarts]

1. My first ever oc was a character named Khaos. He was originally a human who was experimented on and turned into a chimera by a facility who had been advertising themselves as a medical institution who could heal miraculously disabled children/people. Khaos ran away with another girl, who'd been turned into a half snow leopard anthro and eventually they found a portal to another dimension and escaped there. Oh btw he was basically a humanoid Discord from MLP.

2. If I had to choose, it would probably be either Gaelför or Akina. They're my favorites not because of their designs, but also because of their stories.

3. Nope. I'd love to, but the ones I come across typically are outside of my budget.

4. Probably some of my older oc's! Like Angela or my Suitor Armor oc's.

5. Gaelför and Fukukochoumi Akina! Out of all of my oc's, these two are my favorites.

6. I think for the most part my oc's are decently distinct in their appearances from one another. But I can see Nunah and Angela possibly being confused for siblings or something similar?

7. Yes! Gaelför, Kirsi, and other oc's are a part of a story I'm calling "Black Snow." I plan to turn it into a webcomic, and I'm currently working on the script and official character sheets for the most important characters. Anything about them is under the "black snow" tag on my tumblr.

8. Nope. I don't RP.

9. I don't think so. All of my oc's are very near and dear to me, I couldn't possibly part with them!

10. This is just her concept art. Her final design will definitely be more complex.

11. Tia! She's my baby and I absolutely love her I don't draw her enough.

12. Lukas! He's an absolute sweetheart and he's super curious about earth and everything about it!

13. Kiora! She's a chaotic neutral tiefling bard, so she's bound to be mischievous to some degree.

14. Gaelför again lol. Although I won't reveal everything bc I want to keep some things a suprise for the comic, I'll reveal a few things. His tribe were betrayed by a village of humans, which led to the death of his parents and planted the seed of his hatred for humans.

15. Yes!

16. Mm... Probably Mitsuha? She's quite shy and nervous around people, but she has an excellent memory and loves to learn new things.

17. (I'm including some oc x canon) Chisuke x Keigo Takami, Fukukochoumi Akina x Thoma, Gaelfor x Kirsi, Tia x Fenrir, Adria x Iida, and likely more.

18. Nope!

19. Gosh, all of my oc's mean something to me. But Akina probably means the most. She's one of the oldest oc's I still have (in terms of how intact she is with her original self). Her journey of self acceptance and owning her own femininity and becoming more confident in herself after she's found friends/a place to call home means a lot to me.

20. None of my oc's really sing aside from Akina? I don't have a voice actress in mind, but she'd definitely have a very beautiful singing voice that's very strong and melidoc.

21. I don't have one!

22. Not really? I know some of my oc's will eventually get mischaracterized, but none at the moment.

23. Akina! Originally, she was a calico cat girl maneki neko, although she did sell enchanted charms and trinkets like her modern counterpart!

24. Definitely Tia! She's an absolute sweetheart and I would love to have tea with her in her cottage.

25. ... Kirsi. She's about my height (a little taller) and has short hair like me. It's not as curly as mine though! And my hair isn't white lol

26. Nope. Any and all changes I've done to my oc's have been of my own choice or for the betterment of their story.

27. Nope.

28. Chisuke or Gaelför. Chisuke because of her incredibly dangerous blood quirk, quick reflexes, and ruthlessness. Gaelför because of his strength combined with his firescales.

29. None of them would lol. Either they're too scared to, or they just don't want to.

30. Igni (Gaelför and Kirsi's adopted eldest daughter). She acts all tough and abrasive, but she would 1000% have a huge hoard of plushies

31. Tia would have a very soft cottage core theme blog. Lots of recipes, plants, and lots of nature photos. She'd probably have like a Howl's Moving Castle gifset reblogged every couple days too.

32. Gaelfor! Gaelfor 100%! Especially early chapters Gaelfor! He's a 7'9" Ddraikin who can heat up his scales to incredibly hot temperatures. Once he figures out how, he can be an incredibly ruthless hunter, who's good at tracking scents, combat, and other skills.

33. Mitsuha! She's a maneki neko yokai who's super shy, but once you get to know her, she'll be one of your closest friends.

34. Yep! Sïndri and Nyx are Gaelför and Kirsi's twin boys! I haven't drawn them yet!

35. Fenrir and Callum are brothers. Gaelför also has a sister named Ylva. Akina has her younger brother, Haitao, and her younger sister, Iyla.

36. Not yet. I have an Avatar (2009) oc I'm hoping to pair with a mutual's oc! But she hasn't had the chance to design him yet.

37. Lukas. He's a tall, lanky alien boy for a sci-fi alien story I had in mind. He's a part of a species which is mostly humanoid, but they're built for their mostly aquatic nocturnal planet.

38. Akina! She's literally a performer and her dance is used as an opening show for a specific autumn festival in Inazuma!

39. I unfortunately cannot remember his name at the moment, but he's a human who's super into the supernatural and aliens. He's Lukas' best friend and is the only human who knows Lukas is a shapeshifting alien.

40. All of them have fond memories, really! Just drawing them is enough fun for me.

41. Yes! Quite a few people have! A mutual @roxxiespirt has drawn this of my MHA oc Iron Eagle in my Mama Bird au!

42. Probably Carmen. She's a total bookworm (she's also from the unnamed alien story)

43. ... body type can kinda vary but... skinny women with a pixie cut/short hair. They are also kinda standoffish or a more tsundere archetype. I don't know why. But this has happened multiple times. Chisuke (MHA), Angela Lumonte (Spy X Family), Andromeda (BG3), Nunah (Suitor Armor), etc. I uh. Have a type I enjoy drawing apparantly.

44. I like that, to some degree, they all have one or more trait of myself. Some of them are nervous as well as confident, some show they're capable of change, and others don't. Plus their designs are all super fun to draw,

45. I have.. so many. There are so so many characters from older/abandoned stories that I no longer use. But in an older version of Black Snow (originally titled Silver Rings and Potion Bottles) Kirsi (then Kiki) had a sister,, which turned into a lot of different sisters. There was also Oliver, who was a redesigned version of Khaos to fit into the SRaPB universe. He was one of Kiki's witch friends!

46. ... yeah. I kinda enjoy traumatizing my friends with the lore I create for my oc's so I've definitely been told I'm being mean to them.

47. Sorta? They say (insert oc name) is baby but not specifically their baby if you know what I mean.

48. Fynn! He's the golden sunshine dead husband of Nunah! He was a really kind herbalist Nunah absolutely fell in love with when they first met as teens. He's... unfortunately dead. But he's a sweet lad.

49. Lukas. Or Carmen.

50. Gaelför belongs to a species/race from my original story Black Snow! They're native to the continent of Gal'ruk, and tend to stick to the northern parts of the continent, on the other side of a wall of active volcanoes called the Ignimurus! When he was about 10, he snuck away from his tribe to go and fight off the group of Seekers (Ddraikin hunters/collectors) who were camping close to them. He was quickly overpowered by the hunters, and was taken away from his tribe. He was then enslaved as an Executioner in the human city of Cal'deur for 14 years. He only managed to escape the city because of a chance escape he made one day while in the ring with a magi prisoner he was supposed to kill (Kirsi). He's not exactly what I would call a good person towards the beginning of his story. He's cruel, unkind, and only thinks for himself. It isn't until he makes a deal with Kirsi to help him get home, along with some other misadventures along the way, does he actually begin to grow and change for the better!

Some OC questions

[solarwynd]

https://x.com/slvrtre/status/1869076594905723348?t=_3v_QkwjLW24CRQiYgWHFw&s=19

I saw this and was wondering how many times These ppl or #HIM in specific lies to keep that ot7 shit forever going. First things first none of these men hold a candle against dancer jm to even comment on his dance, not even hobi because jm is way more versatile dancer than hobi, but even if I give benefit of the dought and think they were giving objective critisism Why in the world would you lie and say you were praising jimin pre-debut when the said man is right there and has known what you said about him? That too twice brother? Where's your shame? Atleast feel a little to do that when jm is right there? Although idt it was all of them so i wonder which one of them criticized him. Idt it would be yg and jk because i do remember jk's first impression of jm was that he was kinda impressed with his stunts and was even asking jm how to do it(but that was when they first met so idk again) for yg i just think he in general loves jimin's voice and dance. He does think jm can do it well so idk i just think he's been encouraged when it's needed.

Also read a comment that once taehyung said that his alarm ringtone is Army's voice or something like that and jm caught him on the spot and asked him to play the ringtone right there and taehyung admitted lying AGAIN......

I also remember this guy playing dumb as how he doesn't know how to use that mask while cooking with his Jinny's kitchen intentionally putting it over his eyes when we literally have rub BTS ep where he's used that mask perfectly fine over his mouth....like bro why even? Wanting attention of fans thinking they'd find it cute? How many times does he lie? Then every single time him presenting things the way shippers aka Tkkrs wants to and then you hear it from the other husband aka jungkook and it's a different story......IF the speculations of jennie being with them in Hawaii is true then again presenting it in how shippers wants that too during jm's album release time is fked up.

Then members say this man is most innocent what innocent when you do things with different intentions and those intentions not even being right in the first place.

I know i only pointed out just taehyung while talking about all members but i have seen incidences with him so i pointed him out. Honestly wonder how they actually treated him because from the looks of it only yg seems to be encouraging one when jm was a trainee, we know what kind of a guy jungkook was with jm lol.

Honestly who knows.

But the way that’s not even the first time Jimin has brought it up so you know it bothered him. I’ll forever find it beyond strange just how badly Jimin was up against it during his debut days. From the aversion of so many higher ups in the company down to some of the members themselves. And it’s not even like they were battling against each there for a spot on the team atp, they were all fixed and Jimin just came on later. What was there to even feel indifferent about someone that talented (and who honestly saved the group from just being a couple notches above average) was joining? Just weird ash.

I feel like Jimin is very much a “forgive but don’t forget” type of person. Maybe not so heavy on the forgive part, just moving past. Because it was extremely bold of that man to try and rewrite history that Jimin experienced personally. And ontop of that without us fully knowing the extent of how bad it was, him lying about it probably came off as trivializing or minimizing it even if he tried to pass it off as a joke.

That’s why in retrospect, I still really don’t understand how that “soulmate” narrative even stuck for as long as it has. I understand that not all relationships have a solid start and can change over time, but theirs has so many lows and never really changed for the better…And Taehyung at his core is just such a fake ass unlikable person. Just does or says whatever he feels will make he look good in a certain light. Literally everything his solos and tkkrs accuse Jimin of doing, that man is the epitome of all of it.

[ferrarifinnick]

WHO WANTS TO BE A DADDY | THE HUNGER GAMES HEADCANON

didn’t think i would, but i absolutely loved thinking about this with thg boys. we only ever really see katniss’ opinion on parenthood in the books, and it was so much fun exploring other perspectives. i’d love to hear if you agree or if this feels all wrong, because there’s no right or wrong answer really! also, i know most of you dislike gale but i really enjoyed exploring him in this lol.

CW: set post-rebellion, when life is finally peaceful and full of possibility. small couple lines at the end of each section about: how many & genders i think suits them best, and why.

includes: gale, finnick, peeta

warnings: none

gale would absolutely want to be a father, but just not for some time after the rebellion is won and over. i can see him moving back to the new district 12, building a new house for you both to live in, far away from the ruins he watched go up in flames. i think this would be his project for a while. it would be his way to grieve the loss of his old life, while focussing on building a new one. with you. i can see this being therapeutic for him, and i can see his younger siblings helping him with painting the walls and his mother cooking a meal for you to eat together once the project is complete. and as gale is eating in your new home with his family, i think he would realise that he no longer has to provide for them like he has since his dad died. they will be alright without him now, and he can finally live a life of his own. after his family goes back to their new home, i think he would finally tell you that he’s ready and wants to start this new chapter right away. but most importantly, he wants to start it with you.

i think gale would shine best with two boys, partly because he can fill the void his father’s death left in him, and to turn them into better men than he was growing up.

i’m going to defy canon and say that finnick doesn’t really have a preference. i think his attitude would be that if it happens, it happens, and if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. it would be something he’d like fate to decide, i think. after all, finnick is much more interested in all things you than about what you can or can’t give him. but that’s not to say he wouldn’t be completely overcome with excitement if you did happen to fall pregnant. i think he would occasionally wonder what your baby would look like, if it would have your eyes or his smile, and he’d spend a lot of his free time thinking of names that incorporate your favourite flowers and colours, just in case. but if you didn’t ever fall pregnant, i can see him being equally content in taking the number one spot on the list of people that you love.

finnick is definitely great with kids. i think he’d shine best as a girl dad or as the fun uncle katniss and peeta’s kids see occasionally for holidays.

peeta has three priorities in life: propose to you, marry you, and then have beautiful babies with you. plural, because peeta has so much love for you that it couldn’t possibly be contained to just you. no, he needs extensions of you, so that he can share his love with them, too. i think peeta would take his role as a husband and father incredibly seriously, and that would include cooking every meal for your family, organising family game nights every week, etc. but he would even do little things like filling up a vase with fresh flowers every week for you, crafting his own stories to read to your kids every night (and he’d definitely make a picture book to go along with it), and really taking the time to meet the emotional needs of your family. most of all, he wants to make the kind of loving family that he wished for but never had.

he would do best as a father to at least one girl and one boy, if not more. he would definitely make saturday mornings a baking day, with you and the kids helping to bake some treats for game night later that day.

papa peeta makes my heart melt honestly. like, comment, reblog. love <3

[bridgeportbritt]

Ella's BUS Residence | Sage, SimDonia

Ella sighs

Ella to herself: We were so cute at prom.

Ella sighs

Ella to herself: Could've literally been a perfect night...

Ella to herself: If it wasn't for him...

Another day, another aged up girlie in this story! This time it's miss Ella who is officially a Britechester University of SimDonia student! But let's take a look at her SimDonia Prep graduation and larger than life bday party. Shall we?

Our girl was valedictorian, gave a speech and the event actually worked for her to get a diploma! (I did do a screenshotted version of the graduation just in case it didn't work though lol)

The whole squad got their diplomas and the whole fam came to celebrate the occasion!

The Creeksbrey ballroom transformed into a party palace fit for a young Duchess throwing a bash for her young adult birthday! All her friends came and even Maia and Kali flew in. She was showered in gifts, aged up and danced to a new life as a young adult!

[shima-draws]

Been having a rough couple of days. Send me asks?

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

How are you feeling about last act of the simulanka quest?

it started off meh because scara made his long-awaited appearance, but i had already anticipated that so i focused on navia and nilou being as wonderful as always

but then we got to the dragon and let me tell you scara is so fucking hilarious in this quest. my guy is genuinely projecting his self-inflicted trauma and issues onto a literal baby (half-self inflicted, dottore did deliver like half the punches there). like- you cannot make this shit up. god i love it, he's so ridiculous, very in-character of him honestly. i guess if nothing else he's rather good at staying consistent with that LMAO

little durin was adorable, and it's always funny to see alice again. these events are always just- don't trust anyone in the hexenzirkel and tbh i approve of that. at least when it comes to alice god but her va is so good it's such a delight to hear her speak always. my girl gets like two voiced scenes per year and makes damn good use of them hahah

overall it was decent! scara's inclusion does keep it from being as good as the first two acts. also do bear in mind that i haven't done the appendix (is that the name for it) yet so idk how the rest shapes up to be

[skunkes]

i quite like talon! i think hes one of the most real and interesting ocs ive seen, he feels very human! the fact he is able to be flawed and stay flawed is something that people dont usually do with their characters and its refreshing to see! he feels like your friend or someone you know as opposed to a character you made one day, hes super neat :)

thank u! I've gotten this sentiment about my ocs a lot over the years, I wish I could make more and have equal time and brain power/fixation for all of them, as well as. Actually give them Stories, beginning and ends.

but I also think they wouldnt be dis way without them being so rare from me + me spending several years focusing on One (with the help of another, which develops both in the process wee hee) in the form of Hanging Out With them In My Brain All Day (or again, making them hang out with another oc in my brain all day)

[moonpaw]

ohhh, I overlooked this last week, but I was under the impression that vegapunk was getting copies of living user fruits from current impel down inmates

Up until we see that S-hawk's is from number 1 who was an inmate for only a few months 2 years ago

really uh, makes you question what other kind of dna they have for use

[forcedhesitation]

stop fucking flirting with me, you rancid little man

[arcticmist0324]

One thing that is difficult about writing historical fiction is when you’ve set your story up in the same time frame as major historical events, which you KNOW would be on your characters’ radar yet they don’t impact the plot. What is too much? What is too little?

[heatherfield]

I'm halfway through the complete cut of Headless and !! I'm at the Bromtilda wedding!

Ahhhh! (You're probably done now—I'm sorry I wasn't able to answer sooner.)

I can literally remember my whole impressions and journey of the first time I watched "Headless" even though I've watched it countless times since. I remember thinking that Brom and Matilda were literally going to get divorced right away and it would amount to nothing.

I was not prepared.

[byakuyasdarling]

I remember hosting the poll about how many people who followed this account knew who Byakuya was in his source and I believe the sample I got was 90% (from memory) and that’s TERRIFYING /POS /LH like y’all know who he is AND STILL LISTEN TO MY “i love my husband, he’s gentle with me” talk?? LMAO, legends /Gen

Y’all know his chapter 2 atrocities and ARE STILL HERE??

[queenlucythevaliant]

A Liturgy of Surviving

Scarlett always wanted to be like her mother, and maybe in another world she could have been. If the war never happened, she could have grown softer instead of sharper. She could have curbed her temper, married well, and been received in respectable homes all her days. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the war, Scarlett O’Hara could have lived out her days in genteel artifice, just like Ellen before her.

Maybe. Maybe not. If you asked her, Scarlett would say that the question was irrelevant. “God’s nightgown!” she would exclaim. “Don’t ask me what could have been. The war happened and that’s that.”

          I won’t think about that now.  

The day after Scarlett’s world ended, she swore an oath that she would never be hungry again. 

She woke in pain. Her muscles ached and her joints creaked. She was nineteen, but she felt like she had a hundred years weighing her body down. Morning light slanted through the window and her head ached with the moonshine liquor that she’d downed the night before. From another room, she heard an infant crying. 

She passed through the dining room without eating, pausing only briefly beside her grief-ravaged father. She found Pork on the porch shelling nuts. The sun was up. Scarlett O'Hara drew herself tall and began to marshal her troops. 

Melly and her sisters were still infirm, so they were useless for now. Mammy could tend them, and Pork and Prissy were to round up the livestock. Dilcey to Macintosh, herself to Twelve Oaks; perhaps they’d find food. Yes, I know. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now get going. 

Those days as the war staggered to its end were some of the longest of her life. In between them, Scarlett would collapse into bed and rub the welts on her feet with clumsy fingers. Sometimes she’d picture Ellen and all her gentle admonitions to kindness and refinement, and she’d say aloud to the walls, “What happened to me? What am I doing?”

She didn’t dwell on the question, but somehow, she always knew the answer. “I’m doing what I must,” she would answer herself. “I’m surviving.”

People didn’t talk back to Scarlett anymore. They were all afraid of her sharp tongue, of the new person who walked in her body. This Scarlett bullied and cajoled until everyone obeyed her, and inevitably her orders were to work. She was all edges; any softness that she’d once possessed had been sanded away splitting rails and picking cotton. Good, she thought. Let them fear me, if it keeps us all standing. 

          I’ll think about it tomorrow. 

Scarlett was sixteen when the war began: sixteen in green muslin, fearless and unencumbered. She had her mother’s slim waist and her father’s square jaw, but her clear green eyes were her own.

She was sixteen when she married Charles Hamilton and lost him, seventeen when she bore his child and draped herself in black crepe. She got Melly and Wade in the bargain, but she didn’t want either of them. She wanted Ashley. She wanted to dance! She wanted, she wanted. She wanted Scarlett O’Hara back. 

At nineteen years old, Scarlett survived the destruction of her whole world. She could have cried for the loss of her girlhood, for her old self long gone with the soft hands and dancing slippers, but what good would it have done? Curled up in her childhood bed at Tara, Scarlett didn’t cry. Instead, she folded in on herself, knees tucked up to her chest, and tried not to feel her muscles aching. She would have to get up again tomorrow, no matter how badly her shoulders still hurt.

She had strong shoulders, Scarlett O’Hara. That was maybe the most important thing about her. At any time, at any age, her shoulders could bear whatever they were given. “I’m surviving,” she would say each morning when she rose. A stranger’s freckled face greeted her in the mirror, but Scarlett only squared her small thin shoulders, breathed in, took one step and then another.

          Tomorrow, when I can stand it.

Calluses form like this: repeated pressure or friction is applied to the skin, most often of the hand or the foot. The outer layer, which is made of dead cells, begins to be retained rather than flaking off normally. The dead cells accumulate, forming hard layers sometimes hundreds of cells thick. 

They form like this: you use your skin. The shell of hardness around it slowly thickens. 

          I can stand anything now. 

The day after Rhett left, Scarlett packed up Wade and Ella and she once again drove the long road home to Tara. She pushed her way past Suellen at the threshold, exchanged brief pleasantries with Will, and then fell into her old bed as she’d done so many times before.

The next morning found Scarlett basking in the slanting yellow light that struck the porch from the east. Her eyes were fixed on the fields beyond and there was a devilish look on her face. 

When Rhett came back—and he would come back, he had promised he would—he would find her here at Tara, where she was strongest. “He liked when I was strong,” Scarlett said to herself. That was something she’d always known, for all that she’d been blind to the true dimensions of it.

Day after day, Scarlett rose and moved through Tara’s halls. She ate her breakfasts in the place where she’d faced down the Yankee army, sorted through figures where she’d once debated with Melanie over whether they ought to risk sending Pork out on the horse to look for food. Twenty times a day, she walked past the place at the base of the stairs where she’d shot her deserter dead. Here, in these halls, she had made her greatest stands.

She’d stood more rigidly then, threadbare and starving and uncertain. She’d come to the end of herself, only to find that she had wells of strength hidden deeper than she knew. Her hands were calloused and dirty. What else could she do?

          I’ll never be hungry again.

It’s easy to view Scarlett as hard and amoral. Even those closest to her would not have contested that characterization. Perhaps Melly would have argued, but then, Melly always saw the good in everyone. Scarlett killed and she stole and she schemed and she cheated, and she did it all in cold blood. What a selfish, conniving bitch, you might say.

It’s easy to forget Scarlett’s compassion. When she beat that poor horse to keep it trudging the long road home to Tara, she regretted hurting a tired animal. Her concern for Melanie, her friendship for Will Benteen, her joy when Rhett made her laugh: these were all true and genuine.

Didn’t Scarlett love her father and mother? Didn’t she grieve to see her friends and neighbors ruined by war? Scarlett O’Hara risked her life to save Charlie’s sword for Wade to inherit, and she built her mills for him and Ella both.

None of this negates the ruthless things she did in the name of survival, but it does begin to explain them. Scarlett made herself hard when hard was what she needed to be. She determined to live without reservation, without softness and with little kindness. Rhett called her cruel, and maybe he was right. But Melly also called her sacrificial and devoted, and maybe she was right too. 

          No, nor any of my kin.

On that road home to Tara, Scarlett once said, “If the horse is dead, I will curse God and die too.” Someone in the Bible had done just that—cursed God and died. Scarlett remembered feeling like that person, a despair of Biblical magnitude.

But the horse was alive, and so Scarlett did not die. Later, she thanked God that her knees still had the strength to support her, that her neck was still strong enough to hold her head high. Scarlett was not Job’s wife, nor even Job himself. She was Rahab, who escaped the destruction of Jericho, who saved her whole household and survived.

“What a fast trick,” said the Old Guard when she stole Frank Kennedy away from Suellen. No, Scarlett could never be Job. She was Jacob, the trickster and supplanter.

          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load.

Scarlett was easily provoked into courage; that was one of the first things that Rhett learned about her. A few insults, a pointed comment, and Scarlett lifted her chin and flounced off to prove just how brave she could be. She shed her crepe years early, and to Halifax with anyone who objected.

Rhett did that same thing to her on the awful day that Atlanta burned. He insulted her and laughed at her, and when Scarlett spat, “I’m not afraid,” it was true. Her hands, which had moments ago been shaking too badly to hold anything, were steady now, and anger had crowded all the fear out of her voice.

Rhett kept needling her all the way out of the city, until they reached the Rough and Ready where he left her. The banter kept her sharp. As long as her eyes were flashing in indignation, she hardly noticed the fire.

Even after Rhett left, his jabs stayed with her. “What would Rhett say if he knew I couldn’t do this?” spurred her back into action more times than she would ever admit. It was a petty kind of courage, and it felt smaller than the great, soaring motivation that came with thoughts of Tara, of the O’Hara name and Irish pride and red earth, but sometimes petty courage was enough to bridge the gap between strength and exhaustion.

He gave her something to hold onto, something to ground her, and even Rhett only halfway understood what that meant. I want you at your best, he never told her, but he pulled her into it by taffeta ribbons and witticisms. As the years rolled by, she rose to meet him. They swapped sharp words and insults, him always claiming to know her and her shouting, “You don’t know half!”

One day on the jostling ride out to her mills, Scarlett told Rhett about the fire that the Yankees set in Tara’s kitchen. “I’m not afraid of fire anymore,” she declared with something like pride, and Rhett remembered goading her past the flames the night Atlanta burned. “I beat it out with my skirts, and then Melly had to beat me out when my back caught,” she went on. “Now I’m not afraid of anything but hunger.”

I don’t want you to fear anything in all the world, Rhett didn’t say. Once they were married, he laughed at her appetite and teased her, “Don’t scrape the plate, Scarlett. I’m sure there’s more in the kitchen.”

           No matter, ‘twill never be light.  

After the war, Rhett had his millions. Ashley had his honor. Melly had the Association for the Beatification of the Graves of Our Glorious Dead. Scarlett held a ball of red clay in her fist and whispered, “I have this.”

Her father built Tara from nothing and he loved those acres like they could love him back. He had come to Georgia a poor immigrant boy and he had won that red earth. Whatever Gerald could do, his daughter could do too: of this she was certain. This land, this firm red clay on which she stood, was both her battlefield and her prize; her birthright and her hallowed ground. She gripped it tight with all the passion of a lover. She longed for its rolling fields on cold nights in Atlanta, sleeping beside Frank Kennedy.

“Yes, I have this,” and she let the dirt run between her fingers and lodge beneath her nails. Melly had Ashley and Ashley his senseless honor. Scarlett had Tara.

          I’ve still got this.

When she rode out in her buggy with her lap robe pulled up to her bosom, Scarlett heard how people whispered. She felt indignant about it the first time, and the second time she worried what Ellen would have thought. The third time, she decided not to care.

She still complained to Rhett about the whispering as he was holding the reins one afternoon. He didn’t laugh at her, just looked sideways from the road with his dark eyes and nodded like he understood. “Be different and be damned!” Rhett said, and his tone was like a soldier who’d heard the bugle. It was so strange, how Scarlett could tell him all the worst things about her and he would always answer back like they were medals instead of secret shames. 

Most of the city was in mourning, but Scarlett wore colors. She pilfered the store’s inventory in search of bright green, washed and mended her curtain dress as many times as it would stand, and when the money came she wore gowns of emerald, blush, indigo, and scarlet. Let them stare, she thought. See if I care.

At twenty-two, Scarlett rode up to Pittypat’s in the evenings, long after Frank had come home from the store, and she felt condemned. To the well-bred folks of Atlanta, she was as bad as a Scallawag. But sometimes, when she was alone, Scarlett ran her hands beneath the lap robe and hoped that Rhett was wrong about children and grandchildren, that the child she was carrying would understand one day. I hope you’re nothing like Frank, she thought. I hope you have shoulders like mine.

           I’ll never be hungry again.

“It’s no use, Scarlett. You can’t scrub out the past,” said Rhett when at last he came to Tara. “You can’t take back the last ten years, no matter how you’ve come — to appreciate my charms.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Scarlett snapped. “There’s never any going back. Not ever. But Rhett—” she reached for his hand. “I love you, and at last we understand each other. We can build something out of that.”

They argued about it until Rhett left again, fuming and bitter, his Panama hat pulled low over his face. Scarlett made an unannounced visit to Charleston the next month. “I was thinking,” she suggested, “That we might sell the Peachtree Street house.”

Scarlett knew all the words for making men love her, so long as she understood what it was that they wanted. The Tarleton twins had wanted merry excitement; Charles had wanted to feel important and Frank had wanted to feel like a strong, successful man. Ashley had wanted someone braver and better than he was, and he’d found it in Melanie without having to risk himself on Scarlett. Scarlett had never understood what it was Rhett wanted, but she did now. Why, it’s always been my love he wants! So Scarlett spoke the right words, and this time she meant them.

“You were right when you said that we’re alike. Only—you’ve always known about me, whereas I’m just starting to know you. Will you tell me about that knife fight in California again? About the sail boat you won at cards?”

“You know those stories,” clipped Rhett. “You don’t need to hear them again.” So Scarlett went downstairs and pried the stories out of his mother instead.

The house on Peachtree Street sold within the month, snatched up by some Carpetbagger who wanted it for a hotel. Rhett traveled to Mexico, and returned to find Scarlett back at Tara preparing for spring planting.

“What do the women wear in Mexico?” she asked him, leaning on the porch railing in the slanting light. “What is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled?”

Rhett indulged her in brief, but then abruptly he chuckled and shook his head. “I know what you’re doing, you little minx.”

“Yes,” said Scarlett. “Of course you do.”

           Tomorrow, oh tomorrow!

The clay soil of Georgia is red from iron oxides. It’s red the way rust is red, the way blood is red. If a blister splits open and your blood falls on the ground, that iron-red soil will just swallow it up. You can bleed and bleed, and the stuff in your blood will always be one with the stuff of the soil.

When cotton and vegetables sprout from the ground, it’s easy to believe they grew from your very own blood, and that your own sweat and tears watered them.

           Never look back.  

“We women were soldiers too,” Melanie said once. Scarlett didn’t respect her yet—at least, not consistently—but this might have been one of the moments where she first looked at Melly and thought not that her heart was soft and timid, but that it was a sword.

“We never expected to be – or at least I didn’t.” She looked around the circle of ladies, at India and Fanny, until her eyes came to rest on Scarlett at last. “We were children then. We all imagined the world far simpler than it was.”

Melly, India, Fanny, Scarlett. These women had all been girls together. They knew one another at seven, twelve, fifteen, swaddled in silks and trying to seem more grown-up than their playmates. They’d competed for beaus and Scarlett had mostly won, except where Ashley Wilkes was concerned. They had lived through the war together. Now, Scarlett sat among them on Melly’s front porch and tried to remember if she’d ever in her life felt like one of them.

For Christmas, Melanie gave Scarlett a small book of poetry. Scarlett never read it, except for the one verse which Melly had marked with a green ribbon. She bit back the urge to sigh when she undid the wrapping, but Melly pointed out the bookmark and said, “This one made me think of you, dear.”

Scarlett didn’t like to think of it now, but once she’d been sixteen in green muslin, confident that dimples and a clear complexion were the only weapons she’d ever need. She had been a child, but that child had not died when Atlanta burned. The belle of Clayton County was not in the grave with all the boys who’d never come riding home from war. Scarlett was alive. She was right here.

“What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost/ Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation/Like dream words most? / Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women. / I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair/ And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders/ And a leaf on your hair—"

Scarlett came home from her mills in the gray evening and she made her way back to the Wilkes’s ramshackle front porch. She left her buggy feeling condemned and she sat with the other ladies feeling alienated, but all the same she couldn’t bring herself not to go. The war was over, and these were the survivors. They were through fighting, hung up on glory, but Scarlett still hadn’t holstered her guns. 

“We were soldiers,” said Melanie, and in her heart Scarlett added, “Some of us still are.”

           I won’t let them lick me.

Supposing that Ashley had married her. Perhaps the sight of her in green makes him brave enough to shed his veneer of honor and say, “Yes, you’re right, I can’t live without you.” It’s a minor scandal when he casts Melanie off in her favor, but not for long. The war is beginning and besides, good men have made themselves fools for Scarlett O’Hara before. By the time the soldiers march away, the scandal is all but forgotten in favor of the fine figure they cut as they embrace at the depot: Ashley so brave in his uniform, his young wife radiant as she clutches him.

Ashley sends her long, meandering letters full of philosophical musings. Scarlett reads them uncomprehending and sends back missives full of I love yous. She kisses them when she mails them, sometimes with a Hail Mary for her husband’s safety.

Rhett doesn’t notice this Scarlett at Twelve Oaks, and so he’s caught off guard when he hears the young Mrs. Wilkes say something blunt and scathing at the Bazaar. He chuckles to himself in delight and later he asks her to dance, and of course Scarlett simpers and agrees, and it’s a merry night. But Rhett doesn’t come back to Atlanta for the rest of the war.

This Scarlett leaves for Macon with the rest of the women when the Yankees come to Atlanta; after all, she has no Melly to keep her in the city during the siege. She takes Ashley’s child with her, and it’s in Macon that he finds her after the war. He waxes poetic about the Old Days, the Horrors of War and Götterdämmerungs and the like. He looks at her with sad, tired eyes and Scarlett says yes, I heard you the first time. But what are we going to do?

Twelve Oaks is razed. They go to Tara. Ashley tries his hand at farming, but it’s Scarlett who manages to pick and plant and organize while Ashley’s fumbling attempts at working with his hands yield scant success. His heart isn’t in it, which infuriates Scarlett. C’mon, get up and fight! She looks into the tired face of the man she loved so ruinously at sixteen and wonders what she ever thought was so noble about him.

When taxes come due there’s no way to pay. What’s more, Ashley doesn’t even try. It’s here that Scarlett breaks with her husband. Between Ashley and Tara, it’s Tara every time.

So Scarlett bullies her husband into calling old debts in from a few impoverished friends and when that isn’t enough, she goes to see the tax assessor dressed in green velvet and makes some very personal insinuations about Mr. Jonas Wilkerson. From there, Scarlett bullies her one-time-beloved and does as she pleases, and Ashley has to live with the fact that it’s his wife who provides for the family. In every world, it is Scarlett O’Hara who keeps Ashley Wilkes alive after the war.

His pride lays down in the dirt and dies. Scarlett Wilkes shakes her head bitterly and plants more seed in her red, red earth.   

Supposing Scarlett could have imagined all this. What do you think she would say? Perhaps in her youth she would have cherished the idea, but the hard-eyed Scarlett who emerged after the war would have only leveled her small shoulders and said, “What does it matter what would have happened? I’ll think about it later.”

           There but for a lot of gumption am I.

The day after Bonnie died, Scarlett called for the buggy and went to her store. Rhett took this as proof that Scarlett had never really loved the little girl, that she was devoid of maternal affection as he’d always suspected, but Scarlett was grieving in her own way. She threw out two uncut bolts of blue velvet: expensive fabric over which she’d have upbraided a clerk to hell and back if he’d wasted even a few inches. 

It was true that Scarlett had never wanted any of her children when she’d carried them. She had not felt joy or love or any of the feelings that other women described when first she saw them. What she did feel, in the moments after Dr. Meade placed each child in her arms, was a fierce surge of protectiveness. She was certain that she would work and sacrifice and even die for her children, if need be. They were her blood, her flesh, her kin.

Scarlett had hated pregnancy each time it happened to her. She hated feeling large and lumbering, hated the way that her tiny waist bloated and grew until even her modified dresses didn’t fit right. She hated the inconvenience of morning sickness, the limitations on what she could do, the necessity of seclusion as delivery drew near. It was nine months of hardship and frustration capped off with many long minutes of excruciating pain. 

Bonnie had died in an instant. She’d been flying towards the hurdle and then, half a breath later, she’d been gone. Standing in the back of the store with two bolts of blue velvet before her, Scarlett swallowed back tears that Rhett would never see. It wasn’t right that a child who’d taken her so much time and effort to bring into the world could be gone from it so quickly. 

When she returned to the house a few hours later, Rhett had locked himself in the bedroom with Bonnie’s tiny body. Scarlett paused for a moment outside the door, but then she squared her shoulders and kept walking. 

          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. 

Scarlett had a habit of humming “My Old Kentucky Home” while she worked. Splitting wood, planting and picking cotton, driving between her mills, keeping the books—even sewing. The song was a thoughtless thing, an instinctual thing. She hummed it the same way a person might worry lips between teeth or tear at nails. 

She repeated the words again and again until her heart pulsed to their rhythm. Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. I’ll think about it tomorrow, when I can stand it. Tomorrow, tomorrow. No matter, ‘twill never be light. I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my kin. I’ll never be hungry again. They were a mantra: something to hold onto when the whole breadth of her world had narrowed to a single point. A refrain. A liturgy of surviving.

          Just a few more steps

Rhett loved Scarlett and it was terrifying. He feared that she would treat him like one of her country beaus: a lovely toy to play with and to tear to ribbons when she was done. He was afraid, so he hid his heart behind his impressive poker face and said “I want you” instead of “I love you.” He called her “pet” instead of “sweetheart.”

Scarlett loved Rhett and it was slow. He brought her bonnets and bonbons and Scarlett thought, “Why, it’s almost like I was in love with him!” He came to help her the day Atlanta burned, and Scarlett thought that she’d like to stay in his arms forever. When he chauffeured her to the mills, she thought that he was the only person in the world to whom she could tell the truth.

"You never told me you loved me, you know," Scarlett said the next time she visited Charleston. "I never knew. That's not to say you were wrong about me - about what I would have done if you had said something. But you should have been brave enough to risk it all the same."

Rhett closed his eyes for a moment and his mask slipped away. It was doing that more and more these days.

"But I did tell you — once."

"I think I would have remembered that," said Scarlett, pursing her lips.

"Ah. ‘It is far off; and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.’ I suppose my humble confession was the least of your worries that day."

Scarlett wrinkled her nose. "What?"

"The day Atlanta burned, my dear."

After a long moment, Scarlett gave a little gasp which turned into a sigh as it ended. "Oh. That's right, you did then, didn't you?" She shook her head. "Rhett, I do believe you have the worst timing of any person I know."

          As God is my witness

The day she married Charles, she wore Ellen’s cream-colored silk gown, aired out in a hurry from the chest where it had been sitting since the O’Haras married back in 1846. She couldn’t breathe for how tight her laces were —sixteen inches, like Ellen’s waist was when the dress was purchased— and perhaps that was a good thing. Scarlett was light-headed throughout the ceremony and she scarcely remembered it afterwards. 

The day she decided to have Frank, it was raining hard. Scarlett left the jail in sodden velvet and was grateful for the drops falling on her cheeks to disguise the tears. It was sunny the day of the wedding, but she scarcely noticed that. Afterwards, when she thought of marrying Frank, Scarlett would always remember the rain. 

There was a fine mist over everything the day she got Rhett back for good. Scarlett was wearing her work clothes when he came riding up to Tara; she’d been walking the cotton fields that day, overseeing the progress of the crop. They were both a little damp when he kissed her.

           I’ll never be hungry again.

O’Haras and Robillards had always known how to dig their nails in, and by God, Scarlett was both. Her namesakes had long ago fought for their own plots of Irish earth; had survived and died and been hanged fighting to hold onto it. All Scarlett’s forebears, her folk, had left crescent-moon imprints on all that was theirs when it was finally pried from her hands. Scarlett gripped her little ball of clay and felt her nails dig into the heels of her hands.

She was her father’s hot-tempered daughter, but she had her mother’s steel-hewn spine. All the years of her life, she never saw Ellen Robillard O’Hara rest her back against a chair.  When Scarlett’s own time came, she held herself every bit as straight as her mother: she didn’t rest or lean, just stood and stood.

Maybe this is what she was always made for. Her green eyes weren’t for charming young men, they were for seeing dresses in curtains. Her hands were never supposed to be soft; they were meant for digging in the red dirt. Even her lips—Rhett was wrong, they weren’t meant for kissing. Scarlett’s lips were as sharp as the words that she spoke when she wasn’t afraid what anyone thought. They were meant to draw blood.

She had been sharp all her life, even when her edges were carefully concealed in layers of satin. Scarlett was not made to be soft; her core held no gentleness. She could not pretend otherwise. All she could do was stand straight, and hold up her tired old shoulders like they were the strongest thing in the world.

           I’ll think about it tomorrow. 

One day, at the Butler home in Charleston, Rhett taught Scarlett how to play poker, and subsequently how to cheat. They were still playing hours later, counting cards and hiding them in sleeves and making all kinds of ridiculous bets on losing hands. Just as she was taking off her right earbob to call, the thought rose to Scarlett’s mind unbidden: “What on earth are we doing here?” And just as quickly, there was the answer. “We’re living.”

At the end of this most recent road home, weary and damp from running through the fog, Scarlett found her way back into Rhett’s arms. In the evenings she listened to his stories and witticisms, and late at night she listened to the sound of his breathing. I will not speak of undying glory, she thought. Rhett was still here, and so was she. They were both still here.

Scarlett took off her left earbob too, for good measure. “I’ll raise you,” she said. “I have a good feeling about this hand.” There was still an ace hidden up her sleeve, but if Rhett noticed it he didn’t say anything. 

They survived together. They built something new. There is always profit to be made in building things, and these two were nothing if not industrious.

           After all, tomorrow is another day.

[dapperrokyuu]

Fact about me that will only be understood and potentially found amusing by a niche amount of people: oddly, the first Vocaloid project I found myself getting into was Shuuen no Shiori and then Kagerou Project. I clicked on a Kagerou Days thumbnail thinking it was a PART of Shuuen no Shiori, lol.

[akkivee]

what will they be doing when they’re on opposite sides from the rest of their team i wonder??? 🤔🤔🤔

[raycyel]

Could I interest you all in a crack UT/DR AU that my brain has been cooking up for like 2 years now where the dark worlds are occurring in the underground, Grillby takes Kris' place, and which exists exclusively because I am quietly obsessed with Grillby and needed a way to provide a "logical and realistic" way for Grillby/Swatch to happen?