#not even in any of the actual like. art-making parts of my major yet

[razzafrazzle]

goose!

[image description: a sketchy animated gif of a goose. the goose raises its head and flaps its wings gently before leaning back over. the animation then loops. end id]

[gothgoblinbabe]

The Art Of Make-believe Matrimony (pt.2)

Logan Howlett x afab!reader

Warnings: NSFW 18+, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), afab reader, soft dom!Logan, good ol’ face sittin’, sloppy oral (m receiving), swearing, use of pet names - babydoll, sweetheart, pretty girl - teeth rottingly sweet fluff, emotional(?) sex, mild angst, i think thats it but if there’s any more pls lmk!

Read pt.1 here

Summary: part 2 is finally here! I’ll be honest i think the majority of it is smut, but if you’re not interested in reading that, you can stop at the point where you and Logan drive home from the restaurant :) <3 this is probably the most detailed nsfw thing i’ve ever written so it’s a lil’ longer than what i’d usually write for smut but I really wanted to deliver on this one.

Taglist: @deardo11 @pastelpinkflowerlife @joyfulpeanutsalad @jonesem11 @carollinnasic @likeficsinthewnd @mrs-ephemeral 

Word Count: 9.5K

divider credit here and here

It had been about a month since the whole ordeal with Logan - the exchanging of fake rings, sweet nicknames and kissing in the driveway - and to everyone else, it seemed like nothing had changed.

You’d still taunt each other during training, bicker over the small things and butt heads on almost everything, but it was all accompanied by stolen kisses in empty hallways, nights on the roof spent stargazing and small, sweet moments in between. You were going to come out with it - tell the team what had been going on behind closed doors - but truthfully, you were both fearful of the possible outcomes. What if this didn’t work out? What, you’d go back to hating each other - for real this time? So you kept it hushed, intending to give the new ‘relationship’ - a word neither of you used, yet - a sort of trial run. Neither of you admitted it aloud but you knew this way, if it really wasn’t meant to be, it could save you the embarrassment of admitting you were both wrong.

As the days went on, though, it became harder for either of you to keep up the act and even more difficult to keep your secret. You came close to being caught more often, having to stutter out an excuse each time. Jean and Ororo still knew what was going on - having been the ones to greet you in the hall when you’d gotten back from that dinner party - but gave you their word that it would stay a secret. The former of the two even feigned surprise when Scott mentioned he thought he saw you nearly kiss Logan in the kitchen, insisting he must've been seeing things.

You’d been washing some dishes and handing them off to him to dry and put away, both of you alone in the kitchen after dinner. 

“Hey, do you wanna come up to my room in a little bit? Maybe watch a movie?” he offered in a low voice, standing so close that your arms touched.

Neither of you had actually had the chance to be alone like that yet and the idea made your stomach erupt in butterflies.

“Hm - If I didn’t know any better, Logan,” you chuckled, “I’d think you have some ulterior motive.”

“And If I did?”

Your cheeks hurt from smiling and you rolled your eyes.

“C’mon,” he cooed, “what do you think?”

You were looking up at him, your noses inches apart as he leaned down further. One of his hands came to rest on your lower back.

“Hey, guys, have you seen my - “

Scott’s voice echoed through the kitchen and you both jumped, Logan trying to put distance between you and nearly tripping over his feet in the process. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck and you kept your eyes glued to the dishes in the sink.

“Uh,” Scott tilted his head, “have you guys…seen my phone?”

“Nope,” Logan was quick to reply, drying and putting away dishes now like it was his job.

“Um, no - sorry,” you shook your head.

“Hm…okay,” Scott mumbled, clearly suspicious of whatever it was he’d just seen. You both exchanged a look of panic when he left the room.

“That was close,” you huffed, returning to the task at hand.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “and he’s probably the last one we want to find out - Summers is a blabber mouth.”

You knew exactly what he meant. If you told Scott anything, he couldn’t keep it to himself. One time Jean had tried to plan a surprise party for your birthday and you already knew about it before she could even pick the decorations.

Jean and Ororo had thankfully kept their word, though. It was damn near torture for them to keep from shouting the truth aloud every time you got into your usual spats. The sly jokes, however, were another story.

“Will you two just kiss already?” Jean had blurted when you were pelting each other with beanbags during an outdoor game of cornhole. 

Ororo wasn’t any better. 

She was sitting next to you at dinner one night, Logan across from you. Everyone was chatting about their days or telling stories and she volunteered you to share.

“Anything new happening with you? You seem extra happy lately,” she was grinning.

Your eyes darted to Logan and then back to her, taking a deep inhale.

“Uh, nothin’ - nothin’ new,” you swallowed, "just happy.”

Logan was smiling to himself, his gaze focused on his dinner.

After everyone had finished dinner and vanished off to their rooms, he stopped you at the bottom of the staircase.

“Hey,” he nervously scanned the hallway while gnawing on his bottom lip, “can you meet me in the garden out back in fifteen minutes? I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Sure,” you nodded, “but the ‘something’ better not be beef jerky and a picnic blanket - which, by the way, is not a date.”

He clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, a contradiction to the smile tugging at his lips.

“That was one damn time - you’re still mad about that?”

“Eh - not really, but I am gonna mention it in every argument we will ever have,” you joked.

“Oh, shut up, ya’ brat.”

 You giggled and he beamed at the sound, already undeniably smitten with you. He’d never been so sure of any other feeling in his life. Your serene voice, your perfect hair, the smell of your perfume, the way you walked, the way you laughed and smiled - it was all things he’d taken notice of before but chose to bury within himself, terrified of whatever it was that had given you so much power over him. 

Set on trying to impress you, he’d gone around the garden that morning and picked a couple flowers out of each different plant he saw. He felt a little ridiculous - his six foot frame and two hundred pound body towering over a bed of tulips and daffodils - but he reminded himself this was for you; to see that smile on your face that could bring him to his knees. He had fallen for you and he fell fast. He didn’t know when he’d truly realized it - maybe during one of your midnight conversations or during one of the movie nights when you made yourself comfortable under his arm - but it was a feeling so intense that he’d never experienced anything like it before. He’d never had that ache in his chest, the pain of wanting someone so badly that it physically hurts; the twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought of losing you, the way the thump of his heartbeat became so much louder and faster when he caught even a glimpse of you. Weeks ago, he probably would’ve made fun of the poor sap who was acting just as he was - like a lovesick dog on your leash - but he found himself finally starting to embrace the idea that there was someone for him in the way there was for Jean and Scott or Marie and Bobby. Maybe it wasn’t all permanent - nothing ever was - but whatever connection he had developed with you was one of the only things that he thought of first thing in the morning and right before he went to bed at night.

After what felt like the longest fifteen minutes of your life, you made your way outside and to the well kept garden. You admired every variation of flower in bloom while you walked, taking in the peaceful atmosphere of the garden in the moonlight. You planted yourself in the middle of the extensive displays of flora, nervously rocking back and forth on your heels. You scanned the landscape and that’s when you spotted him. 

Logan was making his way towards you and even through the darkness, you could see the bright arrangement of flowers held in his hands. Your heart felt like it swelled so much with adoration that it was going to burst. He’d done this for you, went out and handpicked every flower. Receiving so much affection from him was unusual, in a good way. Recently, he’d absentmindedly begun holding your hand in his at times, talking away while his fingers intertwined with yours like it was second nature. He’d play with your hair, kiss your cheek, embrace you from behind, even pull you onto his lap so you could nuzzle into his chest. Even when you weren’t alone, he was having trouble keeping himself off of you. He’d place a guiding hand on the small of your back or let his touch linger when your fingers brushed up against each other - small things, almost unnoticeable. It was a stark contrast to his behavior weeks before and you couldn’t have been happier. 

“These are for you,” Logan held the bouquet in front of you, pointing at some of the bulbs, “a couple of ‘em might be a little bent - I may have accidentally yanked ‘em out of the ground with more force than I needed to.”

You were beaming, your hands on your cheeks in excitement and surprise.  You delicately took the arrangement of flowers from him, admiring the beautiful ribbon that kept them together. Jean had helped with that, of course.

“Oh, Logan,” you pouted, “these are beautiful!”

“I wanted to give you somethin’ nice, y’know - after being such an asshole for so long,” he shoved his hands in his pockets. 

You knitted your eyebrows, “you didn’t have to, you know.”

He shook his head, waving a hand dismissively, “c’mon, none of that, princess. You deserve ‘em.”

Your heart felt like it would jump out of your chest whenever he’d call you sweet names. He’d called you princess before, sure, but only to tease you. The way he said it now was affectionate, as if to say you really were a princess in his eyes. You were head over heels for him already but you held your tongue, fearful that it was far too soon to admit something like that. The last thing you wanted to do was drive him away and lose the only relationship you’d had in years that made you absolutely lovesick to the point of losing sleep.

“I wanted to, uh - I wanted to tell you something, too,” he began, resting his hands on your waist. He seemed a little nervous with his bottom lip tucked between his teeth.

“So, tell me,” you smiled up at him. You’d be lying if you said you weren't a little nervous yourself, picking up on his hesitation.

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, standing up straight and keeping his eyes trained on yours.

“I love you.”

You only blinked in response, lips parted in surprise.

“You don’t have to say it back if you don’t - “

“I love you - I love you, too.”

It was like letting go after holding your breath for so long, a sense of relief that couldn’t compare to anything else.

A wide grin crept onto his face, one he couldn’t hold back even if he tried. Your expression mirrored his - complete adoration for one another.

He was staring down at you the same way he had during dinner that night you first kissed. You’d wondered since then what it was, what made his pupils dilate when his eyes focused on yours or why he would tuck his lip between his teeth. You knew now that it was love.

“It’s gonna be even harder now to keep this - us - a secret,” he mumbled in a low voice. He brought his hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. He cupped your cheek after, unable to keep his hands off you.

“Well,” you bit the inside of your cheek, “we could tell them? Tell everyone, I mean.”

“Do you think you’re ready? I mean - not that I'm not ready, but I don't want you to feel rushed into anything.”

Your knees could’ve buckled right then and there at how truly sweet he was with you. You took his words into consideration and had a realization.

“We haven’t even really figured out what we are yet. What would we tell them?”

He nodded solemnly, grazing his thumb over your cheekbone, “Yeah, you’re right.”

You hoped this would be it - this would be the moment he finally told you that you were his girlfriend, you were something - but he gave a small smile and dropped his hand from your face.

“It’s getting late, we should get back before anyone notices we’re gone.”

You simply nodded, clearing your throat to replace the exasperated sigh you were about to let out.

You followed him on the way back, mind racing for the entirety of the short walk and drowning out anything Logan was saying. You wondered if he’d ever ask you that one question at all. Maybe he’d said he loved you to keep you hanging on, wrapped around his finger. Maybe it was meant to be casual and you’d misunderstood. 

But there was a bouquet of flowers in your hands. You’d fallen asleep on his chest more times than you could count, held hands at any moment you could and he did just tell you he loved you. So, maybe he did mean it.

As you snuck down the hallway to your bedroom with the arrangement of flowers, you wondered how long you’d have to keep this a secret.

Unbeknownst to you, it wouldn't be much longer.

It all came to a head when the team decided to go out to dinner together, settling on some chain restaurant. You’d coincidentally ended up next to Logan in the large booth, the both of you on the very end of the table. You were all reading from the menus and Marie piped up from across the table.

“Honey, do you wanna switch seats?”

She was talking to you. You didn't look up from the laminated paper in your hands, responding automatically without a second thought.

“Nah, I'm fine.”

She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion and looked at Bobby, who only shrugged. You two never sat next to each other, usually bickering so intensely that you’d be asked to shut up or leave the table. 

The unusual interaction was soon forgotten when your drinks were brought over, the waitress placing them in front of each of you. She was pretty and her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Logan being on the very end made him the closest in proximity to her and you being so close meant that you could hear her hushed voice when she leaned down before she walked away.

“And here, this is for you.”

She slid a napkin onto the table, your eyes automatically drawn to the movement. There was a clear phone number written in ink, her name scribbled underneath next to a smiley face.

Everyone at the table had noticed the interaction and waited for Logan to speak after she walked away. Instead, they watched in curiosity as he silently slid the napkin under his drink, the ink bleeding immediately from the condensation on the outside of his glass.

“Okay, what's up with you?” Scott questioned from across the table.

Logan raised his eyebrows, “I don’t know, what's up with you?”

“I asked you first.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Marie chimed in then, leaning forward with her elbows on the table to interrogate him, “you always take girls’ numbers when they give ‘em to you. Why not hers?”

He shrugged, “just not interested.”

“I call bullshit.”

“Watch the language, kid.”

“Whatever, you’re so full of it!”

You pretended to be uninterested in the conversation, folding your napkin into unrecognizable shapes. 

“You know what? I think you might be in love,” she giggled, “you’ve been way too happy lately. Like, absurdly happy.”

You froze in place, gwaning on your bottom lip. 

It was true, though. He was waking up early, smiling more, making more jokes that weren’t at Scott’s expense - they really had never seen him so happy.

“Um,” he hesitated for a second when you stole a glance at him. He was smiling to himself already.

“I guess you could say that.”

Everyone turned to stare at him in mild disbelief, including you.

“What? I was just kidding! Oh my god, you didn’t tell us?” Marie exclaimed, “spill it!”

Jean and Ororo were smiling wide behind their hands and exchanging knowing looks.

“Well, she’s real pretty,” he started, “and she’s sweet.”

You were trying so hard to fight a smile, covering your mouth with your fist as you leaned an elbow on the table.

“I never thought i’d hear you talk about someone like that,” Marie knitted her eyebrows and stuck out her bottom lip - the kind of face you’d make when a kid confesses their first crush.

Logan rolled his eyes and scoffed, a grin stuck on his face. Marie was still asking questions, determined to not let the topic go till she knew every detail.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Logan was nervously chewing on the inside of his cheek. He looked like he was thinking of an answer.

“Uh… I don’t know. I haven’t really asked her.”

You must have been pink all the way to the tips of your ears. You brought your glass of water to your lips, hoping it would help cool your face. 

“Why not?”

Marie was really not gonna let this go and you dreaded to hear the answer come out of his mouth.

Logan sighed, picking at the skin around his fingernails as a nervous tic.

“Just a little nervous, I guess. I don’t wanna screw it up.”

“A girl that makes you nervous? When do we get to meet her?” 

Your eyes were stuck on the wood grain of the table, both of your hands covering half your face at this point.

“When the time is right,” he responded, taking a sip of his drink.

Ororo rolled her eyes.

You’d all finished eating a good while later and the check came. After you’d both put cash down, he mumbled under his breath with his hand shielding his mouth.

“Meet me outside in a second, okay?”

He slipped out of his seat and you watched him disappear around the corner.

No one had noticed him leave his seat, too engrossed in conversation. After a minute or two, you muttered something about using the bathroom before you left the table and swiftly made your way back to the entrance you had come in through. It was starting to rain a little, barely drizzling.

Logan was standing in the parking lot with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. He beckoned you over when he saw you, taking your hand in his and leading you to a spot outside that wasn’t directly in front of the door. His nose was starting to turn pink from the cold evening air and your cheeks were doing the same.

“So,” he swallowed hard, brushing his thumb over your knuckles, “I guess it’s about time I asked you, huh?”

“Ask me what?’

You were smiling so wide that your face ached. You knew exactly what, but of course you wanted to hear him say it.

His expression mirrored yours and he let go of one of your hands so he could cup your face.

“Would you be my girl?”

It may have been a little juvenile - the teasing, the hiding, the avoidance of labeling what you had - but it had worked.

“I already am,” you told him, leaning up to plant a kiss on his lips. He happily reciprocated, wrapping his arms around your waist to pull you even closer.

If either of you had taken a second to look around you first , you would’ve spotted the rest of the team turning the corner the second you kissed him. 

“No way!”

Marie’s squeal echoed through the parking lot and both of you jumped, turning towards the sound. You both stood in stunned silence, Logan’s arms still locked around your waist.

“Uh…” He was like a deer in headlights.

“I should’ve guessed,” Scott clicked his tongue, irritated that he hadn’t figured you out sooner.

“Guessed what? We’re - uh, we were just - “ Logan shot you a look, hoping you’d be able to think of something on the spot - even with his arms still locked around you. You could’ve squirmed out of his hold, made some unconvincing excuse about having something in your eye and needing his help. You almost did. Looking up at him, his features highlighted by the flood lights that illuminated the nearly empty lot and his cheeks peppered in rain drops, you had a realization. You didn’t want to lie. You didn’t feel the need to anymore. You weren’t afraid it wasn’t going to work or that you might be better off as enemies rather than lovers. Everything felt like it was finally right - as if every piece of your life finally fit into its perfect place. If you were wrong - fuck it. You’d deal with the consequences later if you had to. 

“Kissing. We were kissing - we’re dating,” you sputtered out to your friends, looking back to Logan after. You almost expected him to be embarrassed, to tell you to keep your mouth shut.

 But he was smiling. He was smiling wider than you’d probably ever seen. He leaned his head down to kiss your forehead affectionately, mumbling into your hair, “I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, huh?”

You hummed in affirmation and peeked back at everyone else. 

“How? Since when? Oh my god, I need to know everything,” Marie was as giddy as could be, nearly jumping up and down.

“Since they went on that mission where they had to pretend to be married,” Ororo piped up, “they liked pretending a little too much.”

You all began walking to the two cars you came in, Logan’s arm draped around your shoulders. He was holding you so close that you were practically stepping on his boots.

“Aw,” you heard Marie whisper to Bobby from behind you, “they’re so sweet together.”

“Now that they're not trying to kill each other? Yeah,” he replied with a small laugh.

“I thought you guys hated each other,” Scott said, “what happened?

“Well,” you smiled to yourself, “he’s a good fake husband, so I figured he might make an alright boyfriend.”

You stopped when you approached the car and Logan wrapped you into a tight embrace, your face smushed against his chest. You giggled into his shirt until he finally let you go.

“How’d you guys even keep it under wraps anyway?” Scott asked.

You looked up to Logan, “Willpower?”

He chuckled, “I don’t know, really,” he rested his hands at your waist, “I guess we got lucky that you guys aren’t too bright.”

Ororo lightly smacked the back of his shoulder, rolling her eyes but holding a smile on her face.

You all piled into the cars you’d came in - you, Logan, Marie and Bobby in one and Jean, Scott and Ororo in another - and made your way home. Logan drove and you sat beside him, his hand in yours for most of the ride.

When you all got home and everyone went off to their rooms, Logan stopped you with a gentle grip on your wrist.

“Would you, um,” he looked to the floor for a moment, biting back a smile, “would you maybe want to spend the night in my room?”

You and Logan had been alone together a handful of times, but never like that - in his bedroom. The thought made your palms start to sweat. It wasn’t that you hadn’t thought of it - you’d been together about a month now and every time you’d gotten the chance to make out, you usually didn’t have an opportunity to go any further. Someone would call your name, Logan’s phone would ring, you’d hear footsteps - always something to pull you apart. It was torture, knowing you could kiss him till his hands started to creep up your shirt or your hand rested on his belt buckle but never actually get to go any further.

“We don’t have to do anything but sleep,” Logan could see the hesitation in your expression, “whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“I’d love to,” you replied, letting him take your hand in his and lead you down the hall. 

“How about this - I'll change into pajamas in my room, you can change in yours and then come down,” he swiped his thumb over your knuckles, “is that alright?”

You almost wanted to insist you could change in his room - let him see you bare in front of him like you wanted for weeks - but you simply nodded and slipped your hand from his grasp as you walked the short distance to your room. After changing into a tank top and pajama shorts, you shuffled up to his door in your slippers and gave a small knock.

He answered in an instant, wearing sweatpants and his usual white beater. You unintentionally let out a sigh, eyes immediately scanning over his muscular torso under the thin white fabric. 

Christ, he’s hot.

“Everything alright, pumpkin’?”

It didn’t help that he was so damn sweet to you.

“Huh? Uh - yeah, I just,” you stopped, realizing there wasn’t much of a need for an excuse, “I like the way you look in that.”

You boldly reached out to playfully tug the hem. He smiled and used your hand on him to pull you out of the hallway and into his room, wrapping you in his arms. 

“Yeah?” He said softly, kissing your cheek and forehead before finally meeting your lips, “I like the way you look in these.”

His hand slid down to the hem of your shorts, hiking them up a little to squeeze your upper thigh.

You giggled, a blush forming across your cheeks.

“And you’re so damn cute,” he led you to his bed, laying down and patting the spot next to him, “c’mere, sweetheart.”

Still, even after all those weeks, the pet names made you feel weak in the knees.

You obeyed instantly, crawling onto the mattress and snuggling up next to him. You rested your head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, steady and strong. 

Logan had a mirror across the room, coincidentally angled so that, from where you were, you could both see your reflection. He was playing with your hair when he began to stare at your reflection, smiling to himself.

“What?” You interrogated, looking up at him and then back to the mirror.

“We look good together,” he admitted, “well, you look good.”

You clicked your tongue, “are you kidding? Please, girls practically throw themselves at you.”

“Well, there’s only one girl I ever really wanted to throw herself at me.”

“I think you got your wish.”

You still had that spark - the back and forth quips and competitive nature - except that it was always something sweet now.

“I love you, a lot,” he muttered into the top of your head, pulling you as close as you could lay to him with your leg slug over his thighs.

“I love you too, Logan,” you smiled into his shirt, taking in the smell of him.

His hand came to rest on your thigh, gently kneading and squeezing. You already felt your breath quicken and heart start to race again as his fingertips traced the hem of your shorts. 

“Like I said,” he cooed, having picked up on your rapid heartbeat, “we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Staring up at him, his large hand still kneading your upper thigh, you’d decided - just like in the parking lot earlier - you’d had enough of holding back. You swiftly brought yourself further on top of him, straddling his lap with your knees on either side. You didn’t give him time to protest as you cupped his face and kissed him in a slow mess of tongues and teeth, savoring the feeling of finally having him beneath you. It wasn’t long before his hands found home on your thighs, his fingers already slotting beneath the fabric of your shorts. He then slid his hands up to squeeze your ass, pushing you even further into him while your tongue explored the inside of his mouth. When you finally pushed yourself up with your hands on his chest, he almost looked dazed. 

“I wouldn’t start somethin’ you can’t finish,” he panted, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips.

“Oh, I think I’ll finish,” you joked, raising your eyebrows at the innuendo. 

“Yeah? I know you will.”

You squealed and giggled when he flipped you on your back, climbing over you and caging you in with his forearms on either side of your head. 

“Been wantin’ to get my hands on you like this forever, you know,” he continued with a wicked smile, peppering kisses from your jaw to your collarbone, “thinkin’ about you.”

“W-What were you thinking about?” you managed to stutter out, eyes nearly rolling into the back of your head when he began to lightly suck and bite at your warm skin.

“Having you here, in my bed. Getting to undress you, having your thighs ‘round my head.”

You nearly choked on your saliva at the filthy way he was mumbling against your skin and squeezing your hips.

“Me too,” was all you could say, lost in the feeling of his hands now sliding under your tank top, resting right below your tits.

“ ‘s that what you thought about?”

You can tell he wanted you to say it, let him know just how bad you wanted him.

“I thought about being in your bed, sitting on your lap,” you took a deep breath, “and having you - having you, uh…”

Your sentence trailed off, cheeks tinted pink.

“What, sweetheart? C’mon, don’t be shy. What do you want me to do, huh?”

He still knew how to tease you, even if it wasn’t out of spite anymore. 

“Fuck,” you swallowed audibly, “want you to eat me out, fuck me - anything.”

You sounded desperate and you knew it. You really didn’t care, too engrossed in everything about him to even consider it. 

“Really?”

Your eyes met his, filled with lust and ambition to please you any way you wanted. His lips were parted in surprise when he first heard your words, slowly turning into a devious smile.

“Please.”

That was all he needed to trail his lips down your shoulders, gently pushing the straps of your tank top down. He sat up to let you pull it off and if he wasn’t already set on worshiping you, he definitely was now.

You’d yanked the garment over your head and onto the floor, revealing your bare chest. 

Logan groaned, laying you back down and almost immediately latching his lips onto the newly exposed and incredibly soft skin. 

“So beautiful,” he mumbled against you as he took one of your nipples in his mouth, swirling his tongue.

“Oh my god,” you huffed quietly, arching your back to push yourself even further into him.

He was trying to hold back a smug grin, switching between each breast, sucking and biting gently.

“ ‘s good, baby?”

You were lost for words, even more so when you could see the string of spit that connected his mouth to one of your tits.

“Mm-hm,” you hummed, your fingers having found their home in Logan’s hair. 

You whined when he pulled his mouth from you with an audible pop.

“Words, sweetheart,” he told you, his eyes glued to yours while he licked his own spit off his lips. 

“”Fuck, yes, yes -“

You were cut off by your own moan, gasping when you felt the pressure of his thigh in between yours. He slid his hands down your body to grab your ass in an attempt to grind you down on his leg.

“I like it when you make those noises for me,” he muttered into your chest, his hands still kneading your ass when he pulled you forwards.

You wanted him for so long that the reality of being with him had made you over sensitive to his touch. Even through the fabric of your panties and shorts, the feeling was intoxicating.

You were practically whining as he ground you down so hard that you were soaked all the way through your shorts and panties, the fabric of both sliding to the side.

“Fuck, you’re so wet already,” he chuckled a little, feeling the soaked patch on his sweatpants, “all for me?”

You hummed, hands tugging at his hair, “for-for you.”

His hands came around to the front of your shorts, his fingers hooking onto the fabric.

“Can I take these off you?”

“Please,” you responded immediately, already lifting your hips off the bed so he could drag your shorts down your legs. 

When he turned to throw them somewhere on the floor, he caught a glimpse of your reflection in the mirror. Your chest was heaving and your hair was all over the place from rolling around in the bed. He could see that you were still looking up at him, even when he was turned away.

“I got an idea, scoot up a bit,” he told you suddenly when he turned back to face you. You moved forward on the mattress as he momentarily stood up, stripping himself of his beater. He sat behind you and arranged himself so that he was holding your back against his chest with his arms around your waist, his legs spread out so you could lay between them.

You instantly caught sight of your reflection in the mirror. Your head was leaned back on his shoulder and he planted delicate kisses down your neck.

“ ‘s that why you wanted to sit like this?” you nodded weakly in the direction of the mirror, your eyes nearly fluttering close when he slid one of his hands to rest on the inside of your thigh.

“You look real pretty, I wanna see all of you,” he explained, his middle finger grazing your cunt through your damp panties.

Your eyes were glued to your reflection - your legs spread with his hand between them and purple hickies darkening on your chest. Logan was staring at your reflection too, his mouth still working on your neck.

“Look at you, all spread out for me,” he mumbled into your ear, “so fucking gorgeous.”

You couldn’t help the moan that escaped your lips. If he kept saying all those filthy things, it wasn't going to take long before you were coming apart in his arms.

You shivered when his fingers hooked around the wet crotch of your underwear and moved it to the side.

You could hear him swear under his breath from behind you, his fingers barely grazing your heat.

“God, Logan,” you were squirming, trying to push your hips towards his hand, “you’re gonna make me beg?”

You could see him smirk into your shoulder in the mirror, “you know what?”

He moved his hands to drag your panties off, nearly tearing them in the process.

“Yeah, I am.”

He let his head fall back to rest on the headboard, lidded eyes staring into your reflection while his hands laid still on the outside of your hips - even farther away from where you wanted him. He really wasn’t going to move an inch until he heard you beg for it, though he couldn’t help himself from digging his fingers into your soft flesh.

You groaned in frustration, “Fucking hate you.”

“Nah, you don’t.”

His lips grazed your earlobe and you wanted to roll your eyes at the smug look on his face, “Now, c’mon, baby. Beg.”

You moved your hands behind you so you could thread your fingers through the hair at the back of his head.

“Fuck, please, Logan - need you.”

“Need me how?”

He really was an asshole.

“Need your hands - need your fingers, please,” you groaned.

“I don’t know, you think you’ve been a good girl? Think you deserve it?”

You would’ve been pissed at him had he not turned you on beyond belief. You gave in, becoming putty in his arms.

“ ‘m good - been good for you,” you whined, using one of your hands on his to try and move it between your legs, “please.”

He sighed, returning his hand back to the hot skin of your inner thigh, “Shit, need me that bad? Huh, pretty girl?”

You were so worked up you could have cried from his teasing. You nodded eagerly, attempting to clamp your thighs together to force his hand to at least graze your cunt that was dripping onto his sheets.

He clicked his tongue and used his strong hands on the inside of your thighs to spread your legs again, “Gotta keep ‘em open for me, sweetheart.”

He dragged two of his fingers between your folds, messily toying with you. You gasped, gripping his arm and inadvertently leaving imprints from your fingernails.

“So fucking wet,” he huffed, gaze glued to the reflection of your spread legs in the mirror, “Pretty pussy’s all mine.”

You were already whimpering and moaning from the slightest touch.

“ ‘s yours - fuck, I‘m-I’m yours,” you sighed, eyes fluttering closed.

He hummed in agreement, his fingers prodding at your entrance.

“Please, please, please,” you whined, trying to push your hips forward.

“I think you’ve been real good, angel,” he was slipping his fingers further into you at an agonizingly slow pace, “think you deserve it.”

You were whining and whimpering so loud that you were sure someone had to have heard you by now. You couldn’t help the noises slipping from your mouth, feeling like you’d black out just from the sight of Logan’s fingers slipping between your swollen lips and into your cunt.

When he finally thrusted his fingers into you all the way down to his knuckles, you brought a hand up to cover your mouth in an attempt to muffle what you knew would be a pornographically loud moan.

He clicked his tongue, grabbing at your wrist to tug your hand away.

“Uh-uh, baby,” he panted into your ear, curling his fingers inside you, “wanna hear you - want everyone to know who’s makin’ you feel good like this.”

His thumb started to draw circles around your clit in rhythm with the movement of his fingers and you could feel the pressure in your stomach starting to build.

“Fuck,” he cursed, his jaw hung open while he watched his fingers disappear inside you over and over again with ease, “takin’ my fingers so well. I think you’d take somethin’ else real well, too.”

The intent of his words nearly drove you over the edge, your mind unable to stop conjuring up images of what it would be like when he finally did fill you like you’d wanted him to.

“Logan, Logan, I’m -,” you groaned, so close to finally coming on his fingers.

Until he slipped them out of you and pulled his hand away completely.

You choked out a sob, squeezing your eyes shut in frustration.

“I’m gonna let you finish, don’t worry,” he promised. You watched him suck his fingers clean before he used his arm around you to rearrange you both so that he was laying on his back and you were facing him with your legs straddling his torso. You could feel his erection poking at your ass and you licked your lips when you imagined being able to take him in your mouth, letting him fuck your throat to the point that your chin and the base of his cock were coated in your drool.

“C’mere, sweetheart,” Logan’s voice brought you out of thought and you let him guide your legs up until your knees were on either side of your head.

You looked down at him in curiosity, not yet understanding what it was he wanted to do.

Noticing your expression, he wrapped his arms around your thighs to pull your dripping pussy closer to his mouth.

“I’m gonna let you finish, baby, but it’s gotta be on my mouth. Sit.”

“You…” you hesitated for a second, feeling your face redden, “you want me to sit on your face? What if I crush you? Or suffocate you?’’

He chuckled at your concern, lovingly caressing your thighs, “You won’t, trust me. It’ll feel good, I promise. Besides, If you did suffocate me? I don’t think I’d wanna go any other way.”

You laughed nervously and let him pull you down further, sinking onto his face. His tongue swiped up your folds and you gripped the headboard so you wouldn’t fall forward.

“Jesus, Logan,” you gasped, your other hand gripping his hair, “feels so fucking good.”

“Uh-huh, told you, princess. Jus’ lemme take care of you,” he mumbled into your pussy, eating you like he was starved. He moved his head back and forth and up and down to lick every inch of you he could.

“I think I would’ve - ah, would’ve said somethin’ to you much sooner if I knew you could do this,” you joked a little, your small chuckle turning into a gasp when he slipped his tongue even further down so he was inside you. He hummed into you, his nose nudging against your clit. You began to grind your hips back and forth over his mouth, drunk off the way he moved his tongue.

“Atta girl,” he grunted, “use me, c’mon.”

His hairy arms were hooked around your thighs like a vice, to the point that you couldn’t lift your hips even if you wanted to. When his eyes weren’t trained on you above him, they were squeezed shut in an attempt to savor every second his tongue was in your pussy. He was pulling your thighs forward every time you rocked yourself back and forth, desperate to feel you come on - in - his mouth. 

You could already feel the pressure building in your stomach. The obscene wet noises coming from his mouth messily eating your cunt didn’t do much to ease it, either. Your eyes rolled back and you continued to ride his face, mouth hung open in ecstasy. Logan could tell you were close just from how sloppy your movements had become. 

“Gonna come for me already, honey?”

You hated how hot it was when he teased you, mocked your desperation.

“Fuck, yeah,” you groaned, your hips rolling forward.

“Lemme see it, pretty girl, come for me.”

You gasped at the filth spilling from his lips into you. It was more than enough to finally make the tension snap in your lower stomach, still rocking your hips over his mouth while you whimpered his name over and over again like a prayer.

Logan was practically growling into your cunt, feeling your muscles contract around his prodding tongue. He was trying to catch anything that possibly came from your release. You tasted good, but when you finished? Even fucking better.

“Lo-Logan, too much, s’ too much,” you tried to protest as he kept your thighs locked around his face, still lapping at you without slowing his pace. He hummed in response and finally let you go when he was sure he’d licked you clean.

You lifted your hips and moved to sit beside him on your heels, almost in pain at the loss of physical contact. When you finally got to see his face, his lips were red and raw, his chin and even the side of his cheeks coated in your slick. You watched in awe as he wiped his cheek, bringing his hand up to his mouth after to lick it clean.

“Taste fucking amazing,” he assured you, keeping his eyes on yours when he sucked on one of his fingers.

You caught sight of his obvious and rather large erection and your mouth began to water. Once again, you were lost in the thought of how good it would be to feel the weight of his cock in your mouth.

“You alright, baby?”

“Yeah, I - um,” you sighed, leaning forward on your hands, “can I - can I have it in my mouth? Just for a little bit?”

Your hand rested on his hip, fingers grazing the waistband of his sweatpants, dangerously close.

“Shit,” he huffed, his cock twitching from the anticipation, “you wanna?”

You nodded eagerly, pulling his pants and boxers down his thighs when he lifted his hips.

“Hey,” he tenderly stopped your hand as you reached to touch him, “I’m tellin’ you now, girl -  you can suck it ‘cause you asked so nicely but I’m not comin’ unless it’s in you.”

He let go of your wrist and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear, continuing to speak.

“I can fill your throat another time, yeah?”

You were speechless, lidded eyes switching from his face to his swollen cock and back again. You nodded in agreement.

You guessed Logan would be big - he was generally a large guy - but you could feel the drool gathering in your mouth when his cock sprung out of his boxers to hit his stomach. He was fucking huge. You might’ve been nervous if you weren’t so eager to fit him into your mouth. You finally leaned down to wrap a hand around the base of his cock, softly licking at his leaking tip.

Logan threaded your hair between his fingers, gathering as much as he could to form a makeshift ponytail that was held together by his fist. 

“Like seein’ your pretty face. You’re so fuckin’ gorgeous, you know that?”

His words only spurred you on and you gathered as much saliva as possible so you could spit onto his cock. When you did, you started to stroke him in a slow rhythm that had him rocking his hips towards your hand already. His mouth hung open and his eyes were glued to your movements, watching you work your hand up and down. Your spit coated your hand and his cock to the point that it was dripping down his balls.

The moment you finally closed your mouth around him, he was practically a mess.

You took him as deep as you could, relaxing your throat and steadily breathing. You gagged as his tip hit the back of your throat and he groaned. He watched your head bob up and down while you simultaneously stroked whatever you couldn’t fit into your mouth. He huffed out your name in between cursing under his breath. His gaze caught the mirror he’d nearly forgotten about and he could’ve came just from the sight of your mouth drooling around him.

“So good, baby,” he sighed, licking his lips, “you look so pretty suckin’ my cock.”

You reveled in the praises spilling from his lips. Chasing more, you used your hand that wasn’t around him to cup his balls and massage gently. He actually whimpered and you could feel Logan’s legs start to shake a bit.

“Alright, enough - ,” he grunted, using his grip on your hair to pull your mouth from him and push your hand away.

You almost looked hurt, pouting while looking between him and his glistening cock. Truthfully, you liked the taste of him. Loved it, really, so much so that you had to hold back from diving right back into position. Just the idea had you clenching your thighs together when you thought of it. When your mouth was already on him? You were so wet again that it was starting to smear across your inner thighs.

“Sorry, doll,” he apologized while swiping fallen strands of hair from your face, “too close.”

It felt exhilarating being able to turn big, bad, scary Wolverine into a whimpering mess after only a couple minutes in your mouth.

“I’m gonna come in you,” he reiterated, “gonna make you mine.”

You just about melted into putty from his words.

“ ‘m yours, ‘v been yours.”

Your voice was desperate and you crawled onto him, straddling his hips. Your bare cunt slid against the base of his cock and his hips jerked up.

“Fuck,” he panted, “you wanna know somethin’? Been thinking about this for so long, even when I thought you hated me - I couldn’t help it.”

“Me too,” you replied, hands on his chest to steady yourself, “even when I thought you hated me. Used to think - to think about jus’ getting you alone.”

“Yeah?” He teased, one of his hands coming down to align his cock with your entrance, “what did you think about doing when you got me alone, hm?”

“I - ah, f-fuck,” you tried to speak, stuttering when he started to slip himself in as slowly as possible, “letting you fuck me, having - having your fingers in me.”

“So, is it as good as you imagined?”

“Mm,” you tried to respond and only whined from the pressure of Logan pushing you down further onto his cock and stretching you out, “better, it’s better.”

“You think you can take all of it, sweetheart?”

“I need it, please, please, Logan - need you.”

You could rarely recognize your own voice, strained and desperate.

“Only ‘cause you begged so nice.”

In one hard thrust, he pushed your hips down onto his.

Your jaw hung open and your eyes rolled back into your head. You’d never felt so fucking full before, like he reached every inch of where you wanted him. 

“Fucking - Christ, Logan, you - ah,” your sentence was cut off when he began to grind up into you, using his grip on your hips to keep you steady and gently help guide you up and down. 

“Hm? What, baby?”

When you sat back down on him, he used an iron grip to keep you where you were, pushing himself as far into you as he possibly could. The friction on your clit made your pussy twitch and he definitely felt it, pulling you back and forth a little bit.

Again, you couldn’t speak - too distracted by the indescribable feeling of having him sheathed completely inside you. Your eyes started to water, tears forming from the overwhelming pleasure in the pit of your stomach. 

“Fuck me,” you nearly sobbed, leaning forward to bury your face in his neck, “please, please.”

He finally let you lift your hips up and down again and you were a whining fucking mess. Logan could see over your shoulder into the mirror and he marveled at the white ring you left around the base of his cock every time you lifted your hips. You were messy, exactly how he wanted you - he’d probably lick you clean after, if you’d let him.

You were rambling into his neck, panting, “so fucking - you’re so big, oh my god, need you all - ah - all the time.”

He was smirking to himself, smug from how he was able to fuck you to the point that you were just letting go completely - telling him every thought that popped into your mind while you were still on top of him. You worked yourself up to a steady rhythm and he indulged in the image of your tits bouncing above him when you sat up. 

“So good, honey - takin’ me so well, like you were made for me,” he groaned. His eyes never left yours.

“ ‘m made for - for you,” you slurred, rolling your hips.

“That’s right, sweetheart. Who’s this pussy belong to, huh? Tell me.”

“Yours, I - it’s yours, Logan.”

Your thighs started to ache pretty quickly, your pace faltering as he kept steadily drilling up into you. 

“Are you sore, baby? You wanna switch?”

His voice was so soft in comparison to how he was speaking moments earlier through gritted teeth. You nodded and let him lay you on your back, climbing over you and caging you in with his forearms on either side of your head. He placed a tender kiss on your forehead, both cheeks, the tip of your nose and finally, your lips. You were absolutely giddy from the sickly sweet moments you shared inbetween the times where he was fucking you so hard you were out of breath. 

Your ankles locked behind Logan’s back to pull him into you while he tried to guide himself with his hand. He slipped back in effortlessly and ground his hips forward, pinning you down to the mattress. One of his arms was snaked around your back to hold you closer and the other was holding your wrists together above your head.

His hips rolled forward and he hit a spot inside of you that made the fire in the pit of your stomach rise.

You choked out a sob and tried to squirm in an attempt to free your wrists, but you both knew there was no way you’d wiggle out of his grip unless he let you. To no surprise, a man made of mostly metal was almost impossibly strong when he pinned you down with his hands and hips.

“I gotcha’.” he panted, so close that your noses brushed together when he thrust forward, “you’re not goin’ anywhere, sweetheart.”

As if you’d want to move from your spot underneath him.

Your eyes caught the shining metal of the dog tags hanging from his neck, swinging back and forth over your chest when he moved. When you looked back up to his face, his eyes were boring into yours. His face was flushed and his mouth hung open, sweat accumulating on his brow. He looked fucking gorgeous. You were going to tell him so, try to lean up to kiss him, but he spoke again before you could.

“I’m in love with you - ‘m so in love with you, you know that?”

The pace of his thrusts quickened and you could’ve cried at the sincerity had he not been drilling into you so hard that you could barely open your eyes.

“I - I’m, ah - in love with - with you, too,” you choked out between gasps.

“So pretty,” he muttered, finally letting go of your wrists so he could hold your chin to force you to keep your eyes on him, “i’m so fucking lucky.”

It was all too much - the sincere adoration in his voice combined with the filthy way he was snapping his hips into yours - and you could feel the knot in your lower stomach start to come undone.

“Logan, fuck, I’m -,” you tried to tell him you were close, but his thrusts were knocking the wind out of you.

“God, please - c’mon, c’mon,” he was pleading through gritted teeth, trying with everything in him to hold back from coming before you did. His hand slipped between your bodies so he could draw tight circles around your clit and your eyes squeezed shut in ecstacy. 

You were chanting his name after a couple more strokes, tears rolling down the side of your face while he pounded you through your orgasm. You were practically seeing stars, your legs shaking around his waist.

He could feel your muscles contract around him and his movements became sloppy. He was grunting with every roll of his hips, muttering praises under his breath.

So fucking pretty

Look so beautiful like this

So perfect

He was spilling into you seconds later, animalistically groaning into your ear. His hips slowed to a halt, his arms still wrapped around you. You were both shiny and sticky with sweat, panting with flushed faces. When he pulled his face from your ear, he was beaming like an idiot, already drowsy.

“Was that good, baby?”

He was still out of breath, using one arm to weakly hold himself above you while he stroked your hair. 

“Are you serious? More than good,” you chuckled, “amazing.”

He tenderly kissed your forehead and rolled beside you, immediately wrapping you in his arms.

“Don’t we have to clean up?” you asked, eyes already starting to flutter closed.

“Mhm,” he hummed, nuzzling his face into the back of your neck, “can do it later - wanna cuddle.”

You grinned wide, amused by how damn cute he was. You simply hummed in agreement, resting your hand over his.

“Logan?”

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

A/N: I had to close my laptop and walk away a a couple time while writing this so I hope it drives you as insane as it did me! I'm gnawing at the bars of my enclosure

If you enjoyed, thank you for reading and pls like/reblog!! <3 and thank u sm for the love on part 1!

[whateverisbeautiful]

♥️Reveling in Richonne - TOWL

#53: The Dossier (1.06)

gif cred: @nerd4music

It looks like Jadis and I unfortunately do have something in common - we both be writing pages and pages about Richonne 😋...

So after the pretty theme song, Rick opens doors where Pearl is waiting and happy to see him. She wants Rick to tell her what happened now that he’s given the others a debriefing. Rick says there was turbulence and their helicopter was struck by lightning. And then Rick says, “We were going down over water and Bethune shoved me out. She saved my life. Not hers, mine.”

And y’all, the way Rick can’t help but have his tone and expression soften when talking about Dana Bethune. 😇 As has been established, it's tough for him to play the role of Man Who Is Not Madly In Love With The New Consignee. 😋

gif cred: @coolpartytimefan

I like how the story Rick crafted is one where Dana saved his life. That Bethune sure is a little superhero for Sergeant Major Grimes the way she stays coming to the rescue lol. But it’s fitting because, of all the fabricated parts of their stories to Thorne, the truest truth is that Michonne really did and does save Rick’s life. 

Rick thanks Pearl for bringing Dana in. But Michonne still has Pearl in her feelings so she doesn’t want to be associated as she scowls and says, “No you brought her in.” And Rick sure did - years ago at a prison. 😊 Michonne even thanked him for it. 😇

Rick, never above pulling the Okafor card with Pearl, says “Why don’t we just say it was Okafor. That we were just keeping his thing going.” Pearl and Rick look at each other for a moment as Pearl seems like her days of being loyal to Okafor are over.

And as Rick and Pearl looked at each other I was like - Pearl, you can’t tell that your brother Rick appears real rejuvenated after that helicopter crash? Like the man was looking fine and full of life after the time he’s spent with his wife. But Pearl never did know Rick like she thought so she still hasn’t put anything together yet. 

Pearl notes how her thoughts on giving up have changed as she and Rick walk down a hall. She acknowledges how she and Rick gave up a lot to be here and then she sounds extra culty when she shares that she now realizes that giving up can be a sign of strength and being committed to something bigger than oneself. Had me looking at her truly like...

She says, “Giving up made me understand what we’re really doing here. Hopefully, you will understand too.” Rick says he wants to understand…and he does, just not for the reasons Pearl thinks. Because he and his wife have a whole plan to expose what the CRM are really doing here.

Pearl says she’s glad Rick made it because it is up to them but not like how Okafor thought. Pearl suggests Okafor died because he was never fully present with the CRM - but actually, Okafor died because Michonne and Nat had to get their lick back. 👌🏽

And then Pearl says that they are meant to be a part of the CRM and have to let go of Okafor’s 'BS.' Rick tells Pearl, “Well show me the other way” and Pearl is happy to hear that as she walks and he follows. 

gif cred: @andy-clutterbuck

Then we get to see what Michonne is up to as she sneaks into the CRM. She’s stealthy making her way in and is quickly able to get into Jadis room which is covered in art. I feel like an appreciation for art is the one thing Jadis and Michonne had in common.

You could say they also had thinking Rick is fine in common which is fair, but as many have noted, there aren’t any paintings of Rick in Jadis room and I agree with those who felt like that could suggest her suggestive come-ons with Rick had a lot more to do with liking that it made him uncomfortable than actual attraction. 

Pearl takes Rick to the woods where Beale kills walkers in solitude. She tells Rick that Beale wants to talk to him and before Rick approaches Beale, Pearl seems to want him to understand how eye-opening and 'life-changing' this next encounter with the Major General will be so she tells him, “Rick, this is it.” But like...

So then Rick greets Beale with a salute and Beale gives him more insight into himself and his perspective. Throughout talking to Rick in the woods, Beale places emphasis on how they are 'the dead ones.' That was true for Rick for a long while but now he has Michonne back and has returned back to being the ones who live. 👌🏽

Beale is humbled by Rick returning when he didn’t have to and so he says he’ll share some time and some info with him. 

gif cred: @andy-clutterbuck

In Jadis' room, Michonne searches through Jadis belongings and finally spots a wiry silver cat sculpture tucked away in a corner near a drawing of Father Gabriel.

Jadis would put the dossier in a cat statue after knowing Rick took her cat statue all those years ago and wouldn’t give it back because it belonged to Michonne now lol.

I do like the choice to have the dossier - this paper that caused so many complications - be placed inside a cat sculpture. Seeing Michonne holding it was a nice callback to the cat sculptures she’s had in the past - the one Rick got her from the heaps in Season 7 and the too-damn gorgeous rainbow cat she got when bonding with Carl in the OG Grimes Family 2.0 episode Clear. 🥲

Michonne is able to remove the document and has an emotional response as she reads it. I'm glad they showed us portions of the dossier so I could read some of it too. And upon reading it…y’all, Jadis was out here straight snitching. 😑

The way she was writing pages about Rick and Michonne I really was like…nawt Jadis writing her own twisted version of a Reveling in Richonne post. 🙃

Some of the things I caught from the letter is Jadis admitting that she had an arrangement with Rick after trading him when he was injured. She mentions Alexandria Safe Zone and that Rick is actually an A. She writes that, “Rick led his own alliance of communities.”

Then I do like seeing that she talks about Michonne as Rick’s wife even tho first and foremost she needs to keep his wife’s name out of her mouth and dossiers.👌🏽

gif cred: @taiturner

She wrote, “Rick’s wife Michonne is the individual known as Dana Bethune.” She exposes that Michonne was searching for Rick and shot down the helicopter that killed Okafor, not knowing Rick was aboard.

Jadis acknowledges Richonne is a force to be reckoned with as she writes that Rick is a natural-born leader with several strategic abilities and strengths that make him a “formidable opponent.” And is. 💯

And she again refers to Michonne as Rick’s wife and says, “Her unwavering loyalty to Rick and her relentless determination make her an equally dangerous adversary.” She really said look CRM, Rick's wife is ride or die and nothing to play with because when she sets a goal, she persists and achieves it. 💅🏽

gif cred: @michonnegrimes

Basically, this dossier can be summed up as Jadis knowing that Rick and Michonne are the baddest to ever do it, and she's trying to tell the CRM...

She writes that the community Richonne built is well organized and she says that destroying Richonne is "necessary" because they pose a grave threat to the CRM's operations and mission.

And one last time let me say - Jadis, you beast. 😒 Like the fact that she had to complicate Richonne’s life even in death by writing this dossier and advocating for their destruction. She got what she deserved in ep 5. Honestly, better than she deserved. 

So then Michonne emotionally tears the dossier up into tiny pieces and she too is pained by the fact that this little paper caused so many issues and nearly kept her from reuniting her family. Its an impactful moment as she finally gets to destroy the very thing that tried to destroy her and those she loves.

gif cred: @coolpartytimefan

And then she picks up the pieces and gets ready to head out when the first wrench is thrown in the plan as a soldier realizes someone is inside Jadis’ room.

The woman enters and Michonne takes her out and well…one thing about Michonne and Rick - they don’t exactly have a crisis of conscience when it comes to killing if they have to.

gif cred: @nerd4music

So then Beale goes into his speech with Rick, convinced that after their talk everything will change for him. Beale asks Rick, “What’s the worst thing you did to make sure someone else survived?” And then they cut to some of Rick Grimes’ most pivotal and classic TWD moments.

They show when Rick killed Shane in season 2, killed that prisoner in season 3, killed the termites at the trough in season 5, and the montage concludes with Rick’s absolute craziest and most iconic kill when he took a bite out of Joe the Claimers throat. 

gif cred: @ex0rin

Rick knows that’s gotta be the number one wildest thing he’s done, and so he says, “I killed someone with my teeth. Like they do.” I love the delivery of this line. 😊 And not many can say they took a page out of the walker handbook like that man Rick Grimes.

gif cred: @ex0rin

Beale says he’s sorry to hear that but Rick says he doesn’t have to be. As dark and insane of a mental place Rick had to go to take out that Claimer, he would do what he did 1000 times over if it meant saving his family.

Beale notes that Rick has made some extraordinary choices and shares that he’s given this echelon briefing 2,533 times but never to someone like Rick ‘Built Different’ Grimes.

...And Beale will soon realize why it was probably best to not give this speech to a soldier like Rick. 👌🏽😌

[animehouse-moe]

Ryoko Kui's Daydream Hour

I am moving at a glacial pace with tidying up and editing the images of this art book, so I'm going to take a break and talk about Kui's incredible character design on Delicious In Dungeon, using elves here as an example

So, first of all, race-defining traits. With the elves, it's obviously ears as the first. But, Kui plays around with that far more and in an incredibly natural way. The size of their ears differs, the angle at which they protrude from the side of the head can be different, their rotation in terms of where the opening of the ear faces can change, and even the "pointyness" is unique to each elf.

It creates incredibly varied views and "styles" of elf within the world, and complements a lot more of the physical traits that reflect ethnicity in our world.

Take, for example, the hair of elves. In the vast majority of cases it remains blonde or silver/white, and is straight. As you can tell with some of the images, it's not always smooth or silky like some exhibit, but in the vast majority of cases, for elves that are pure elves, their hair is straight (potentially with some shape/volume as you can see with the gray-haired elf with green markings on their face).

Similarly, elves are shown to have characteristically blue or green eyes. Which begins to draw your attention towards an outlier.

This elf. The one with purple eyes. Immediately, you might think "oh, they must only be part elf", but Ryoko Kui was only laying a trap with that idea. This elf is certainly 100% elf, it's just that they exhibit traits that are heterogenous to how Kui's defined elves as a race.

The biggest outliers being the purple eyes, but then also the ears. Here's the thing though, there's not a race that strongly exhibits purple eyes throughout Ryoko Kui's work on Delicious In Dungeon. It's just that elves exhibit strong homogeneity in regards to eye color. A similar thing can arguably be said about the ears which may make viewers think something's up. They're certainly the smallest of the bunch, and the most rotated, but other elves also see aggressively rotated ears, just not to the degree that this one does.

If you want to talk about how the traits of elves mix with that of other races we actually have two examples. Marcille Donato, obviously, as a half elf and half tall-man, but also this other blonde woman with blue eyes.

We know of Marcille's heritage so let's focus on the woman on the right. The first thing that you notice as a heterogenous is her hair: it's wavy. It's a trait that's very much separate from Kui's depiction of elves. Similarly, the shape of the eyes betrays that much more narrow and sharp style.

Then there's also the ears, which are larger, noticeably shorter, more round, and most noteworthy are thicker.

With that last piece I'm sure many are thinking, "Oh, she has to be half Gnome!". Yes, the shape and size of the ears does very much fit Kui's style of Gnome (as does her height, I'll say more later), but let me show you a (bad and unedited) image of how Kui draws gnomes.

Their eyes are far more slanted and downturned. It's a very strong trait of the Gnomes, alongside their very prominent noses and hair that isn't noticeably curly or wavy.

So no, it's not Gnome, and I wouldn't say it's Dwarf either. My guess is that this woman is part half-foot. The smaller stature (yes, the headshot shows that she's shorter than the other elves), the curly hair, the shorter yet more prominent and thicker ears, the rounder eyes, it all speaks to similarities expressed by Half-Foot characters.

And I think that's really incredible. It's just a wonderful highlight of how thoughtful and creative Kui is with their character design, and how unique they're able to make a race.

At a glance, you can tell who's what, but they don't all look the same by any means.

That's something that's really driven home with Ryoko Kui's Daydream Hour, and something I really want to talk about more. Though, as you can tell, I've got a lot of work ahead of me to get images that are actually good and presentable, so we'll see when I'm able to squeeze out a proper post.

[canmom]

Hello! I absolutely love your blog, everything from your festival recounts to animation analysis and programming (one of tumblr's recommended posts was the one where you made your own rasteriser, and I liked your attitude in what I've read so much that I'm gonna attempt to conquer my 3-year-long grudge against using opengl during college and do something similar now that I'm a bit older and have no deadlines :D).

But anyway, I have 2 questions (sorry if there's easily accessible answers, tumblr search is not helping): 1. During your animation nights, does the screen stay black while everyone watches their own video while you provide commentary? I haven't caught any yet but maybe someday! And 2. do you have any youtube channels or just one-off video essays that you like that also cover animation/directors? Or, even programming lol.

Sorry for the long ask have a nice day!

hiii! i'm very touched that you like my dorky eclectic blog <3

For the Animation Nights, I just stream the video over Twitch from local sources on my computer, typically by playing the video in mpv and recording it in OBS. This is obviously not ideal from a video quality perspective, but it's the easiest way to watch video in sync without making everyone download files in advance. Then we all chat in the Twitch chat box (in large part to crack stupid jokes, it's not that highbrow lmao). I've gotten away with it so far!

As for youtube channels, I can recommend...

anime production/history (i.e. sakuga fandom)

SteveM is likely the most sakuga-fan affiliated anituber. He makes long, well-researched and in-depth videos on anime history, usually themed around a particular director or studio.

Pyramid Inu might be my fave anituber - very thoughtful analysis of Gundam, obscure mecha anime and oldschool BL and similar topics. tremendously soothing voice too.

The Canipa Effect does excellent deep dives into the production of specific shows, both western and anime. I appreciate the respect he gives to the Korean animators of shows like AtlA in particular!

Sean Bires's 2013 presentation on sakuga is pretty foundational to this whole subcultural niche, and a great place to get an introduction to the major animator names to know and significant points in the history of anime. unfortunately a couple of the segments got slapped down by copyright but the rest holds up!

animation theory (for animators and aspirants)

I'm going to focus here on resources that are relevant to animation in general, and 2D animation. if I was going to list every Blender channel we'd be here all week :p

New Frame Plus is one of the best channels out there for game animation, describing in tightly edited videos how animation principles work in a game context and analysing the animation of various games. highly recommend

Videogame Animation Study is similar, examining the animation of specific games in detail

the 'twelve principles of animation' (defined by Disney's Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas) remain the standard approach to animation pedagogy; there are various videos on them, but Alan Becker (of Animator vs Animation) has quite a popular series. I haven't actually watched these but many people swear by them! Dermot O'Connor expands the list to 21. Note that some of the terminology can be a little inconsistent between different animators - c.f. 'secondary motion'...

Dong Chang is an animator at Studio NUT, who produces a lot of fantastic, succinct videos on standard techniques in the anime industry, timesheet notations, etc. etc. Studio Bulldog, a small anime studio, are a good complement; they focus more on douga than genga and are generally a bit more traditional.

programming

big topic here, I'm going to focus on game dev and tech art since that's my field. but also some general compsci stuff that's neat

SimonDev - graphics programmer with a bunch of AAA experience, fantastic explanations of advanced optimisations and some of the more counterintuitive aspects of rendering

Acerola - graphics programmer who makes very detailed guides to a variety of effects with a very rapid and funny 'guy that has seen monogatari' editing style. When he's good, he's really good. His video on water is probably the best one I've seen (though I can recommend a couple of others).

TodePond - the most charming, musical videos about recursion and cellular automata you've ever seen. less programming tutorial and more art in themselves.

Ben Eater - known for his breadboard computer series, a fantastic demonstration of how to go from logic gates up to the 6502 with actual hardware. worth watching just for how clean he puts the wires on his breadboards like goddamn man

Sebastian Lague, Useless Game Dev - both do 'coding adventure' style videos where they spend a few weeks on some project and then document it on Youtube, resulting in a huge library of videos about all sorts of fascinating techniques. great to dive into

Freya Holmér - creator of the 'shapes' library, makes videos on mathematical programming, with gorgeously animated vector graphics. Her video on splines is a particular treat.

There are definitely many more channels I can recommend on these subjects, but I'll need to dig into my history a bit - unfortunately I need to rush out right now, but hopefully that should be good to be getting going with!

[fishmech]

you really have to be fucking stupid to believe the nonsense about "Israel is waiting til big events to do big attacks"

First of all: they are committing massive murder constantly every day. Not even just since October but for decades.

Second: none of the big events people claim match up are things that actually hide that? You're just making stupid excuses to cover for countries that don't care anyway. About whole populations that have never cared about Palestinian suffering and Israeli crimes.

But most especially it's galling to see people try to claim the fucking met gala as a "big event" that would drown out war. The fucking local fundraising event that doesn't even get live TV or streaming coverage.

Because it's run by the Vogue fashion magazine by and for the fashion community in general, and to fund the Metropolitan Museum Of Arts' ongoing upkeep of fashion and clothing material exhibits in general, and to provide primary funding for the latest yearly fashion exhibition it immediately precedes.

It's something the vast majority of New Yorkers, let alone the vast majority of Americans, let alone the vast majority of the world doesn't care about. When you declare the stupid event as necessary to hide yet another daily Israeli crime, you're basically revealing you don't actually think of the reality of the ongoing genocide, or have any touch with your own national reality.

But hey the same people saying this shit didn't start pretending to care until 6 months ago. Could never be me, my rabbi grandfather taught us that what Israel was already doing was evil and we should support our Palestinian brothers and sisters and oppose further restrictions and encroachment on their land, lives, and existence. So I already was aware of this shit, of how zionism is at best harmful by accident and most of the time harmful on purpose by like 1999.

Just, when I see people convinced that their favorite little internet day must be a smokescreen for an attack it's like. How are you this unserious as a person? What went wrong with your perception of world events that you have to qanon your way into believing niche events are being used as cover? It's frankly treating real life genocide like it's part of a fucking ARG.

[ryuichirou]

Okay I know you made this art like AGES ago but the womb tattoo Idia lives rentfree in my head and I wanted to ask if you had any hcs connected to that, like which character would love it and breed him nonstop, who'd find it hot in theory but not actually want to knock him up, who'd just make him get rid of it to not even risk it... or maybe someone would just make him a public breeding stock?

Hi again, Anon!

I am so happy you liked that one; I randomly remember that idea from time to time as well. We definitely should revisit it, and I should draw it again, but for now I’ll use your ask as an opportunity to talk about it!

First of all, “public breeding stock” is a phrase that feels so wrong yet so right when you apply it to Idia… thank you for putting this image in our heads. Ah, the way he should be treated 😔

As for the boys, I think none of them would want to get rid of the tattoo in an easy non-sexual manner; maybe it’s because of magic, maybe it’s horny monkey brain, but the moment they see it on Idia’s stomach, they’ll go ballistic lol

I also think that the majority of the boys we ship Idia with wouldn’t actually want to knock him up BUUUUT there is some nuance to this whole thing, so let’s go through the list of our main Idia ships…

Azul – this one actually has some hcs, since the original comic is Azul/Idia-centric! The moment Azul learns about the true meaning of the tattoo, he’ll play the “oh how dare you, did you want to use me for your own satisfaction, Idia-san?” card, of course being very obviously fake about this heartbreak and betrayal of trust. And he would completely ignore the fact that Idia wasn’t planning on doing that at all… and he’ll keep talking about it, while having sex with Idia, completely ignoring Idia who is trying to explain that this isn’t the case. The fact that Idia’s mouth starts smiling involuntarily due to how good it feels doesn’t help his case at all.

Azul doesn’t really buy the breeding thing, but he’ll still get overly horny simply due to how much power he has over Idia in this state, especially as the tattoo lights up with his every move and how Idia exhales whenever the dick leaves his body. They’ll break the spell, but Azul will definitely use it in the future. Controlling Idia by having the one thing that he wants sounds like too powerful of an idea to ignore it. Azul is on his way to learn how to cast it! (he’ll also try not to think about how much he genuinely loved seeing Idia looking like this and desiring him…)

Jade and Floyd will get super into in this exciting new thing that Idia did to himself. It’s like a fun toy just got upgraded into the best toy! Idia is already pretty easy to chase and freak out, but when he’s barely running because his body actually wants him to get railed by these two, even though his mind isn’t… it’s perfect. It also feels like when Idia is scared of them, his sexual frustration gets even worse, so by the time they finally get tired of playing around and pin him down, his tattoo would be so bright and hot and his hips would move on their own because he’s desperate. These two would really push the tattoo’s effect to its absolute limits before they even get to touch Idia directly. So of course they’ll comment on how pathetic Idia looks, and of course they’ll play with him for hours!

While they probably won’t be very interested in the breeding part, they would love how Idia begs them to stop but also keeps clinging to them. They’ll also love how his belly is getting filled and stretched as they finish inside for the 5th time both, and Jade would be the one to not only comment on that, and then Floyd would put pressure on the belly to make Idia squirt out everything he’s been storing inside for the past two hours. His tattoo almost started disappearing, too..! But now that Idia is empty, it’s bright and hungry again.

Ortho – Of course he’ll help his niisan/niichan out! Isn’t it for the best that they can do it together and Idia won’t have to embarrass himself in front of other people? Not to mention, they’ve read a hentai manga just like that about a younger brother who helped out his older sister in the exact same way! What do you mean Ortho shouldn’t have access to this type of literature? Too late! Anyways, he’ll ignore Idia moaning about how wrong this it because he’s too busy enjoying how the tattoo colour changes whenever he changes the settings of his robo-dick.

Ironically, I can picture him of all people kind of wishing to knock Idia up, both as AI Ortho and as actual human Ortho. Not only he’ll say it while fucking the living daylights out of Idia, he’ll also make sure that by the time of his third orgasm Idia would start agreeing with him while crying of pleasure. This would’ve instantly became a cringe memory that Idia could’ve easily brushed off (he wasn’t really himself, it was the tattoo’s fault) when the whole thing is over; but Ortho would say that it’s a bummer that actually knocking Idia up is impossible… Ortho, please, you are the one person who SHOULDN’T think about it!

Sebek – no thoughts head empty; after figuring out what kind of curse this tattoo implies and yelling at Idia for being so obscene, he’ll get consumed by the desire to breed him. Maybe fae react to this type of tattoo stronger? Maybe it’s just a Sebek thing. But the moment he stares at the tattoo for longer than 2 seconds, his pupils will dilate and he will get super horny. He might get a vague desire to actually  impregnate Idia, and it’ll keep his hips going like crazy, but it wouldn’t go further than that. Even though for a moment there he really would feel like Idia’s body is capable of handling fae eggs or anything else for that matter… Still, Sebek will fill Idia with to the brim and just keep creampie-ing him until both of them pass out.

Lilia – he is the one guy who is actually aware about the tattoo and what it represents, and he would be very impressed by the fact that Idia managed to do this to himself somehow. This is absolutely the first time Lilia witnessed someone doing it on accident… He’ll scare Idia with stories about how some infertile fae casted this spell on themselves and pumped out like 5 babies that year in one go, and how the tattoo means that Idia won’t go back to normal until his body is properly satiated with thick and potent seed. Idia could just ignore it of course, it won’t kill him, he’ll just feel incredibly horny all the time and start feeling the urge to shove anything even remotely phallic inside his ass—this is where Idia would beg Lilia to stop talking and making everything worse lol

Lilia will fuck Idia alright! And he’ll feel him good, while still talking about how Idia’s body will start changing whether he wants it or not. Idia will be completely terrified but also too horny to think about anything because Lilia would feel way too good.

But ALSO. When Lilia himself is done (grandpa can’t go 10 rounds like he used to…), he could actually do the “making Idia a public breeding stock” thing and just invite all the Diasomnia students to have their way with Idia. He’ll stay there the whole time, holding Idia’s legs and patting his head playfully while Idia completely loses his mind because both his hair and his tattoo would go absolutely crazy because of how overwhelmed and horny he is. He wouldn’t remember just how many guys he took that day, but thankfully, they left plenty of autographs on his body with a marker that Lilia found somewhere.

[mufos-photo-album]

Do you happen to have any Piripu lore for the Piripu enthusiasts 👀

I feel like a broken record typing the things I'm about to type, however I realize a lot of the lore I have for Piripu has been sprinkled throughout my posts instead of being compiled in one place -- like I'm about to do now.

Before I start, I will note the "ownership" situation of Piripu is a little weird. By that, I mean that while I put out most, if not all, art and writing of Piripu, he still belongs to my buddy Dave (shorting to MBD from now on). With that in mind, the things I'm writing may be subject to change depending on what MBD thinks. The following is what I think his lore is.

The basic gist of his backstory: Piripu was once a Wayfarer (player character from Journey), white-robed, who guided others. One day, on his lonesome, he was attacked and killed by war machines. This time around, the process of being reborn/revived took a long time, and by the time Piripu came back to the world, a new society had been born and died (the Kingdom of Sky).

Upon rebirth, he was found by two familiar yet strange figures in the Valley of Triumph. These two are Odiwa and Kucevoz. These two would serve as Piripu's caretakers while he got his bearings. Unable to recognize the "new" world he was born into, the first and main part of Piripu's character arc/story revolves around him trying to return to his world (where he was once a Wayfarer).

Once Piripu was more confident in his new body, he snuck away from Odiwa and Kucevoz and later befriended Mufotsuki -- his first friend and de facto guide in the world.

Other things about Piripu -- you can think of these as fun facts or headcanons:

He is developmentally around 13-15 years old, a little less than a year younger than Mufotsuki.

He likes crabs, and even has a pet crab named Roast, who he saved from an abandoned crab cookout.

He is actually slightly shorter than Mufotsuki, though his hair always makes him look taller.

This one is more in the headcanon zone, but it's possible that "Piripu" is not the name he had as a Wayfarer. I currently like to think that "Piripu" as a name was given to him by Odiwa and Kucevoz. The name didn't really stick until he had to introduce himself to Mufotsuki.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that Piripu can speak two languages. First is "Wayfarer" (often represented by glyphs in comics where Piripu speaks it), and the second is just common Spirit language, used by the majority of the Kingdom of Sky.

(The events of the comic above aren't really canon, but show a good example of Piripu speaking his first language).

[runa-falls]

cat and mouse - 2

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x Supervillain(?)!Reader

Warnings: kissy kissy :3, mention of alcohol, you're broke. sorry.

a/n: i wrote this out today (what is now a few days ago) because i couldn't work on the other fic until i got this out of my system :) if there are plot holes its because i vomited out this chapter and threw it out like a dumbass. idk what Black-Cat's personality is like so i made it kinda mirror cat woman from the harley quinn show.

Summary: Every time you try to convince people it was an accident, you immediately get ratted out to the Spider. But really, it was! You don't know why you're being hunted, you didn't even do anything wrong. Yet.

w/c: 2.6k

part 1 part 3 part 4

masterlist

----

Nueva York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, as he, and the world, likes to call him, is your official nemesis, or at least that’s what the city thinks.

You crumple up the half-soaked People magazine, filled with ‘juicy gossip about our favorite Spider and the new villain-of-the-week: Blaze’. Seriously, you might just become a villain if they keep calling you that.

You briefly forgot you swiped the news story off of a nearby food and entertainment stand (that’s barely holding up in the downpour) until you hear:

“Hey! You gotta pay for that!” 

You don’t. 

In your defense, it was only a dollar-fifty. And either way, it’s technically the Spider’s fault that you didn’t have a penny on you!

Honestly, if it were your choice, you’d never see his stupidly broad shoulders again. He truly is the bane of your existence and a major pain in your ass. You genuinely don’t understand why he even pays you any mind, it’s not like you are plotting to take over the city. You just want enough money to get some fries and a Koka Soda, and maybe a couple more black articles of clothing that aren’t covered in clawed-out stripes. 

Spider-Man? More like Cat-Man. 

You would say you’ve been “fighting” this man for weeks like the magazines insinuate, but it’s less violence than it is just you squirming out of his clutches and running away. You swear the Spider is a bloodhound. No matter where you are, or what you’re wearing, he always finds you. And you always get away. It’s actually quite pathetic. 

He goes: “It’s you again.”

You say: “No it’s not.” 

Then he has to say: “Blaze.” Like you’re some ultra-nemesis that has ruined his life.

And you can’t help but: “Stop fucking calling me that, dude.” Before you make a run for it. 

He catches up, obviously, either has you on the ground, against the wall, or holds you up so you can’t escape, but then you do. Every time. And he lets you. 

So really, it’s just fucking annoying. What a waste of a great plan and an excellently executed silent break-in!

You never asked for any of this. The fact you don’t have a flashy-ass elastic suit should be proof enough: You’re not a supervillain. 

But, when the opportunity to make a little more cash comes around, you can’t just say no. In your mind, the bigger the heist, the longer you can stay out of the public and away from him. 

And if the one girl on the team wants to make you a suit, how can you resist? The Spider has ruined all the other clothes you’ve worn (and not in a good way). 

You saw your new suit a few hours before you needed to meet up with the team. Felicia, or Black Cat as the rest of the group refers to her, is probably the most elegant and badass woman you’ve ever met. 

She has voluminous silver-blonde curls and sharp green eyes that match the deadliness of her talon-like retractable claws (which actually kinda remind you of someone…). Though she doesn’t have explosive energy inside of her as you do, her cat-like senses and martial art skills are almost as deadly. 

Felicia was happy to invite you over to her multi-million dollar penthouse to get ready and hang out a little before you needed to leave. 

She’s filing her nails into perfectly deadly points as you sit on her plush ultra-white couch next to the new suit, hands fiddling nervously together as you watch her pamper herself with extreme precision. There are two glasses of high-grade champagne in front of you on the glass coffee table. Yours is barely touched. Hers has been drained and refilled a couple of times throughout the hour. 

“You know, usually I’d work this job alone, but it’s a lot easier to get away when you leave a few maggots to distract the Spider. That’s what men are for. Us girls need to stick together, right?” 

Even her voice is elegant. 

“Yeah.” You croak out. You prefer to listen to her talk than say something dumb and non-villain-like. And yeah, you’ll admit you’re a tiny bit scared of her, but sometimes that’s something you have to go through when making friends. Right?

“Alright, we’ve got like 20 minutes. Go on, babe, try it on.” She loosely gestures to the suit, “Bathroom is in the hallway, first door to the left.” You stand promptly and shuffle over to her bathroom, taking a second to look back to send a grateful smile at her before you close the door. 

It almost resembles the one you saw on her the first day you met. The only difference is that yours is completely black and has a high collar neckline in contrast to her more provocative V-shaped suit.

There’s no fur-lining or silver details, just an invisible zipper that creates the illusion that this suit is painted onto your body. Felicia also provided a simple mask that you can pull over your head when you tie back your hair and some silver hair spray so you’re less recognizable to the general public. 

You stare in the mirror and smooth out any wrinkles down your torso with your gloved fingers. Alright. Now you look like a supervillain. 

Or at least a super-something. 

She makes you do a little spin. “You look lovely, darling.” A smirk pulled at her charming lips. “Absolutely, perfect.” 

—

Fuck.

So here you are, trying to break out of a bank that shut down around you as soon as you walked in. The two guys, who you never took the time to learn the names of, are freaking out, banging harshly against the metal doors that slammed shut in front of the exits. 

Felicia, on the other hand, is as cool as a cucumber, checking her nails like there isn’t a blaring siren and pulsing lights around her. 

So what now? You could probably blast the doors open with whatever comes out of your hands (you’re still not sure as you try to use your powers as a last resort). But that would leave a bunch of evidence that you were there and you didn’t come to knock down a whole building.

You walk over to her, trying to hide the anxiety that’s starting to bubble up inside of you. “What should we do?” She looks up from her manicured nails and looks at you. Then at the guys.

“Well, the boys seem a bit preoccupied,” As if to prove her point, one of them starts kicking the door, as if it would magically open up for him if he were to hit it harder and make more noise. She sighs, “I guess we could use the air duct that leads to the roof.” 

“Ok.”

So you follow her to one of the main offices in the building, watching as she easily rips off the cover of the vent and uses the desk for leverage to hoist her into the surprisingly spacious air duct. 

The chill evening breeze of Nueva York has never felt so good. Well, it has smelt better, but if garbage and crime-filled air meant you’re not going back to jail, you’ll take it. 

“Well, that could’ve gone better.” The Black Cat runs her fingers through her hair, pushing it back and out of her face. Of course, it falls perfectly over her shoulders. “So…I’ll see you later, yeah?” She’s leaving?

“Uh, yeah, sure. I’d love to!” 

“Great.” She walks to the edge of the roof and scales down the back of the building like it’s nothing. Look, it’s not that tall of a building, but still, you weren’t about to follow her down. You watch as her black-suited figure lands on the concrete ground, barely making a sound, before she sashays into the shadows of the city, disappearing into the night. God, she’s so cool. 

And then it’s just you. 

You sit yourself down and finally take a breath. Your first job as a villain and you didn’t even get to see the money. What are you getting yourself into?

You pull slightly at the elastic holding your hair together, regretting the tight pony that’s now giving you a major headache. Maybe this life isn’t for you. With, probably an overdramatic, sigh you push yourself up. Now to figure out how you’re getting out of here. 

–

Turns out you didn’t have too many options. As soon as you were about to take a serious ‘leap of faith’ and try to scale down the building, you were ambushed by a series of fwp, fwp, fwp’s and lifted from the ground. That probably saved your life now that you’re thinking back on it.

So, he found you. Big surprise. He’s practically stalking you at this point.

He takes you for a ride, holding you close as he swings from building to building, barely breaking a sweat. You’re actually surprised that you didn’t hurl all over his stupidly firm shoulder. You should have.

You don’t know why he brought you to the top of a half-constructed building, but you’re assuming he’s just trying to be dramatic again. Superheroes, right? 

You struggle against restraints when you’re finally set down, at least trying to lay in a more comfortable position as Spider-man stands over you. Not only are you fully wrapped in red webs, but your arms are also tied behind your back.

The Spider kneels down, watching you continue to struggle, “Alright, Hardy, give it up.” Hardy? Shit, he must think you’re Felicia. The black suit, the silver hair. Dammit. 

He takes off your mask before you can say anything, pulling out your loose hair tie with it, and boy, is he surprised to see it’s you.

“Wh–Blaze?” He takes off his mask like he can’t believe his fabric-covered eyes. His scarlet gaze not so subtly takes in your new look. A big change from the usual getup you wear. “What, uh,” When he finally meets your eyes, one of his gloved hands raises to rub at the back of his neck. Is he nervous? He briefly looks away from you, “What did you do to your hair?”

“Who cares! Let me out of these!” You glower at him, arms tugging at the luminous webs, “And you know I hate that stupid-ass name.”

“What the hell were you doing here? Why are you suddenly hanging out with a bunch of criminals?”

You give him a deadpan expression, “I’m a villain, remember.”

“Ah,” He slices through a couple of the overlapping webs that fit snugly over your stomach. “Finally giving into the narrative, hm?” Then the ones around your arms.

“S’not like I have much of a choice.” The red webs start to loosen until they unravel completely and pool on the floor. “So, you’re…letting me go?” You rub at your sore wrists, feeling the ache dissipate almost immediately. He shrugs like it’s no big deal for him. 

“It’s expected, isn't it?” He’s at the edge of the roof staring at the buildings around him, a soft breeze sweeps through his hair, and the lights of ‘the city that never sleeps’ soak over his suited figure from below.

“Just like that?” 

“...Just like that.” He says. But he says it more to himself than you. With that, he swiftly puts his mask back on, hiding the wonderfully serene expression he once held, but you never got to see in full. 

Spider-man is confusing. He treats you like you’re some sort of catch-and-release criminal. Acting like a push-over parent that reprimands their child even when they know they’ll do it again. You don’t get it. 

And the way he looks at you sometimes. Like he’s having fun. You see it when he’s chasing you, webbing you to the wall, or holding you under his claws. There’s a glowing heat that pulses in his eyes and you can almost see the barest gleam of his fangs. You can’t even wrap your head around how he can both infuriate and draw you in at the same time. And then he lets you go. 

And now he’s leaving you. 

So you take your chance. 

“Wait.” He stills but doesn’t turn back to look at you. He just stays there, merely stopping to listen to whatever you have to say. But you want him to look at you. You need to see those simmering red eyes that are hidden behind the mask. “I-” You stop yourself. You’re not actually sure what you were going to say. All you know is you just weren’t ready for him to leave yet. “I, um, never caught your name!” It blurts out of your lips before you realize what you’re saying. 

Then silence.

How awkward. 

You were sure he was going to leave you there. No sane superhero would reveal his secret identity, dumbass! Especially to a girl like you.

But then his hand comes up, slips off his mask again, hair slightly ruffled from the action, and he finally turns. Before you know it he’s approaching you, fast. And you can’t do anything but stand there, watching as his looming form starts to take up more and more of your vision until he’s standing right in front of you, head tilted downwards and red eyes low. 

Two warm palms cradle your jaw and you lean into the touch, eyes fluttering closed at the feeling. Just as your eyes start to open again, his head is dipping toward yours. Then his lips meet yours.

And it’s perfect. His soft plush lips move against yours, occasionally nipping and sucking on your bottom lip until it was satisfyingly plump. The warm, masculine smell surrounding you makes your knees weak as his hands drop from your face to your waist in an effort to pull you toward him.

Your body melts against him as he starts to softly lick into your mouth, thoroughly seeking out the taste of you. He pushes you gently against the unfinished concrete wall behind you, eliminating any space that was left between your thinly suited bodies. You swear you’re about to melt when you feel his broken groan against your lightly suited-chest.

And then you separate, heavy breaths and intense gazes floating between you. “Miguel.” He looks down at the way he’s holding you, the size of his palm against your smaller body. And then the ridiculous suit that was tailored specifically for the heist, but looks more like something you’d wear for a BDSM session. He clears his throat and looks back up, “Miguel O’Hara.”

“Miguel…” His hand on your waist clenches at the sound of your hoarse voice and you can tell he’s tempted to pull you back in. 

“You’re one of the few who know.”

Now, you’re curious. You hum, “Who else knows?” His eyes glance at your hair and his hand drops. Suddenly, you feel cold. He steps away from you, not unkindly, but it’s clear he’s trying to create space. 

He brushes it off, “No one important.” And then he’s walking away. Back to the same spot he was going to leave you from. Cool. 

“Well,” You take a few steps closer, eyes roaming over his muscled back,  “I promise not to tell anyone.”

“I know.” His mask is back on, and this time you know there’s no stopping him this time. “Catch you later, Little Red.” He jumps. 

Little Red? 

[edwardallenpoe]

Hey. Just wanted to put my two cents in, like everyone else on Tumblr dot com is. (It got pretty long so putting it under a cut)

I don't really care about what you think should happen to the fandom. Like. If you are going to continue to engage in the fandom without giving Neil any sort of gain is fine. I'm personally still on the fence on what the fuck to do now. But let's not make that the whole focus, yeah? What Neil allegedly did was fucking terrible. Like. Objectively worse than what JKR did when things first came out about her. Let's forget good omens and sandman and coraline for a minute (don't care if you still engage with those things or burn your copies and remove your tattoos, let's just put it down for a minute.) and try really hard to think. Because we all hated JKR. We burned her reputation to the ground. For good reason. But we can't even decide if we hate Neil Gaiman yet? Guys. Please. We have to believe all women. Plus he's a rich fucking white dude who has admitted to using his power for gain.

And if it turns out (which this is a 8% chance) that this is all not what it seems to be, or even all of it is fabricated, and Neil is innocent, we still gotta stop worshipping this dude. This has got to be a wakeup call that he's not some Messiah. He's a human dude in power who does the same shitty things human dudes in power do.

And I get it. You want to continue to like your stories that he helped create (key-word 'helped' bc he was a part of a team with a lot of these stories, including Sir Terry Pratchett) but me personally? I would be a massive hypocrite if I metaphorically burned my Harry Potter stories to the ground and put HP fans in my DNI because of JKR but said "separate the art from the artist" with Neil Gaiman.

And this is coming from any other Good Omens fan that became way too attached to the story. Like a lot of people have said that story helped in very. Very fucking trying times. It was my rock, some days the only thing keeping me going. The fandom has been an amazing place of creativity and community and love.

But so was Harry Potter. If you think about it. If any Good Omens fans were previous Harry Potter fans you'll know just how wide spread and open and creative and deep the hp fandom was. And this may just be me misremembering because it was a couple years ago at this point (plus everything with Neil Gaiman is still such news) but because JKR was spouting rhetoric that directly harmed us (us being majority queer and poc people) we drop-kicked hp pretty fast and focused on the artist and her shittiness.

Can we have the same attitude towards Neil? Can we separate the art from the artist long enough to fucking focus on Neil? When I say separate the art from the artist I don't mean "remove artist, continue to enjoy art" I mean "remove the art and focus on the artist, and study that motherfucker". How many video essays are their out about JKR? How many books referencing her terribleness? Without giving so much as a hint to Harry Potter?

Separate the art from the artist and focus on the artist and bringing him to justice. And believe the victims.

And yeah I can see your arguments against the source of the information and who the victims went to tell their stories, I can understand those arguments, but let's look at the data, okay? Let's look at what Scarlett and K actually said with their actual words and their actual messages and separate the source from the material. What Scarlett and K talked about is scary. Terrifying. I couldn't even read more than a little bit before I got triggered. I wasn't caring about how the source podcast was talking about it. What Scarlett and K said with their own words should be enough. Make your own judgements. If you can't look at a story without being influenced by the storyteller's hidden agenda and not have critical thinking skills????? I'm sorry but that's going to be your downfall.

Or better yet, if you can't believe victims because they have political views that differ from your own (which, they probably don't. From what I can tell nobody really fucking knows what Scarlett and K's political views are but it doesn't really matter) you need to really study and look into what you mean when you call yourself a "leftist". Because it's not very progressive or helpful to not believe or help victims because of their political views. Sorry. Is that wild for me to say? Idk

Uh anyways. I don't really care what you do in your free time when it comes to enjoying the fandoms. I don't necessarily think it makes you a terribly shitty person for still engaging in it instead of burning all your Neil Gaiman stories, and also like a lot of people have said (and since I'm on the same boat) treating fans like the scum of the earth when a lot of fans have had good omens as a way to escape and has become super dependent on good omens and are justifiably horrified by everything and trying to ignore it is shitty. But I'm personally going to continue to follow this story because I care about the victims. Not because I want to be guilt-free reading a fanfic about an angel and a demon. Because I care about real life people.

[mr-damian-s-power]

Sorry I did not mean for this to be this long.

I have two, both relating to the worldbuilding. This one is about how the visual aspect fails and the other is the written aspect, but they boil down to this: The Boiling Isles is the most bland, boring ass ‘dark’ fantasy world I’ve ever seen.

First off, even in the background it never really feels like fantasy world, maybe just a historic district with Halloween decorations.

The woods are just regular woods in autumn, Bonesborough is just a standard medieval/renaissance town with some eye and teeth iconography. The only time I felt we were in actual fantasy world was that brief scene in Latissa, the buildings look like they’re made of flesh, there’s pustules acting as street lights, the overview shots are far more natural and feel like they belong in the environment. The colors are dark yet vibrant, and it gives off a spooky, kind of Halloween-Town feel. I love that!

But we literally spend 98% of the time in Bonesborough, whose colors are predominantly shades of muted blues, grays and whites, and overall it feels too empty and tidy, like it’s not really a place where people have lived and worked for centuries at the very least. Yeah it has doors with eyes on them or roof races in the shape of teeth, but imho, they showed that one shot in the first episode and never lived up to it again, only harking back on it slightly for occasional ‘character observing the area’ shots.

Honestly I thought the Collector-controlled Isles were far prettier and more fantastical. Part of this I think is due to the artstyle, especially with the character design, bold, vibrant colors work better. And a lot of scenes just have such cold, impersonalable backgrounds. They don’t even have to be some eye-bleeding color explosion, just…not gray. There are some cartoons that have gray and muted backgrounds but they work with their art style.

And the woods aren’t much better. We seemingly only get ‘oh right, dangerous fantasy world would have scary woods’ when it’s plot convenient, but otherwise? It’s just more muted colors in a honestly pretty sparse forest. They apparently originally wanted far darker colors but it melted together too much so they opted for ‘bloody red’. I’m sorry but go look at the woods and tell me in what world is that a crimson color?

I know there’s a lot of crap that goes on behind the scenes and that with backgrounds and environments it’s especially difficult because you don’t want to muddy it up or distract the audience but I think that Latissa is a good example of how to do it right, it’s simple yet feels like it’s it’s own place with history and environment. Just a few bolder colors, make it more cramped and claustrophobic, that kind of thing.

The other thing with the environmental storytelling part of it is Dana took inspiration from Heirymonous Bosch’s paintings of Hell and illuminated manuscripts, and I just don’t get the feeling at all with the Isles we see for the majority of the show.

The second of far more agregous in my mind.

It’s seemingly stuck in the middle of wanting to be ‘like Earth but with magic’ and ‘ooh look at how different and inhospitable it is!’ For a world that’s supposed to be filled with monsters that will kill you for breathing and just stepping outside is risky to your life, the characters seem able to galavant about both civilization and wilderness without a care.

We get all these little asides in the first season about how they have boiling rain, skin-eating fairies, etc, but pretty much never factor into the story, and when they do, it’s either easily brushed off or used in the stupidest way. *coughBelossdeathcough* We have characters mock Luz and say she’s not strong enough to handle it, and even ignoring any Mary-Sue claims Camilla seemed to have no trouble with the more dangerous Collector Isles when she had nothing but a bat. When taking Luz’s OPness with sticky-note magic, it really neuters the dangers of the Isles, because it seems that half of the problems can be solved by being physically strong or clever with no magic required.

I am more forgiving of this, but the magic, especially near the end, went kinda off the rails in some aspects in power scaling, but also didn’t really stuck to the cooler concepts of that.

Abominations went from just creating and controlling golems to being able to craft anything with the material, yet we don’t get to see anything really big or flashy or even practical, Darius’s goo-form appears twice, making weapons or shields only happens a handful of times and it’s very quick and forgotten about(imagine if Amity went full on Mecha with abomination goo in the finale).

Bard magic can do completely OP things like control someone’s body like a puppet or change the molecular structure of something(put a pin in that) yet in the finale Raine just keeps flicking their bow across the strings to send out energy blasts and doesn’t use it to try and control things and sabotage Belos.

Illusion magic is able to dip into Oracle magic a bit and see memories, we even get a shot of Gus seeing Belos’s entire backstory yet this is never used or mentioned outside of Gus knowing Hunters a grimwalker. Even without that we see Gus can craft gigantic, in-depth illusions that can confuse and pyschologucally harm people, yet he never does this after Labyrinth Runners.

Plant magic, which in a fantasy world like the Isles would mean a number of poisons, toxins, and man-eating plants are at your disposal, and Willow’s only move is…vines. Granted, vines that seem indestructible and are able to take down things that likely wouldn’t be vulnerable to vines, but still…vines. (Which are also green despite the plant color of the Isles being red and it could e been a cool little aside for both Luz and the audience having to get used to seeing red for plants but oh well)

And the others…we don’t care about. The closet one is potions that seem to cover a wide variety of magic types(scrying potion-Oracle, Eda’s potions-Healing)and don’t need magic to do but whatever, why have Eda use her Potions upbringing to supplement her lack of magic when she can turn into a harpy and fly and..that’s kinda it.

Magic also supplements as variety of things, such as technology, and honestly? Not the biggest fan of how that was used just to give our quirky teen protagonists phones and computers-that they don’t even use that often so I don’t get why they were necessary except for ‘haha that Instagram right? Sooo relatable!’ It’s there just for asides and making the world confusing. Like how we can seen scrolls being used in Thems the Breaks, 30 years prior. Yet they seem to be only used for Penstagram, which also apparently only got updated to 2.0 during the second season, so what were they being used for before? And why is Penstagram so established if it’s that new and scrolls were used for other things before? I mean, as background jokes they used searching up disinformation and conspiracy theories and had characters not recognize any media site or conspiracy theories when using the Internet, so it might be a case of wanting their cake and eating it too.

Which is another issue that I can’t stand in isekai/other world type media. Regular human/person growing up it’s a regular human is able to reconfirm e the fantasy version of something, yet their mythical friends can’t understand that a car is like their horseless carriage.

Luz can catch on to the fact that scrolls and crystal balls are just our phones, computers and televisions but from a Halloween display, yet the witches can’t even tell what a shoe is (when they are 99% humans with pointy ears), or when one was made of mud. They refuse to accept animals or concepts that have the most basic information and dismiss Luz, like seriously, how hard is it to figure out what a paper clip is? Or that opposum are real when you know that animals like raccoons exist? Or the most annoying, there is a thing called a crow phone. We hear them call them ‘crow phones’ several times. But when Amity went to Willow for help about Luz? ‘I don’t know what this…pho-oo-on is?’

It’s done only for jokes and yeah it’s not supposed to be taken seriously but all it does is make the witches and demons seem incredibly stupid. Seriously Belos probably didn’t have to put that much effort into his campaign because apparently the residents of the Boiling Isles will accept literally anything at face value(didn’t even use that to make a point on propaganda smh).

This extends beyond the witches’ mental capacity and into ‘what exactly is this world?’ They don’t have technology above some steampunk blimps and automata, except for when they do because how else do they have modern western clothes like t-shirts and sweats? You can’t even say ‘oh it came in through a trash slug’ because Eda can literally customize and order t-shirts. In the literally the same episode, we see witches referring to the ‘four humors of the Titan’, which many people took as an idea that they have very limited medical and scientific knowledge, like no further than the 1600’s…only for Raine to be like ‘I changed its molecular structure!’ And it’s like what? How do you know what molecules are, or how to use your magic to change them in a way that just improves taste? You guys can’t figure out what a cheese grater is but you know about molecular properties?

Honestly I’d rather have a fantasy world just have phones and cars but they run on magic than this, because at least I don’t have to wonder how they know all these common modern ideas yet can’t figure out an umbrella even when someone tells them point blank.

Yeah, maybe it’ll be harder to explain an umbrella, but it’s not like the world tries to make any sense with he boiling rain thing. In fact, pretty much everything in the natural world in the show doesn’t make any sense because right when you can excuse it as ‘total fantasy, rule of cool’ it throws in something that kinda ruins it. In the case of the boiling rain, that’s not how boiling water works at all. I saw someone suggest it just being ‘stomach acid’ from all the titans’ giblets leaking into the sea, but even if we do that ‘it’s magic’ explanation of clouds heating the water up before it rains, it still has the thing of ‘if this is such a common thing, than why is anything vulnerable to it?’ Like the flora evolved and grew from the Titan, yet it doesn’t have natural protections against the rain? That leaf that Eda, Raine and King use in the finale seems to hold up fine so why isn’t all flora like this, or at least have it be part of their life cycle? On further note, why isn’t every building infused with a rain protection spell? Why isn’t there building material made to be rain resistant? Why does Eda have that magic barrier umbrella when we’re first introduced to it and never see it again. In fact, why isn’t that a thing? They have mass-produced clothing merch and stress toys yet they can’t make a push-to-activate protection spell for commercial use? It would’ve been cool to see how witches adapted and changed to the hostile environment, and far better than ‘lol like our smartphones’.

The ‘because magic’ excuse is also lame because it doesn’t even go that far or use it for crazy environments. Like the Titan is the size of Vermont, which is huge for a living being, but it is so tiny in the show. Apparently the Titan is based off of ‘the Earth is a corpse’ motif in several real mythologies but those corpses are far, far bigger, so big you can’t even recognize that it is a body. Yet several times characters get across the isles in minimal time, covering distances that shouldn’t be possible-not just in air, but on foot too. How did King and Steve get around the entire Titan in a motorcycle(even though the most advanced vehicles were steampunk airships) on dirt and cobblestone roads? How can something the size of Vermont(for reference, that’s about the size of Sardinia and Sicily and twice the size of Jamaica)be viewed in its entirety from a bird’s eye view and close enough off-shore that individual buildings can be seen? Or that it’s big enough to sustain several different biomes that are alluded to(but never seen)including a desert?

Then in the finale it’s big enough to reach into space from a prone position…yet we also see that the world is a globe. So these creatures, who were numerous and loved food, lived on a planet that was so small compared to them that they could reach into space by laying g flat and extending their arms straight up. This would’ve been a great spot for pure ‘because magic’, like the entire realm is a giant flat plane that eventually just falls off into nothingness and above the sky is like celestial heavens, but apparently not!

Also despite the fact that earlier it was stated that all landmass is made up of Titan carcasses there apparently was regular land just off shore, so close that the Titan is nearly touching it. Which from how much of the isles can be seen from just off-shore makes you wonder how nobody ever noticed that land or went over there.

There’s a lot of other things, like how abominations was said to be a good career path yet we don’t see evidence of that outside of Blight Industries which seems to be very exclusive, or that the ‘authoritarian’ government is completely laughable, but overall the isles feel like a bunch of people say around, said ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if?’ And then added it in without any thought. But then both the show and fandom act like every aspect is some never-before-seen, not-like-other-shows star when it can’t even decide on its tone for the main setting.

You know, I was talking about this issue with a friend not too long ago. The Demon Realm loses its 'edge'. When it's introduced, they wanted to make it out like it's a dangerous place to live. There are vicious monsters around every corner, vegetables run away from being eaten, people have no qualms with harming or even killing children. Bump doesn't step in to stop Boscha from bullying Luz because it 'wasn't fatal' or something. So they clearly want to set this place up as a 'survival of the fittest' World.

But then, if they kept it this way, it would interfere with the story. You see, the Demon Realm is supposed to be a world worth saving, and the way it was initially presented isn't really that. If they kept everyone how it was, would the Day of Unity really have been THAT bad? "Hmm, is it really that bad that a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths are going to die?"

To achieve this, they had to really 'neuter' the Isles. Now, later in the series, a lot of the danger is just gone. Characters walk around willy-nilly with no threats around them. Where's the Witch-eating furniture? Where's the Boiling Rain? The monsters? Painbows? Gorenados? Where did they all go? Having your cake and eating it! This show's mantra!

Amphibia does a better job selling a dangerous world IMHO! There's a monster around every corner and the world is quite inhospitable, but the people are resilient and make due.

-

Ugh, yep! This is a world with 'magic technology', but the characters are still stupefied by our normal tech. This would have made sense if the Demon Realm were a low-tech medieval world, but it isn't. They want the characters to have magic phones, but still go "durr, what is this 'phone' you speak of?" It really does make the Witches look stupid if anything!

Owl House has plenty of issues with its worldbuilding! We could be here all day discussing them!

[judgeanon]

It Sure Has Been a Wild Couple of Days to be a Lady Shiva Fan

(Art by Skylar Partridge)

So after only showing up for a backup story in DETECTIVE COMICS a few months ago and for a few pages in the last issues of BATGIRLS back in January, turns out that Lady Shiva is gonna be a major part of not one, but two different series come November. Putting my thoughts under the jump 'cause they might be long:

First, there's an all-new BATGIRL ongoing written by Tate Brombal and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa. I'm not really familiar with either of them, but I'm gonna try to check some of their work in the weekend. As for the plot:

When a deadly group of assassins shows up to kill Cassandra Cain, Lady Shiva must come to the rescue, and they’re forced to put their complicated past aside and work together as mother and daughter to ensure they make it out alive. Unfortunately, things are never as easy as they seem, and Batgirl must embark on a jaw-dropping, martial-arts filled adventure in her quest for truth and justice…and revenge?! This is a Batgirl unlike any other so don’t miss the opportunity to dive into the psyche of one of Gotham City’s deadliest fighters, while exploring her deep and complex relationship with her mother.

Here's the thing: while I am overjoyed that after Bryan Hill's OUTSIDERS we've pretty much exorcised the idea of Shiva as a zealous, card-carrying member of the League of Assassins, I've been a little bothered by how literally every single big Shiva appearance afterwards has revolved around Cass. Even in that weird short stint leading a new Birds of Prey team, her motivation was somehow gaining Cass' trust for... reasons. So I'm glad Shiva's no longer an LoA flunky, but I'm concerned with how she seems so tied at the hip with Cass -- especially since Cass does get to have stories that don't involve Shiva at all.

But at the same time, I do think there's a lot of meat on that bone, meat that, in my eye, nobody has really sank their teeth in yet. Hill tried but he was working within a team book, and Cloonan and Conrad just sorta teased it. This one, however, feels like a story about Shiva and Cass built from the ground up, with all the room necessary for some actual development from the two. This is them not as a subplot or as a tease for future stories, but as The Story. And while that may go in a bunch of different ways, I'm definitely interested to see what way this will go.

Annnd then there's Tom King and Ryan Sook's BLACK CANARY: BEST OF THE BEST, which I'm... a little less interested in.

Black Canary faces her toughest opponent yet, Lady Shiva, in a battle to determine who is the single greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the DC Universe. To make it to the final round, Black Canary will need all her fighting skill and ability, plus additional training from some of DC’s most accomplished fighters, including Batman, Wildcat, and even her mother, the original Black Canary!

Yeaaaaah, I just... I'm not feeling this one. There's not any real mention of a plot here, not a lot to really grab on to other than vibes, and the vibes are just weird. It's weird how Dinah is fighting to determine who's the best fighter, something that to me isn't really a huge part of her character. It's weird that, from the preview pages, they're fighting in like a Vegas casino, in a ring, with an audience. It's weird that there's three trainers mentioned and none of them are Cass, who not only has beaten Shiva before but has trained with Dinah at least twice in canon. And this being tumblr, let me say it's also weird that this is a story about a white woman training with three white people to beat up an Asian woman in martial arts.

It's a six issue mini and the short solicit and weirdness is clearly meant to pique curiosity. But I'm dreading how much this all sounds like it's using Shiva to put Dinah in a pedestal, to show how strong and resilient and stubborn she can be. Even if it goes for a ROCKY ending of "Lost the fight but won at life", unless Shiva is written very thoughtfully, it feels like she's just gonna be there for the sake of Dinah's character. And I dunno if I trust King to write Shiva with any real thought.

So that's kinda where I'm at. Neither of these are a full Shiva solo, and one of them fills me with dread, but it's been a real rush to have two major Shiva-related projects like these be revealed one after the other. And with 2025 being the 50th anniversary of her debut, hey, who knows? Maybe this is just paving the road for something special. Hope springs eternal, no?

[genshin-impacted]

Exchange of Rings

(Alhaitham x Reader - 5/?) 

Love can speak a multitude of languages. You think you're beginning to turn into a polyglot, and you can only hope Alhaitham can understand. OR change + convenience + hypothesis

Word Count: ~4.4k

Notes: afab!reader*, second person pov “you”, gn!reader, switches pov with Alhaitham, modern au, arranged marriage, fall first/fall harder, slow burn

*(really) vague mentions of reader having a menstrual cycle

[Previous - Next]

.

.

.

Not many things have changed since you've come to terms with your feelings for Alhaitham. There is no dramatic reveal, no major shift in perspective. Perhaps you have always been a little in love with Alhaitham, because this self-awareness has given you the chance to love purposefully and unabashedly. 

You buy him small trinkets just to see him smile. They remind you of him (green gems like the necklace he always wears), or you think Alhaitham would get a kick out of how interesting something is. You never thought he would be into art-- and maybe he isn’t. The point is the two of you both still get your kicks out of that one wonky sculpture he bought ‘just because,' so you bring him shiny things as a gift, much like a crow. You think Alhaitham and you both make the same connection because you see him reading a book on corvids the same week you bring back a ‘funny-looking’ marble. 

For the most part, you don't see a lot of the trinkets you buy laying around the apartment. You don’t actually mind if he eventually throws them away. Most of the things you get are cheap and for a bit of a laugh without much actual utility, but you have a feeling Alhaitham has stored them away somewhere safe. 

(The mini, inflatable boyfriend that grows with water is the only thing you know he threw away. You saw him do it, purposely, in front of you with a deadpan expression that still gets you into stitches when you recall it.)

You cook him his favorite meals based on what he's liked of your cooking so far and with a little help from his parents. They were very eager to share their recipes with you, even offering to come over and teach you how to make it. You kindly turn them down– you aren't sure how Alhaitham would feel about being so close to his parents yet– but you appreciate their willingness to lend you help. It is so very evident to you how much they cherish their only son, and their warm wishes for your union with Alhaitham only makes you appreciate them more.

It's freeing, knowing exactly how you feel for Alhaitham. It gives you the courage to invite him to outings just to spend time with him. You try not to overwhelm him with so many invitations, with how much of a homebody he can be, but he has been amenable to all your plans so far, which could not possibly make you any happier. You hike together to see the sunset. You take him out to lunch at the city to try out something new together.

Even for menial tasks, you ask if he wants to come along too. He doesn't always go with you, but when he does pick up to-go with you or drop by the shop to buy something, warmth nestles inside of you from the trip there and back.

You tend to drive on these outings. Just a preference agreed upon by the both of you. You like using your car and Alhaitham likes reading in the passenger side. 'My passenger princess,' you call him teasingly, and Alhaitham always only gives you a shrug, not once denying the allegation. When convenient, you drive him to places he needs to go, though it will always be convenient if you do it for him. This, too, is something you do out of love.

Alhaitham often ‘rewards’ you for your diligence by reading to you in the car upon your request. It's your choice of book usually, if he wants to not have you fall asleep at the wheel. If you were being particularly teasing or bothersome, he pulls out the book on Introductory Harmonic Analysis and reads it to you whether you want it or not. The passenger storage container now fits the emergency kit and two books: the fictional book you want Alhaitham to read aloud and Alhaitham’s book that he keeps for the car rides. Alhaitham's smooth and sonorous voice is a pleasure to listen to, your own personal kindle reader who only pauses when the two of you arrive at your destination. 

In love as you are, you have your off-days. For the most part, you are content with where you are with Alhaitham. You like to think you have a growing understanding of who he is as a person, so you believe even if he isn’t in love with you as you are with him, he has at least grown fond of you. He shows that he cares not through words but through actions, making menial tasks streamlined for you or providing you with help that makes your life easier. He once told you, “To some extent, I want everyone to lead the lives they want to live.” You like to think he has a special interest in making sure that your life is especially to your liking and take it as a hopeful sign of affection.  

Still, some parts of you yearn for open declarations of love. Of someone holding you close and telling you how lucky they are to have you. Of telling someone ‘I love you’ and having them say it back without hesitation. Even the fanfiction you used to read and enjoy, you still enjoy, but your mind always drifts back to Alhaitham and putting Alhaitham into the stories instead. You are by no means blaming Alhaitham for whatever actions or words he cannot give you, but you admit that it makes living with Alhaitham the tiniest bit lonely at times. 

During these sloughs, you deal with it by watching sad videos that make you cry your eyes out. (If it works, it works.) You wipe the tears gathering in your eyes and see Alhaitham, who is beside you in bed reading a book, occasionally glance over with mild concern. He hands you a box of tissues at some point, and you gratefully grab some to dab at your eyes, now completely refreshed after the bout of crying. 

“Thanks, Alhaitham,” you say, returning the tissues to him.

“Sure…” He trails off, watching you carefully. You blink at him, watching as the metaphorical gears turn in his head as he decides whether or not to continue. Eventually, he asks you, “Are you okay?” 

Your heart flutters at the thought of his concern for you the same time you laugh at how worried he looks. “Yeah, I’m fine,” you explain. “Just a few sad dog videos online. Followed by some cute stuff that makes me reaffirm my faith in people. Makes me a little emotional.” 

You see him mutter ‘only a little?’ to himself and let yourself laugh again. Your heart is set to burst with love for him as you put your phone down to throw yourself at his side like you always do. “It’s that time of month again too,” you say.

“I did restock the bag of chocolate in the cabinet today,” Alhaitham tells you. “As for your other items, I just checked whatever you already had and bought the same ones.” 

“You restocked everything for me?” You ask, not even bothering to hide the adoration in your voice. “Thank you.” 

“No need to thank me,” he says, turning back to read his book. “It was convenient for me to get them is all.” It’s what he’s always told you whenever he does something nice for you. But you know the grocery store you both often go to does not have every product that you would need, so you would always need to make an extra stop elsewhere. ‘Convenient,’ he says. It cannot be ‘convenient’ to drive an additional distance away from the apartment to get something he doesn’t need. 

He does it for you, you think warmly. You think you almost tell him ‘I love you’ then.

Instead, you lay your head where his arm rests and gently hook a finger onto his, the closest thing you can get to holding his hand. You think if he asks, you’ll tell him you were just examining his hand, but you hope he lets you stay near him until you fall asleep.

(You sleep earlier than Alhaitham for once, so you do not realize Alhaitham keeps your hand in his until he turns away to put his book down and join you in slumber as well.)

.

.

.

Something has changed. It is so subtle of a shift that Alhaitham almost doesn't notice. But he is more observant than most, and when the changes involve you, who is often the focus of his observations, it is only a matter of time until he realizes something is different. 

It started when you began to ask him out more often to places. A restaurant, a park, the post office– it doesn't really matter where, but you explicitly seek his company more often. He doesn't always accompany you to your desired destination, but he does it more often than not. After all, reading at home is much like reading in the car when you drive with an added plus of stopping by the library or the local book store if there's time left before supper. And he would rather not leave you unsupervised at a stationary store lest you bring home a box worth of things you 'think' you might use.

Though, he admits convenience is not the only reason. He's also curious about the sudden developments, and perhaps he will understand what has changed and the reasons why if he comes along.

For one, you have been giving him more ‘gifts’ as of late. Small trinkets and baubles that have caught your eye when you pass through the flea market or at the shops while he’s at work all end up in your shared apartment. Some of them reminded you of him, and others you found too amusing to not show him. The most notable trinket you have brought home to him (aside from that inflatable boyfriend you bought as an April Fool’s joke) is an artsy take of a drinking bird and a Newton’s Cradle. When questioned as to why, you responded with “it’s funny” and “you like physics, right?” 

(The answers are 'yes,' and 'you're not wrong, per say.')

Other things you have brought him are marbles you describe to have the same shade of green as his eyes. It seems you’re building a collection because the vase you’ve begun to fill with these marbles you find is getting fuller. Not all the marbles are the same exact color though. Some of it has a twinge of orange or yellow, the green a cooler or warmer tone. When Alhaitham takes note of this, you still insist that they are the colors of his eyes. 

“You don’t get to see them in a different light but I do,” you tell him as you turn into the grocery store parking lot. “It’s hard for you to see your eyes without a mirror, right?”

Alhaitham glances up at the dashboard and closes his book. “I suppose so. Just don't look at me so much while you're driving. I'd prefer to avoid a motor vehicular accident, if possible,” he replies, looking over at you. The incoherent sputter is enough of an answer for him, and he can’t help the huff of laughter despite your grumbling about how you would never do that because you're a safe driver, if he couldn't tell!

(He could tell. Alhaitham just thinks your reactions are amusing.)

Alhaitham would think that the gifts are like tokens of appreciation, though Alhaitham can’t fathom what he has done to warrant such gratitude. Any changes he may perceive, he does not believe he has changed in any way since he has lived with you. Yes, some of his habits are affected by you, but his way of living, the ideals of life that he strives for has not changed. Thus, he concludes that the change must be inward; something must have changed in you for you to be acting differently than before. 

Nonetheless, his observations end up inconclusive. 

Alhaitham can conjecture all he wants, but he cannot prove why the change has occurred. Something has changed the way you act around him, but is it from an active force (a decision, an event, a realization) or is it a change that has simply run its natural course? Alhaitham does not know you before the arranged marriage, so he cannot know whether or not this slight alteration in behavior is a result of you becoming comfortable– if this is simply a ‘you’ that he has only just unlocked. It could be both, he reasons. There is no reason why an active force could not act as a catalyst for your change, but he figures he cannot truly know unless he asks.

Not that he will, though. 

In the end, there is no need for Alhaitham to do a thing. As far as he is concerned, the change has only yielded positive things. He’s been able to understand you more and he’s been able to visit places that would be too far (read: inconvenient) for him to go alone. Your gifts do amuse him, and your desire to spend more time with him is more endearing than annoying as he would have previously thought. 

If there was one point of concern, it would be the fact that you seem… distracted at times. You are a person more present than most, so when he finds you with a far-away look and an almost wistful expression on your face, he finds it cause for notice. It’s a normal occurrence for him to walk into the dining room and find you reading something on your phone. What is not common is seeing you stand at the kitchen counter and stare off into the distance, a call for your name unable to bring your attention to him. 

When Alhaitham peers over your shoulder– perhaps something you read has made you contemplative– and asks what you’re reading, your yelp and jump is so sudden that even he is taken by surprise. You gasp when your phone drops onto the floor with a loud clack. Alhaitham instinctively covers the corner of the counter with his hand as you scramble to pick up the phone and check for any damages it might have attained. 

“Whew, it’s all good.” You sigh in relief. Finally, you look at him and smile sheepishly, the bright gleam in your eye present as always. (Alhaitham doesn’t realize but he feels tension leaves his body the moment he sees your familiar smile.) “Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Did you call for me?”

“Not exactly,” he says. “I was just wondering what you could be reading that would make you so distracted.” He trails off when he sees you freeze like a deer in headlights. 

"Um, uh," you start to say succinctly, looking anywhere but at him. Alhaitham knows he often made you nervous when the two of you first started living together, but this is the first time it has happened in a while. 

When you start to mumble something, Alhaitham raises his hand and stops you. If it's something you don't want to share, he finds no reason trying to make you. "Never mind. It's fine if you don't want to tell me-"

"Well, no, it's not like that," you blurt out. You press a hand to your face in the way you always do when you feel your face grow hot in embarrassment. "It's just, um…" He watches as you bite your lower lip in thought. "You ever heard of fanfiction?"

"Of course I have," he says, and his heart leaps without his permission when he sees you turn your head to him, eyes wide with stars. He wonders if it's truly that much of a surprise, but as you go onto a long-winded and, as it seems, long-time coming explanation of fandoms and fanfics, it's evident that you did not anticipate a warm reception to your hobby.

But he does not judge. Why would he? The effort to determine whether one hobby is worth more than another is simply too much for something that does not affect him. In regards to what is ‘socially acceptable,’ has he ever been one to care what society determines as ‘acceptable?’ You seem to have forgotten this facet of his personality, much to his amusement, murmuring a quiet ‘oh yeah’ when he tells you as much.

He truly believes that writing, in all forms, has its merit. Fictional works have never been his moda operandi, but the written word has always been a part of his life. His father is a professor, his mother is a journalist, his grandmother is a librarian– it doesn't come to a surprise for him that his fiancé is involved with prose to some extent too.

“Oh, and your mom has a blog too, right?” You recall, “I remember you telling me she usually talks about her job on there.”

Alhaitham pauses for a moment in his explanation before nodding in confirmation. Perhaps it should not come to a surprise to him that just as he can remember the minute details of the conversations with you, you can too. He remembers the number of times he’s talked to you about his family can be counted on one hand, much of it in passing detail. And you remembered? He didn’t expect you to, but the fact that you did rather… pleases him.

Throughout this conversation, your expression settles in between gratitude and relief. Alhaitham doesn't think what he's saying is particularly praiseworthy, but the way you beam at him so brightly keeps his lips zipped from any further comments. 

Your gifts to him would make sense in this situation, but instead, you offer to cook him one of his favorite meals. It wasn’t out-of-the-blue, it seems, since you gather the needed ingredients from the refrigerator and begin your prep work, humming all the while. Midway through your preparations, Alhaitham begins to recognize what you’re trying to make: chicken-wrapped shawarmas. 

You must notice his calculating gaze because you shoo him out of the kitchen to set the table for dinner that is rapidly underway. Before long, the two of you are sitting at the kitchen table, and you watch him with rapt attention as he takes the first bite. Alhaitham feels a smile tug at his lips at how tastefully familiar it is, and you match his expression with your own bright grin. 

“Is it good?” You ask, though he is sure you already know his answer. 

“It tastes exactly like how my mother makes it,” he says. The words delicious and flavorful are synonymous with his compliments, and you understand, if the way you duck your head bashfully is of any indication. Alhaitham glances at you almost coyly. "Almost like you have her recipe.”

“I asked her for it," you say sheepishly. "I hope you don’t mind.”

Many facets of your personality, Alhaitham finds, are endearing. The way you shift between pride and humility when he praises you, the effort in which you place into getting to know others, his family included. The thought of you getting along with his parents strangely pleases him as well. It’s not like you’re marrying his family (just him; though some books have said marriage is the joining of two families…) and his family’s approval has never been something he needed. But the idea of his parents and you enjoying each other’s company is a nice thought. Alhaitham takes another bite of the shawarma and thinks about his grandmother and how she would also like you as you are: lively, witty and kind. 

He must have been quiet for a moment too long because you tilt your head at him curiously. “Is it your turn to be contemplative today?” You tease, spreading the yogurt sauce into the pita bread.

It is only a hypothesis, but he finds no harm in sharing his thoughts. “I was just thinking my grandmother would like you too,” Alhaitham says. “As it seems my parents seem to have taken a liking to you. My mother does not share her recipes with just anyone.”

“W-Well,” you stammer, fidgeting with your plate like you are wont to do when shy, “it’s because I’m cooking for her son, of course she would send me the recipe. But, um…” You trail off, looking down at your shawarma. “Your grandma… I know how much you care for her. You really think she would like me?” 

You look worried when you ask. Though he cannot empathize, Alhaitham does understand why you would be concerned just because of who you are as a person. Of course, you would worry about what his family thinks, about making a good impression. You value family, so it is only natural for you to want to be a part of his family.

He believes your worries are misplaced though; there is no reason to worry when he is almost certain that his family already loves you. Hypothesis yet to be proven, he thinks, but he imagines you are one family visit away from being included in his mother's journal entries, invited to his father's outdoor barbecue, and doted on by his grandmother who will squeeze your cheeks. The thought of it soothes him.

Alhaitham also predicts if you ever bring up meeting his friends (or more likely, when they bring up meeting you), they will end up liking you too. You might even laugh at Cyno's jokes while making glances with Tighnari and Dehya who will like you the moment they realize you win arguments against Alhaitham. Nilou and Kaveh will especially get along with you. You are a creative soul, and they will know almost immediately and flock to you like birds of a feather. 

It is not hard to imagine, Alhiatham thinks. You are easy to love.

“Yes, I’m quite certain my grandmother would like you," he says finally, much to your relief. "You'll find them much more agreeable than me."

"Well, that's not much of a competition, is it?" You joke, and you laugh when he quickly snatches the condiments you were reaching for out of a pretense of spite. 

Even Alhaitham cannot hide the hint of a smile when you complain to him. It’s all an act when you do it, goading him into bantering back and forth with you. A well-laid trap that he willingly walks into because it feels easier to do so than not. Sometimes, though, he watches you whine and gripe about something to see what you would do without his responses. 

Like tonight, when you roll into bed with him at what you consider an early bedtime, you tell him you can’t sleep, looking up at him anticipatorily for a reprieve that he can provide you. Alhaitham knows you want him to read to you. It’s something he does for you often, in the car, in the living room. You find his voice soothing, perfect to lull you to sleep, so you say. He isn’t prone to mischief, but even he finds ways to amuse himself at the tiniest of your expense.

“Alhaitham…” 

“Yes, what is it?” 

Alhaitham doesn’t have to glance away from his book to know that your lips have formed into an involuntary pout as you decide whether or not to ask him to– for a lack of better words– read you a bedtime story. You find yourself embarrassed at the strangest (to him) of things, not that Alhaitham is complaining. He gets to flip through a few pages of his book as you stew in your thoughts, and it’s as if Alhaitham can see the mental gymnastics you’re doing to work yourself up to ask for something you want. 

“If it isn’t any trouble,” you begin, and Alhaitham already begins to mentally sift through the possible books he can read to you before you even finish asking. He thinks anything might do if his voice truly has that effect on you, but if a story isn’t necessary, math will do just fine to put you to sleep. “Can you read something to me for a little while?” You scramble with your words for a moment, “Just until I fall asleep, I mean. If you don’t mind.” 

“Is that all you wanted to ask?” Alhaitham can’t help but say just to watch you huff in mild indignation. A smile is on his face before he even realizes it. “How’s the book I’m reading right now?” 

Even now, he still startles slightly when you snuggle right up to him, if only to squint at the book cover he’s currently holding. When you tell him that anything is fine, his heart has already begun to settle again, your warmth comfortable and familiar at his side. And he begins to read. 

It doesn’t take long for you to fall asleep. You’re on your side, breathing steady, with your head in the center of the bed where you moved in closer to him. As animated as you are, with your body language and your expression, it is something of a novelty to see you be so still in sleep. Alhaitham feels something stir inside his chest as he watches you for a moment longer, his hand reaching out to pull the blanket up higher to tuck under your chin. 

Alhaitham doesn’t know how long he sits there in his own thoughts, but eventually he finds himself getting ready for bed as well. He turns off the lamp on his bedside table and gets under the covers, turning toward the center of the bed where you still are. It’s a little cramped on his side, but he finds he would rather keep you where you are than run the risk of waking you up to move you. It was due to his efforts that you’re now asleep, after all, so it would only be a hassle to ruin all that work. 

And it is a cold night tonight. Spring is fickle with its temperatures, with its sunny mornings and cool sunsets; your presence by his side serves only to make his sleep more comfortable. It’s why he’ll let you stay as close as you are- among other reasons he can think of, and he thinks he can come up with more. 

There are two thoughts that run through Alhaitham’s head before he falls asleep. One, he’s pleasantly surprised that you’ve been able to keep up the habit of sleeping early like you had hoped for. And two, he can smell your shampoo from how close you are– the scent of citrus that suits you so well staying with him even in his dreams. 

.

.

.

taglist:

@crowbird @thetwinkims @jaguarthecat @tanspostsblog @dxstopiaa @yoimyas @theprinceofkhaos @homeinhobii @nagisuterus @sleep-deprivedracoon @scentedcandlesandcookies @secretlyrexlapis @kibbly-bibbly @loki-zos-galvus @teapartyspilled @herbal-tea-and-manga @quintessentialdreaming @detectivesparrow @certaindreampost @kazuharem @flooffi

[sootcrow]

I’m gonna ask a bunch of narumistu shippers this but how do you think Iris would react seeing that happen? Also how would your dream Narumitsu wedding play out, and would pearl be invited? I just have so many questions! I also love your art!❤️❤️❤️

congrats on being my first anon haha! I’m honored to be up here with the other narumitsu artists considering I like just got here lmao

I don’t usually talk about these kinds of things of my own accord but I DO think about this literally all the time and I love thinking about character dynamics n stuff so I will take this as permission to talk about some of my thoughts lmao

Iris

If you’re talking about how Iris would react to narumitsu in general, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the matter

All things considered and as sad as this sounds, I think iris is pretty familiar with this kind of feeling and would handle it well outwardly. Considering the time they spent together in college, I think she would be pretty familiar with Phoenix's feelings about miles and his plans about going into law on top of art, so it's probably not exactly completely unexpected to her

Iris may have had a lot of time to get over him, but also with all that time with zero contact with him until bridge to turnabout, she's never had to address her feelings until she's metaphorically and literally staring the issue right in the face.

Phoenix, on the other hand, is forced to confront this event and any lingering emotions and issues he had afterwards right away. That event was a MAJOR turning point for his whole life. He got accused of murder, he ate glass (cough), his girlfriend apparently hates him ???, he met Mia, and overall everything has been turned upside down for him. He can't just ignore it or forget about it or pretend nothing happened like Iris could, and by now, his feelings have dulled. They definitely both still have lingering feelings about each other, but both of them end up dealing with them in completely different ways

Iris is definitely going to be feeling a LOT of pain over both seeing him again and seeing him with someone else, regardless of how prepared for it she tells herself she is. It's human to hurt when you see someone you cared about move on from you to someone else. There's a lot of guilt and blame that she carries from the incident, ESPECIALLY when she has to confront her emotions and him face to face.

But Iris is not a petty person or a grudge holder, unlike Dahlia, and she cares a lot about Phoenix. She's also not an idiot. As much it makes her heart ache, she knows her chance has passed and that Phoenix has moved on, even if Iris is still working on that herself. She will heal with time. Despite everything, I think she is an incredibly strong person.

Though it's going to hurt (a lot), I think that regardless, she'd be really happy for them.

Wedding

In terms of a wedding I don't actually think about that all too much yet dfjkfhfs I haven't gotten anywhere past the pw trilogy so I don't actually know all too much about anything post-trials and tribulations yet. (despite that I do have a whole narumitsu progression timeline. aside from the pining that they both think is one sided, there is a whole lot of nothing until AFTER the 7 year gap. they don't actually get together until after that. god they are so infuriatingly slowburn i hate them)

Anyways as hilarious as I think "pearl is homophobic" is, she's still a kid. We can't completely fault a kid who doesn't know better and never really had the chance to learn. I think it'd take a lot of work on Maya's part to be able to give her a proper explanation (if nick tried to explain anything he'd just end up getting pearl-slapped and things would go nowhere probably, its all up to maya here), but I figure pearl eventually comes around with some help and is like SUPER involved in everything. Her passion for romance n stuff just gets switched to nick and edgeworth instead of maya and nick

Once I'm more familiar with all of the other characters and the events of post-pw trilogy I'll definitely have a lot more ideas

[power-chords]

apologies if you've explained this already, but tumblr search is trash, so I have to ask... why the obsession with michael mann, how did that start?

Oh, man. It’s a long story! In the early days of the pandemic I got a call from my favorite rock musician that he had read a short essay I’d written on his solo album, and he wanted me to contribute a piece to his band’s forthcoming box set. Dream come true obviously, couldn’t say no, so I immediately buckled down on the research end, which for me involved a deeper dive into said musician’s love of film. Mann was on the list of suspects alongside more definitive entries like Coppola and Scorsese, but that turned out to be a happy accident of misreading. (Major shout out to Adam here, by the way, because without his guidance I would have been working with a much more meandering home-brewed syllabus.)

I enjoy movies like any properly adjusted American but they don’t tend to put a spell on me the way music does, or make me want to disassemble the whole contraption piece by piece like a good written story. And Mann’s work was the first time I’d ever encountered films that could have the same effect on me as music and literature. They were hypnotic and enchanting and propulsive, like my favorite records, but they also suggested this dense subterranean architecture of potential meaning, obscured from immediate view but very much there and carefully, deliberately encoded. In other words, these films were like texts imploring (really, daring) you to interpret them.

That’s Mann’s methodology in a nutshell, basically — it’s a seduction gambit, and on me it worked spectacularly! It tapped into my grotesque hedonic animal brain and sparked an intellectual curiosity as well. For me that combination has a narcotic quality that’s hard to explain, but I have an addictive personality. And the more I watched his work, the more it ensnared me like The Footage.* (“WHAT is going on? What is this film doing to me??” Etc.) You have to understand I have no prior experiential basis for this, so as far as I’m concerned it’s witchcraft. By the time I turn in my piece for the box set I have this collateral situation developing, ha ha, oh no, and here I am three years later.

Initially I had wondered if Mann had been an influence on Dulli, but it turned out to be a case of convergent evolution. Or something akin to it. I think they’re just similar in terms of what subject matter they’re attracted to, maybe in their modes of perception and how they make aesthetic/narrative sense of the world. And there is some part of me that keys into that sensibility — whichever part precedes organized expression, maybe even conscious comprehension — and finds it cathartic and liberating and all that good stuff. (I’m a Safety First adrenaline junkie these days so I try to limit my habits to art and pop culture.)

And then he and Meg Gardiner co-wrote an actual book which provoked further investigations, escalations, whatever you want to call them. It turns out that the abyss really DOES stare back into you in the form of numerous spooky historical coincidences. I’m like afraid of Heat 2 at this point because the more I go trawling around in there the more it becomes an eldritch object, LOL. I’m the closest anyone has come to living the film Jumanji, let me put it that way. But the experience has been a blast. And I feel fortunate to have found yet another creator on par with Dulli and Townshend whose work I will be able to take with me and return to over the course of my life, and seek shelter in in that way.

*EVERYBODY READ PATTERN RECOGNITION BY WILLIAM GIBSON!

[thephooka]

How we got here from there

Or, the long journey of a longform long-running webcomic about a long man with long wings.

In the spirit of @feathernotes and @phantomarine who have been talking about just starting your webcomic and not worrying about being "ready", I was inspired to do a post about White Noise's origin! I'm a little limited by the fact that I either left behind or destroyed a lot of the art I have from prior to 2009, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Cringe Truth below the cut!

The Cringe Truth of White Noise is that it has its roots in a Pokemon x Yu Yu Hakusho x self-insert(s) roleplay thread I used to do with an internet friend I made on Neopets guild forums way back in 2002-ish. We would come home from school every day and RP over AIM, and then when we had to get offline, whoever left first would email the other one, and we would continue via email until we were back on AIM at the same time.

Liya was my self insert.

This isn't even remotely the earliest art of her, it's just the earliest I have on hand. I was drawing her for almost a decade by the time I drew this one. Imagine the earlier drawings as being like I traced over Sailor Moon characters that I printed out from deviantART and gave them a brown ponytail.

The funny thing is Liya really hasn't changed much from her original form! I also had loose brown curls that I kept in a ponytail 24/7 to the point that it showed when I had it down (which is why her hair is 'dented' like that). I did it because I was trans and didn't know it; she does it because she hasn't realized she can just cut it off and be butch yet.

Other characters that date back from this time period: Yoshi (originally an InuYasha/Rurouni Kenshin pastiche), Hawk (I don't remember when he got wings but they were white at first), Numair (named after the Tamora Pierce character and filling a Koenma kind of role), Helly (sort of--I had an elf character named Kamui who had the same temperament, and he was eventually transmuted into Helly) and...Kurogane.

I've never named Kurogane but he appears in the background of the comic a few times, as my own personal inside joke.

Vlad came along somewhere between this RP period and planning the comic, but I can't remember when or why. I don't have drawings from that time (~2004?) but he was the first character I drew when I got a tablet for the first time.

Everyone else came along later when I started actually planning out the comic.

All this said: the reason I started White Noise as a weekly webcomic is because I wanted to learn to draw better.

At the time I was in college majoring in animation, but I didn't feel like I was learning very much at all (the program was badly structured; I had more art history classes than anything else. It was a mess.) I was also working nights in order to feed myself, and so had a lot of downtime. I had this story rattling around in my head from my RP days, so I figured, why not just give it a go?

For posterity here's a photo of a chapter 1 panel in progress, back in 2011 with my typical college diet in the bg:

(Chapter 1 was originally pencil on paper, scanned in and colored in PS. I later re-drew it to make it fully digital to match with the rest of the comic.)

There's been a lot of talking about not waiting until you're 'ready' to start a webcomic, and I agree with that sentiment. Try framing it like this: making a comic every week for years and years will improve your art way more than any prep work you can do before starting the comic. It's like learning to swim. You can read about swimming all you want, but you're not going to really figure it out until you do it. If your early comics are bad, well, that's normal. It used to be an expected part of doing webcomics; I blame the shift into expecting webcomics to be polished from start to finish partly on commercialization in the space, but that's an angry rant for another time.

With this background, here's the collage I posted for WN's 10 year anniversary back in 2021:

And now we're here.

So do your webcomic. Put it on ComicFury or make a janky little site for it. Be okay with imperfect pages and be prepared to shout into the void for a while. Even if it's always a hobby, if it never makes you a dime or wins you any awards--that's fine! You'll be a lot happier if you learn not to worry about that stuff, and just make something that will help you grow and make you happy. We could do with a lot more work like that in the world imo.