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obsidiancreates · 3 months ago

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Memory In The Froglight

(Shared Souls AU is back babey)

Shepherd shakes his head. “This is gonna be a fuckin’ disaster.”

“I can’t watch.” Felix pulls his hat down over his eyes. “Poor guy never gets a break.”

“Whattya talkin’ about?” Skrimm is perched up on Torbek’s shoulder, mimicking a preparatory neck rub. Torbek feels nothing, of course, nor hears. “He’s gonna kill it!”

“The crowd?” Marius eyes Skrimm’s proximity to the Witchlight canisters.

“Not the crowd, sheesh, are you ever not a downer?” Skrimm nudges nothing but air with his elbow– the habits of Life, where he would have someone for the joke to either land or fall flat with, still a part of him even after all this time. “He’s gonna do great! It’s in his soul!”

“Skrimm.” Shepherd knocks his hat brim up with one knuckle. “I know you ain’t the most attentive–”

“Nor clear-minded,” Marius mutters.

“Or intellectual,” Felix shrugs.

“All I’m sayin’ is,” Shepherd says, “Torbek ain’t great with crowds.”

“And? I’m tellin’ ya, this guy has a showman somewhere deep down in there!”

“You’re just saying that because you two sound most alike,” Marius says, quirking an eyebrow.

“When you get stressed your voice fully turns into his,” Felix adds, gesturing at Torbek.

“Which means the opposite can also happen. He can have my lovely and beautiful voice if he tries.”

The other three share skeptical looks just as a bullywug pops in with offers of Song Syrup.

“Don’t need it,” Skrimm says confidently.

“Take two,” Felix says.

Torbek hears nothing. “Torbek is beyond help.”

“Killed by a hag over a theatre play.” Marius’s expression is sour. “I’m still unconvinced that we didn’t fall back into Druskenwald.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Uh, just a word of waaarning, remember that nothing rhymes with orange, purple, or silver. Don’t fall for that trap twice, Torbek!”

“Orange? What about uh, doorhinge?”

“That’s-that’s a cheap cop-out. Get outta here, Frost.”

“HA! Look at that, he’s learning!” Skrimm claps his hands together and then rubs them in preparation. “He’s got this!”

“Did either of you know Skrimm had such a… fondness, for Theatre?” Marius asks his companions.

Shepherd shrugs. “Makes enough sense I suppose…”

“Skrimm.” Felix can’t remember the last time he provided this much input on one of Skrimm’s… episodes? Moments of enthusiasm? Manic switch-ups from despair to optimism? “Do you have a background in this kind of thing?”

“You kiddin’? My friends and I put on the best play Drakkar has ever seen! No-one has topped it in the last thousand years, I’m sure of it.”

“Y’all put on a play… in Drakkar.” Shepherd crosses his arms. “Is this like how you’re sure you were six-foot-five and two hundred pounds before yer death?”

“This is way more real- I mean, I was, but that’s not the point! I was Mr. Bones, and I was so professional it’d blow your ass right off your body!”

The three others share skeptical glances again.

“Just watch!” Skrimm scrambles back as the curtain rises. “Torbek’s got that skill, I can feel it in my bones!”

Felix sighs deeply. “You don’t have bones anymore.”

“My ghost bones.”

“... Sure.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So did it just fix his tone-deafness, or did it actually change Frost’s voice?” Felix watches from where he sits on the bottom of the box-tower as Torbek waits to be rolled onto the stage.

Shepherd shrugs, and Marius shakes his head, unknowing.

“Ah.” Skrimm has his arms crossed, one foot tap-tap-tapping so quickly that if he was physical he’d be wearing a hole into the soggy wood of the floor. “Maybe the big guy should’ve taken one of those. I mean I still think he’s got this but, that was pretty damn good. Stupid cat.”

The tower is rolled out, the tiny curtain covering Torbek’s face parted. His ever-present and ever-imperceptible spirit companions wait with baited breath.

“Uuuunnnnggggghhhhh, it’s Torbek’s time to shi-ine!”

“Not a promising start,” Marius whispers. “Please let him do well enough to live…”

“Torbek is playing Princess Torbeka toniiight!”

“Oh, phew.” Skrimm wipes his brow. “Good thing he remembered to tell the crowd who he is! Heh, that was almost a terrible misstep.”

“Almost?!” Felix brings his hat low over his eyes, unable to watch.

Torbek brings out a tiny tin whistle and blows a single note. “Torbek Torbek Torbek, Torbek

Torbek Torbek!”

“Ain’t you supposed to do them warmups offstage?” Shepherd looks at Skrimm, who’s just nodding in invisible encouragement.

“What? No, ya take your script out there with you, you do your warmups, you embody your character! Me and my friends did our whole play without any rehearsal! Total dry ru– … Mostly dry. I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.”

Torbek takes a deep breath. Everyone but Skrimm braces.

“... Miiidnight, not a sound from the paaavement, has the moon lost her mem-ry, Torbeka’s smiling a-lone…”

In the wings, Frost’s jaw is dropped wide open, and Felix, Shepherd, and Marius are hardly different. Skrimm, however, whoops and jups as high as his little goblin legs allow, swinging a celebratory fist in front of him.

“In the lamp-light the withered leave, collect at her feeeeet… and the wind, begins to moan…”

“He’s got… range.” Marius blinks in pure befuddlement.

“Where’d all his gargglin’ an’ rasp go?” Shepherd walks up, unseen as he is by the audience, and peers at the Witchlight canisters sticking out from Torbek’s princess costume. “These ain’t lowered…”

“I’m tellin’ ya, goblins are made for theatre,” Skrimm boasts, scrambling up Torbek’s back and sitting between his shoulders triumphantly. “I was the only one who stayed on script the whole time! Even when it was weird and perverted and definitely not me misunderstanding what pump meant.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

Torbek takes a deep breath. “Mem-ry, all alone in the mooooonlight! Torbeka dreams of the old days, life was beau-tiful theeen…”

A pang of grief and nostalgia strikes the hearts of all in the theatre, living and dead. Shepherd looks towards Gricko, no, around Gricko, wondering what Sarnax must be thinking of this play his… ward, of sorts, has written. Marius looks to Frost, wondering how Lethica’s voice might sound singing a tune such as Torbek sings now. Felix can’t see Kremy, backstage somewhere preparing for his own part, but he imagines Toa is away from Kremy’s side to watch the show, smiling wide.

Skrimm looks out at the living vessels his friends all follow, and hopes they’re remembering their play too. It was a mess, a haphazard disaster thrown together in the ruins of a beautiful and warm lethal lie turned to rubble– and it was the most fun they’d had in months by that time.

“Let the mem-ry, live a-gaiiiin.”

As long as Torbek has a better understanding of the intent of the stage directions than Skrimm did, this might shape up to be even better than Ogreton’s Last Play.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Wow, Jornir!” Toa nudges the firbolg next to him, applauding for no-one but his ghostly companions. “Isn’t this play great so far?”

“It is… certainly better than what we did.”

“You did a play too?! I wish we could’ve done a play. Someday when we all reunite, let’s all put one on together.”

“That would be… very crowded.” Jornir watches Torbek cover his mouth with exaggerated shock as Hootsie pulls out the red scarves tied around rat snacks from the snake costumes. He gestures to Torbek. “That, makes it easy to see Skrimm, in the bugbear.”

“The overractin’?” Briggsy laughs a little to himself, having only Clayton to elbow for his ‘get-the-joke?’ movement as Clayton watches with more Confusion than anything else.

“Yes.”

“Oh. … No fun when you agree, you know.”

“I am not trying to be… fun. You are right. Skrimm is… animated. Loud, and… bold. I did not think, I would see it here, in this life.” Jornir… smiles, just slightly, barely enough to tell. “It is… nice, to remember.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“AYE, GOOD JOB LADS!” Barnabos cheers and pulls Jericho and Sarnax into one-armed hugs, pressing both to his side as he bellows proudly. “LOOK AT OUR MR. GRIMGRIN! HA-HA, AS FINE AS A TALE AS TROTHACK SHARK-PUNCHER’S SEVEN VOYAGES!”

“I-I do like the jaunty tunes!” Jericho’s fingers move like they would if he was playing his banjo along with the pit orchestra. “And everyone’s singin’ real nice! I never did hear Sir Marius or-or Lethica carryin’ a tune!”

“Nor I, Shepherd.” Sarnax’s tail comes up to slap Barnabos’s shoulder, in reminder more than annoyance, and Barnabos loosens his grip for Sarnax to slip out. “I wonder how he is feeling, watching this unfold.”

“Aye, not the kind of travels for singin’, you two had.” Barnabos laughs, pointing at Torbek. “An’ look at that! That’s a Mr. Stabbaskotch expression if I’ve ever seen one! Some of us migh’ bleed through to the living after all!”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daisy is laughing, leaning on Lethica as she watches the tube-sock-costumes Kremy, Gricko, and Gideon all “disemboweled” by Sir Morgo Hootise as Torbeka watches in shock. The silent shaking sets off Caprice as well, who’d gone from despaired horror to elation as soon as Frost’s song-syruped voice had melted the tension of the audience with it’s shocking beauty.

Lethica is not mirthless herself, imagining Marius in Torbek’s place, and when Daisy raises her hands for a moment to sign “He looks just like Skrimm,” she knows she’s not the only one picturing another life, another time.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taishen is laughing well, but there’s a hint of worry to his expression as he eyes Torbek.

“Is something wrong?” Yorgrim casts a careful eye of his own over the crowds.

“Oh, nothing… too, terrible.” Taishen shuffles his feet. “Its just, Torbek is reminding me quite a lot of Skrimm right now, not with the singing Skrimm couldn’t sing that well, but well, when we did our play things went a little…”

Yorgrim waits as Taishen looks in the distance, trying to find a careful way to phrase things.

“... Skrimm was very confused, about some things.” Taishen shivers. “Very, very confused. And Torbek isn’t a stranger to… confusion…”

“... Did someone die?”

Taishen thinks back to how he’d felt towards Skrimm in that moment of revelation. “... Almost.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Least Kremy’s stickin’ to the script.” Queenie stands on top of Twig’s hat to have a good view of the play from the wings. “Jornir sure didn’.”

“I thought you were all stranded in an icy wasteland,” Iris looks down at Queenie, even with Queenie standing on Twig’s head.

“Yeah but we did a play anyway, for the ogres.” Queenie looks at Torbek. “Skrimm probably did the best up until he had to pump his fist.”

“Pump his fist?”

“Yeah, he thought it meant pumpin’ his pe–”

“Eugh!”

“Do they really think this will work?” Strahdanya looks up to the hag in the box. “If they send Twig to us early…”

“I’m sure if she dies, they died hours ago,” Queenie says. “She’s a tough one.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Torbek sings his second song about the (allegedly) murdered Agdon Longscarf, Skrimm grins smugly down at the other three from atop Torbek’s back. “Told you he’d do well.”

“I hate when he’s right,” Felix huffs.

Marius nods in agreement. “A thankfully rare occasion.”

Shepherd snorts, watching Torbek finish up as Skrimm starts to huff and puff at Marius’s insult. The applause of the crowd drowns out the offended shouting of the goblin as Torbek steps back from the spotlight. Maybe things might work out for this band of chucklefucks after all.

#legends of avantris #once upon a witchlight #icebound #torbek #skrimm stabbaskotch #fanfic #my attempts at fanfic

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canmom · 2 months ago

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the adventure of canmom at weird weekend (part 1)

is this 'adventure of' joke getting old? like I've already done the 'translate into scots gaelic' variant. it's not exactly an adventure if it's a half hour bike ride is it? ah fuckit

This weekend was the Weird Weekend film festival in Glasgow! it's the tiny kind of film festival with one screen and folding chairs - they did get their hands on a real beast of a projector mind you...

Look at that concentrated beam of pure film. Kind of awesome to actually see a lightfield intense enough to scatter off random bits of dust in the air honestly.

This is apparently the fourth time this festival has run - though as is often the case I'm terribly out of the loop and only heard about it when @birdfriender told me it was on lol. It's also only my third time going to a film festival (the previous times both being Annecy, a very different kind of festival). It was a great time: the organisers have excellent taste and there's a lot of deep cuts, and made some good friends among the attendees.

On Friday night I showed up for the opening evening of interactive film - this included a short film/video essay commissioned for the festival based on of all things the Goncharov meme (seriously...), followed by a brief history of interactive film including the amusingly ill-fated venture of a certain former Microsoft guy called Bob something (I really should have written this down), and then someone called Puke ("everyone’s favourite genderfluid body fluid") came out dressed like this to oversee the actual event...

...and we watched of all things Final Destination 3 with the DVD feature that lets you switch in alternate scenes at various points (mostly death scenes). This was actually a pretty good time since it was my first time seeing a Final Destination film, and there was a good energy in the audience (although it seemed like the film always picked the opposite of what we voted for - not sure if that's a thematic point or programming error lol), but I'm glad the rest of the festival was more obscure stuff.

On Saturday, the festival proper began! I am reminded of a certain line in Exordia, in which the alien Ssrin gives her assessment of humanity, opening with "You’re a species of gangly distance runners, adapted to sweat and throw stuff. You like watching each other fuck." And indeed, there were few films this weekend that did not offer an opportunity to watch someone fuck. That's art for ya babey.

Looking back the clear highlight was Louise Weard's film Castration Movie I: Traps, but more on that anon - let's start at the beginning. I ended up catching all but one of the films over the course of the weekend and there was maybe only one I'd call an outright miss, so great going in all.

On Saturday we opened with a pair of Hungarian films directed by György Révész, about an incredibly up himself intellectual-in-exile named Dr. János Bátky - the self insert of author Antal Szerb. the first film, The Loves of a Dilettante, sees Bátky going through a series of affairs with women around him - in each case abruptly ending the relationship because it doesn't conform to his specific fantasy. The reasons become increasingly absurd: at first Bátky wishes instead that his partner is a certain Countess, but when he chances to meet the lady herself, he refuses to believe she is who she says she is; at last another woman at the library turns out to be the secret admirer who has been sending Bátky gifts in the post, and he cannot stand to be pursued instead of the manipulative pursuer he fancied himself to be, and spurns her as well.

Bátky is very much the butt of the joke in this film, and the ending sees everyone pretty much done with his bullshit; at the same time, he is an entertaining character, with a nonstop patter full of literary allusions, bizarre tangents and dubious observations. Not so charming that I can quite see why all these women are throwing themselves at him, but that's the conceit of the film I suppose! The actor playing him, Iván Darvas does a splendid job of making this sideburned wanker come across as interesting enough to carry a film.

The second Bátky film, The Pendragon Legend was a major tonal departure from the first - and also featured a different cast, despite including a number of the same characters. (Funnily enough Iván Darvas returns, but as a different character.) This time, rather than a study of Bátky's foibles, we have a complicated conspiracy at a stately home in wales, tying in with biological experiments, immortal sorcerors and the Rosicrucians, assassination plots, affairs; the works. It ends up a lot of fun, although the sheer number of characters made it a little hard to keep track of everything. Here, Bátky is pulled in as almost an observer of all the shit going down, and comes across a lot more sympathetic as a result.

All in all, a pretty fascinating pair of films and window into Hungarian cinema. With both these films set in London and Wales but voiced entirely in Hungarian, it seems to present an amusing alternate universe in which Hungary is the language of the UK, but nobody knows where Hungary is. It's a very old-school 'from outside' view of the UK, full of tea-sipping aristocrats and walks in the park and intellectual conversations in a library - it's quite funny to me. I haven't seen a ton of Hungarian film (mostly animation), but everything I've seen has been fascinating, and terribly literary.

vimeo

A whole lot of the films in this festival were restorations of various out of print films, and that includes to the next one, Treasure Island directed by Scott King. This film has absolutely nothing to do with Stephenson's book, instead referring to the island near San Francisco where mail was processed during the second world war.

The basis of the story is the historical Operation Mincemeat, in which the British constructed a false identity for a corpse and planted it to mislead the Nazis; here the story is transplanted to the American invasion of Japan, but the focus is hardly wartime intrigue, instead the psychosexual inner lives of the two Americans who are involved in constructing the fake identity for the corpse. One of them secretly has two wives, one a white civilian woman and the other a Japanese woman who works in translation for the military; the other habitually invites other men for group sex with him and his wife and has a whole lot of hangups about how he is not gay, and that corpse is not at all sexy thank you.

As the film progresses, both of them are increasingly struck by visions of the dead man talking to them and the line between 'reality' and fantasy gets blurrier. It's a very well crafted and engaging film; shot in black and white in 1999, it aimed to challenge the rather sanitised and straightforwardly heroic picture of the 'Greatest Generation' who fought the war, presenting a more 'warts and all' look with the sexuality and racism and so forth in full view. I found it very effective! And it was cool to have the director there, a bearded American guy who spoke very confidently about his intentions for the film - I got to ask a question about how he kept all the fantasy and more literal elements straight while scripting the film.

(Do you find that when you get a Q&A session like this, you really want to ask a good question? Because I do. It's very silly. But like if I am going to hold the mic and get the spotlight on me... sure I don't want to waste peoples' time, but also I kinda want to come off well lmao. If I can get people to go 'ooh that's a good question' I feel like I've won audience Q&A, a real thing that is reasonable to want.)

In the afternoon we got a massive block of trans films old and new. We opened with Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucubers featuring Holly Woodlawn; Jaye Hudson of the TGirlsOnFilm Instagram account (which I was not previously familiar with) gave an introduction, telling the story of how Woodlawn came into the orbit of Warhol's 'Factory', and reading out some funny anecdotes about her experience on set. As Jaye talked about it, at that point in the 70s, trans girls were kind of the flavour of the month and we appeared in a bunch of films at the time, of which this was one.

The film sees a girl called Eve Harrington moving to New York in pursuit of the dream of becoming an actress; there she meets a series of weirdos from taxi-driving nuns to 'Mary Poppins', the drag empress of a kind of roommate finding service who's always trailed by worshipful boys. Most of the film sees Eve trying to find an apartment and a boyfriend, and running into various 70s archetypes along the way: a werewolf (also played by Woodlawn in boy mode), political lesbians, a plant-obsessed hippy, and finally a taciturn amnesiac Russian woman and her brother, a little person in a cowboy outfit who does pro wrestling. It's an intriguing slice of the 70s and of New York in particular.

Apparently this film has long been out of print and only narrowly evaded being lost media, so it's pretty sick to see. (And honestly despite the long cultural shadow they cast, I don't actually know that much about the girls around Warhol's 'Factory', so I was glad to get a look in.)

vimeo

Next up we had 'An Untitled and Perfectly-Legal Coming-of-Age Clown Parody Film' - not hard to figure out what film this is (The People's Joker), especially with the still and trailer right there, but while the courts in the US seem to have come down on recognising it as a valid Fair Use defence, the legal status is still a bit up in the air in the UK.

This one got a lot of buzz for thumbing its nose at Warner Bros.' copyright empire - and of course being part of a recent wave of trans girl directed independent films such as I Saw The TV Glow. It's a trans girl coming of age story built around the Batman milieu, and clearly by people with a pretty thorough knowledge of Batman's cinematic history and DC universe deep cuts (the final act involves a musical number with Mx. Mxyzptlk, played as a puppet, which I'm sure means something if you read the comics).

It's largely shot on greenscreen, with all kinds of mixed media and animation segments - deliberately going for a grungy, chaotic look where it doesn't try to match lighting and animation styles (there's a whole bunch of indepedent animators contributing brief segments here, much as in Barber Westchester). The story concerns Joker the Harlequin, a trans girl who finally moves away from her controlling mother after being drugged with 'Smylex' for most of her life; now in Gotham she can transition, have a dodgy relationship with a trans guy (who is also a version of the Joker, and - spoilers - a former Robin), and build an 'anti-comedy' club with most of the usual Batman villains before going to confront the cultish institution which controls all legal comedy in post-'cyber war' America.

The film's strongest aspect is, fittingly, jokes - throwaway lines about the casually dystopian setting ('drag was outlawed after the explosion at RuPaul's fracking ranch' got a big laugh); a running joke of namedropping cancelled comedians with 'before the unpleasantness, of course' 'of course'; the playful riffs on past Batman films. The core story, though, is a fairly by-the-numbers queer/trans coming of age about self-acceptance, parental mistreatment and finding community, and a bit of a satire on SNL which is perhaps more specific to the director's history - I get the purpose of this kind of narrative and I certainly needed it at a time, and wrote similar stories myself, but it's a kind of story I'm kind of increasingly tired of hearing. I don't mean to say it's bad for that - just it doesn't resonate the way it might have ten years ago.

Honestly, I think trying to make a 'trans movie' kind of paints you into a formulaic corner. A corner very deftly avoided by the next movie, Louise Weard's Castration Movie Part I: Traps. This was the theatrical debut of this movie, though it's been available to download on Weard's gumroad for some time.

vimeo

Louise Weard made herself kind of notorious for her previous movie, ten years ago, Computer Hearts, but even more so for her castration scene supercut at the Fantastic Fest '100 Best Kills' event a couple of years ago - something that has left her feeling a bit pigeonholed into castration scenes. Part of the joke about Castration Movie is then that it's eight hours (only half of that presently available) of trans girls being sad (emotional drama) without any castration until the very end of the movie. It doesn't even come up in the first half.

Technically, this is a four hour long movie - the first part of an eight hour long movie! - consisting largely of very long takes of naturalistic conversations shot on an incredibly grainy camera, now and then mixing that with musical montage and sex scenes. Something I'd raise an eyebrow at on description, and I want to kind of lead with that because like, no joke, this is legit one of the best movies I've seen; those four hours absolutely fly by. Incredibly sharp character writing, incredibly strong naturalistic acting - and unreasonably funny, just way too much.

The first hour or so focuses on Turner, an aspiring film director who spends his time working odd jobs at a film crew and increasingly torpedoing his relationship with his furry-artist girlfriend - someone he clearly isn't very compatible with and views with little actual interest, and his efforts to try and salvage the relationship ring false in ways he's clearly unable to see. But at every turn he doubles down and builds on his resentment and sense of emasculation, until he's picking fights with a living statue in the street and busting into his ex's room late at night.

Along the way we get all sorts of darkly funny conversations - Weard has an incredible eye for subtext and awkwardness, and can lend an ultimately very unsympathetic character like Turner enough sympathetic motivation to make his downward spiral completely human and convincing. It's both sad and terribly funny, perfectly pitched.

The punchline sees him posting to /r9k/ - and at this point we cut to a new story about 'Traps', the film's actual main character, a sex worker in Vancouver played by Weard herself, who is caught up with the drama of various partners and her own completely unresolved shit around transition to make her an entirely unsuitable would-be mentor figure to her friend Adeleine, who's kind of the deuteragonist of this act, cracking under the pressure of being the only one in the house with a shit but paying office job while her boyfriend gets top surgery.

The first act sets us up a frame to look at the second - Traps is a pretty messed up person, but in a deeply understandable way, and it serves in ways to show that the shit she's going through is not some unique trans girl thing but very much the torment of being a human. Desperate for connection and fucking it up, digging ourselves deeper while convinced it's the right thing to do. Along the way, we see her having various kinds of nasty sex, injecting DIY HRT, taking a bunch of cocaine, a trans guy getting top surgery, and various other fun things that I could never stream on twitch (or you bet I'd be planning a screening right away) - but it's also in many ways incredibly matter of fact about all this shit we get up to in a way that feels incredibly real.

It's a film that benefitted a lot from viewing with a largely transfem audience who would laugh at certain lines in the right spirit - I have no idea how this whole thing would come across if you aren't trans and don't know what 'agp' means (about the person saying it as much as anything) lmao. But if you are, it's like the film I never even knew I needed. It's way too real: from amusing setups like the polycule who has the access to DIY HRT trying to drag you into an argument about Dune before one of them wakes up and has a panic attack or daft conversations about boobs, to the pinpoint depiction of the kinds of neuroses we end up carrying from our shitty tenuous work, and of course the friction and fireworks of trying to care for each other when we're all burned out from carrying our own shit. Weard is fearless, and does seem to rather revel in being transgressive, but this is not edge for edge's sake.

And honestly this is 100% what 'trans film', if we can't help but have such a category, needs to be I think - a story heavily informed by the specific fucked up experiences of being trans but not like, About Being Trans(TM) in the way People's Joker was. Uncompromisingly honest (but with plenty of humour) about how we are, which is to say painfully human, rather than cheerfully painting the sort of freeing subculture we'd like to think we have.

I got to talk to Weard quite a bit on Sunday (ending up in a pub with her and a number of other mostly trans festivalgoers), and it turns out the slightly ludicrous length of the film wasn't even planned, with the original idea to edit it down to something like a standard 90 minutes - but when it became evident after shooting the first forty minutes or so that these long scenes were kind of absolute gold, someone (I forget who now) made the case that they shouldn't be cut down at all and to just go for the full behemoth. And honestly? They were fucking right. This did not feel like a four hour film, somehow. There were definitely other films this festival where my mind wandered and I kind of checked out a bit, but not this one.

As a chaser (ha ha) to that, we had Louise Weard's 'Unsee' segment, screened just once in the hour before the clocks change (which is in a certain sense lost to time, or at least that's the joke of this segment). An elaboration on the experience of presenting the castration scene supercut at the '100 Best Deaths' event, it dives into a reprise of that supercut before increasingly alternating with scenes of a kind of introspective monologue on how people reacted to that event and how far Louise herself started to end up feeling like the butt of the joke (even as random cis women accused her of being transphobic lmao).

As the video progresses it segues into an increasingly ridiculous sequence where two of Weard's friends step in (as substitute Louise Weards) reading out her essay of Lacanian film analysis on castration scenes in movies, while Weard (behind the camera) gives them directions to frame the shot to better show her cis ex's boobs. In between, more castration scenes! So many, most of them unfamiliar to me (funny moment when I finally recognised one and my brain was like hey! that's Sálo! and I found myself turning to face Violet with an excited grin before my brain caught up with that)

Among other things, the narration talks about the whole arc being a transgressive tgirl filmmaker who frequently faced some rather ridiculous accusations of being a transphobe or nazi troll (by TV Glow's Jane Schoenbrun, although it seems they have since made up), all in a time when it seems like a lot of her contemporaries in the transgressive film scene actually do seem to end up going nazi; the trouble of getting pigeonholed as the castration person, and so on - but also kind of playing with like oh, fifteen more castration scenes, that's what you want right? So many swerves, and the supercut was in fact very funny (I wonder if I find it easy to laugh instead of wincing since I actually have been castrated lmao), ending in a scene which is constructed to suggest Louise actually cut her balls off for the bit - though since she showed the prop penis earlier it was pretty clear that she didn't. (Yet..?)

It's a really clever bit and superbly entertaining bit of filmmaking, all told. I'm a full Louise Weard convert at this point, can't wait for castration movie part ii.

This post has gotten pretty long now, so I'll write up Sunday tomorrow. Do go watch Castration Movie tho, it's worth your time.

#film #louise weard #castration movie #film festival #the adventures of canmom

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badass-queer-couples-battle · 10 months ago

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Sword gays showdown, round 3 of bracket one

Propaganda:

For Alucard:

He has a sword that he can command to fly around. He's bisexual. He's depressed. He's both the direct opposite of his father and too much like him. He's part of the most disastrous polycule to ever exist. He's a jerk. I love him, he's very important to me.

Symphony of the Night has too much of a cultural impact to not have him be included here. He’s an aroace icon with a huge sword collection (he’s bisexual in the animated series). He has a flying sword familiar and a sword he can hold in his hands. Loves taking naps.

For Zoro:

Literally training to be the greatest swordsman in the world. Has a special three swords technique (one blade in each hand plus one with the handle held in his teeth). I haven't read the manga or watched the anime but the live action adaptation gives me extremely gay vibes and based on the fandom things I've seen I'm not the only one

bro uses three swords. has one in his mouth. dont ask how the HELL he manages that. one day he will be the worlds greatest swordsman....after he beats the current greatest for both the titles of greatest swordsman and fruitiest swordsman. he's dramatic as FUUUCK like bro what the hell. has homoerotic fights with the local twink like everyday. directionally challenged, can and will get lost in a paper bag, doesnt know left from right...he probably cant read, too. hes too silly ngl

First of all, im in like episode 250 and so far he hasnt been shown attracted to any woman at all during the whole show so far, not even when one changed clothes in the same room as him and this is anime so you know there were other characters with bloody noses and shit. With that out of the way he wields three swords at once [two in his hands, one is his goddamn mouth dude. Its cool af trust me.] When he was little he made a promise to his best friend that he'd be the best swordsman in the world. Later she died in a tragic accident and left her sword which he still uses today. He also carries a cursed sword but he overpowers the curse with a combination of skill and sheer luck. He got stuck in a chimney. While his crewmates sail their ship he takes naps. He learned how to cut through metal by fighting a guy who could turn his body into metal blades. That's metal. He refuses to fight this liberal marine officer because she looks like his childhood best friend and its just understandably really awkward for him. He's autistic. He's a he/him bisexual lesbian. He's a gay man. He's ace/aro. He's whatever you want him to be babey!!

he has 3 swords, wields one in his mouth sometimes, his dream is to be the greatest swordsman in the world

three swords and big aroace-spec gay vibes

He not only has a sword he has *three* swords. He's absolutely gay there's no way to see this man as straight. Also one time he licked his sword for no reason and that was really funny to me so I had to mention it

Look, this man thinks about three things: Swords, His Captain, and Booze. He’s on a quest to be the worlds greatest swordsman. The Live action has a scene where he declares his undying, unwavering loyalty to his captain WHILE reaffirming his promise to be the worlds greatest swordsman. At this point His dream and his Captain are so intertwined it’s crazy. Man is so sword-y he’s got three of them. When one of his swords broke he carried its empty scabbard until he was able to give it a SWORD FUNERAL. He hears a sword is cursed and takes that as a challenge. He will literally tell his swords off for “bad behavior” when they “act up” due to being straight up cursed. He tests one by throwing it in the air and sticking his arm out to see if it is so blood thirsty and ill tempered that it will cut him. Even though he’s literally the first mate if you ask him what his role is he’s going to answer Swordsman.

He's dedicated his life to two things: becoming the greatest swordsman in the world and his captain, Luffy.

He mastered the three sword style. Its his style. It would've been more swords but he could only fit one sword in each hand and one in his mouth. He wants to be the world's greatest swordsman, a deal he made with his childhood best frenemy (before she died falling down the stairs). He thought he was All That at the start and was almost completely decimated by the actual Worlds Greatest Swordsman. Now, after two years forced training with that guy, he's probably in the top tier no-doubt, and honestly could already be the best but we just don't know for sure yet. Also, did I mention: he's got the whole demon/devil imagery going on at times. And he has absolutely no sense of direction! plus is a total softie when it comes to Chopper and all the children who somehow gravitate towards him. And he loves naps!

One of the guy's main goals in life is to be the best sword fighter and he fights with three swords which I think is telling enough of his skill.

#sword gays showdown #castlevania #castlevania netflix #alucard #castlevania alucard #one piece #roronoa zoro

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ccraccz · 1 year ago

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Hello! May I request a GN reader x Ezreal or any of the Heartsteel boys (you can choose which ones you like) going out on an arcade date with the reader! I hope this isn't too much, thank you ^^

Arcade date

characters: Ezreal x gn!Reader, Aphelios x gn!Reader

Ezreal

He'd totally brag about being so good with arcade games during the drive there

Only to be gobsmacked at how good you are on the claw machines and shooting games

Here he is thinking he'd be able to get you something from the prize counter

Only to get his ass kicked by you

Poor babey

Ezreal's sulking now

That is until he found your weakness

Driving games

His best weapon is your worst enemy

He got first the whole time

That made him happy

Laser tag? LASER TAG

If you're on the same team, you guys are winning that game by a land slide

Opposite teams?

He's targetting you whether you like it or not

Your group still wins though LMAO

You're just that good pooks

Dance dance revolution

You guys try it out and he falls on the floor three times and twists his ankle twice

He now has a grudge with DDR. Never getting on that thing ever again

Yk those VR Rollercoaster things?

Yeah, he'd get so scared going through the dinosaur one

He's so me

But he'd go ham on beat saber LOL

He'd prolly be one to buy food from the arcade restaurant tho

I will say, those arcade fries hit DIFFERENT

He'd also probably take you to chuck E cheese before you tekk him to bring you to another arcade place LMAO

He comes out with all the extras you got from the claw machines as the things from the counter in his hands and you holding the drinks

Augh he's so cuteness!

You definitely get him some type of plush that looks like him tho

A green little rabbit or something LMAO

He'll ask for so many kisses because you embarrassed him 🧚‍♀️

Aphelios

AUGH I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS MAN ITS CRAZY

Other than that, he's such a God at arcade games!

The arcade is literally like a second home to him

He knows these games like the back of his hand

He'd devour in motorcycle driving games, rhythm games, claw machines

Hell! He'd even get the jackpots in most games!

He didn't even struggle on DDR 😭 he's that good!

The only time he'd probably struggle are those vr rollercoasters , mostly because it's so loud, and he just doesn't like how public your reactions can be lmao

He'd just freeze up in the end and not hit any of the virtual bugs that you need to kill💀

Either way, you guys come out just minutes before the arcade closes, hands filled with bags

He literally bought every expensive thing from the ticket counter for you

But he doesn't go as low as to buy you food from there

So you guys then go to a restaurant and eat, and after that you have some fun in the car and at home 💙

You have to thank him in a way 🙃

-------------------------------------

HAHA I LOVE THIS ASK SM THANK YOU FOR REQUESTING LOVE!! 💙💙💙

#heartsteel ezreal #heartsteel aphelios #heartsteel #heartsteel aphelios x reader #heartsteel x female reader #heartsteel aphelios x male reader #heartsteel aphelios x gn reader #gender neutral reader #heartsteel ezreal x male reader #heartsteel ezreal x fem reader #heartsteel ezreal x gn reader

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dirtyvirgotarot · 2 years ago

Text

CHILL Messages, Chill Vibes Pick-An-Image Reading

A late-night Pick-A-Card, best enjoyed late at night, curled up in bed with your favorite drink and some jazz in the background. 😎 Or at least, that's how I would enjoy this one anyways, but that's definitely the vibe for this Pick-A-Card! I'll be using a regular ol' deck of playing cards for this one to match the theme! Minor Arcana only, folks. Some non-stress messages and advice for you to enjoy! Take in the aesthetic and pick your reading! I'll see ya there. ❤️😉 ~~~~~~~~ Pile 1 (The Roulette Wheel): Your Hand: King of Clubs (Wands), Queen of Hearts (Cups), and the 7 of Clubs (Wands), 9 of Clubs (Wands) as a clarifier. You and your best friend/lover are doing fucking AWESOME at overcoming challenges at the moment. It's you two vs. the world, and you both are slaying it, even if it doesn't feel like it! Your bond is only growing stronger by working together. I have a feeling you two are complimentary opposites, water and fire, black and red. You and your partner have found a complimentary balance that will serve you well going forward. You're being encouraged to keep leaning against one another, to keep supporting each other when the other is down. I even sense in some friendship cases a sense of hidden attraction. You or your friend may have a crush on the other, and are stubborn about admitting it to the other. This might be a sign that the time is right, for those of you. If this is in fact a relationship for you, I see the challenges you overcoming only spurring on sexual encounters. You find the other's strength so sexy. Damn baby, you did that. After all, when fire and water combine, they do create steam. 😉❤️💙♨️💪 ~~~~~~~~ Pile 2 (The Swirl): Your Hand: 9 of Diamonds (Pentacles), Jack of Hearts (Page of Cups), 8 of Clubs (Wands), 2 of Hearts (Cups), Queen of Clubs (Wands) Damn, today's your lucky day! Or at least, in the very near future, I see a windfall comin' your way. Money, babey! It may be that someone will tell you that you got a raise, or maybe your partner got a raise, or sudden influx of money. Someone around you is levelling up, and it's effecting you in a real good way! It'll be really unexpected, and happening soon! If you got a honey, I see a date to celebrate in your future! That Queen is a fiery one... I wouldn't be shocked if it was the Queen in this scenario that got the raise, whether it be you or your S/O. Maybe you're the kindly Page, and you're the one that lets the Queen know. Either way, it'll only serve to bring you two together more. If you're not in a relationship at the moment, not only are you getting this influx of money, but someone is coming your way! Look out for a feminine energy, black or red haired perhaps, and they are going to come in like a light in a dark room. Love at first sight, for some of you! They are mysterious and intimidating, yet loud and fun at the same time. For you, my dear Pile 2, I detect some serious summer lovin' coming your way, and the windfall of money to be able to live it up! 🪙💸💘😍💞 ~~~~~~~~ Pile 3 (The Poker Chips):

Your Hand: 10 of Clubs (Wands), 2 of Diamonds (Pentacles), 3 of Diamonds (Pentacles), Queen of Clubs (Wands), 8 of Hearts (Cups), Queen of Diamonds (Pentacles) as a clarifier to the 8 of Hearts. Help is on the way, Pile 3! If you're struggling with life, or wanting to move on from something like a large project or undertaking, someone is coming in to help you balance things out. Perhaps a new coworker, friend or partner! The teamwork is palpable, you both get along and work together flawlessly. Despite this, I feel that sexual intimacy will be temporary, if not just staying a friendly partnership. Romance would go pretty south, as I get the feeling that this person isn't the greatest when it comes to relationships morally, or might be toxic in that area and a relationship would be unhealthy. If you're already in an unhealthy relationship with someone, and your history sounds similar to what I've explained, it is a safe time to move on from them! Still, I get the feeling that for the most part, this person's gonna get you out of a pinch or love you when you're lonely, or already has, and ease/d some troubles you've been having so you can move on to a better job or better person, and a better, more healthy you! 🤝⛓️🐦🪙🏃☀️ ~~~~~~~~ Pile 4 (The Boulevard):

Your Hand: 8 of Spades (Swords), King of Diamonds (Pentacles), Ace of Hearts (Cups), 9 of Hearts (Cups), 10 of Hearts (Cups) You may feel trapped or lonely right now, Pile 4.. But if you can believe it, the one who you love most loves you right back! A nurturing, stoic yet kind energy, someone who has always been there, always been your rock, perhaps masculine in energy. He is going to extend his hand and offer his heart to you. This is your person, Pile 4. If you simply take off the blindfold, if you let them take away your bindings and dry your tears, if you let them know that you see them and their feelings, and that it's mutual, and grasp the full cup they offer to you back, I see your soulmate in this person, the person you will marry!! You've found them, Pile 4. Call their name! 🗣️😭🙏🤍💞🫂💍 ~~~~~~~~ General Afterthoughts and Notes for All Piles: 😳😳😳 Gosh, you guys.. Love is in the air!! Then again, it is the middle of June.. Every single pile had something to do with love, whether physical or emotional in some form!! Lots of Clubs, Wands, fire! The theme really ended up matching the messages! Whew! 💦 Red is your lucky color right now. Wear lots of it. 😉 I hope these readings resonated, and I wish you the best in luck AND love, guys!! If you want more, check out my Tumblr, and my Youtube page for more in-depth readings!! If it REALLY hit different for ya, here's the link to my Ko-Fi! You would be supporting a disabled, queer reader! Stay tuned for more fun readings!!! :D Have a beautiful day! -DV💜💚

#dvpac #image id #inspiration #pick a pile #pick a card #tarot community #tarot reading #pac tarot #pac #disability friendly #disabled creator #disabled #lgbtqai+ friendly #lgbtqai+#aesthetic #pick a picture #flashing #flashing lights

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 1 year ago

Text

tuesday again 10/3/2023

september was not kind but we're back with a real making section babEY and lengthy all other sections

listening

SHIFTED by Jolynn J Chin, a progressive jazz (?) piano piece that changes time signatures on every bar. i am led to understand this is a massive technical achievement but more importantly to me it sounds cool as hell. this is a little funny bc pianist friends occasionally complain that the technically challenging pieces that are fun to play aren't that fun to actually listen to. spotify

youtube

the artist uploaded an explainer video that went well over my head but i have no music theory background. i know that not every video with a lady patiently talking through a problem on a whiteboard is going to be a physics video but spiritually this is a physics video to me

youtube

how'd i find this: spotify discover weekly

reading

lee winter's The Fixer. perfectly fine technical quality of writing but absolutely bizarre plot. there will be spoilers for this book bc i cannot talk about this book without them.

A naive activist is hired by a corporate villain but doesn’t realize it. Cue one awkward farce, a twisty puzzle, and the slowest of slow burns in this opposites-attract, ice queen romance. Nine years ago, aloof, icy Michelle Hastings chose career over love. She’s now living with that choice as she rules a secret corporation catering to the rich and powerful. Enter Eden Lawless. The guileless activist finds it a bit weird being employed by a mystery organization to bring down a corrupt mayor. But, hey, she’s up for a challenge. Much harder is getting her beautiful new boss out of her head. The pull between them is electric.

this was not the fanfic level of mean woman i prefer. this woman is a bit of a tsundere boss with some past regrets. like yeah her Company does awful shit but she herself is a very restrained sort of James Bond villain level of icy polite.

unfortunately the actual plot itself is so fucking bizarre.

one of my two concerns: the author is not Jewish but has written Michelle as such, and employed sensitivity readers. i do not know that it is in the very best of taste to have a Jewish woman as the head of a shadowy, textually evil, para-governmental organization pulling strings behind the scenes for the rich and powerful.

the other thing that really threw me is that the series of events we are concerned with, a mayoral election in small-town uhhhh maryland??? i have returned the book and cannot fact check-- seems to be a very thinly veiled rehashing of the 2016 presidential primaries. but as a mayoral campaign.

there is an obnoxious redheaded used car salesman who is running for national publicity for his used car business and writes nasty jingles about his main opponent, a very unpleasant woman who nevertheless gets things done but WAS a slumlord and DID ruin our activist Eden's life. everyone in the county is in her pocket. things are running quietly and well in town, and her platform is solar. the solar farms would take up literally all the actual farmland in the country and (spoiler) she is defeated bc the townspeople think this would be an eyesore and not actually bring that many jobs to the town. again, i stress this is a small town mayoral campaign. they are a college town but it is an EXTREMELY small lib arts college. she has the correct idea about renewables but downfall is that she personally is reprehensible and is going about renewables WRONG!!!

our main character Eden sinks this renewable energy plan bc, again, in college, legally-not-Hillary-Clinton got her dad fired from the local hospital and ran them out of town bc of Eden's protests against her slumlord activities.

then there is the objectively best candidate, a retired pediatrician in the very early stages of dementia who is sort of a puppet candidate for his wife, the actual political mind who hired the evil CEO Michelle's company through a shell company in order to sink her husband's opponent. VERY weird setup.

this was indirectly recced by a big name romance writer who would would not appreciate being tagged lol. i will not be reading the second half of this duology. too much stuff that made me go WHUH???

watching

The Big O is a 1999 and then 2003 detective noir mecha anime. i have never wondered what batman: the animated series would look like if it went in a different retrofuturist direction and put bruce wayne in mecha, but now i have that answer.

this show looks good as fuckin hell. there are SO many dutch angles and dials and gadgets and switches. there's a cut in the first episode that doesn't translate well to screenshots, to the interior of a luxury apartment building and the water in the pool is sloshing around as mechs fight outside.

ive only seen the first three episodes but im having a marvelous fucking time. very importantly for me, there is a robot who is a child but notorious womanizer Bruce Wayne Roger Smith isn't fuckin weird about it.

how i found it: this post reblogged by @ouroborosenso ! the line "You're a louse, Roger Smith." got one short sharp bark of laughter out of me, and a bone dry sense of humor is an excellent selling point. it's available on the internet archive (dubbed but no subtitles)

playing

im having a grand old time with g/enshin's new area. my shit did kind of get rocked with the revelation that the prisoners-- okay let's back up. the player character gets sent to prison on false charges so they can investigate something for the chief justice. backing up farther, the watery land of Fontaine runs on magic energy produced during its court trials. this incentivizes them to make the court trials full-on fucking dramatic productions with very little care for like. victims. once convicted (fontaine feels like it has a near 100% conviction rate, very much like japan) prisoners go to an underwater prison that is a more steampunk version of bioshock. these prisoners make the automated clockwork humanoid police force, as well as the automated clockwork police dogs. there is a panopticon.

the economy in the prison (cannot believe this game that wants me to spend money on anime waifus so i can watch their skirts billow teasingly in the wind while i fight big monsters also wants me to think about prison economies) anyway the economy in the prison is scrip-based. you get one free meal a day but everything else runs on scrip. apparently many people choose to stay in prison after their terms are up bc they have achieved some sort of power and stability there. says a lot about the surface world, don't it? wish we SAW literally any of that in the surface world!

i guess being very overt about drawing from a fifteen year old game is like. kosher? so many other games have drawn from bioshock, but genshin draws so heavily and frequently from Breath of the Wild that it was a little jarring to go from the last area with the cute little korok seed knockoffs and a lot of thinking about academic misconduct to somewhere with a flavor of politics i think a lot more about. as you travel throughout the land of genshin impact, you are quite involved in big diplomatic incidents and overthrowing various baddies, installing the correct people, things of this nature. i think this new land of Fontaine is the most overtly political in that literally all of your time here is spent thinking about exactly how this country's administration operates. it's not a real "hey look we've recreated the Torture Nexus" situation yet but i am curious about what sort of themes the next expansion will be chewing on. im also not quite done with the second of two giant quests that take place in the prison so stay tuned.

bonkers fucking game. wish it wasn't gambling based and didn't have to adhere so closely to chinese restrictions. wish literally ANY outlet was regularly covering this insane lore hiding under the gacha and grind systems

making

the goddamn couch covers are finally done. they are 9x12 and 12x16 100% cotton drop cloths from Chicago Art Supply, and im quite happy with their quality (evenness of weave, normal selvededge, normal seams). i used rit all purpose dye in fuchsia (hot bucket method with colorstay, more on that later) and the itajime triangle method of shibori dyeing. this involved folding the fabric accordion-wise, folding it like a flag, then sandwiching it between two triangles of wood or plastic with many many many rubber bands or twine.

it was a right fucking bitch to prewash, dry, and fold these fuckers. mack was deeply unhelpful. if i need to wash them in future i will be visiting a laundromat.

i could not procure enough dye locally for the recommended 1 packet per 1 lb of dry fabric (4 and 8 pounds respectively) so i did a .75 strength dye bath, since i wasn’t trying to dye the entire thing perfectly and evenly. i think you could probably do a half or quarter strength with more time and be fine. the photo on the left is the smaller dropcloth after a half hour in the bucket (unfolded in the washer to reduce. well to just reduce many problems) , and i did not like that high of a contrast bc i did want some color on all the fabric. so i unfolded and dunked the whole thing back in for literally thirty seconds and it promptly sucked up the rest of the available dye molecules, making it lower contrast than i wanted. so it goes.

i didn’t like how even and neat the triangle motif was on this go round (when deciding on colors and patterns for this project i was thinking about coral and pink cow print but did not want a literal pink cow print couch), so for the next one i did a much worse job folding and was way more aggressive with the rubber bands. i also folded it in half lengthwise to make the accordion folds easier for myself, something i did not do for the smaller one.

and here she is through my balcony screen door after an hour in the dye bucket and a wash with half the recommended amount of fixative to get it to bleed a Little for better coverage of the fabric but keep it lower contrast. i am not completely thrilled with how this came out bc i feel it reads a little sorority girl tshirt. im not sure if making the motif/triangles smaller would have helped any, and even though i was not folding it in half every time you can only fold something so many times before it becomes extremely cumbersome.

couch before the cushion, the cover loosely on the couch. i am going to safety pin and tuck the shit out of this but do not currently have the bandwidth to actually sew it. we’ll see how this goes! kind of a pain in the ass and physically taxing but not a lot of actual hands on time, and now the dyeing bug is out of my system.

preview of next project: i am going to repaint this somewhat shabby globe bar with northern hemisphere constellations :)

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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adriartts · 5 months ago

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Idk who you are and I found you in a friend's blog but I really like your oc Julian and his perpetuity for being covered in blood and surrounded by sheep (my two favourite things) can you tell me about him:))

Oh hell yes babey you're just like me for real. take my hand. let me tell you about my favorite guy

Julian was a shepherd through childhood and early adulthood, caring for the sheep was an obligation to his house but not a resented one- he liked it, and actually did care for the sheep quite a bit. He was a weird little girl who grew into an odd young woman, easily frustrated, very dismissive of other people, short-tempered and restless and always off who-knows-where doing god-knows-what. Some thought it was childishness, some thought he was just a bitch, both were right and also neither were. And then he just disappeared, not telling anyone where he went or why, but pretty much all of them knew he wasn't coming back.

A few years later and he would be unrecognizable to anyone who knew him then. He's a sailor now, babey, and finds an equal but opposite call in it as he did with the sheep. It's unfamiliar and dangerous and as he hops between crews he quickly finds himself with one full of scoundrels and shitheads and people that are as much a danger to themselves (and Julian) as they are to others but he stays there because they're also tough and rough and violent and that's the ship he wants to be a part of.

Restlessness turns to recklessness and everything he is is the same but louder, and, integrally, this is on purpose. He thinks he's better than everyone else, thinks he's invincible, thinks everything is a game and nobody else really matters. He has convictions in theory, because most of them can be broken if he thinks he's right to do so. He doesn't let anyone figure him out, he lies for fun and so nobody ever really knows anything about him for sure. He sees the world in transaction: kindness and favor are debts that can be held against you, everyone is trying to take something, so give as little as possible. Everyone has an angle, so he's always trying to decipher what it is. He makes more enemies than friends.

The violence is on purpose. The cockiness, to an extent, is on purpose. He can't stand something quiet and dull in the background so he wells it to the surface of someone else's skin. A fight has rules, a bruise or a cut heals in a predictable way that can be influenced one way or the other. Violence takes energy, it's physical and tangible and it makes sense. Blood comes from somewhere, you can staunch it or you can let it run, none of this in-between bullshit. The choice is there, you just have to make it.

#ocs #julian dae #ask #TEEHEE. i love him so much he sucks soooooooo bad #of course. ya know. you can't replace a lifetime of dread and choicelessness with a bit of careless violence but. boy will he try!!!!!!!!!#if julian has one true conviction its 'i aint thinkin about it'. ..... if he has a second one its 'i am unkillable' LMAO #ANYWAY ANYWAY. got this ask and started kicking my feet twirling my hair etc etc. i will take any opportunity to talk about my guy #yeah the one that sucks. so anyways THANKS for the ask dude!! we are like the buff guys shaking hands meme except its liking blood and shee #<3

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chaosandthe-deadblog · 1 year ago

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Sunny's unnofficial rendering tutorial because idk why but people say they like how I color

Hey kid. So you got your drawing, right? And you have your flat colors, now you gotta render 'em, right? Then you find that BAM, you have no idea how to make it look cool? Neither do I! But here's what I do (I've been told that my coloring is cool)

1. Place your flat colors

Imagine these are your flats. A few things: you want your base colors to be all around the same hue, that way they look better together. See how all the blacks, greys and whites are purple/blue-ish? That's on purpose babey! But how do you acheive this? idfk. jk, you have to stay on one (or two) areas of a hue wheel.

This way, all the colors look like, nicer around each other. You're not FORBIDDEN from going outside an area you picked, but you should still try to make sure everything is in the same hue so you have to do less overlay layers later.

(FYI: I do this because it saves me time on rendering. I don't think it's mandatory, there's no rules to art. Go crazy!)

2. Shading

I think shading makes or breaks a drawing. Personally I don't have a lot of rules about it, but there are still tips I can give.

So here's what you gonna do. You're gonna pick a color that's somewhere on the opposite of your main hue, alright? Here, my hue is mostly cold colors, so I'm going to pick a warm tone. You're gonna make sure it's dark enough so it's like, a shade, but not enough so it becomes black when you set the shading layer to multiply.

(Note: I never get this right on the first try)

(Another note: as you can see, I have the entire drawing, including the lines, inside a group. Don't worry! I'll explain this later)

Personally I like to use a paintbrush-esque brush because I like the look of it being hand-painted that it gives my art. Mine is the default paint tool sai brush, but I'll leave the settings down here just in case.

I don't. Really know how to explain the way I shade, I mostly follow the lines I already placed in the lineart phase, and give them depth. I guess my biggest tip would be to FOLLOW THE CLOTHING FOLDS!!!

Idk how to explain this. But people always tell me that they like how I shade the clothes, it's because I follow the fold lines I place on the lineart phase! Not only does this give the clothes depth, it also makes shading a lot easier. Follow your lineart, idk what else to tell ya.

Now you're gonna set the layer to multiply...

And lower the opacity as much as you want until it looks good. No real rules to this, it's kind of depending on the vibe you want your piece to have.

Now, and stay with me here, grab a blending tool, okay? This is the one I use, I have a textured version for when I'm feeling brave, and a regular, flat version (the one I use the most) Here I'll use the flat version.

And. Stay with me here. I want you to blend the FUCK out of this. Just absolutely destroy those borders. Okay? Trust me. If it looks messy you're doing it right. You're gonna want to follow the shape of the shadows tho, this way you don't lose the shape of the objects you're shading.

Woah! Suddenly everything has depth! Let me go back to the clothing folds, because holy shit, the clothing folds.

See how I'm adding depth to the shadows I placed by kinda. Following the line I drew and blending the outside? Idk how to explain this. You blend whatever isn't touching the line, okay? Trust me.

3. Lighting

Ok. I'm holding your hand gently. You have to do lighting on your art, okay? You have to. It adds depth to the shapes and also is sososoososo easy. Here's how. It's so easy.

Grab your airbrush tool. Yes, that one. Hear me out okay?

Pick a light, warm color between yellow and orange.

Stay with me. Make a new layer, set it to whatever lighting mode you prefer. I use luminosity because I live dangerously.

Now.

Airbrush everything that the shadows aren't touching. Yes. I'm serious.

It's gonna look ugly as shit. DON'T BE ALARMED. This is part of the process. I want you to take the blur tool. And blur the ever loving fuck out of this. Just go fucking ham.

Good. You're doing so well. You're being so brave. Now lower the opacity as much as you want, until you like the way it looks.

Like so. I also like to add a few brush strokes and blend them on an up-and-down motion for the hair and certain details, but this is optional. Same as before, you're gonna take a (slightly warmer, but still bright color) and make a new layer on luminosity mode.

Take the blending tool and make it small, only slightly bigger than the brush strokes, and blend these lines until they look nice. Adjust the opacity, and voila!

Now, I could stop here. But I'm extra so I keep going.

4. The pizzazz

AKA, "Ah fuck the colors don't look the way I wanted them to!"

Do not worry! I have a solution that's almost never failed me.

Overlays. Just a whole fuckton of them. I don't really have a method to this, I just kinda try colors and layer modes until something looks good.

For this one, I felt like I wanted the colors to be warmer, so I picked a warm color and overlayed it on multiply. Then, I noticed that the darker colors came out darker than planned, and you couldn't really tell them apart, so I picked a light warm color and overlayed it on screen.

Voila! We're not done! There's one more thing I like to do, and here's where the layer folder comes in!

Remember how I said I keep everything, including the lines in a folder? This is why!

Make a layer that's on top of everything, like this. Pick whatever color you want, make sure it's bright. (Personally I like using pink). Take the airbrush tool again and airbrush whatever edges you want to give a little more pizzazz to.

Blur it as much as you'd like...

And adjust the opacity and layer mode however you like!

5. And done!

Sometimes I add white highlights. Sometimes I add more shading, or more lighting. It depends! But this is the method I use in a nutshell.

Hope you enjoyed it, or at the very least realized idk what the fuck I'm doing!

#sol.art #art tutorial #sol's art tutorials #god this was so hard to explain. idk what im doing guys

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tchaikovskym · 4 months ago

Text

Stress systems

There are many things happening during stress, and it all starts with my beloved nemesis, the hypothalamus. It senses a stressor and gets to work by switching on other parts.

Sympathetic nervous system

It goes right to adrenal gland (right above your kidneys). The secretory cells there are actually a part of the nervous system, but that's a secret, don't tell anyone.

Either way, it produces adrenaline and noradrenaline (see how it makes sense paired together with the name "adrenal gland". however, if you are american then they produce epinephrine and norepinephrine).

This causes visceral stress reactions:

increased heart rate and strength

vasoconstriction (smaller diameter of blood vessels) in inner organs (mainly digestive) and skin (to not waste precious blood on them)

vasodilation (opposite of the prev point) in heart, lungs, brain and skeletal muscle (because those are the bad guys you need for fighting or running away)

glycogenolysis in the liver (where you would normally have glucose stored as glycogen just in case, and this is the case)

sweating (let the toxins out babey), hindering digestive processes (not relevant at the moment)

Anterior pituitary

This bad boy is up there with my beloved nemesis, and it is there to activate a bunch of hormonal systems.

Adrenocorticotropic hormone (or, ACTH. Abbreviations are there to make life easier for real). This guy will go to adrenal gland, but to a different par of it! In turn, we will get:

aldosterone - to keep inside sodium (and due to all known laws of chemistry and physics, water with it. so, basically, no pee in bladder!), but! at the same time it stimulates hydrogen ion excretion (to not make it awfully acidic in the organism)

glucocorticoids (most popular babe being cortisol) - to promote gluconeogenesis (a bit different process of what I described earlier. this has nothing to do with storage. this has everything to do with the Krebs cycle. long story short, more glucose! in circulation!). They also promote protein catablosim (it literally breaks down stuff in order to get energy. it would be like chopping up your bed for fire to keep the war forces running or smth. this was a bad metaphor but you got me). And! Finally - hindering inflammatory reactions. To keep one alert etc. (But beware! if the stress is prolonged it means that your body cannot deal with pathogens)

Somatotropin, also known as growth hormone, also takes part in stress reaction. It's target is liver, where somatomedins are produced, which, in turn, increase fat catabolism. You see I think we've finally reached the breaking down of all the main substrates with this. Energy: available!

Finally, we've come to thyroid-stimulating hormone, which does what the name says. In turn, it produces thyroid hormones, which increase the breaking down of carbohydrates to get even more energy

Conclusion: awfully lot of systems that work together to make energy available.

#phd adventures #stress #long post #i have to study for my exam and you all are studying with me

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lovesickeros · 8 months ago

Note

can we get some tsaritsa headcanons of yours? specifically appearance wise because i gen don't know how to picture her in my head.

YES because i've thought about it extensively and revised it like 20 times. um. don't expect a full descriptor though i run on Vibes tm

the core of tsaritsa to me is a careful dichotomy of archon of cryo + goddess of love. creating the ideal symbol of love and also frigid and emotionless. of a warrior as much as a leader. Childe speaks of this especially (describing her as a true warrior, arrogant and cold in Childe's delusion story, again with Childe but in his "about Tsaritsa" voice line describing her as gentle, "too gentle"). this is the base of her design, to me.

originally i leaned towards "very tall but very lean" at first but i've kind of leaned in the opposite direction lately. still view her as very tall (inhumanely, even), but i've taken a lot of inspiration from marble statues (and sometimes paintings) as a reference (notably and obviously, aphordite) in terms of body structure with the only exception being i view her with broader shoulders then typically painted/sculpted. facial structure is a different matter, but the general view i have is "angular and sharp" (prominent cheekbones, defined jawline, etc).

to be more specific as well, i tend to make the tsaritsa very colorless. the most color she gets is the occasional shades of blue, but most colors i associate with her are very monochrome in nature. i also use this to create a less "human" appearance for her as a personal hc of mine that the archons are all vaguely Off and not quite human in some manner. i portray this specifically in a few ways (extremely pale skin (to the point it makes her veins a lot more visible), white iris, etc) and a few other things i haven't quite settled on. i've considered the idea of her fingers having a black gradient (similar to arlecchino, in a manner) in reference to severe frostbite.

not quite as necessary to the design but i also just give all the Archons big teef on principle. nothing more intimidating then someone you thought was a funeral consultant flashing a set of teeth that can rip out your jugular with no effort!! +1 to unnerving factor. don't piss off the local mondstadt bard, either. it's a bit unnerving to see them when he's laughing like a madman.

speaking of unnerving, i usually write and view the tsaritsa as very stone faced. like, it could put arlecchino to shame. not a single emotion to be seen. you won't even see her face twitch if she's angry. if she smiles you've royally fucked up and you have roughly 0.2 seconds to live. g-dspeed.

another feature i usually add is claw jewelry because it just Fits. in silver, obviously. and she keeps those things sharp. don't get mistaken by the name she can maim a man with those.

i keep clothing very vague because im not familiar with traditional clothing (ill create a mock-up of a design some day. probably) but one of the core parts of it is the veil. don't think wedding veil, though. even if it's white i imagine it's design more as a mourning veil because it fits more with her character (while weddings are associated with "love", the mourning veil suits her better i think in this regard. delusional made up lore things babey!!!!).

#asks #Anonymous #tsaritsa #i would imagine a bit of fur plays a part in her design though. is this bc i love fur in designs?? maybe!!! fur on clothes esp formal ones #is so good its unreal #i think abt tsaritsa design a lot i try to create a dichotomy of “mother” versus “archon” in essence?? its kind of complicated #mother in reference 2 the hoth kids referring to her as such which is WILD.#crazy lore drop there btw arlecchino u got smth 2 say abt that “father” holds out a mic #i am going off the like 2 things we know about her here give me a break #all i had for so long was like. venti offhanded mention and childes two mentions #the arle one doesnt really tell me much but it does make me go crazy anyway #further confirming my characterization of the tsaritsa i think hoyo is taking notes from me /j #okay i need 2 be put down before this gets out of hand im stopping myself and cutting this short #or i will never shut up everyone go home #i said i run off pure vibes w her design i wasnt lying btw #tldr powerful but “gentle” silhouette is the goal #big quotes around gentle

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okdeedee · 2 years ago

Text

you're so busy changing the world

cassian andor x gn! reader - 7th instalment of latch series.

masterlist

an: ayoo we're back. need everyone to know that the full lyric that the title is derived from is "you're so busy changing the world, just one smile can change all of mine." because. cassian andor smiling is incredibly important

warnings/content: angst again babey. teen? rating? because there's swearing. Ruescott Melshi being a little intense, as per usual. that's a cornerstone of his character. fluff fluff fluff fluff FLUFF. i couldnt resist sorry. une kiss. perhaps.

wc: 3.8k

You’ve made a valiant effort at keeping up a cheerful front, but it’s been a month and a half with no word from Cassian.

You’re only human – you adore him, but there’s a little pool of resentment growing day by day in your stomach.

You’re beginning to wish he never kissed you.

The mess hall is near-empty, it’s after the designated lunch slot, but you like the quiet. You sit at a table by yourself and pick at the lukewarm meal before you. Something with greying vegetables, some grains, and a little too much salt.

You’re lost in thought, staring at your meal tray, when the table wobbles with the impact of someone sitting down opposite you.

It won’t be Cassian, you know it won’t, but you can’t kill the hope that it is.

You brace yourself, look up, and barely hide your shock when you see the solemn face of Ruescott Melshi. He nods at you.

“Sergeant Melshi-”

“I’m not your CO anymore,” he says calmly.

“Right. Just Melshi, then?”

He smiles just a little. “Just Melshi.”

You’re not sure why he’s here. He’s just observing you and it’s making you want to look back down at your lunch, but you don’t really want to look away because you feel like you’ll lose whatever standoff this is. So, you hold his eye contact until he opens his mouth to speak.

“How’s mech crew?”

His succinctness still makes you smile.

“It’s good. I enjoy it. Plenty of variety, good teammates.”

“Good,” Melshi nods approvingly.

You force down a couple mouthfuls of food while he sits there in silence.

“You spoken to Cassian lately?”

Your heart jolts. What does he know? “Not for a month or so.”

“Hm.”

You fidget with your spoon, Melshi looks deep in thought, staring blankly at the door to the corridor.

Suddenly his discerning eyes focus back on you, and he folds his arms in front of him on the table.

“I know Cassian cares about you. He’s been acting strange recently, and I wanted to see if you had any idea what that’s about.”

You want to walk away. Or hide. Or start a completely new conversation.

But you can’t, so you take a deep breath. “We – I – uh, we… we had a conversation a while ago. And I think it freaked him out. He hasn’t spoken to me since then.”

He frowns. “What about?”

You know he’s just trying to be thorough; make sure no irreparable damage has been done, but this is the most awkward facet of your relationship with Cassian that Melshi could possibly be investigating.

You smile and try to brush him off. “It’s nothing. I think he’s just busy at the moment. Stressed.”

Melshi isn’t convinced. “But if it’s nothing, then why–“

“Really, it’s okay. It was just a personal thing. We’re sorting it out.”

Melshi sighs, his expression growing more determined. Panic starts to collect in your throat. “Cassian trusts you. I trust you. You know that. But there are things I know about Cass that you don’t, and I want to make sure you didn’t hurt each other –“

“I told him I loved him, okay, and he kissed me! Then he told me he loved me back!”

Your hands are in tight fists. Melshi is stone-still and silent.

“And then – he – he had regrets, I think. About us becoming… more. So, I said I’d give him time to think, and I haven’t heard from him since. That was a month and a half ago when we had that mission on Numidian Prime.”

You can tell by Melshi’s expression that whatever he was expecting you to say, it wasn’t that.

He pushes his lips between his teeth, and his eyebrows furrow deeply. “Right.”

You sigh and place your head in your hands. “Yep.”

He hums like he’s thinking it through. You want to turn into dust and fly away but that is not within the realm of your abilities, so you sit there staring down at your meal tray, appetite getting smaller by the second.

Finally, you rub your face with your hands and look back up at Melshi.

There’s something gentle in his eyes, like pity.

The resentment in you flashes hot like a sun flare, and for a second, you’re filled with rage. At Cassian, for stringing you along. At Melshi, for forcing your secret out of you.

At yourself, for being vulnerable enough to care at all.

When Cassian gets himself into trouble, the first thing he tries is running.

Usually, it works.

Debts, warrants, angry exes, the responsibilities of civilian life - the weight of them disappears if you disappear as well.

This time, running isn’t going to work.

He knows that.

He knows it like he knows how to fly a ship, like he knows how to take an accurate shot with a blaster one-handed, from a glance at the target.

A mix of years of experience, and the instinct he’s always had for self-preservation.

If Cassian keeps avoiding answering you, he’s going to lose you – if he hasn’t already.

You said you’d wait for as long as he needed, that you’d be there when he decided, so he still has hope.

You’re the best, purest thing that’s ever happened to him, but even you can’t be endlessly patient. You deserve a commitment, and he feels like he’s incapable of making one. He’s not sure why. It’s not like he doesn’t want you. Or that he wants anyone else instead.

He’s in love with you. He knows that, too.

Cassian is terrified he’ll ruin things; so, he wonders if it’s better to never start on this path than take a few blissful steps on it and have to watch it dissolve under his feet.

Then he reminds himself that running won’t fix this, and he goes through the whole thought process over, and over, and over again.

At the heart of things, humans are creatures of habit.

So when he’s offered a solo mission where he’ll have to go dark that’s likely to take a few weeks, he takes it.

You go from barely seeing Cassian to not seeing him at all, and it doesn’t take long to make it through the jogan vine that he’s gone on a no-contact mission.

You don’t blame him for the mission, exactly, you just wish he had the tact to speak to you before he left.

You feel like you shouldn’t, but you miss Cassian a little more each day. You miss seeing glimpses of him, hearing his voice, being able to reach out and touch him.

Before long, it’s two months and two weeks since Numidian Prime.

At this point, you’d settle for just knowing Cassian’s alive.

During the third week of his mission, while Cassian is desperately trying to find his way out of an out-of-use sewer system, he realises there is something fundamentally different about the way he’s thinking right now, compared to a year ago.

His whole life has been about survival – the same could be said about most beings in the galaxy under Empire rule. In many ways, life has not been kind to him, and it often doesn’t help that he has a natural talent for getting himself into trouble.

Underneath the instinctual need to stay alive from moment to moment, Cassian has always fought for something he loved, despite the loss.

With Maarva and Clem on Kenari, he was fighting to get back to his sister.

On Ferrix, fighting for his friends, or to go home to his family at the end of the day.

Aldhani, to get credits to pay back the people he owed and take Maarva somewhere safe.

Narkina 5, for freedom.

But Maarva and Clem are gone, Aldhani feels like it took place in a different lifetime, and he’s been out of Narkina 5 for coming on three and a half years.

He hasn’t seen Bix, Brasso, Jezzi, Wilmon or Bee in over three years. He knows he’s not going to see them again.

Cassian joined the Rebellion because he knew there was no way to escape the Empire. The only way out is through. He figured may as well make the rest of his life mean something.

He’s been fighting less for the love of things, and more for his rage against injustice and his dangerously powerful hope that things can be better. The two concepts together are an effective motivator.

He’s not suicidal, he wants to live, but he’s been reckless and often cold to people because he has very little left that he will fight for out of love.

Until now.

As he’s stalking through the dark with a flickering torch, his mind isn’t following the path it usually does.

If he was in this position a couple years ago, he’d be thinking, just get above ground, check your blaster isn’t jammed, stay low, find your transport, go from there. Stay alive to fight again another day.

Pragmatic, unemotional.

He will always have the pragmatic plans because that’s who he is, but his current reason to stay alive is…unexpected. The realisation hits him and knocks his breath out of his lungs.

Cassian’s fighting to stay alive for love again. For the good that already fills his days, and the good that is good yet to come.

He hears your laugh in his head, sees your smile in his mind’s eye. He remembers touching you, kissing you, and he’s pushed forward by the need to see you, to hold you again.

To tell you he loves you again, and not let you down this time.

It’s too hot or too cold or too something in your room, and no matter how much you toss and turn, you can’t get to sleep.

You room with Greda, as of just after Life Day. Her previous roommate moved to be with her spouse, which gave you an opportunity to get out of the soldier’s barracks.

There is a very faint, digital trill going off somewhere near you. At first, you grumble, because you think it’s Greda’s datapad making noise.

She always forgets to mute it; she sleeps deeply, so it doesn’t bother her.

But the ringing is closer to you. You reach your hand out and fumble for your nightstand, and your fingers land on your buzzing commlink.

Who would be trying to contact you at this hour?

You grab it, prop yourself up on an elbow in your bed and click to receive the call.

“Hm?” you grunt, very eloquently.

You hear someone’s soft breathing on the other end, but no response.

If this is a wrong number, you’re going to be a little pissed off.

“Hello?”

There’s a long period of silence, and you’re about to hang up, when you hear someone whisper, “Hey.”

You yawn. “Who is this?”

“Are you alone?”

Then it hits you – the rasp, the musicality, the softness of this voice.

“Oh my gods, Cassian?’

“Are you alone?”

The reality of the situation suddenly hits you, and you scramble out of bed as quietly as you can. “I will be. One second,” as you shove your boots on and grab a jacket, “stars, Cass, why are you calling? Isn’t your mission no-comms? Where are you? Are you alright?”

You hear him chuckle whisper-soft, and it makes you smile entirely against your will. You’re supposed to be angry, or at least irritated with him right now – but to hear his voice, his laugh, to know he’s alive; it’s like breathing for the first time in weeks.

“I’m fine,” he says as you slip out of the room into the corridor.

You breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank the stars,” you sit on the floor, leaning against the wall, “Okay, I’m alone now.”

You’re expecting him to launch into a message you need to relay, or something mechanical you can help him with, but he’s silent.

“Cassian?”

He hums in assent.

“Are you really fine? You’re not injured, or anything?”

“I’m good. I promise.”

You fiddle with the zip on your jacket, yawning.

“What time is it on Yavin?”

You rub your eyes and check your chrono. “Oh, like 0300 hours-ish?”

“Shit, sorry, I didn’t realise.”

You lean your head back against the wall and hug an arm around the front of your torso. “No, it’s alright. I couldn’t sleep anyway. It’s good to hear your voice, Cass.”

Cassian’s chest feels tight and vulnerable from the soft, raspy tone of your voice.

He can’t help but imagine being there with you, hearing you in his ear, feeling the warmth of your body next to him.

“It’s good to hear your voice too,” he says, which is the understatement of his life, because it is the entire reason why he decided to break protocol and call your personal comms.

Just to hear your voice.

“Where are you?”

“I can’t say-”

“You’re already breaking the one rule of a no-comms mission. Just tell me.”

He softens at your persistence, at your warmth. “I started on Oba Diah. Now I’m on Kessel, in an abandoned hotel, waiting for a transport back to base.”

“So you’re about to come back?” A thrill runs down his spine. He can hear in your voice that you’re smiling.

“Yeah. Should be back home in couple days.”

Home.

Neither of you speak for a little bit. He just listens to your gentle, even breaths, and tries to keep his emotions in check.

Then, in the silence, he hears you take a breath.

“I got to do some illegal mods yesterday,” you say a little shyly.

He can’t stop the tiny smile that appears on his face. “Oh yeah?”

You launch into your story, and he listens, heart bursting with the domesticity of it. He remembers how torn and empty you were in your early days with the Rebellion, and hearing your joy and passion now almost overwhelms him with pride for you.

“…swapped the engines of the fighter and the dropship, which technically isn’t legal because that class of dropship can’t have that powerful of an engine – but we need it to be that fast for a mission next week. Something about a window in the flight scanners that the dropship can only make at a certain speed.” You pause, and then mumble, “felt pretty cool, doing that.”

He doesn’t know what to say. A rush of affection floods him. You felt cool doing illegal mods on a ship for the Rebellion. You’re still sharing parts of your life with him even after he effectively gave you the silent treatment for over a month.

Suddenly it’s imperative that he doesn’t wait until he gets back to Yavin to talk to you. Before he can think it through, before he can doubt it, he blurts it out.

“I meant it when I said love you.”

His pulse is pounding so loudly in his ears that he barely hears you breathe in sharply.

“What did you say?”

He feels like he’s taken a dive off a cliff, and he can’t tell if it’s in a good way or a bad way. “I said, I meant it when I said I love you.”

He hears you take another harsh breath in.

Cassian can’t lose his momentum. “I still mean it. I love you. So much.”

You’re silent for a while, and Cassian tries not to panic.

“Cassian?”

His heart jolts. “Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to… feel obliged to say it. What happened on Numidian Prime was – it was a lot, and it was new, and I don’t blame you if you regret it.”

It feels like Cassian’s stomach has come untethered and dropped right to his feet.“I-”

“You haven’t spoken to me in weeks. I didn’t even see you. It was like you disappeared off the face of the planet,” you say, your voice soft but certain. “I know said you could have as much time as you need to think, but it was weeks and weeks and then you went on that mission and didn’t even say goodbye, and I just assumed-”

Cassian’s heart aches. “Wait-”

“-you didn’t want me in that way – and I’m okay with it, I really am. I just don’t want to lose your friendship, is all, because you’re-”

“Please-”

“-still the best thing that ever happened to me-“

“Stop, my love.”

You stop.

Your hands are shaking.

He called you ‘my love.’

You can’t get a solid, deep breath in – just shallow, shaky gasps.

“Breathe, baby.”

Fucking hell.

The man you’re in love with is calling you things like ‘baby’ and ‘my love’ and he’s halfway across the galaxy, and suddenly the comfort of his gentle, gravelly voice is not enough.

There’s a lump in your throat and your eyes are burning with unshed tears. You sniff, just once, but Cassian’s observant, so he notices.

“Are you crying?” he asks gently.

You think you might melt into the floor. “Not yet. Trying not to.”

The wall of the corridor is cold behind you. You recall the times you’ve sat with Cassian like this, your shoulders touching. The way he smelled – clean and inviting and human. When you held his hand. When he’s held you. When his lips met yours.

“Cass…”

“Yeah?”

His voice.

“I miss you,” you say, and your voice cracks. “I wish you were here.”

He sighs, and there’s something comforting in it, like he might feel the ache you feel.

“I will be. Soon.”

“Yeah.”

You sit there in comfortable silence.

Cassian looks out into the street from one of the hotel windows. The streets are busy, sentients of all kinds hurriedly making their way through the industry and grime.

“Cass, fair warning;” you start.

“Hm?”

“If we’re doing this – if you’re – you want to – be together, I’m not letting you go. I can’t.” You stutter for a second, “Sorry – wait – like obviously, if… you know… things didn’t work out, I wouldn’t try to… imprison you or anything. But… if things work out, you’re it for me.”

Hundreds and thousands of years and millions of different species of intelligent life in this galaxy, and not one has created a machine that can teleport Cassian back to Yavin, next to you, in this very moment. He’s never felt such a strong yearning in his life. He thinks he might cry for happiness, which has never happened to him before.

In the midst of what sometimes feels like a hopeless fight, in the face of countless devastating losses, in this empty, dilapidated hotel on Kessel, Cassian Andor feels lucky.

“You’re it for me, too,” he says in a rush, and it’s like his chest is expanding and imploding at the same time.

And then you let out a breathless laugh, and it’s the best sound Cassian has ever heard.

You tell Greda about your comm with Cassian as soon as she wakes up. You can’t not.

She gives you a wry smile, as usual, but she’s happy for you. Thrilled, even – you can tell by her eyes, even as she jokes that you could find someone that smiles more.

On another day, you’d buy into the game, tease her back, but today, you’re bursting with these bright, endlessly expansive feelings. You want him, grumpy, gruff, short-tempered, deeply compassionate and loving him. And you have him.

You’re vibrating with joy and excitement for the rest of that day, and through the night. Cassian doesn’t comm again, but the pilot that was shuttling him back to Yavin 4 confirmed their pick-up.

Now, you just wait.

It’s dawn, the day after Cassian’s call. You’re doing a pretty good job of distracting yourself – you took the overnight shift just for something to do. You’re helping Riekk move a bunch of shield generator components when Greda calls, “Wompy!”

You roll your eyes, and Riekk’s waterspray-gun sounding laugh echoes in the hangar.

“Please call me anything but that.”

She’s suddenly close enough to tap your shoulder, and she does, twice.

“Your man just landed,” she whispers in your ear.

Your stomach tumbles. “Where? Here?”

She snickers. “Where else? Of course, here.”

In an uncharacteristic show of terrible manners, you practically drop the part you’re holding and run as fast as you can up the stairs. You weave through ships and astromechs and pilots until you’re in the open runway, and you scan the space, maybe a little frantically.

The Yavin system’s sun is rising now, and the sky is painted with achingly delicate shades of pink and orange. What you can see of the horizon that isn’t covered by thick forest is gentle lilac.

You’re a little embarrassed at how your breath catches when you see him step out of the U-wing.

It’s still somewhat dark outside, and everything is washed in muted orange. His skin is sort of gold in the growing light, and his hair is messy. His beard has grown out again. He’s talking to the pilot; someone you don’t know. He’s got that stern, focussed look on his face and it makes you feel warm all over.

He bids farewell to the pilot, and suddenly you feel shy, like maybe you should give him a minute to get his bearings or wait for him to visit you – but you stay where you are.

It’s like a holovideo or a scene from a Coruscant opera when Cassian’s eyes meet yours.

You can see the smile in his eyes even if the set of his mouth is still serious, and it makes you so giddy that you laugh, unable to hold in a smile of your own.

He’s right there. And he’s alive.

That thought alone pushes you forward several steps. Cassian opens his arms, you do too, and then like gravity, you’re in the tightest embrace you’ve ever been in.

You place one of your hands on the back of his head as he buries his face in your neck. You can’t help but stroke his hair a little.

After a blessed, loving eternity, Cassian draws back a little and presses your foreheads together. His hands cup your face with a tenderness that makes your throat close up.

Then, he kisses you. Simple, chaste, but so fervent your knees feel weak.

You both pull away, but you open your eyes first and see his face – a faint smile with his eyes closed, his brows furrowed just a touch.

He opens his eyes. You stroke his face with the hand that isn’t wrapped around his waist.

Cassian smiles wider than you’ve ever seen him smile and you are so incandescently happy about it, you might just float away.

“Welcome home,” you say, beaming.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

You don’t know what to say. You just stand there smiling at each other like idiots, and if Greda was here, she’d be laughing at you.

You take in Cassian’s windswept hair, his dimple, the glint of his teeth in his smile, the warmth of his hands and the feel of his beard on your palm.

He’s alive. And he’s yours.

#cassian andor x gn! reader #cassian andor x you #cassian andor x reader #latch series

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