#quit my job and collect purple stuff and do art full time

[chcnce]

guess the TWENTY FOUR YEAR OLD OCTOBER baby just arrived to dallyeog! it makes sense, because HWA YOHAN / CHANCE HWA  is just as CRISP as the month of OCTOBER. wait, why do they remind me of BANG CHAN? beyond that, they seemed RELIABLE AND PASSIONATE upon first glance. i heard someone say they’re sort of SELF-CONSCIOUS AND CAUTIOUS though. i hope they get acquainted here in COMPLEX # 4 / APARTMENT # 1 / FLOOR # 2 ; HE seem(s) to have a lot going on with HIS job as STREAMER.

hi! i’m lu and i’m really happy to present to you to my mess of a son. he’s certainly a hard pill to swallow but he’s not as bad once you get to interact with him. chance is his real english name, but also the persona he’s crafted to remain popular and relevant to the masses. he’s blunt and brutally honest, but mostly when he’s streaming. all in all: a whole ass mess, i insist.

without further ado, here are his basic stats, a trivia and wanted connections under the cut. however you can find his background and plots linked accordingly ( i’ll add other pages eventually ). i’m really fine with talking either here or discord, so whichever works fine for you, works fine for me too! i’ll be reaching to everyone go gives this a like soon enough <3

basic information

― full name: hwa yohan / chance hwa ― nicknames: yohwa ― age: twenty four ― date of birth: october 3rd, 1996 ― birthplace: cheonan, south korea. ― hometown: sydney, australia ― current location: seoul, south korea ― living arrangements: dallyeog / complex # 4 / apartment # 1 / floor # 2 ― ethnicity: korean ― nationality: dual, korean (natural born) and australian (naturalized) ― gender: cis male ― pronouns: he / him ― orientation: demiromantic, heterosexual. ― religion: atheist ― occupation: streamer ― language(s) spoken: korean (fluent), english (fluent) ― accent: heavy australian accent

physical appearance

― faceclaim: bang chan / christopher bang of stray kids. ― hair: naturally brown, though he often dyes to a variety of colors, mostly black and blue. right now, it’s a purple color that’s already fading. ― eye colour: coffee brown ― height: 171cm ― weight: 56kg ― tattoos: none at the moment. ― piercings: lobe and upper lobe on both ears. anti-tragus, orbital and rook on the left one. double helix on the right one. ― clothing style: regularly techwear when he goes out and athleisure at home.

personality

― label: the cynical ― positive traits: attentive, dependable, reliable, passionate, brave, energetic, honest, humorous, clever, versatile, truthful, affectionate, sociable ― negative traits: self-conscious, cautious, opinionated, arrogant, detached, critical, tactless, stubborn, loud, quick-tempered, harsh, unfiltered, cynical, restless, ambitious, ― hobbies: baking, collecting enamel pins and funkos, jigsaw puzzles, skateboarding, reading, listening to music, curating playlists when he has time, learning origami. ― habits: obsessively organising, borrowing books and rarely ever returning them (he forgets who they belong to ok), really bad road rage, awful at keeping track of time, people watching, always wears a black ring on his left index finger, always hugs something when sleeping, gets easily impressed by things, quotes movies and shows in regular conversations, knuckle cracking, snacking between meals, eye rolling without noticing, squinting when concentrated, crossing his arms over his chest, running hands through his hair, slouching, rolling his shoulders. ― zodiac sign: sun libra, moon gemini, ascendant libra. ― mbti: infp-t “the mediator” ― enneagram: 8w7 “the nonconformist”. ― temperament: melancholic ― hogwarts house: ravenclaw ― moral alignment: chaotic neutral ― primary vice: greed ― primary virtue: diligence ― element: air

trivia:

― he’s played all kind of games and his twitch channel was created 9 years ago (whew) and it currently has over 5 million subscribers. currently, he streams mostly genshin impact, valorant, league of legends, overwatch, spider-man: miles morales, cyberpunk 2077 and the witcher iii. every now and then he makes charity streams. he also makes special lives with other gamers and figures where they play games like among us, minecraft, fortnite (though he absolutely hates it), party animals, fall guys and other party games. ― despite the rumours around him and his parents, he’s never talked about them to the media. it’s not like chance hides the information, after all it’s online, but he swerves questions about them and pretty much decides to not say anything about them just to avoid controversy. his parents didn’t mind until last year the company they worked at offered him a sponsorship and yohan turned it down. it’s safe to say they were pretty hurt over this and they haven’t talked much recently. ― yohan is, in his words, the biggest fan of spiderman (not really) but he’s his favorite heroe of all times and he collects everything and anything that has him in it. his biggest collection is funko pops with over 30+ figurines. he collects funkos of various other interests of him as well as enamel pins. ― lowkey a weeb. he likes watching anime in his spare time and if he likes it too much, he’d buy the manga and read it as well. his latest obsessions are kimetsu no yaiba, boku no hero academia, haikyu and jujutsu kaisen. ― won’t ever admit this out loud, but almost every ghibli movie makes him cry his eyes out, even when he’s watched the same one over and over again. he prefers to watch these on his own. his favorite one is grave of the fireflies. ― it took him a while to get used to korean culture, a part of him is still trying to. luckily, his family would speak in korean in their household most of the time and this helped him not struggle as much when it came to the language. his streams are most of the time in english to cater to a bigger audience, but recently he’s got himself a small team of an editor and a translator that’s helped him add subtitles to the videos he uploads in youtube. ― his current setup is completely sponsored except for a few extra things he’s bought himself and he has minimal experience when it comes to builds, though he’s really interested in learning and has recently researched more about the whole topic, hoping to get his first custom build by the end of the year. ― has terrible road rage and this is the reason why he doesn’t own a car or a driving license, even being in the backseat makes him anxious and would much rather prefer to use the bus, a bike or his skateboard to commute between places. taxis and other rides are his last option, if he’s quite honest. ― as a neighbour, he’s polite and tries to be mindful just to avoid needless problems. the first thing he did was soundproof his office in order to not disrupt others, but sometimes this doesn’t work as well due to how loud he can be. chance will try to greet every neighbour he encounters either with a wave or a simple nod. ― loves dogs but doesn’t feel he’s responsible enough to take care of one yet, though he will certainly volunteer to pet-sit his friends’ dogs.

wanted connections:

― life in seoul: he’s been wanting to start a podcast that has nothing to do with his main channel, aka a podcast about the culture in seoul from different perspectives, he wants to know about other people’s experiences. can be people that have lived all their life here or foreigners that, like himself, are pretty much new or can’t get enough of the city. it’d be a pretty chill podcast and anyone can participate! ― people that know about him and lowkey follow his streams (or just play them in the background while doing other stuff) ― or people that know about him but dislike him because he’s said stuff before about other public figures you’re a fan of. or he just simply rubs you the wrong way. ― people who absolutely hates when he streams late at night and he’s full on screaming at the screen (he tried to soundproof his streaming room but someone he can be way too loud, sorry) ― he’s always up for a good collaboration regardless of the topic: food, art, random tags and challenges. even if it's not up to his alley, he's likely to always say yes just for the laughs. ― the group of friends yohan met in different ways. they're not all strictly gamers, streamers or anything of the sort, but whenever they get together to play some games, it's a total chaos. and he wouldn't change it at all. ― the one person that always gets his packages delivered by mistake to your place instead of his. or the other way around. ― more: friends, enemies, a penpal, a platonic soulmate, workout buddies, etc.

[partnersatfazbear]

Bunny updates

I posted awhile back about a lot of different buns my wife has been collecting for me and we found quite a few over our weekend away.

This gal is part of some series of dolls (na na na suprise?) Anyway, they have this gal w/yellow bunny theme and a purple bunny too that I passed on. My friend got the panda, so it was kind of a “hey, we’re friends” kind of purchase, too. The doll itself is kinda creepy--plush more than plastic. The best part is the last image--a small little purse, like an oversized coin purse.

A sign from a thrift store. It has the FNAF colors!

Some thrift store plush buns. I’m trying to be more selective about them, but I keep finding cute ones!

Decorative buns! Got them from thrift / discount stores and the last one, the door stopper, from TractorSupply. I got a cute metal sign as well, but forgot to get a picture of it. The sign will go in my future garden, so I guess I’ll share it then. I was particularly proud of the plaster bun in the middle as I specifically bought it as my first decor item for our house (which we are now hopefully buying since we weren’t able to build in the area we wanted). I wanna be that yard with a million bunny skeletons on Halloween =XD

I saw this and got it for so many reasons. I do think these sets by this company are overpriced--I used to stock them at a big box toy store before it went out of business... So for one of the best jobs I had, it was kinda nostlagiac. I collected a lot of these style animals as a kid, too. But the best part for me was the rabbit pen, because I remember researching them for my abandoned horror game when I had to make a room full of these and use some tricky stuff to get the cage doors to appear over the rabbit sprites--all in all it’s an amazing effect and ugh, I wish I could have finished the game.

As I said, I was out of town and well, I’m unsure if we’re getting the house on top of the fact that I’m not sure if my MIL is spiky-round-boi sick or just worn out from a long few days. I don’t know how these things will impact my life going forward in terms of free time, considering I may have a month and a half to move or be tied up with the issues I mentioned... thank you all as always for the patience. You’re support for my art, shitposts, and fanfics has been phenomenal as always!

I’m just glad to be back home... as much as I like getting away from the city to see the woods, I really miss my furbabies and my own bed.

I’m going to try and get some writing done tomorrow and get the ending of Resurrection Seeker churned out and edited. Thank you to all the new followers! =:3

[buttercupsfrocks]

So, tumblr, by popular demand, (Hah! Get me!), here’s a loooong post on my living room display cabinet.

I started collecting 1930s ceramics when I was 17, shortly after my grandfather died. My dad, as his only child, was given the job of sorting through the contents of his flat, which is how I first came into possession of a couple of Art Deco nicknacks - a plastic jewellery box, which sadly fell to pieces, a chrome and enamel powder bowl, and an electric clock with a peach mirror glass face. Also this amazing uplighter seen, along with the clock and few pieces from the china collection, in the living room of my previous flat. 

But back to my mid teens. At around this time I saw Cabaret on the big screen for the second time, and resolved shortly afterwards to reinvent myself as a Sally Bowles/Louise Brooks hybrid. 

Thus the 30s became my thing. For life it turns out. Since I was still living in my childhood home in my tiny childhood bedroom, it started with beads and earrings as I didn’t have room to collect much else. The necklace I’m wearing here was one of the first things I ever bought – from the long gone Twentieth Century Box in the King’s Road – and the dress belonged to my great grandmother. 

At some point though I bought this little Art Deco jug, which proved to be the thin end of the wedge. I knew it was a piece of cheap tat – it didn’t have a stamp on the base and cost a mere £1.75 from Camden Market – but I loved it then and I still do, crazing, cheap lustre finish, indelible stains and all 

Before long it had found a friend in a Shelley jug and they’ve been together ever since. I acquired a few small pieces of Carlton Ware here and there, as it was cheap and commonplace, but the china collection didn’t really get going in earnest till I came face to face with these ...

... and these...

... Paragon cups, saucers, and tea plates. It was the delicate flower handles that did for me. My heart literally stopped when I spotted the whole lot filling a display case on a stall in the Barrett Street Antiques Market in St Christopher’s Place. I’d never heard of Paragon, which is comparable in quality to Shelley, before; and I’ve only ever met one other person who avidly collected it. The colour work here is a combination of basic transfer and hand painting, and I’d never seen anything so beautiful, nor coveted anything quite so desperately, in all my puff. Back then were three trios in each design, and they would have cost entry-level graphic designer me two weeks wages so it was a no go. I chatted to the dealer for ages, heaved a sigh of resignation, and left. Then fate stepped in in the form of some freaky, life-changing events: 1) My paternal grandmother died and left me five grand, and 2) The company I was working for decided on a radical restructure and I was one of those made redundant. I decided to use the money to start my own business – an illustration agency – and marked this momentous decision by returning to Barrett Street to buy the Paragon. I didn’t have the space to display it all until I moved into my own place a couple of years later but there was no looking back once I did.

Most of these pieces are made by Paragon too, the exception being the Royal Doulton cup and saucer on the right, which was a gift.  The un-lidded sugar bowl on the left cost me two quid in a car boot sale while the lidded one in the front cost me under a fiver from another late King’s Road haunt called Eat Your Heart Out. With two notable exceptions, I’ve never parted with serious money for any of this stuff. I also rarely buy to sell, so not all of my collection is in perfect condition. Obviously it’s great when it is, but the cumulative effect of seeing it altogether is way more important. And the cumulative effect is pure joy. Which puts me in mind of the book I mentioned a couple of posts ago, which posits the idea that liking colourful stuff is not a mark of shallow, unsophisticated character, and that joy is not something innate without stimulus, but rather a reaction to the objects and environments that surround us. This resonated deeply with me.

I used to write in an alcove in the L-shaped hallway of my previous flat. It was a nicely decorated hall. Yellow-gold marbled wallpaper with paintwork a shade lighter and a yellow gold carpet to match. The light was good too. But I didn’t have many pictures in those days so the walls were blank apart from my grandmothers mirror; nor were there any shelves on which to house books or display tchotchkes. One day I started writing in my living room instead, which contained all of these things including my trusty display cabinet, and I realised I felt creatively stimulated; galvanised even. From then on I’ve always worked surrounded by colour, pictures, objects and books.

So, on with the show.

This adorable little person is a powder bowl from Germany. I don’t often go for figurative ceramics but I completely fell in love with her. She came from a junk shop and cost me about  quarter of what she was worth at the time I bought her. Behind her is a Parrot Ware biscuit barrel, a gift from my potter friend Steve, who is also an avid collector of ceramics, and has contributed many pieces to my collection over the years. Behind that is a Parrot Ware plate I found in a junk shop in Lye in the West Midlands. To the left of her is a Paragon chintz ware trio, another gift from Steve. 

The coffee cup and saucer is the only piece of Clarice Cliff I own. It was a present from a family friend back when I first started collecting. Then, as now, Cliff, Susie Cooper and Charlotte Rhead were the big names and overpriced accordingly, so I decided to concentrate on the more affordable end of the market. The hand painted Poole vase is, I think, from the 60s, as is the Royal Winton plate behind it, but I think they blend in well enough. The same can be said about this Brentleigh Ware breakfast for one set...

It came from a car boot sale many years ago. The rain was chucking it down and the sellers were so desperate to go home they practically gave it to me. How could I refuse? 

This is the only glass piece in the cabinet. I’ve occasionally seen these swizzle sticks for sale individually but this is the only set I’ve seen with the matching base. Behind it is a pair of hand painted Czechoslovakian vases of the type that Cliff clearly ripped off. For that reason alone I feel they should be worth a whole lot more than they are. Russian folk art, as reinterpreted by the likes of Natalia Goncharova for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, was also a huge influence on the Art Deco movement. The majority of my pieces are simply 30s as opposed to full on Deco but the colour palette is often in keeping.

The green cheese dish is a Royal Winton piece I bought in the 80s, while the yellow one, a more recent acquisition from a charity shop, is Crown Ducal. Which brings me to something else. Video may not have killed the radio star but eBay definitely murdered the antique market. Some time in the mid 90s I consciously stopped adding to the collection. It was harder to find at a reasonable price and I also felt I’d reached Peak Thirties so to speak. Contributor No 1: Knowing how much I loved the period, my stepgrandmother had promised me a pair of French bronze book ends when she died. And although my mum and stepfather were divorced by the time she did, he honoured her promise on the understanding that I’d never sell them.

(AS IF!! These are the balls-out Art Deco bookends of my wildest dreams. I will never, ever sell them. Excuse the dust, by the way. These live, along with a lot more china, in my hall book case, and are lucky if they see a duster once a year.)  

Contributor No 2: Prior to working in the World’s Loveliest Gift Shop® RIP, I worked for Steve for the six years he had one. But whereas Lynne restored and upcycled vintage furniture as a sideline, Steve's was vintage ceramics. His brother, who is also an antique dealer, occasionally sold stuff through the shop too. One day I came into work and had an instantaneous repetition of my Paragon experience. 

This immaculate, unused Deco-tastic tea for two set is the reason I painted my living room purple. It’s most likely Czechoslovakian too, as indicated by the tiny plate. Too small to be a plate for cake or sandwiches, it was most likely for lemon slices, lemon tea being the norm in that part of the world. The moment I clapped eyes on it I was a gibbering wreck. I didn’t care how many days pay it would take me to work off the debt; it was indisputably Meant To Be. 

Having thus snapped up the tea set and inherited the bookends, I decided I actually had sufficient on the 30s front, much to the consternation of my friends. But a handful of years later things began to change. eBay had stuck the boot in so hard that the vintage china dealers, who had previously pushed up the prices to you’re-’avin’-a-laugh-mate heights, started to throw in the towel on their businesses. And vintage ceramics started to show up in charity shops and car boot sales again – at it-would-be-churlish-not-to prices. 

I started to find pieces like this...

...and this...

...and this...

...and this...

...and this...

...and this...

...going cheap as chips in the chazzas. 

And those dealers who had somehow managed to weather the storm, were no longer charging stratospheric prices. (Unless they were flogging Cliff or Cooper or Rhead), so I was able to add things like this...

...and this...

...to the mix without feeling the pinch.

Should I emerge from this period of history with body and soul intact and raise the collateral I’m hoping to, one of the cosmetic changes I’d like to bring about in my home is to replace the built in hi-fi cupboard in the corner of the living room with another display cabinet, so I can move some of the china that’s languishing elsewhere in the flat into the living room too. Yes, I know it’ll end up looking like the ceramics wing of the V&A, but, frankly, what’s wrong with that?

Poor abandoned things. 

Can’t you see they’re gagging to come and join their friends?

I imagine you’re losing the will to live now so I’ll sign off with my two Beswick fish, which are from the late 60s/early 70s and, despite having no connection with my other treasures, have lived on top of my display cabinet for aeons.  Group similar colours together and you can get away with murder. Toodles!

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #231

too lazy to even think of song lyrics to put, just have this

Do bridges make you nervous? Somewhat. Are there any movies that you find so dumb, you find funny? Aha, Napoleon Dynamite. Do you have any older siblings? Four + one I don't know. How often do you vacation? Pretty much never. Are you currently having any cellular problems? My phone is ACTUAL horse shit. Have you ever tried to meet up with someone from online? With Sara, multiple times now. :') It'd be fantastic if when I go to South Africa I can meet Shaylee when I visit to the KMP, and my other friend Alyssa knows how badly I wanna meet Mark, so she insists on me going with her one day if he ever goes back to PAX East. I'd love to meet Connie, too. If you could have any car right now, what would you want exactly? Eh, I don't know car types. Something medium/smallish (I don't want very small for safety reasons) that's either burnt orange or red and just pretty and sleek. Do you think it’s cruel to leave a live fish to die in an ice box? Um???????? YEAH????????????????? Have you ever done anything sexual with someone of the same sex? Yeah. Do you collect issues of a certain magazine? No. Have you ever pawned anything off at a pawn shop? Nah. Do you have stomach abs? Ha, I wish. Do you know anyone who is trying to physically impersonate a celebrity? No, but oh my god, so my friend Leon, right? He looks UNCANNILY like Leon Kennedy (WEIRD name coincidence????) from the Resident Evil series so much that he dressed as him one day. The resemblance is fucking unbelievable, especially when his hair was longer in the front. Do you have the Bakery Story app? Haven't heard of it. Do you watch Sister Wives? Haven't heard of that, either. How do you feel about polygamy? It's definitely not for me, but if it's KNOWINGLY between a consenting, happy group of people, you do you, man. Just hardcore practice safe sex. Have you ever seen a shuttle launch? No. What would your parents say is the worst thing you’ve ever done? I haven't got a clue. I'd assume Mom would probably say me texting her "fuck you" even though she deserved it. Dad, probably the letter I wrote him after the divorce. Are we having signs of the apocalypse? I don't even remember the Biblical signs besides like, swarms of locusts and humanity's focus shifting to materialism. I say rather we're having actually scientific signs of a mass extinction coming in the next few centuries, probably, or sooner. Historically, we're extremely overdue for one, anyway. Global warming, the ozone, overpopulation, pollution... you know, all that jazz. We're killing the earth. Would you rather see The Blue Man Group or Fear Factor live? Blue Man Group. Do you have any vintage clothing? Man, I wish. Are you glad to accept any certain person’s hand-me-downs? "As long as it fits and it’s like, clean, I guess?" <<<< This. Have you ever bought anything at Rue 21? Yeah, I like that store. The graphic tees section, at least. What color of colored contacts would you like to have? Like, purple or something. NO, cyan. Gimme a Manson feel. What’s on your bed? Me, Teddy, Roman, my laptop and mouse, my pillows, sheets, blanket, phone... Your floor besides furniture? My bookbag and purse. Wires. Shoes. Your dresser? My meerkat collection, along with some other plushies. The top shelf in your closet? I have no clue. Are there any dead stuffed animals in your house? Uh, you mean taxidermy? No. I am viciously against hunting "trophies." HOWEVER, I'm deeply into vulture culture and have mixed feelings about making art of NATURALLY deceased wildlife... A part of me says that's disrespectful, and then the other says it's very honoring and respectful, to immortalize an animal's beauty as art after experiencing a good life. It's something I semi-want to get into, but again, I'm torn on my thoughts about it. Do you know anyone who goes fishing, but doesn’t like fish? Do you mean like, eating fish? I'll fish with Dad if he invites me (I otherwise stopped as I don't support it if not necessary for food, but this has always been my and Dad's "thing"), but I hate fish as food. If you mean they don't enjoy fish as animals, I don't think so. What’s the best prize you’ve won on an amusement park/carnival game? I don't have a clue. Have you ever done anything sexual in a school? No, besides simple kisses. Have you ever been indoor skydiving? No. Would you have any interest in going on a cruise? No. Being out in the ocean scares me. Have you ever been to a Chinatown in any of the cities you’ve been to? No. How old was the oldest person you’ve dated? Maybe like, five years older. Do you know anyone who has their own podcast? No. Have you ever been to couple’s counseling? No. How many children do you want, and how did you decide on this number? None. I decided because 1.) I would be a terrible mother, 2.) I'm not putting anyone's well-being above my own ever again, 3.) I'm not dedicating the remainder of my life trying to raise someone who might end up not even caring about me, and 4.) they're fuckin expensive and I've been poor my whole life and will do almost anything to keep my bills and expenses in general as low as possible. Where did your last kiss take place? The airport. Did you often read for fun when you were a kid? Oh, definitely. I loved reading. ^ What were some of your favorite books? Little-little kid books included Stellaluna, What Makes a Rainbow?, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Rainbow Fish, 10 Minutes 'Til Bedtime... a lot. As like an elementary student, I was really into the Magic Tree House and Hank the Cowdog series. Then in middle school, Warriors dominated my bookshelf. Are you more of a visual learner or an auditory learner? Visual. Do you have any dietary restrictions? No. Do you prefer Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, or something else? I've never used any. What is your favorite coffee brand? N/A What is your favorite tea brand? N/A Have you ever worn false eyelashes? No. I probably only will for maybe my wedding. How old does someone have to be for you to see them as an adult? 21 I guess. Do you ever ‘manspread’ when you sit down? Uh. I actually don't know. I don't pay attention. Which of your good habits has made the biggest positive difference in your life? Coming to understand I have to put myself first, probably. Or learning how to talk to myself gently. Have you ever dated someone who was very lazy? No. Have you ever turned down a job offer? No. Have you ever been fired from a job? No. I always quit too early for that, really. Do you overuse smileys? I don't think so. At least not anywhere near how I did as a pre-teen in the "LOL rANdoM!!!!!! XD" phase. Who is better; Madonna or Blondie? Idk. Who is better; Elton John or Billy Joel? BILLY!!!!!!! Name three website you visit every day: YouTube, Kalahari Manor, and deviantART. Have you seen all of the Jaws movies? Tyler and I watched the first one. I don't remember what I thought about it, really. Have you ever worn black eyeliner? "Yeah. That’s the only kind I wear." <<<< This. Have you ever worn blue mascara? No. That'd look weird on me. Hm, or maybe not. Maybe it'd bring out my blue eyes. Ever spiked your hair? No. How long have you had a computer? I don't have a clue. Have you ever written something, and published it on the internet? Well yeah? When was the last time you played cards? (not on the computer) Hell, forever ago when I was at Colleen's with Girt and we played CAH. Can you play chess? Nope. When was the last time you read a book over 700 pages long? Shit man, no clue. I don't know if I ever have. Have you ever drank cherry Coke? GOOD STUFF Do you prefer using pens or pencils? Pencils, considering you can erase. I avoid using pens if I can. Have you ever skipped for a long distance? Maybe as a little kid? Are you excited for the holidays? Halloween was disappointing, as I did absolutely zip. I honestly don't care about Thanksgiving. We always just go have dinner with Ashley's bigot in-laws. I'm VERY hyped for Christmas 'cuz I'm probably gonna be with Sara!! Can you play any instruments? I played the flute for years, but I don't think I could remember how to now. Are you a Facebook addict? Nah. Are you afraid of stink bugs? YEAH. I hate beetle-like insects. Do you have a printer? Yeah. Does anyone own any embarrassing pictures of you? HAHAHAHA I HOPE SHE DOESN'T STILL HAVE IT, MY FRIEND ONCE TOOK A PICTURE OF ME IN THE MIDDLE OF EATING A HOT DOG AND I JUST REALLY HATE IT. Do you still live at home? Yeah. Are you currently enrolled in college? Yep. Do you care what others say about you? Way too much. Have you ever played Farmville? No. What is your favorite video game? Silent Hill 2 and Shadow of the Colossus. What song represents your life the best? "Get Up" by Mother Mother makes me think of myself A LOT. Are you into anime? Yeah. Name one movie that has made you cry more than once. The Notebook. Always. Do you watch the Disney Channel? Not anymore. Do you swear? Way too much. Do you overthink things? You wouldn't BELIEVE how much I do. What’s the largest animal you’ve ever had as a pet? A fuckin ginormous black lab until Ashley moved out. He wasn't even full-grown. Do you own any kind of helmet? No. What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? As a kid, I was running on the gravel road and slipped and fell. I scraped my knees to the point of pus coming out. It took a loooong time to heal. I cried SO fucking loudly. Bad, bad memory made only worse because Dad got so annoyed by it that he yelled at me to shut up. Happy beyond words he changed so much after the divorce and stopped drinking. What is something you like to have conversations about? MARK and other YouTubers I love to an unreasonable height, meerkats, vidya games I enjoy, RP, bands I love... What all is in the trunk of your car? I don't have a clue. Do you ever put fruit on your cereal? EW no. I hate that shit. How do you usually celebrate your favorite holiday? By doing nothing, lately. I don't have anywhere to go, so no point in even dressing up. Plus I can't afford costumes. When was the last time you drove something other than a car or truck? Uh. I have zero clue. Have you ever eaten/drank something and then realized it was past the expiration date? Probably at some point. Do you own any jewelry containing your birthstone? I have an amethyst angel pin from my grandmother. When I was in high school and going through my most suicidal phases, I wore it on my shirt underneath my hoodies. What is something unusual that annoys you? Hm. Well, I think this resonates with a lot of people at least to a mild degree, but it really angers me when people don't put their shopping carts back and just sit them in/by a parking spot. Fucking lazy as hell. Does mind over matter work for you? Rarely. What was the last thing you were invited to? No clue. Well, besides the obvious things like my niece and nephew's b-day parties, I don't know. What item should never be shared? Stealing the last person's answer: your toothbrush. What do you usually order at Taco Bell? A cheese quesadilla and fiesta potatoes. Sometimes the cinnamon delight things instead of the potatoes. Have you ever sat all the way through Gone With the Wind? No. Does drinking alcohol make you act more like your true self? I don't know if it's my "true" self, but I'm more extroverted and calmer. Have you ever googled a name and found somebody? Uhhhh so this is probably so incredibly creepy, but I jumped through hoops finding Jason's landline a few days before my suicide attempt because I was absolutely desperate to talk to him. It was in the dead of night and his sweetheart mom picked up and spoke with me for like two whole hours trying to calm me down. Jason was asleep, apparently. I miss that woman. She was so patient and gentle that night. Okay I'm honestly getting pretty emotional recalling that night so MOVING ON. What is your favorite possession? My iPod, really. I've had it since middle school and has 1k+ songs on it that I, like an idiot, am too lazy to back up... soooo when it dies, which it's WAY overdue to do, I will probably tear the world in two. What makes you feel like you are young again? Laughing hysterically. Especially when I do this little squeaking sound. Girt pointed it out all the time and since then I've actually paid attention to it and it's fuckin cute tbh. Are you picky? You. Don't. Even. KNOW. You have one wish, what would it be? World peace. How tall is the person you like? Shorter or taller? She's just like two inches shorter at 5'2''. How tall was the tallest person you’ve dated? Fucking hell, Girt was AT LEAST 6', I'm sure taller. I only reached his chest. How many foreign friends do you have? Oh boy, plenty. Well, I'd say most are acquaintances, but still. I've been on the Internet too long. In which countries do they live? European countries and Australia are the ones I know off the top of my head. What was your dream birthday party as a kid? Hmmm, probably going skating with my friends. What’s the most interesting story you’ve never told anybody? I don't know. What’s the most complicated meal you’ve cooked? Nothing. Have you ever come up with your own game? As kids, my sisters and I did a lot. What is something you value a lot in your life? Having a home, food to eat, a family that loves me... the basics that unfortunately many people don't have. Whose hand did you hold last? Sara's. What was the last thing you planted? Habanero peppers, I think. What or who was the last thing you gossiped about? *shrugs* When's the last time you helped a senior citizen somehow? Probably by holding doors open? What's the most selfless act you have done? Probably compromising my mental health to help others. I dunno. Have you ever intentionally fed a house spider? wtf no get out of mah swamp Are you clumsy? If so, how? I'm a newborn deer ffs. I bump into and trip over shit every day. How many Lidls are there in your town? None. I think. I think the closest is in the next town over. How do you like your favorite beverage? Cold and freshly opened 'cuz carbonation. Are you going to any concerts this summer? Ozzy Osbourne is very likely and I am NOT over it even though that was decided forever ago. Have you ever been to a concert? Once. What do you do when you can’t escape thoughts of your ex? I have PTSD from that relationship, getting away from those thoughts isn't a thing until my brain decides it's over it. Like I mainly just look for a distraction, but honestly, the only thing that seems to be truly effective is time or sleep. Do you watch any TV shows where the setting’s a hospital? I enjoy The Good Doctor, but I've talked about my disinterest in TV plenty. Did your first real significant other change you at all? HI HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE BREAKUP??????????????? Are you waiting to have sex until you’re married? Nah, not anymore. I broke that "promise" anyway through total cheat methods or whatever you want to call them, but I'm ultimately glad I thought I was obeying abstinence through that time considering honestly with how serious we were and how impulsive I was, I genuinely wonder if I would've wound up pregnant. Let's NOT IMAGINE THAT ROUTE. How many schools have you been to? Six. What’s your favorite color to wear? Black. Isn’t it lovely when your S/O smells good? I mean yeah, would anyone answer "no"???? Who’s your favorite actor? Mark is an official actor now don't even fuckin try me about this Who can make you laugh no matter what? *points up* + Sara and Game Grumps. Has a movie ever made you cry? Which one(s)? The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Titanic, Old Yeller, The Lion King, Coco, Finding Dory, Johnny Got His Gun... man, a lot. I'm a baby when it comes to movies. Do you keep a list of movies you want to watch so you don't forget? No. What was the last song you heard for the first time and enjoyed? It was one of Highly Suspect's new songs. I think it was called "Snow White." What do you prefer -- the original fairy tales, or the Disney versions? Disney. Would you like more film adaptations of traditional fairy tales? Yeah, I enjoy them. Are there any comic books you'd like to see made into a movie? I don't read 'em. Are there any comic book movies you wish had been better? ^ Have you watched the Good Omens series yet? Thoughts? No. Who are some of your favorite female fictional characters, and why? Yrel from World of Warcraft is a fucking badass that needs to come back, I love Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3 with her being a realistic, relatable, and headstrong female protagonist that takes no shit, Bayonetta is my Mommy like have you seen that girl work (she served as some of my first evidence I wasn't straight, actually), I love Cynder from The Legend of Spyro saga with her personality overall and story... there's a lot I love. OH! Ellie from The Last of Us is impossible to not mention. It's beyond debate she's one of the toughest females in video game history, and it was interesting to watch her grow up in a post-apocalyptic world where horrors and tragedy were so normal. Something you didn't like that happened in one of your fave shows/books? GINGA DENSETSU WEED SPOILER: I will forever be livid Jerome died sobs I loved him more than I love myself. THE OUTSIDERS SPOILER: Dally's death devastated me. A character (in anything) you wish hadn't been killed off? Vol'jin's death in WoW was fucking stupid and entirely anticlimactic. Make the guy warchief & then Blizz doesn't know what to do with him and lets trash kill him, such shit writing, look guys I'm fuckin tilted about- What was the last video you saw that made you smile? Oh my god, I watched a clip of Shane Dawson at the Mall of America with Jeffree today, and he was physically in a state of shock, entirely speechless, and in tears. My lips were about to split my face in half smiling and almost crying. He deserves all he's getting right now beyond words. What's something exciting that's happened recently? A Heist With Markiplier was the best thing that ever happened to me ok. What about something upsetting? My grandma going downhill so fast. Cancer cells are now clearly visible in her blood. Do you have any calluses on your feet? So possibly TMI so look away, but I used to walk SO MUCH that my feet, especially my big toes, have the thickest calluses you could probably imagine. They bother me so much that I want to see whatever kind of doctor that can get rid of the damn things. Nothing I've ever done has helped get rid of them. I've CUT areas off in hopes of them going away, but it always heals BACK into a callus???? What was your last big purchase? Teddy's vet visit. Have you ever eaten grits? Grits are disgusting. What is the name of your YouTube channel, if you have one? 0zzkat. Do you wear the same shirt and shorts multiple times before washing? It depends on how long I wore the shirt and if I sweat. You'd never see me in shorts. What color is your favorite lip gloss? I don't use gloss. How many different states have you lived in? Just one. Are you allergic to bees? No. What color is the rim around your bedroom mirror (if applicable)? Black. What is your favorite flavor of saltwater toffee? I don't know if I've ever tried that. Have you ever vacationed on an island? No. What does your favorite bikini look like? Remember how I said you wouldn't see me in shorts? That goes even more for bikinis. What flavor was the last slushee you had? Strawberry limeade.

[splattales]

Fifteen Questions. Fifteen Mutuals.

Repost, don’t reblog!

(HEY DID Y’ALL KNOW I HAVE LIKE 1,000 MUSES? I’LL DO THEM ALL. HERE’S A READMORE FOR YOU. SORRY MOBILE USERS)

1. Are you named after anyone? 

Molly: Sorry, nah. Can’t really ask anyone though.

Finn: I believe my first name is my grandfather’s middle name. Dad’s side. 

Marina: Maybe? I think I was named after a historical figure, but it’s, like, a really popular name anyway...

Brine: Nope! Just salty water.

Pansy: I’m named after a flower. It’s a tradition in my fam’bly to name your first-hatched after a flower...

Ribbon:  Momma’s a Ribbon Eel!

Slushie named himself -- though technically, he’s named after a beverage.

Tay: Yes! Many rulers in my bloodline were also named ‘Octavio’. 

Sabi: It’s shortened from ‘Wasabi’. Not very creative, I know, but ... I’ve had a few names. This is just the one I’ve gotten used to. 

-

2. When was the last time you cried? 

Molly: Nunya bizness. (About three days ago.)

Finn: I’m actually quite happy at the moment! Maybe two weeks?

Marina: I don’t ever cry, duh. (Last week after spilling her meal on the floor.)

Brine: Yesterday! Don’t worry, it was just a touchy subject that came up. Always cry when you need to, it can really help.

Pansy: Haven’t in a fair bit, I think I cried on Groa the other day about somethin’ real dumb. One of my workmates left n’ I burnt dinner n’ then something else happened and just… well, I sure hope he doesn’t think I’m weird ‘cause of that, eheh.

Ribbon: It was my birthday recently, so I haven’t felt like crying! I dunno.

Slushie cried the last time he ate a memcake, so two days ago.

Tay: That isn’t any of your business. (Ten minutes ago.)

Sabi: Sometimes I cry when I’m listening to sad music, so, um… Tuesday?

-

3. Do you have kids?

Molly: No! Adopting might be cool when I’m older, but I’m only 19 and I have way too much to deal with already!

Finn: Do I look like a father? I’m still in uni! … That said, a few of my classmates have kids, it’s really strange.

Marina: No, but I have younger siblings, so I know how to take care of ‘em. … I don’t think I’m gonna want kids for a while, if ever.

Brine: Haha! No! Maybe someday.

Pansy: Slushie’s my kid! He’s adopted, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t family. I hope he knows that.

Ribbon:  You’re funny! Sometimes I pretend my dinosaur toys are babies, and then we destroy the town as a powerful army.

Slushie is 15 years old!

Tay: I think Reed could be considered my ‘child’, but I’m still not altogether sure about that. And Masako, I think? But I never had any children in this timeline, so it’s a little confusing…

Sabi: No, no, I don’t think I’d make a good father…

-

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? 

Molly: Here and there. I don’t like to overdo it, but it’s totally justified sometimes.

Finn: Yeah … my friends aren’t exactly a good influence.

Marina: All the time. I don’t think I could live without it.

Brine: Hardly! It wouldn’t be good if I sassed my superiors, and it’s mean. But a harmless eyeroll won’t hurt, on occasion.

Pansy: Eh, sometimes. I’m not really smart enough, I get out-sarcasm’d, and it ain’t the nicest thing.

Ribbon: ��Doing a sarcasm can be pretty hard… you get told off, too.

Slushie doesn’t talk enough to use sarcasm, but his body language often suggests it!

Tay: Oh no, I neeeever use sarcasm…

Sabi: …It isn’t kind to be sarcastic.

-

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people? 

Molly: Their face. Some people have real distinguishin’ features.

Finn: Their ink colour! If they don’t have one, then I look at their style instead.

Marina: Uh, does it matter? It depends on the person, right? I usually notice if somebody’s an Octoling.

Brine: Usually? Their handshake. I know that’s kind of weird to say, but the way someone shakes your hand can tell you a bit about them.

Pansy: I try to look at how they carry themselves n’ the expressions they make. It helps you figure out what a person’s like – though how they talk and what they do’s the next important thing. S’ important to watch the eyes.

Ribbon: If they’re smiling!

Slushie pays very close attention to the way other people talk.

Tay: How they behave towards me! Respect can be the difference between a guest staying or being thrown out – and potentially a matter of life and death when assassins are concerned!

Sabi: How much of a threat they are to me, haha… I try to keep my head down.

-

6. What’s your eye colour? 

Molly: Kinda… teal green? Lighter?

Finn: Rose pink!

Marina: Green eyes, green sclera. Just once I want somebody to say I’ve got eyes like emeralds, but I don’t see it happening. Nobody’s that suave, and I’d probably slap a stranger if they did.

Brine: Ocean blue!

Pansy: Deep pink. Cute, right? Haha, that was a joke…

Ribbon:  Pink like dad’s!

Slushie’s eyes are purple, with a white sclera.

Tay: Soft blue on green~

Sabi: Blue – and um, I’m the kind of octoling that has green ‘whites’.

-

7. Scary movie or happy ending? 

Molly: I like scary movies, they’re usually not that scary, haha. Happy endings make me think of those sappy films, but I don’t mind them in like … regular stuff.

Finn: I love happy endings! Especially in a romance film. Scary movies aren’t so bad, but some of them I’d prefer not to see…

Marina: Horror. Happy endings can be way too saccharine for my tastes.

Brine: I do love a good happy ending!

Pansy: Yeah, happy endings here too. I don’t mind horror so much if things work out in the end, though. What’s the point if everyone dies?

Ribbon:  No scary films please!!!

Slushie isn’t a fan of scary films. He’d much rather watch something happy.

Tay: It depends on my mood. I like a happy ending, but it has to be written well, and scary films – well, I’m not scared of anything, but too much of it taints the mind, you know…

Sabi: Please . . . take one look at me and say I’d enjoy a horror film. You’d be wrong in every way…

-

8. Any special talents? 

Molly: People keep saying my cooking’s good, but I don’t really see it? I know lots ���bout weapons…

Finn: Art! I’m trying to make a career out of it.

Marina: I’m pretty good at mending up old human tech, and I can program. Real dab-hand at fixing technology. Betcha didn’t know that.

Brine: I’ve got a good eye! … Yup, that’s all I can think of, ahah.

Pansy: Me? Er, I guess I can cook pies pretty good. I used to be decent at all that detective stuff too, but now I’m not so sure.

Ribbon:  I dunno what my special talent is yet! I’m hoping it’s to do with detecting.

Slushie is very good at puzzle solving, and has quick reflexes. He’s also an absolute STAR at learning languages.

Tay: I have so many talents! Always looking good is practically a talent, and there’s my overall intelligence – I’m especially good at mathematics – but I’m a creative mind too! I’m PERFECT at stage performance and mixing music, not to mention I’m excellent at tinkering with machinery, I’ve built plenty of things and […etc.]

Sabi: Oh, um, I’m pretty good when it comes to music, I guess…

-

9. Where were you born? 

Molly:  Small town just outside of Inkopolis, but basically Inkopolis.

Finn: I think my parents moved to Inkopolis around the time I was hatching? Yeah.

Marina: Octopolis. You know, underground.

Brine: Inkopolis, hatched and raised. (This is a retcon--)

Pansy: Cuttledown, it’s a little village right near Calamari County.

Ribbon:  Here! Inkopolis!

Slushie doesn’t know when or where he hatched, but he was quickly picked up by the underground orphanage.

Tay: Oh, somewhere on the surface a very long time ago… (Actually, that isn’t true.)

Sabi: In a lab somewhere underground. It’s, uhm, not very glamorous.

-

10. What are your hobbies? 

Molly: Turf War! I listen to music a bunch too, n’ play games.

Finn: When I’m not doing art, I like to play Turf War and hang out with my friends.

Marina: *gestures to her room full of human artefacts and study notes*

Brine: I don’t have a lot of time for hobbies, aha… sometimes I still make coffee…? I like stargazing and laughing at conspiracy theories.

Pansy: I garden a lot, but that’s also my job now.

Ribbon: I play videogames and draw and use my imagination and collect dinosaurs.

Slushie is still trying to find his place on the surface, so is trying a lot of new things.

Tay: Tinkering! I get excited about circuits and wires. Surprising, no?

Sabi: I really… REALLY invest a lot of my time into music. But I, um, I also like to read. Mostly science fiction.

-

11. Do you have any pets?

 Molly: Nah. Banned. I leave too much to give ‘em attention anyway.

Finn: My little brother. … Okay uh, that was kind of a cruel joke, eheh. No.

Marina: Pets are cute, but I don’t have the time! Not to mention no space.

Brine: Haha, Mom would kill me.

Pansy: We used to have a nudibranch back at Ma’s but not anymore. Maybe I should get another…? They cost a whole lot, long-term.

Ribbon:  I reeaallly want an axolotl but dad and mom say no! It’s not fair. Dad used to live on a farm so he basically had EVERY PET.

Slushie lives with Pansy, so likewise has no pets.

Tay: Hm, no… perhaps I should invest in one for companionship. I’d pay someone else to feed and clean up after it, of course…

Sabi: Ah, that’s a lot more responsibility than I could handle…

-

12. What sports do you/have you played?

[Everyone says ‘Turf War’ in unison, except for Tay who says ‘Sword fighting’ and Slushie who says nothing].

-

13. How tall are you? 

Molly: *grumbles* 4’10”…

Finn: 5’4”, still waiting for that growth spurt.

Marina: 5’5”. I’d like to be taller.

Brine: 5’11”! Nothing more, nothing less.

Pansy: Not nearly tall enough. 5’7”. I’m the shortest of my siblings, and I’m the oldest, pffah.

Ribbon:  Small! (She’s exactly 4ft.)

Slushie is something like 5’2”, I haven’t written it down anywhere.

Tay: Tall enough! (He’s 5’6” and insecure about it.)

Sabi: Aaah… I’m 6’8”, how embarrassing… I’m thankful I’m not any taller.

-

14. Dream job? 

Molly: I sure as heck don’t know, my dude. Something where I could show off my knowledge about battling, I guess. A teacher?

Finn: An artist that gets paid!

Marina: I will become the world’s greatest archaeologist.

Brine: Almost there! I’d love to be a fully-fledged lawyer.

Pansy: … I already lost my dream job as a detective.

Ribbon:  A detective!! Or a secret agent!! Or… a mailperson!

Slushie doesn’t really know what he wants to do with his life yet.

Tay: What could be better than being an emperor and a DJ? … being an MC? A showhost? I could do that too.

Sabi: My music is already selling well, so I’m very happy.

-

15. Favourite subject in school? 

Molly: I hated school. Uh, I liked history sometimes, but I wasn’t great. Music? We used to mess around a lot…

Finn: Apart from the obvious ‘art’, I did enjoy literature too!

Marina: Human studies. As for the military side, I did always enjoy target practice.

Brine: Law! Since it’s a later subject, I also had fun in Social Studies and Inklish Language.

Pansy: Long time ago, uh… I remember bein’ pretty good at geography? I was awful at Inklish n’ Maths and that. Science was pretty good though.

Ribbon: Hm… I love all the subjects! Does snacktime count as a subject? We hardly get those anymore now we’re older.

Slushie likes foreign languages. He also excelled in agility training.

Tay: I’m not sure I remember exactly, but I do love mathematics.

Sabi: I technically never went to school, um…

Well, here’s the end!

Tagged by: @manysquidsandoctos

Tagging: meap

[iamwhelmed]

Win One, Have Two: Chapter 13

Okay, it has been 9 long months and I haven’t updated. For that, oh my god I am so, so sorry. I knew I was feeling uninspired but that’s really no excuse! It’s okay, it’s summer now, so I can focus a little more on writing. Hopefully you guys still have interest ^^’ Anyway,

Here it is on AO3

It'd taken them the better half of thirty minutes to collect what they'd need for what Miss Rose was referring to, for the moment, as a "field trip"- no parental release forms necessary because, as she'd made abundantly clear, "I am the only adult you need to be worried about". Except for Crawford, who spent the fifteen minutes it took everyone else to get ready standing outside smoking a cigar with an unbothered look on his face. Clara was the first of the three students done, and waited next to Crawford with her messenger bag full of supplies slung over her shoulders. She looked to him, and he lazily glanced at her from the side.

"You know smoking is horrible for your lungs, right?"

"If anything's gonna take me out 'for my livin' does, I'm gonna die a happy man knowin' it was my vice."

Clara's lips pursed into a straight line.

The front door creaked open; Hardy stepped out first, unzipping his backpack to slip the dagger through its army green folds. Isaac was right behind him, arching an eyebrow at the very functioning door that he, quite frankly, was surprised was still on its hinges after last night. He frowned and grabbed Hardy's wrist, twisting it around to look at his watch. Hardy remained unbothered, trapping his bag between his legs as he used his other hand to close the zipper the rest of the way, concealing the dagger safe and sound in a multitude of pockets. Isaac huffed through his nose- 5am. Correction, then; the attack happened *earlier this morning. Adrenaline and the primal need to not get his head torn clean off of his shoulders had kept his sleep-addled brain at bay, but now that it had time to process that the world had settled again, it was urging him to rest.

There was a hand at his shoulder. Isaac jumped, but he saw the streak of purple in raven hair and found the nerves of his brain settling. It was just Miss Rose. She caught his gaze and gave him a small smile, soft, though he could tell she was strung a little higher than usual. She brushed by him and turned only to lock the door behind her. "Is everyone ready to go?"

"Yeah," Isaac watched as Hardy slipped his bag onto his shoulders. "So, how exactly are we planning on finding our friendly neighborhood home invaders?"

Rose smiled, this time more like she usually did, bright and reassuring. "Same way I look for spectral artifacts! I let Magnus lead the way!"

Isaac raised an eyebrow, and god help him, he swore the top half of his face was going to get stuck that way someday. "Magnus?"

Crawford took another puff, rounding his lips so that the smoke took on a circular shape. Miss Rose waved it away and gave him a look- the kind wives give their husbands over shoes left at the front door- and he grimaced, but dropped the cigar and put it out with his heel anyway. "Well, don't keep 'em waitin', Rose." Clara moved closer to Isaac and Hardy, eager to get a look. Isaac glanced at her and Hardy, and the looks of curiosity so plainly painting their crinkled noses and furrowed brows. Must be new to them, too.

Rose rolled her shoulders in a semi-committal, but ultimately nonchalant shrug. "Yeah, yeah. I'm just not looking forward to the lecture I'm gonna get." She reached into her back pocket and procured what appeared to be a compass. Small, silver, sat perfectly in the palm of her hand, like it was sculpted especially for her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and Isaac could tell from the small rim of purple aflame under her eyelashes that she'd connected with her spirit.

"What is it this time, Mari?"

Rose opened her eyes, finding beady black staring into the abyss that was her soul- or, rather… maybe staring into the abyss that was her curious nature. It made her good at artifact hunting, maybe not the best spectral partner, though. "Okay, okay. I deserve that. But it's important this time!"

Magnus turned and flew a few feet away, back of his body (a long eel-like tail covered in fur) brushing vaguely against her nose. He looked a lot like a basset hound, one that a particularly squealing-prone Sherlock Holmes fan had dressed in a deerstalker and matching coat for a cute scrapbook. She remembered meeting him the first time, back when she was still greener to the spectral world.

Before she knew that spirits were typically averse to hugs and scritches, no matter how much they looked like a good boy.

Magnus huffed from his throat, gave her a look that only an elderly butler with far too much experience and Magnus himself could level her with. The expectant kind. The kind that dared her to make her case. "So you're admitting you were using me for fun before?"

She abided. "Well no, that stuff was important too, but this is…"

Magnus sighed, the sign he gave her, every single time, to signal he was acquiesce. "What do you need?"

Right, down to business, then. She sobered and stripped her hand of her black glove, holding it out for Magnus to sniff. "There should be a saliva sample on this glove. Can you track it for me?"

He hovered closer, inching his wet nose toward the glove. He sniffed once, then twice, and nodded. He registered the smell, compared it to the large database of scents and stenches he'd picked up on in his near-infinite lifetime. She watched him in silence, but took the moment to slip her glove back on. If she knew Magnus, which she did, then he'd give her a destination, maybe a word for warning. He took a few moments, then did something she hadn't seen him do before. He paused. "This could lead you into Consortium territory, you know…"

"What?" She would have hid the trepidation in her voice, but Magnus had known her too many years for her to play anything cool ever, not that she ever got it by him before. She had a feeling he was a little more a detective than he'd like to admit. Magnus glanced at her with droopy eyes, big ears flopping as he floated in place, like there was an undercurrent breeze that blew from below. "Why?"

"The scent you're handing me matches somebody long lost to the Consortium, I'm afraid. One Catriona Barrett." Rose glanced down at her hand, squeezed her fist around the glove that still had traces of saliva on it. "Disappeared after the Consortium eliminated her lover, which I'm sure you know was a spirit by the name of Emmerich."

"That doesn't make sense. The dagger is perfectly capable of killing humans, but it's just as capable of killing spirits. What would she want with it?"

"A conundrum not meant for me to solve, I'm afraid." Magnus hummed floated away from her, cracking only an eye open to glance at her. He must have seen her frown, because he sighed and momentarily moved closer to her, moved around her in a circle so that his tail could brush up against her cheek and make her nose wiggle. "We were lucky that the dagger was within Cousinhood territory, but you know I'll be leading you-"

"- All over god's creation. Yeah, I know." She smiled his way, gave him a scratch under his chin either to calm herself down or to annoy Magnus. She had no plans to ponder which it was. He glared at her, unamused as always, as he faded from her sight. "I'm afraid that's a risk we're going to have to take."

The compass hovered in mid-air, faintly radiating with the same purple that surrounded herself and Magnus. As the last of Magnus's spirit world faded from view, the compass itself pulsed, like a heartbeat. She held out her hand and waited for it to fall into her palm, cold detailed silver against the fabric of her glove. The pulsing became faster, a more constant stream of vibration until it was buzzing in her hand, meaning Magnus had decided precisely what direction to go in. She nodded south and said "Let's go."

Clara, Hardy, and Isaac glanced to Crawford, who only tipped his hat as confirmation before following closely behind Rose. Hardy exhaled, shoulders slouching as air deflated him like an old balloon. "This should be fun…"

He trudged after Rose and Crawford, Isaac and Clara close behind.

She walked beside Isaac, but he felt her eyes watching him as though they were on his back. He tensed up. "You know, if we pass your hometown…"

He grimaced. "I wouldn't say a word."

He hurried hurried to catch up with Hardy, ignoring the set of eyes that were now definitely watching his retreating frame.

Sewing, as any 18th century woman would tell you, is the cornerstone of femininity. Women practiced the art often, and with the persistence of anybody who had to live their entire life without video games or sports. Sewing also, as any of these 18th century woman would tell you, is a real pain.

Isabel pricked herself for the third- or fourth- time, tried once more to stitch the two pieces of cloth together, and instead decided she'd had quite enough of whatever purgatory she'd found herself stuck in. Sleeping Beauty only had to get pricked ONCE to fall asleep, she'd say that she more than earned a nap. "This is so-!" She flicked her tired wrist around, trying to find the right word. How to best describe the ludicrousness of her current task without lowballing her grievances or insulting her teacher. Ah, yes. That's the right word. "Stupid! This is so stupid! How is sitting here sewing going to save anyone?"

Dimitri glanced up from his sewing job, cool eyebrow raised. Zarei, too, glanced up from her task, reading a book which, comparatively, was a favorable task to whatever this nonsense was. Zarei herself looked bored, but not surprised. She'd most likely been anticipating Isabel's outburst, as was customary once every class. Not every period, no, every class that Isabel had to be subjected to some of the most boring, menial tasks she'd ever had to do for a grade. Zarei's class. "Isabel," Zarei started, and she could already hear the routine disinterest. "In a life or death situation, you may have to temporarily sew and dress or cauterize a wound." She adjusted her glasses and mumbled, in equal irritation, "they wouldn't let me have fire in the classroom, so this will have to do."

"This is a waste of our time!"

Dimitri, as chill as always, lifted one hand, a motion he seemed to carry out every time she had these routine outbursts, as though she was a wild spirit and needed to be tamed and reined in. "Isabel-"

"No! I'm sick of this! The traitor who released those monsters is still out there and we have no idea who they are or what they want!"

Zarei seemed unperturbed, though she shut her book with one snap and set it off to the side of her desk. "Isabel-"

"What are we sitting here sewing for? We're just wasting time-!"

"Isabel!"

She choked, instinctually stepping back as Zarei's hands slammed upon the instructor's desk. This… this was not part of the routine, but she supposed her outburst had been more emotionally-charged than her others had been. Zarei usually took her complaints in stride, even snarked about setting up a suggestions box for Isabel to leave comments in (that way she could dispose of them easier). This time, though, Zarei looked her dead in the eye, unblinking, unmoving. Isabel looked to her left where Dimitri sat at his desk, found his hand still raised cautiously, though it'd moved some to avoid her flaring aura.

Fine.

She growled to herself, sliding back down into her seat, but unwilling to continue stitching. Instead she glared at the two bits of cloth and used the needle to take small jabs at her desk. Zarei wouldn't say anything, would probably just be happy she wasn't complaining. She'd just have to deal with her restlessly squirming in her seat until class was over in another handful of minutes. God, she hoped Max was having a better time.

The gym was larger than the auditorium their Training 101 class typically monopolized. Once the bell had rung and all the class had been seated, when Spender announced that they'd all be transferring to the gym for the day, Max had almost felt the collective sigh of relief that hung like the usual unease in the atmosphere. He glanced at Collin, who had taken to walking the very thin line between the waking world and the unconscious one with his chin rested in his hand, eyes slowly inching shut before they popped open again after a restless three seconds of shut-eye. Johnny sat at his other side, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. Probably the least claustrophobic the psychopath has felt in weeks.

Spender stood at the bottom of the bleachers, raising his hands in a sad attempt to get his large, voluble class to more of a hushed whisper. Because Spender was a quiet man naturally, and passive normally, his voice was lost in the sea of early-morning chit-chat, the kind that was kept in-check by smaller class periods. Max watched with varying degrees of amusement as Spender circulated through every trick in the book to get a bunch of confused, aggravated, loquacious middle-schoolers to shut their overused traps. He first tried to clear his throat. When that didn't work, he tried to drop his teacher's guidebook on the gym floor- when that was stifled and dulled in the vastness of the gym walls, he resorted to yelling at the top of his lungs. That still didn't work, and Max could see the man struggling to figure out how else to reign in a hundred or so students. His calloused hands were clawing at his face, eyes visibly heavy with exhaustion, even behind his shades. When all hope seemed to be lost, Coach Oop set one heavy hand on Spender's shoulder, gave him a pitying look, and got the attention of every student the way only a gym coach knew how- screaming and just being louder than the normal teacher.

Chatter seemed to fade almost instantly, and Spender shot Coach Oop a grateful look.

He cleared his throat as Oop retreated to his office. "Class, today we are going to begin working the physical aspects of your new abilities, rather than your minds." Max could practically feel Johnny vibrating in the seat next to him. He shot the red-head an eye that he ignored entirely. "Now, I've always been more focused on the intellectual end of training-"

"Couldn't tell!"

Spender picked Max out in the crowd immediately, glared at him, and received nothing but a grin in response. "... So I've asked an old master of mine to stand in for me." An elderly man stepped forward, huge and terrifying for being gray in the face. "This is Master Guerra. Say hello, class."

"Hello, Master Guerra…." Roughly a quarter of the class even bothered, and those that did were unenthusiastic at best and downright resentful at worst, clearly not knowing what was ahead of them. Max swallowed hard; he'd heard stories from Ed about Isabel's grandfather, stories that Isabel had commented "didn't even graze the bottom" of just how tough Master Guerra could be. And that was on his granddaughter… what would he be like with kids he had no attachment to? Max felt his spine shiver preemptively at the possibilities. Collin leaned over, now much more awake than he had been two minutes prior, and whispered.

"Hey, is that Isabel's dad or something?"

Max cupped a hand over one side of his mouth so Collin could hear him better. "Grandpa, actually. And probably the embodiment of abuse of power…"

Master Guerra's eyes roamed the crowd, but there was something about his gaze that felt like he was simultaneously singling out every single child in the bleachers. Max had the crazy theory that it was because he was, in actuality, seeing every one of them, judging them, assessing them, what they could do. He clearly didn't like what he was seeing, because he took a step forward and his eyes were no less calculating. "Spineless, each and every one of you. Hardly spectrals, hardly able at all. If you want to be worth anything, you will do as I say, and you will do it the first time!"

The class, silent before, fell deathly mute.

Spender stepped forward, chuckling with a nervous edge as he set one unsure hand on Guerra's shoulder- er, tried to. He decided against it last moment. "Master, these children still hardly understand the concept of tools, perhaps you should tone it down just a little-?"

"You asked for my help. This is what you receive."

"Ah."

Isaac cringed. The little cabin he'd taken shelter in was just as creepy and run-down as when he'd last seen it. Creepier, in fact, now that he'd bled all over its floors.

Crawford stopped at the front door and puffed on the last bit of his cigar. Rose passed him by and reached for the handle, eyes on the compass in her hand. "Should I do it?"

Rose shook her head. "Don't waste the energy yet, Crawford. We know the story here pretty well already." She pressed the door open with a sickeningly loud creak, a sound that made Isaac shudder. "Catriona left this place in a hurry in the dead of night. If we want Magnus to keep her scent, we've gotta find something that will lead us to where she went next."

The group pushed on. Crawford went first, one arm protectively extended in front of Rose, other hand cocked with one of his guns. Rose glanced around, looking for anything that may emit a trace of Catriona's aura, careful to let Crawford open doors. The place should have been abandoned, but the odds of Consortium pawns and antagonistic spirits were a possibility she was unwilling to overlook. Clara clung to one of Hardy's sleeves. They were switching off who was looking out in which direction, leaving Isaac to keep his eyes straight ahead. More of a challenge than it may seem, with the cabin's darkness spanning well past Rose and Crawford. He tried to keep in pace with them, but his legs were shaking and he wasn't sure if it was because he was three different kinds of dead the last time he was here, or if the draft of the run-down walls was getting to him.

Clara edged closer to Isaac, willing herself to feel calmer with somebody on either side of her. "There's so much blood, everywhere…" Her breath hitched and trembled with every word, hot breath running down his neck. Miss Rose looked back and found his eyes. He frowned and glanced away. They made it to the end of the hallway, what Isaac remembered as the bedroom he'd taken residence of that night. He was right; Rose raised the compass and the light of her aura illuminated the very edge of the bedpost, rotting and covered in, what Isaac assumed was probably, more of his dried-up blood.

Hardy's foot made contact with something at his feet, and he leaned forward to pick it up. "Oh hey, a diary!" He said one second. "Ah!" He said the next.

Clara glanced over Hardy's shoulder to see the page he'd opened up to by chance, and stifled the scream she instinctually reacted with behind her interwoven fingers. The page was yellow with age and slick with dust from infrequent use, though it had clearly been handled somewhat recently, the way fingerprints edged the pages. The page Hardy had opened up to, the one Isaac now glanced over Clara's shoulder to see, was covered in nothing but pen- and a lot of it. Frantic. Some unlegible. Dark and as black as a widow drenched in the blackest of inks. Words scribbled next to sketches of spirits, of auras and eyes that seemed to watch from behind the safety of the page.

Why can't he see them

I'm not crazy

Help

Hardy screamed and accidentally tossed the book a foot in the air, only to start juggling it with unsteady hands the moment it came back down, whimpering the whole time. Isaac snorted and held out his hand so Hardy could pass it to him- and he did, by using one juggling hand to smack the book mid-air in Isaac's general direction. Isaac caught the diary by the spine in his open palm, flipping it back open with relative ease. "This is her's?"

Just as soon as he opened it, a gloved hand snatched it from him. Miss Rose grinned and raised to compass to the diary, humming at the confirming buzz of her tool. "This is the next piece in Catriona's puzzle, kiddies!"

Kid after kid lined up in parallel with the bullseyes across the gymnasium floor, each new frontrunner as confused as the last. Guerra and Spender stood to the side, eyeing individual auras as they hit or missed the targets- and they rarely hit. Guerra was grimacing, looking every bit terrifying as Spender felt. He kept switching from watching the students to watching his master, frequent enough to keep an eye on his reactions, but not frequent enough for Guerra (hopefully) to notice.

Max was third in one of the first lines. All the better, in his opinion, for getting this over with as fast as possible. He aimed at the target a few feet away, concentrated. He'd had so much on his mind lately. Isabel, Spender, Ed…. His eyes narrowed as blue crossed his vague vision- the kid next to him, but it was enough. He took one quick breath and took his shot. Black gas, perfectly rounded, perfectly paced, hit the bullseye head-on, nearly knocking it over in a clash of red and white against a crawling web of black that descended over it.

Spender's eyes widened, a small smile inching across his face. He'd been worried that all of the attention he'd had to put into training these classes had denied his original students somehow of the attention he felt was vital to truly learning to hone their new powers, but if Max's spectral shot was any indication-!

"Don't get so excited." Guerra was watching the children still, but Spender could feel the disappointment in him radiating from his drilled eyes. He pretended not to notice. "Spectral shots are child's play. That your student is capable of such a feat places him on par with Isabel at five years of age."

The next group of students stepped up. Max met Collin's eyes on his way back to the bleachers.

Collin looked panicked, gesturing to the targets, then gesturing back to the hands Max was well aware would be unable to conjure up any aura at all, let alone get a spectral shot off. Max winced and shrugged at him. Can't help ya there, man.

Collin got up to the bat and mimed for dear life, found other kids doing the same thing. Each pointed and breathed and stood there waiting for auras that never built and shots that never burned through the distance. They turned to each other, confused, some agitated, some lackadaisical about the whole thing.

Guerra turned to Spender with a glare in his eye, and all he could do was smile nervously and swallow the fear gnawing at his throat like acid.

Nature walks were run-of-the-mill for Master Hashimoto's dojo. Ed never quite got the importance of them, and when he asked for clarification the answer was always "something-something peace" or "something-something tranquility".

Aka, "Something-something Ed isn't interested."

But alas, they were required. Every student in the dojo would wake up at roughly 5am, clothe themselves, then walk a mile-long hike through the woods before they could all return home to feast upon the breakfast Hashimoto no doubt would have laid out for them when they got back. As beautiful as the scenery was this time of year, Ed was far more interested in getting back so he could settle the uncomfortable tugging and gurgling of his stomach.

The start of the day was always the hardest. He knew this. And like always, he'd get through it. That didn't mean he felt like trekking up a mountain of flowers today, though.

He sighed and carried onward, barley giving the beautiful red roses he passed a sidelong glance. Well, he almost didn't. The vibrant red caught his eye, and he fell a few steps behind admiring the way the morning dew dripped from the soft petals.

Red was supposed to be the color of aggression, of hunger and anger and danger, but it was also adventure, passion…

Love.

A laugh he knew better than his own crossed his mind's ear, and he almost hated the way he instantly drew the connections to tan skin and red, so much red. Ed shook his head clear and turned away, transitioning into a light jog to catch up to the rest of his peers. This was crazy, he was being crazy. What that girl said meant nothing. What Dimitri said meant nothing, just people being people and misunderstanding his relationship with Isabel. They were like siblings! She was his best friend! He shook his head clear with finality.

He caught up with the rest of the group with ease, not that it was difficult. It seemed like he was the only one eager to get back to food, because his peers had taken a decidedly slower pace. He'd lightly jogged like an old man who'd just watched his small weiner dog steal his slipper, and still, he'd managed to catch up in about thirty seconds. Ed huffed, shoulders slumping in the way that usually got him a fist upside the head from Guerra and a small scolding from Spender.

"Guys, look! He's letting me feed him!"

One of the other students had paused to bend down a few feet in front of him. A quick side-step confirmed that she'd palmed a nut from the ground, and that a small squirrel had taken interest in it. A few other students coo'ed and some bemoaned not having their phone to take a picture. Ed felt himself smiling despite his grouchy mood. The squirrel was, after all, pushing the boundaries of cute. Big beady eyes, tail twitching, head tilting as it tried to communicate with his fellow student in a language it didn't know she didn't understand. Part of his heart, which he found had somewhat frozen over the last few weeks, melted on the spot. She opened up her palm, and the squirrel readily sprinted for it, pausing on her fingers to test the nut and see that it was real. Chestnut brown fur, spots of darker hair that looked black in the early morning sunrise-

-- brown eyes under long lashes, squinting with mirth as he made her laugh, his favorite sound in this world and the next.

Ed froze mid-thought, eyes widening so much he thought they would fall out of the sockets. He'd done it again, the same thing he'd been doing the past- how long had it been? Too long! Too long for this to still be a problem! Ed took several deep breaths, one hand pressed to his chest as he hyper-ventilated, or something close to it. He was just tired, that's all. He was busy a lot of the day training to become a man worthy...of… his mind trailed off again, and Ed felt his hands tearing his hair straight off of his head before he even registered the deep-seeded hand that felt like it was tugging twenty different chords of his heart.

I do not like Isabel! I do not like Isabel! I do not like Isabel!

"Get out of my head!"

There was a silence around him, and he couldn't help but think that it was a little odd, considering all the cute-animal-fawning that'd been happening a few seconds ago. He opened his eyes, which had been screwed shut in his agony, to find his entire class staring at him. Even the squirrel, which had been so content with its nut before, had turned its curious eyes on him as if waiting for an explanation. Ed blinked. "I yearn for the sweet embracing heat of my gaming console."

His peers seemed to shrug it off, nod, mumble "yeah, yeah that sounds about right".

[norenministheshipiestship]

Chewing Gum

Here’s the first part of my ongoing series “The Songs of Our Life”! It’s short but hopefully sweet! Enjoy!~*Thoughts are in italics*

Lee Jeno has a lot to do, he's the best in school, he always helps the others and is a head of the student council. But one day he overslept. And that's alright, because it's his lucky day.  Jeno likes to call it " The day I started to dislike Chewing Gum a little less"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jeno was running, his heavy backpack hitting him painfully as he run down the street to the closest shop he had in his neighborhood. Stupid school for not having a cafeteria. He thought, looking left and right as he walked across the street. Because of him waking up too late he hadn't had a breakfast, not even a lunch ready to take, because he forgot about that when he passed out after a very stressful and tiresome school day. That's also why he had overslept, even if his alarm clock rang 3 times. So now, he had to run at full speed to buy some bread and a lunch pack because ahead of him was a day full of lectures on history, literature, philosophy and languages. And also him helping some people from his classes, due to him being the best student and quit eager to get bonus points he oh so needed because he was failing Maths hard, and maybe him helping others will make the lecturers support him a little more in front of the Math teacher. And also he was the head of student council, so he had paper works and other stuff he needed to do before going home. And there was no way he would be getting home before 7 or 8 pm. He knew because of that it would be as tiresome as it was yesterday, or even worse. So he had to had something to eat and drink for the whole day. And that's why now panting and sweating he marched into the shop, quickly making his way to the food alley when ready-to-eat meals were. On the way there he got something for breakfast, not really knowing what but he doesn't cared because it was food. Despite running to the shop from his house, the adrenaline from the run quickly wore out and now he was feeling low on energy again, so he took a energy drink as well along with some water for later. After he picked something for lunch he quickly walked up to the Cash register to pay for it all. And there's when he saw it. The line wasn't so long, really. But the woman in front of him had party planed maybe... or a wedding because the whole grocery tape was filled with food, condiments, even kitchen wear in such a large amount Jeno wondered if she was buying the whole shop. Where were those things even hidden in this small shop?! Jeno now was feeling like in a comedy because he was sure his fate was laughed upon by some kind of VERY NOT FUNNY SUPERNATURAL BEING. He had less than 40 minutes to pay for his groceries, run out of the market, take a bus and run again to his school in which first class was goddamn MATHS. And he surely wouldn't leave his food now. - You have to be kidding me! - Jeno cried loudly, feeling angry at himself for not waking up ealier or at least making some food the other day. He felt tired, his muscles ached and he was hungry. - Sir? Are you ok, Sir? - Jeno heard a small voice calling him, so he looked at the source of it. It was a boy, not really as tall as him, with brown fluffy hair, cute button nose that was a little red and a unsure smile on his pretty face. The boy was looking worried at Jeno with his big, doe-like eyes, his soft cheeks a little pink in color. Very pretty pink the White-Haired boy thought. - I'm not really fine... - Whined Jeno, keeping closer his groceries that tried to sneak out of his tired arms. He had to look very desperate and pitiful when a beautiful stranger is asking him if he's alright. - I have to be in school in like... - Jeno looked at his watch resigned - 30 minutes and the lady in front of me is probably making a party for the whole army squadron... - He added, sighing as he saw not even half of the woman's shopping being checked already .- Well, I just came here but...- Answered the other boy also looking at the cash register in slight disbelieve.- It's your lucky day. - He added, smiling widely and Jeno rose his brow at his words, surely it was his most unlucky day. When he was about to ask what he was talking about the boy walked away, but not much far. Jeno looked at him as he ,still in his coat and scarf, stood at the second cash register, smiling at the taller boy sweetly. - Please come! - He said politely and the cute boy was right. Luckily Jeno managed to get to his class on time, well, 2 minutes short but the teacher was not there yet. But because of the help of Renjun, as he learned the name while checking his shopping, it still was only 2 minutes and not a whole lesson. He also got to know that Renjun is new to the job and that he hoped to see Jeno again, but not in this rushed state. Jeno hoped so too. And that's why again, on the next day Jeno waked up ealier, ealier than he needed to actually, ate his breakfast normally, packed his pre-made lunch and walked out of his house. Straight to the small market on the end of his street. He had nothing special to buy, in fact he only noticed that he had nothing at all in his hands when he already was walking up to Renjun, waiting for him next to the cash. Today he wore comfortable jeans and a too big sweater, purple in colour. On top of that he had a red apron with the shop logo and his name on the right. He was smiling so sweetly and his brown eyes shone so brightly Jeno could only thing about that for a second. So when he actually noticed that he carried nothing, the first thing he though of grabbing was a pack of strawberry chewing gum on the closest stand. And then it was his turn. - Hello again! Today you're a lot calmer I see? - Said Renjun, insanely fluffy bangs falling into his eyes, Jeno wanted to brush the hair off but the boy himself was quicker. - Yeah, not running for life. - Jeno answered, smiling in answer to Renjun's sweet smile. - I'm glad then, thank you and come again! - Renjun gave him his chewing gum and the rest of the money. - I will! - Jeno grinned walking out of the shop, his eyes disappearing into small moons as he smiled and Renjun thought it was totally adorable. Jeno came back next week, and How come I always forget to pick things up before I get to see him?! Maybe Jeno was really sleepy that day, because this week classes were especially tough and he got so much homework to do he came to bed after 1 am each night, leaving him with no time to visit the shop what so ever. His fridge was mostly empty, leaving him with couple ramen cups and rice. This time too he walked to the register bare-handed and the last thing he could grab was the chewing gum before meeting Renjun face that started glowing when the boy saw Jeno. Or maybe the white-haired boy just imagined that. - You haven't visited for long, tough days? - Renjun asked taking the small package out of Jeno's hand and for a second Jeno could feel the softness and warmth of his skin. - Very, but luckily today the classes are ending quicker. - Said Jeno, happy for the lectures to be cut short due to the professor being ill. Of course, he wasn't happy that the teacher was ill, but very content that maybe because of that small break Jeno himself won't get sick from overworking. - Thanks to that I can come by later and do some serious grocery shopping. - Muttered the taller boy looking at the small pack of gums he bought. I don't even like chewing gum. Jeno bit his bottom lip, looking up at Renjun with small blush on his face. - Will you be there? - He asked and blushed even more when the boy send him a beautiful smile and nodded. - I will. When doing the big shopping Jeno looked for Renjun at the cash register and when he saw him there, helping a lady, he walked into the shop quickly and collected all the things needed. As he came to the registers, holding a basket full of food and necessary articles, the cute boy was there, patiently waiting. - Well, it is really a grand shopping this time! - Said Renjun and began scanning the groceries. This time Jeno learned Renjun was from China and came to Korea to study, but also needed a part time job to menage a living. So he started to work in the small market on his free or short classes days, because it was close to his house and the school. - What are you studying? - Asked curious Jeno, packing the already scanned items. - Art, painting, drawing. That kind of things. - Answered the Chinese, and Jeno thought it suited him well. He also wanted to see his works because he was sure they were beautiful.Just like him. God, was Jeno whipped. - The classes are more practical than just plain theory, so I have a lot to do in my house and not really a lot of lectures to listen to in classrooms. - Added Renjun checking the last groceries. Then he made a surprised face. - Oh, no gum this time? - He asked and Jeno thought he was joking at first, but the real concern in his voice got the white-haired boy surprised as well. And he should have said that yes, this time he doesn't need it, that actually he doesn't even like strawberry chewing gum. - Ah, I forgot! - He said instead, picking the small box of the stand and handing it to the Chinese who smiled brightly. - It's like a small ritual for us, don't forget next time! - Renjun sweet voice pierced through Jeno's fluttered heart, and he felt butterflies at his tummy because of the brown haired words and his cheeks covered in crimson as he looked at the smaller boy with shy smile. Now, Jeno really hoped his friends won't ask why does he has so much chewing gum that he is giving it to them everyday. - Jeno, terrible news! - Said Renjun as the boy walked up to the cash to pay for his lunch, he looked deeply concerned. - W-what happened? - He asked worried, slowing his steps. - The chewing gum you loved is out of stock! - Answered the Chinese boy, his doe-like eyes filled with sorry and his pretty lips turned down in frown. Jeno sighed in relief and laughed out loud at the absurd worry that enveloped him at the Chinese boy's ealier words. - Then we had to find a new ritual for us. - He said finally. - Maybe the candy instead? - Asked Renjun innocently looking at the sweets Jeno was buying. His face made Jeno melt in a puddle of affection and protectiveness. Protect this cute human forever - Well, what about going out with me instead? - Said Jeno and yes, he absolutely adored red-faced Renjun. He also loved the small, shy Yes the boy said next.

[bites-kms]

Chicago, that toddlin' town

I guess very deep inside I love it: I always end up visiting freezing places in December for a quick holiday before the actual big holidays. First it was Russia, then Finland, London and now Chicago. I must definitely have a fetich with the cold, because it’s really unbearable with -18C, and yet, here I am. 

Chicago is cold, yes. But it’s wonderful as well. I can’t wait to come back during summer time. If I find it gorgeous already, I can’t imagine then. Winter isn’t that bad either: all the beautiful places you want to go, see and know are actually empty, picture-perfect awaiting for you and your enjoyment. Some rooftops get cold very easily but, there are other closed ones, surrounded by glass, already ready to fight the winter back, gifting you a beautiful sight of Chicago lights within the comfort of AC. 

You breath and eat its culture. People are polite. The American flavor is present in every corner. It’s hard to describe a particular neighborhood or place; instead, you just have to wing it to discover it. If, as per my point of view, New York City is the heart of the US (at least on the East Coast), where the culture beat and rhythm is determined, Chicago must definitely be its lungs: the air is fresher, the city is cleaner, more tidy yet exciting, smaller but rich, more elegant and better taken care of, making sure the blood stream fluids hassle-free in this living being that is America. I mean, it’s called the Windy City for a reason!

A mix of Sydney, San Francisco, Singapore and Sweden (all of them with S - such a weird coincidence) with a dash of Toronto and Austin, this is a perfect merge of everything. What Yangon is to SEA, I believe Chicago is to North America’s East Coast.  

Downtown Chicago, The Loop & River North, the main stuff. 

Michigan St. is one of the city’s main arteries, it’s fully decorated, with its fancy boutiques, stores and hotels, charming the riverwalk and its surroundings. The sharp cold, the one that makes you feel like you are about to lose your fingers in any sudden bump or gentle touch, paints the city with a crisp white - still figuring out whether it actually came from my frozen watery eyes or the snow itself. Regardless, it’s indeed a charming Winter Wonderland.   

Arriving from O’hare to any part of town is quite easy thanks to the CTA. I went off on Washington stop and walked a few blocks reaching my friend Gabe’s house by New East Park. A compulsory stop at Millennium Park, with a visit to the wrongly named “bean” (it’s actually named Cloud), the Art Institute of Chicago - awarded the best Museum in the World by Trip Advisor until 2018 for four years in a row - is a must. But what is even more important is to try Chicago’s pizza emblem: the stuffed pizza pie at Giordano’s. It has multiple locations, -the original one being at River North- and its menu is full of the good stuff. We went to the one by the Bean instead, and be prepared: it’s a lot of food and it will take at least 45 mins to reach your table. So don’t get fooled, try to hold on and avoid ordering appetizers, don’t be like us, if not you’ll get super full before the main food star. It’s rich and full-filling, the doe is fantastic, it honors the actual “pie” name it stands for, the sauce is delicious and the stuffing reminded me of the pizza rellena my Nona used to make, although with a complete different taste (ours was way better, coz it had bacon, anchovies and eggs). 

After an evident food comma, be prepared to check out a wonderful sunset at London House, a hotel & rooftop bar strategically located on the intersection of Michigan St. and the Riverwalk, where you can be mesmerized by Chicago’s skyline. If you are visiting in winter, remember to drop by early (sunset in December happens approximately around 4:30pm), and if you are checking it out during summer nights, be ready for some music and fun until late. 

A great winter alternative is The Signature Room & Lounge - a closed yet wonderful restaurant, located on the 95th and 96th floor of one of Chicago’s tallest building. A reminiscence of  the Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo and a flashback to Charlotte’s wondering sights at the massive windows in Lost in Translation happens when you first face those monumental glasses, while being charmed by Chicago’s lights and movement. From 5 to 7 there’s a very convenient happy hour, so be mindful to check it out: Prosecco for me, Old Fashion for Gabe. Another incredible talk for our memories. 

Right next to it, you can find The Drake Hotel, now owned by Hilton, also known as the place where Al Capone lived here in Chicago. 

When it comes to dinner, man, you’re in a pickle! Chicago is known for its food scene and for a reason. It’s foodie’s heaven. Thankfully, talking with locals, residents and cross-checking with blogs and seasonal magazines, I can undoubtedly say that The Purple Pig is the place to go. Mediterranean cuisine with a twist, with a wonderful collection of wines and charcuterie. We shared three delicious dishes: whipped feta with honey and sweet heirloom tomatoes, butternut squash with peanut butter and adobo, to finally wrap it up with an exquisite Spanish grilled octopus with potatoes and pesto greens, which made us end up with no extra room for dessert - my friend Belu would be so disappointed on me. 

Right across the street, you can take some pictures at the Intercontinental Hotel, which hosts Michael Jordan Steakhouse (not a biggie, but it’s kind of funny that this legend, Mike 23, has a restaurant on his own). Wrap up your night with some blues. Walk down the area to find your favorite bar, hopefully one with no or little cover fee. We went to Blue Chicago ($10 bucks), grab a IPA Goose Island beer (the local brew) and enjoy some tunes. It was really amazing - I could listen to this music all day long. 

Up North: Old Town, Wicker Park & Longan Park, the cool stuff. 

Head up to Old Town, near Lincoln Park. Take the brown line (if you manage to activate your CTA card, it’s not an easy task if you don’t have a US phone number) and travel 4 long stops. This neighborhood holds St Michael’s Church, one of only seven buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Start your tour over there, and check out the beautiful architecture that surrounds it. It’s an extremely weird merge of modern and old buildings and styles, with some very well preserved gems. Same happens downtown. I guess that after the fire, the city really focused on keeping its charm as untouched as possible. And damn they are doing a great of a job at it! 

Up there, one of the main roads - which is also a National highway - is North Wells Street (IL-64 Route, oh well hello New York’s BQE deja vu!) and check out Second City, an iconic Comedy Club and Theater in the US - thanks Juan for the tip!-. It started as a small cabaret theater nearly 60 years ago and has since become the world’s premier name in improv-based sketch comedy and education. Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray and Mike Myers are just some of the name-dropping figures that appear as their alumni. 

Right in front of it, there’s Foxtrot Cafe, a wonderful and warm place where to have breakfast. It’s iconic spicy chicken biscuit is a must, and you can pair it with the coffee of your choice. Almond cap for me. After some needed calories to fight the -8C temperature, I headed east to Wicker Park. 

What a wonderful place. It’s dodgy, ruined down and hipster-looking. It is truly fantastic. The best of British’s Shoreditch with the untapped, gritted vibe of Brooklyn’s Bushwick or Flatbush, with the crazy look of Seattle’s Pike/Pine-Capitol’s Hill. This is where High Fidelity (2000s, John Cusack in a record store movie) was shot. Gentrification is the hype word you’ll hear, but still, Wicker Park remains a vibrant hub of culture and commerce in Chicago, riddled with boutiques, restaurants, cocktail bars, concerts venues and condos. It’s main area is located around the six corners of Milwaukee, North and Damen Avenues.

Starting from Milwaukee Ave. South, make a compulsory stop by Myopic Books, a nerdy paradise for all second-hand book fans. Continue your literally hunt down by Milwaukee Av and rejoice at Volume’s Book, get the warm hot cocoa you were craving for while writing your travel blog post about Chicago or read a new book instead. For a more funky venue, walk down a few more steps to find The Wormhole, Chicago’s most visited coffee shop. 

The Wormhole is a place very hard to define, so I will just say that is an '80s-themed rustic coffee shop, complete with a DeLorean, pouring locally roasted coffee. It’s a fun place with great music and even better wifi. It’s easily and strategically located before arriving to some of greatest stores by Milwaukee Ave. Make some time to check out all the fantastic the second hand, vintage and thrift shops like Kokoroko, Free People, & or if you prefer, stop by Reckless Records for some great music discounts.

Make yourself some time to check it by night as well, you can have fun at Emporium, the great arcade place or even have a drink or two at Davenport’s, the great piano bar and cabaret. 

The best place - and most iconic one - to have a cozy, all-time-classic lunch is Dove’s Lunchonette, inspired in old ‘60s and ‘70s Chicago’s soul and blues. It’s really fantastic. Becky (almost certain that was her name) is the great waitress that will recommend you all the goodness available in the menu and refill your coffee or tea, always with her laugh and great vibe. Make sure to appreciate the tunes and the environment, it’s a great memory from this city. A delicious poblano pepper filled with chicken and cheese, deep fried in delicious crumbles, topping a side of mexican rice with house, home-made spicy sauce. Yummy. 

Continue your exploration heading towards Logan Place, where more cool stores like tattoo parlors and skate stores are located. Don’t miss out on the street art scene and the 606, the Chicago’s Highline. Make a stop at the “Greetings from Chicago” mural and don’t hesitate to refuel at Colectivo Coffee, a great place where co-working and coffee brewery merges. 

Going West: Fulton Market, Greek Town and West Loop

This is THE place to eat. All of Chicago’s top restaurants are here, even the ones that have their venues by the riverwalk, they know they need to be here as well. We tried out luck at Au Cheval, named the best burger in America for a while, but it comes with a cost: an hour and a half waiting queue. Instead of getting our burger treat, with it’s typical knife on top, resembling some kind of conquest your stomach is about to achieve and colonize, we decided to give Green Street Smoked Meats a chance. This is one of Gabe’s favorite spots in Fulton Market, and it’s a nice and fancier Texas Smokehouse. Communal, big tables, great music and vibe, where to find delicious BBQ, even better brisket which we tried to tuned down with healthier sides such as yummy broccoli salad as well as the traditional pickle cabbage one, are there to ignite your night. 

The Green Door Tavern is an awesome tip my parents gave me. Apparently, it was vox populi back in the ‘20s that the establishments that had a green door, hosted a speakeasy inside and did not respect the prohibition rules of no-alcohol. So, let’s party like it’s 1921 and enjoy a drink or two in here! Once you enter, it just look like a regular, sports and antique bar, where memorabilia and Irish Pub look-and-feel rules the place. Yet, do not despair: head to the back, go down the stairs and before reaching the bathroom, try to listen to the music. A wall, a tricky one, hidden behind a books and ornaments shelf, you shall find Heaven’s door. A funky, old school, hour-o-clock-show bar, where to enjoy strong cocktails, and around the clock shows. Music, magic or, it’s signature event: burlesque. After choosing your drink from a very unique tarot-card-like menu, indulge yourself in the ‘20s era with the surprise show and the old-school videos played on the stage curtains. It’s a fantastic experience!

Visit the Hoxton hotel (always beautiful, never disappointing according to my experiences in Brooklyn, Paris and now Chicago) and head up to it’s rooftop restaurant Cabra - a Peruvian fusion delight. Great for brunch or lunch, we indulged on it’s sample menu and enjoyed some fresh guac and chips, a pulled pork belly sandwich, a tuna tiradito, goat empanadas and some delicious mango and chocolate dessert. It was a perfect Thursday food-comma. 

Before leaving Fulton Market, walk around and visit the brand new Time’s Out Market. Contrary to the Hoxton experience, Time’s Out is a great content platform with great venues around the world. Although, no market is as nice and as delicious as the Lisbon one. It was the first Time’s Out market they launched, and although I’ve visited some others like New York’s or Chicago’s, they do not manage to create the same vibe and atmosphere you can find in Lisbon. Chicago’s one is nice and you can find top names such as The Purple Pig and so on, but maybe you wanna give some of the surrounding restaurants a try before choosing Time’s Out Market. 

Wrap it up by Navy Pier & a bis on the Riverwalk 

While my stayed in the Windy City was coming to an end, I went to the Navy Pier for sunset to be wonder by the Michigan Lake and its view. We also walked down again the main road and visited The Protein Bar, a healthy venue were wraps and juices are top notch and you with your purchase you contribute to a local start-up. You can also check out a top view of the Bean and the Millennial park at Cindy’s, the rooftop of Chicago’s Athletic Association. Visit the Public Library and imagine yourself studying at the same booths or with the same texts Obama once did. Have a coffee by the Theater District at Goddess and the Baker. 

Head to Nonnina for some yummy Italian and even better service. We had some wine, pasta and salmon to celebrate my last night in the city. Call it a day by visiting another Varela’s Family recommendation and favorite: The Redhead Piano Bar. This energetic, fun and light-hearted venue is a fantastic spot where to drink your sorrows away, sing your heart out and laugh as hard as you can. The talented crew at the piano and mic will sing your requests for tips and will cheer and entertain your night with fine tunes, Chicago’s stories and public interaction that will certainly lift any night and place a unique bow on your unique Chicago Farewell. 

4 days in Chicago is not enough, specially if the cold forces you to be inside. I guess the same applies in summer: it wont be enough either due to the outdoor activities the city will offer.  Next time I will drive a little bit uptown heading to Superdawn, the traditional and well known Chicago sausage drive thru. I would also love to visit Manny’s Place, a traditional deli that’s been around for quite a while now, as well as to Kingston Mines, the traditional blues bar near Lincoln Park and Zoo -which we did actually go but too early for a show- as well as another fun and very hard to find ( I need to research a little bit more) tiki-bar speakeasy called three dots and a dash. Chicago, you’ve been awesome - I’ll be back!

[kimlovesgrahamscott]

Pricescott drabble, #81?

So this is supposed to take place when Chloe’s like 16 and still going to Blackwell.  It’s also probably way too cute and sweet but dammmit, they both suffered enough.

Chloe didn’t know what hurt worse: her leg or her pride.  She felt like an idiot wiping out in front of Justin and Trevor and she knew they’d never let her live it down.  It didn’t matter that she was better at skateboarding than them, that Trevor ended up hitting himself in the nuts on almost a daily basis.  Her fuckup was the basis of a remark that “Girls can’t skate,” or some bullshit like that.  It was the least she could do to pretend that she wasn’t hurt.  It took everything in her to act like it didn’t hurt, to continue hanging around until it started raining and then forced herself not to limp as they walked back to the dorms.

As she looked up the stairs she had to climb, she couldn’t deny the throbbing any longer.  It was a pretty gnarly scrape, not deep enough to be of any real concern but enough that there was blood seeping down her leg.  It hurt with every beat of her pulse.  The thought of her lower leg flexing as she walked up the stairs seemed like torture, not to mention just another thing to cause the bleeding to worsen.

“Holy shit Chloe, what happened?” a voice asked, shaking Chloe from her stupor.  It was Nathan Prescott.  She didn’t know much about him, other than the name, that he came from money, and that he was one of Rachel’s good friends.  Because of that, Chloe had always at least been pleasant towards him but she didn’t know if she was comfortable admitting she was in any sort of pain to him.

“I just hella fucked up while skating.  It’s no big deal.”  She could tell from the look Nathan was giving her that he knew she was full of shit. She was bleeding, for fucks sake, and the scrape did span a good portion of her calf and shin.

“You’re bleeding all over the God damn carpet.  You should go clean that up.”  When Chloe froze and averted his gaze, Nathan realized that she wasn’t going to do such things.  Nathan groaned, rolling his eyes, before grabbing her hand and dragging him to his room. He had a rather fancy first aid kit in there.  He told her to sit down on the couch while he grabbed it.

“Why do you have all this shit?” Chloe asked as Nathan grabbed all the things that were needed to properly clean and disinfect the wound.  She flinched as he pressed a cold wipe to her leg.

“Hold still.” Nathan’s voice was gentle, calm, like he had absolutely no qualms about the blood.  Chloe always assumed little rich bitches would be squeamish.  Hell, even she didn’t like the sight of blood. She was fairly desensitized to it after all the cuts and scrapes she’d enduring as a child, climbing trees and being pirates with Max, but she still didn’t think she could handle blood on a regular basis and be a nurse or something.  However, from how carefully Nathan treated the wound and how expertly he wrapped it in gauze, it appeared that he might make a fine nurse someday.

“Why are you so good at this?” Chloe asked as she further inspected the wrapping on her leg.

Nathan shrugged, hoping that would be a sufficient answer.  He didn’t want to get into it; he was starting to regret helping Chloe in the first place.  He couldn’t help it, though.  He knew all too well how much scrapes hurt, and the pain would be especially bad since it was on her leg and she had stairs to climb.  Anyone with an ounce of compassion would’ve offered to help.

Of course, he didn’t count on her actually asking him why he’d learned first aid skills.

“Nah, dude, really. Where’d you learn how to do this? It would be a useful skill to have.” Because that wasn’t the first time Chloe ate pavement while skateboarding and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.  Plus, she and Rachel had gotten quite a few nasty looking cuts while trying to clear out and customize that tiny abandoned building in American Rust.  When she had to doctor Rachel, she’d ended up using a forth of a tube of Neosporin and like six Band-aids.

Again, Nathan shrugged. “My dad made me take a first-aid class.” He wished he’d come up with the lie sooner because it certainly would rouse suspicion that he hadn’t outright said it.  Most people didn’t care to ask, or, like in the case of Victoria and Rachel, they already knew the real reason he was good at that stuff.  He’d had no choice but to get good.

And of course Chloe asked him why he hadn’t just outright told her because it wasn’t like first-aid courses were something to be embarrassed about.  It wasn’t like she could have known the real reason.  She couldn’t know that he’d gotten good at cleaning cuts and scrapes because of how angry his dad got.  She couldn’t know that he’d been taught by Kristine, and had gotten exponentially better at that care after she left.  What Chloe did know was that Nathan Prescott was sitting on his bed, crying.

“Oh God -please don’t- I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did but I’m sorry,” Chloe stammered out.  She was never good with tears, her own nor that of others, and she felt her pulse racing.  She hadn’t meant to upset him, however she’d done it, but she had to of done something awful if she was making Nathan-fucking-Prescott cry.

“Just go away…” Nathan attempted to command but his voice sounded so meek and fragile.

Chloe was conflicted. She was sure that leaving was the one thing a person wasn’t supposed to do when someone was crying.  Plus, Nathan didn’t really act like he wanted to be alone; she knew she absolutely hated being alone when she was crying.  It just made her feel worse.  So she did for Nathan what she knew she’d want if she was crying.  She got on the bed beside him and wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m sorry, Nathan, I’m sorry I’m such a fuck up…”  She really felt that way because, fuck, someone tried to help her and she made him cry without even meaning to! Nathan responded by leaning into her, letting her wrap her arms around him as he buried his head in her shoulder. He hated that he appeared so weak in front of someone he hadn’t really known that well, but he was actually very happy that he wasn’t alone.

Chloe lingered around Nathan’s room long after he’d stopped crying.  They both pretended like it hadn’t happened and just transitioned from cuddling on the bed to watching Netflix like it was something they always did. It was far less awkward than addressing what had happened.

At some point, Nathan ordered Chinese food to be delivered to his dorm room and asked Chloe if she wanted anything.  Chloe felt like she’d overstayed her welcome, but her leg was bruising and it felt so sore.  She also wasn’t going to turn down free food, especially since it was late enough that the cafeteria would be closed and she was famished.  It wasn’t like Nathan was acting in any way to make her feel like he didn’t want her around.  He seemed to be enjoying her company.  Surprisingly, she was enjoying his as well.

The Netflix marathon continued well after they finished their Chinese food.  It was mostly because they’d decided on watching Bob’s Burgers and Chloe was appalled that he’d only seen a few episodes.  He cited the art style being so weird that it turned him off of the show but she promised that if he ignored that he’d find the show hilarious.  Three episodes turned into six, twelve, and by midnight Chloe had fallen asleep on Nathan’s bed.

When she woke up the next morning, she found Nathan sleeping on his couch in a flannel pajama set. She was surprised that he hadn’t woke her up and told her to get the hell out of his room; that’s what she would’ve done regardless of who it was that had fallen asleep on her bed.  She sat up and stretched before deciding she needed to take the gauze off her leg to assess the damage.

She carefully unwrapped the gauze and removed the tape, trying not to make a mess as she did so. She still wondered how Nathan managed to wrap it so expertly, doing a good enough job that the wrapping didn’t fall off or even move during the night.  There were gradients of purples and yellows on her leg and the scrape had scabbed over.  There were bits of dried blood caked on that she would wash off in her morning shower.

She was only relaxing on the bed for a moment, playing on her phone and wondering if it would be more awkward if she just left or if Nathan found her still on his bed when he woke, before Nathan began to stir.  He rolled onto his back, giving her a sleepy smile as he wished her a good morning.  A light blush tinted her cheeks when the thought that he looked rather adorable entered her mind.  She didn’t need to be thinking about the Prescott kid like that. They were pretty much as opposite as could be.

Though, as she saw him go to his desk draw and not-so-sneakily take some pills out of orange prescription bottles, she thought that maybe they weren’t so different. She’d glanced at his movie collection the night before and they liked all of the same things.  She approved of a lot of the things on his Netflix Watch List. Plus, they were both artists in their own ways.

“I had a good time with you last night.  Maybe we could do it again sometime?”  Nathan was trying to hold eye contact with Chloe but found himself looking past her while he picked at his cuticles.  Again, Chloe found that he looked adorable.  Fuck.

“Hell yeah.  Gotta make sure you keep watching Bob’s Burgers! How about tomorrow night we get some burgers from Two Whales and watch more?”  Because watching Bob’s Burgers while eating burgers was one of the few simple pleasures in life that made Chloe really happy.

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Chloe knew Nathan was watching her as she put her skater shoes on, which she didn’t find entirely unpleasant.  It just made her face brighten.  She was hyperaware of her movements as she made her way to the door.  She turned back to face him, smiling as she told him she’d see him later.

It was then that Nathan moved towards her, pressing his lips against hers.  It was gentle, sweet, with a chasteness she found herself liking a lot more than she thought she would.  She normally liked things rough, with lots of raw emotion but it seemed fitting with how little they knew one another.  They needed to test one another a bit more before that could happen.  For the meantime, a cute little kiss was enough.

Chloe found herself smiling as she walked out of Nathan’s dorm room, curious as to what the future might hold for them.

[gameofthrawns]

Miracle Island

A/N: I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. A late submission for tarched’s HTTYDArtAugust, Prompt 5: Hunted. This one was a freaking monster to write compared to my usual stuff, at over 3.5k words—So now I know for sure that I will never write a novel. So I’m using that as my excuse. I also found it just...kinda hard to write. 

If you read my story for the “Campfire” prompt, you’ll probably remember these random Dragon Hunter OCs. Probably gonna post this along with that one in my “Viking War Tales” one-shots collection. Just as a warning, this story gets a bit violent. And a bit long. And a bit dark. So yeah.

“Did you ever learn where she’s from?”

Hans smiled at Ivar’s question. “Who?”

Ivar’s mustache twitched in annoyance. “Don’t play dumb, boy. Sigrid.”

Hans glanced back at the woman marching with Rolf a few yards behind them. Her skin was pale like the moon, with cheeks touched by pink. Her hair was tied in a golden plait that shimmered like the Sun. Her eyes were blue, like ice, or the sea, or the sky on a clear summer day.

What had Hans learned of Sigrid these past few months? He had learned that she was from some Viking village called Raglif; like many other Viking islands, it was a rather sad land, constantly plagued by freezing winters, dragon raids, and just general misery. Much worse than his own village back in Polder, actually.

He had, through the course of multiple nights, learned of her many, many scars, tracing them with his fingers as they explored each other’s bodies in the darkness.

He had learned that her favorite colors were green—especially the shade of green his eyes were, or so she claimed—and purple, which was the color of her favorite flower, wolfsbane. She didn’t like any nuts because she had been allergic to some of them when she was a child, even though she wasn’t now. She had an insatiable sweet tooth, which was really a shame because Hans remembered there being plenty of sweets to go around back in Polder...just not for him. But if he returned now, with Sigrid at his side...

He had learned that she was actually, while not by much, probably the worst fighter in the squad. She made up for it with her cleverness and her deft hands and fingers, capable of building and weaving even seemingly worthless scraps into something useful.

He had learned, much to his horror, that with those same hands and fingers she could deliver excruciating pain upon unwilling victims. It was something her father, the madman, had forced her to learn, so as to better torment her own little brother. The Grimborn brothers themselves had sometimes personally called upon her to break the mind, body, and spirit of prisoners. Hans had only seen her doing such grim work once, and only briefly, for the brutality and cold-bloodedness of the affair made his stomach turn.

It wasn’t much surprise, actually, that a woman so well-versed in the art of inflicting pain could also excel at providing pleasure. That, too, was apparently something her father had forced her to learn. That little fact about Sigrid’s past had always made Hans particularly uncomfortable, in a strange way he’d never felt toward another person before. He wondered if he was taking advantage of her in some way, a thought that had never occurred to him about sex ever since his first experience at the ripe old age of fourteen.

He had learned that Sigrid was actually quite the romantic, or at least, she tried to be. Just last night night, she had told him that they were a “match made in Hell”: two bad people who’d done many bad things, teaching each other to be good, to love. It was an interesting idea, certainly.

“And why do you think she would tell me that?” he finally replied. No doubt, he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn’t care.

“We’re not blind,” Ivar said. “Well, maybe Rolf...”

“Heard that!” Rolf shouted from a few paces behind Hans.

“...but there’s a reason we split you two up for this little hunt.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, ‘Oh’. Do you now how many times we’ve counted so far?”

“Counting what?”

“Times you’ve disappeared.”

“You and Snorre have been—”

“Three times!” Ivar narrowed his eyes at a particular tree. “That’s just when we’re paying attention. I can’t imagine—well, actually, I can...”

That made Hans frown. “Um, do you think Snorre minds?”

Ivar’s mustache twitched again. “The boss thinks you two are cute together. And efficient.”

“And you?”

“A little fucking never hurt anyone, I guess.” The older man shrugged. “Just be careful about...you know. We’re on Miracle Island, and the last thing you want right now is a little miracle popping out of—”

“Ah yes, Miracle Island, truly a blessed place!” Rolf suddenly appeared to Hans’ left, excitedly waving his hunting knife. Hans wisely shifted closer to Ivar. “The world can be so cruel and uncaring, but here...this is where heroes are born, where good always triumphs evil.”

“Sneaky bastard,” Ivar muttered. How a man like Rolf, filled to the brim with energy and cheer, could move so silently was a mystery only he and He were privy too.

“To be able to down the Dragon Boy and his Night Fury with a single bolt? In the dead of night? It was destiny, I tell you.”

“A single bolt dipped in dragon root,” Ivar countered.

“Truly miraculous.”

“Indeed. You’re the worst shot out of all of us.”

“Indeed, indeed. Say what you want, my ever-envious friend.” He tapped his head with the edge of his knife. “And envy, as Hans would say, is...”

Hans rolled his eyes. “A sin.”

“I concur, and so I say, to Hel with you, Ivar!” He laughed, and even Hans chuckled until he noticed Ivar glaring at him. “And I’ll have both of you know that once we capture this downed beast, I will be forever known as the man who brought down the greatest enemy the Dragon Hunters have ever known.”

Ivar just shook his head and muttered under his breath.

“Tell me, friend, how do you think we’ll find the Dragon Boy?”

Hans didn’t really give a damn, at this point. “Um, dead, hopefully?”

“Now there’s no fun in that. I hope he’ll be injured, but still able to run.”

“I really would prefer if he was just dead.”

“He’d be scurrying off like prey.” Rolf did a goofy little jog in place. “ And I’d like you, Hans, to have the honor of delivering the killing blow.”

“Why me?”

“Because Rolf would miss.”

“Oh do shut up, Ivar.”

“Dammit, Rolf, get back in formation!” Snorre bellowed from just up ahead. “I don’t mind a little chatter, but at least follow my orders! Let’s look good when we meet up with Olav’s squad, eh?”

Rolf jogged back to his position by Sigrid. “Right, right, my apologies, sir.”

A calm silence fell over the five hunters as they marched through the ever-thickening forest. Hans snuck another glance back at Sigrid. Apparently she had the same idea, and she gave him a small smile. it was enough to make his heart flutter.

Still keeping his eyes scanning his sector, he leaned a bit closer to Ivar and whispered, “I think I’m in love.”

Ivar scoffed. “Are any of us normal enough to really know what that word even means?”

That made Hans think. “What do you mean?”

“We’re all damaged goods here. No Dragon Hunter’s fully right in the head, or he wouldn’t have chosen hunting fucking dragons as a job.”

“Yes.”

“You agree, for once?”

“I mean that...Yes, I do know what love is.” Hans turned to Ivar; the man’s mustache twitched like mad, but he was still dutifully watching the trees. “I want to...I am going to marry her, Ivar.”

Ivar whistled. “This been going on for that long?”

“Just three months. But she is...special.

“No one gets married in this line of work,” he said grimly. “At least, not happily. Or permanently. Heart shatters one way or another. So you better get out of this mess while you can.”

“I am not joking,” Hans said quickly, trying not to sound defensive. “I love her. Really. She is special.”

“Yeah, you said that.” Ivar finally turned to look at Hans, looking quite serious. “I mean getting out of dragon hunting, before it gets you killed. You and Sigrid. Just do what you usually do.”

“Disappear?”

“Yes, disappear, and then just don’t come back.”

Hans’ eyes slightly widened. “Really?”

For a moment, he could’ve sworn Ivar smiled. “I don’t know why you want my approval so badly, anyways. Snorre’s the boss, so just...make sure he knows. He won’t like it, but he’ll understand. I think.”

“Thank you,” Hans whispered.

As if on cue, Snorre suddenly barked, “Crossbows, spread five!”

Guided by instinct, Hans and Ivar parted from each other as quickly as the , pulling out their crossbows and scanning the surroundings for movement. Only now did Hans realize just how dense the vegetation had gotten, his vision blocked by a maze of vines and trees that seemed to reach the sky.

Rolf had shot down the Night Fury last night; that was certain. It had been a full moon, and all five of them had clearly seen it and its rider fall. The dragon was at best poisoned and severely injured; the Dragon Boy himself was most likely dead.

Unless...nothing. There was no other way it could have happened. So why did it feel like they were walking straight into a trap?

“Problem, Snorre?” Sigrid asked from somewhere all too far away. Hans resisted the urge to glance back at her, for fear that the mere sight of her would cause him to break formation.

“A hundred yards ahead,” Snorre called out. “Two bodies in front, probably Olav’s men. Anybody else?”

“Clear,” Hans said.

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

“Clear.”

“You think it’s the Night Fury, boss?”

The wind whistled strangely—ominously, almost—in reply.

“I...I don’t know. It’s messy. Ripped their guts out and just...left it all there.”

“But I hit it.” Rolf sounded almost hurt by the possibility that he hadn’t actually downed the Night Fury.

“Maybe Night Furies are immune to dragon root?” Sigrid suggested.

“We all saw it go down. It went down! I’m telling you, it went down...”

“Then...the Dragon Boy?”

“No,” Snorre said. “No, they’re all mangled. A dragon’s work, for sure.”

A pause. The wind began howling. “You think we should check the cave?” Ivar asked.

“It’s our only way in, right?”

It was then that Hans realized that he wasn’t just imagining that the wind had suddenly started shrieking. It wasn’t wind at all. He exchanged a look at Rolf, who seemed to come to the same, dreadful conclusion.

By the time the other man screeched “DOWN!”, Hans was already diving for the dirt. The ground shook just before he landed, and he felt heat wash over him.

In the span of seconds, he was already back on his feet, crossbow at the ready, scanning his surroundings, searching for the Night Fury among the treetops.

“Call out!” Snorre ordered. “One check!”

“Two check!” he shouted. “I’m here!”

“Three check!” Ivar followed. “No wounds. That fucking Night Fury!”

But Rolf said nothing.

Sigrid said nothing.

“That shot came from above,” Ivar warned. “Where did he go? Where did that little shit go?”

“Spread three!” Snorre hissed. “Eyes up! Eyes—Hans, what are you doing?”

Hans sprinted towards Sigrid’s crumpled form, ignoring Snorre’s orders, ignoring Ivar’s shouting, ignoring the fact that all that remained of Rolf was scattered, burnt chunks of flesh.

Sigrid was a grotesque swirl of colors: white, beige, and shimmering gold, all now marred with dark reds and ashen black. But she was crying; she was breathing.

He didn’t dare look back at Snorre, but for a brief moment, he locked eyes with Ivar, who was staring at him with an inscrutable expression. Then the older man’s mouth moved.

Disappear.

Scooping Sigrid into his arms, Hans ran as fast as he could.

Like prey.

Hans had imagined the Dragon Boy to be a bit...thicker. More intimidating.

The fact that the “greatest enemy the Dragon Hunters have ever faced” was leaning unconscious against a cave wall, half a left leg missing, a foot-long crossbow bolt stuck in his chest, made him look almost pathetic. So Rolf had struck the rider, not the dragon. Why the Night Fury fell from the sky because of it, Hans did not know, but that was what must have happened.

What a strange coincidence that Hans would so quickly find himself switch from the position of predator to prey and then predator again so quickly, all in one day. It’d be easy, Hans decided, to end the boy’s life right here. In any other situation, he would, without hesitation. But he had something else to focus on right now, something that completely drained him of his desire to do anything else.

Sigrid whimpered as he put her down by the small fire. Her face was, even now—twisted in pain, streaked with tears, slightly burnt and bloodied—made his heart stir with that familiar feeling of love. He wiped at some blackened hair dipping down near her eyes. It was hard and brittle, and it crumbled at his touch.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Sigrid whined, looking down at herself. “Hurts.”

Hans didn’t dare follow her wild gaze, didn’t dare confirm what he felt. There was so much blood. His hands were drowning in it. She was falling apart, and he didn’t know what to do.

“I know it hurts, little treasure, I know,” he heard himself say. “I will fix you. Just look at me, Sigrid. Look at me, please.”

“I can’t!” she cried. Try as they might, her eyes couldn’t focus on him, or anything else. They darted wildly to and fro, searching desperately for something to save them.

Such a thing, Hans’ mind knew, did not exist. But in what felt like the first time in his life, his heart did not agree. His heart held on to hope. His eyes searched for something to stop the bleeding. But he...he honestly couldn’t remember how. Rolf always dealt with wounds, and now Rolf was dead.

“We leave,” he said, his voice breaking. Liar, liar, liar, his own mutinous mind chanted. “We leave, and then I can fix you, okay?”

“It hurts too much,” she whispered, each breath shorter than the last. “I don’t...die.”

“You will not die, Sigrid. You cannot die.”

“No, I don’t...want...”

“I can fix you. Please, God, can I...I can fix you.”

“Hans...”

“And then I am going to marry you, okay?” he cried. “Okay? Okay, Sigrid?”

He was praying, silently, praying to He who died for all mankind’s sins for a miracle. Just one miracle, on Miracle fucking Island, of all places. Was that too much to ask?

Sigrid opened her mouth, but instead of words, she replied with only a soft gurgle, a bit of blood. Was that a yes or a no?

“I love you, Sigrid,” he said between sobs. “Don’t go away.”

Her blue eyes stopped searching, her body slacked. Her answer died on her lips, and then swiftly whisked away by a long, final sigh.

“Please, God,” he pleaded. “Oh please, Sigrid, don’t go away.”

Something growled.

In his grief, Hans had failed to notice the Night Fury that had slipped by him and positioned itself between him and its rider, the pupils at the center of its green eyes narrow and vengeful. A pair of distinctly human dangled from its mouth, threads caught along two rows of bloodied daggers. It dropped Snorre and Rolf’s heads and gently kicked them into the dim light, confirming what Hans’ guilty heart already suspected: Snorre and Ivar were dead.

Surrender, it seemed to hiss. You are alone.

He shook Sigrid gently. “Wake up,” he whispered.

She couldn’t. He couldn’t either, still staring between her and the heads. The nightmare continued.

The Night Fury shook its head in pity and made a deep, rumbling noise. You. Are. Alone.

Only then did his heart let go of hope. It did so with great reluctance, but it could not deny reality anymore. The dragon was right; he was alone. The body in his arms was still warm, but the wonderful, singular life that once inhabited it had moved on. And so his heart fell.

And fell.

And fell.

And shattered.

Hans screamed in a way that matched how he had loved Sigrid, still loved Sigrid: with an intensity and ferocity he had never felt before. It was as much fueled by love as it was by hatred, for the two, in this case, were one and the same. He hated everything: earth and sky and sea, birth and life and death, past and present and future. He hated the parents he never knew, his uncle and all the other people who had wronged him in life, the people who had helped him in life, the people who never knew him, the people he never would know. He hated Him, in particular, the Savior who was supposedly all-powerful and all-good yet had let his friends die so cruelly and pointlessly. He hated his friends, and himself, and even Sigrid, because if love and hope couldn’t bring her back, perhaps hate could.

And above all, he hated the Night Fury.

He didn’t recall grabbing his long axe and charging towards the dragon, but he suddenly found himself, still screaming, within arm’s reach of exacting his vengeance, staring into demonic eyes and devilish teeth, close enough to smell its vile breath and feel his bones tremble as it roared.

“Catch!” a distinctly female voice shouted from behind him.

He spun around, just in time to catch a glimpse of something deadly flying towards him. It sank deep into his right shoulder, and searing pain stripped him of what remained of his reason and senses, pulling him to the ground.

The Night Fury’s head loomed over Hans; its pupils were no longer slits, but wide black bulbs, both taunting and pitying him. He raged against it; in his mind, he was already up off the ground, long axe carving cleanly through the neck of Sigrid’s killer. But his body couldn’t obey, and the realization of this fact only made him scream harder.

He wanted to kill the Night Fury. He wanted to kill this Dragon Boy. He wanted to honor Sigrid’s name with their screams, killing them as she probably could have done: slowly, painfully. But he had only just begun to lift his head up when a heavy boot stomped it back down, crushing his screams down into muffled whimpers.

She was a Viking girl, probably even younger than him. Her skin was pale like the moon, with cheeks touched by pink. Her hair was tied in a golden plait that shimmered like the Sun. Her eyes were blue, like ice, or the sea, or the sky on a clear summer day...

“Sigrid,” he tried to say.

“Hiccup?” she replied, though she wasn’t looking at him.

She put more of her weight on to his face as she ripped her axe out of his shoulder, sending another lightning bolt of pain ripping through his entire body, leaving him howling. He felt how quickly the blood from the open wound was spilling out of him, soaking his arm and the earth below.

It was over.

The world around him grew more distant, yet also clearer and brighter, with each passing moment, and he now knew for certain that that girl was Sigrid. He let his head roll to the left and watched Sigrid kneel beside a wounded boy that looked oddly familiar. What was his name?

“Hiccup,” Sigrid said, shaking the boy’s shoulder. “Hiccup, wake up.”

The Night Fury slowly approached the boy, whining like a worried pup.

A “huh” escaped from the lips of someone nearby. His own, perhaps, trying to pronounce that boy’s name. Yet, that couldn’t possibly be his own voice. Hans didn’t know why just yet, but it wouldn’t make any sense.

With a groan, the boy’s eyes slowly fluttered open. The boy had green eyes, Hans noted, much like...

Himself. There he was.

Sigrid crushed Hans with a loving embrace, much to his confusion. “As-Astrid?”

“Hi, babe,” she said softly, her voice cracking just a bit.

Hans was grinning like an idiot. “Hey, As,” he croaked. “Hey, As. Hey. You’re here. Hi.”

“Of course, silly.” Sigrid pulled out a strand of parchment from her pack. “Toothless, lick this.”

The Night Fury did so.

“This arrow could’ve hit your heart, you know?” She began placing the parchment over the arrow wound. “If you tried to take it out yourself...Thank the gods you didn’t.”

Hans shook his head. “Good guys don’t die”

Sigrid tilted her head “Oh, and you’re a good guy?”

“Definitely...I think.” He giggled. “You’re...you’re so much beautiful, lady. My lady.”

Sigrid touched his forehead with the back of her fingers. “Damn it,” she said, sighing. “Let’s get this home quickly, Toothless.”

“Mmm, nah.”

“What’s wrong, babe? The arrow?”

Hans smiled weakly. “Mmm, tired. And the arrow, yeah.”

“Babe, I promise you, if we try pulling the arrow out here, it’ll hurt. A lot. So let’s get back to—”

“And...you’re pretty. Toooo pretty.” He puckered his lips and started kissing the air.

“Yeah, all right. Let’s go.” Sigrid strapped her bloodied axe to her back and gently picked Hans up off the ground. The Night Fury nudged at Hans’ dangling legs, whimpering.

“It’s fine, Toothless,” she said. “I’ve got him. I guess I’ll be riding you back, and Stormfly can carry—Wait, Stormfly? Stormfly? Where’d my girl run off to...”

“Marry me?” Hans suddenly asked.

The Night Fury made a noise of confusion. Sigrid froze. “What?”

“Like not today.” Hans’ arms flopped around lazily. “But later, you know. Tonight...no, tomorrow. Let’s...not rush.”

That made her giggle. “Sure, Hiccup,” she said.”

“Yeees?” Hans slurred.

“If you actually remember any of this? Yes.”

Hans could only stare as Sigrid and the Night Fury carried him away, out of this dreary cave and into the warm, blinding light that was quickly consuming everything. Into the next life. Hell, probably. Such a fate would’ve been enough to make even Rolf frown.

But she said “Yes”, and that made Hans smile.

Second A/N: Yes, I planned to pair and then kill Hans and Sigurd from the very beginning. I don’t expect tears, but I hope this story hurt at least a little bit. The part I was stuck on was just exactly how to best fit all the moments I wanted to have into a (kinda?) cohesive timeline.

In hindsight, I should’ve divided this better as a three-part thing, with a middle story as part of the “Hunters” prompt. But whatever.

[oosteven-universe]

Trust Fall #1

Trust Fall #1 Aftershock Comics 2019 Created & Written by Christopher Sebela Created & Illustrated by Chris Visions Lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou     Ash Parsons was raised to believe she’s special. As someone with a quirk of genetics that lets her teleport things, she’s the golden goose of her family—the foundation of a struggling criminal outfit.     Ash is able to pop out whole fleets of cars and entire bank vaults. But while she can teleport valuables and her accomplices, she can’t teleport herself — making every job a trust fall with her family there to catch her and escort her to safety. It’s a perfect setup but as things begin to change and the Parsons move up in the world, Ash will find herself pushing back against her golden cage, with deadly results.     Alright so I am a huge fan of Sebela and the crazy stuff he comes up with. I am not quite sure yet what I think of Chris’ vision however as it is so far from my style and it feels like it lacks structure but I'll get into that more later. The story however is incredibly intriguing to me and right from the get go we see a mini-opening and a full one that kind of shows off who Ash is without telling us who Ash is. Now we know she’s got these crazy abilities and we see them beautifully illustrated and we have to figure out just why and I think I am more than okay with that for now. Leave it a mystery for now and let the time come gradually, naturally as the story demands it.     There is some interesting introductions going on here and among them are the members of Ash’s family. It is entirely clear if this is a literal family by blood or a collection of kids that the parents took in and raised as their own. There seems to be a few different races here but again while I want to know I am going to keep coming back time and again to see how that all unfolds as well. What Sebela has introduced us to isn’t something that can be rushed or forced it has to move organically but it is something that will capture your imagination and engage you as it brings you into the story as well.     Now while Chris has his entirely unique style of art and while there are times I feel like it is too abstract and not focused enough for me. In spite of that or because of all that what we see is always suspect and that blurs the lines between what is real and what isn’t. Though it does seem that the past is amplified in this style that much more. I miss my attention to detail ya know but it does have some potential to grow on me and with the heavy purple that we are seeing here does make me happy, it’s my favourite colour after all. The page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels does show a good eye for storytelling. I want to say while this may not be my thing as it were that doesn’t mean it’s horrible or that everyone will dislike it there’s a vibe going on here that’s for sure and I encourage everyone to see if it is for them or not. ​     I am intrigued by the story and I want to know to more. There is something happening here that I cannot quite put my finger on but whatever it is I do know that I like it. This is a crazy ass book with some definite moments that are sure to thrill and excite readers with it’s creativity and imagination!

[sobdasha]

library book haul

these are all many months out of date

Conservation of Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee This sci-fi and fantasy short story collection is Good Shit. Plus it includes my favorite short-story-collection thing, aka Author's Notes on the stories, which enhances the experience even more. So: I tried to read this in the previous batch with Lee's other work, but Lee's work requires your full attention and is not suitable for reading in the breakroom at work, where people come up, see you with a book, turn on the TV, and then proceed to ignore the TV the entire fucking time while they talk excessively loudly with the other people in the breakroom. I've been enjoying the fact that they put a real chair in the department so if I don't work the morning shift I can take my break in the department where the din from the customers is, in fact, quieter. And I don't have to walk to the literal opposite corner of the store, wasting time and chronic pain! Anyway. So I waited until I was on vacation, and had large stretches of quite time, to read this, and it was amazing. I did not do the write-up then because I am lazy. However, I am in the middle of rereading now, and I can tell you that these stories only get better the second time around. I was a little worried it'd be like Shakespeare--you have to read several Shakespeares before you finally get into the Shakespeare zone and can actually, like, read the Shakespeare. These stories, on the other hand, remained accessible and are enhanced by having half a clue where the story will go. I like them all, but some of my top favorites: Ghostweight--Lee says this was the second-hardest story to write because it took months to nail the intro/outro of the story. Well, it pays off. The Bones of Giants--Lee says the fantasy equivalent of mecha is to dig up some giant skeletons and apply necromancy. I'm bad at recognizing "zombie" when you don't use the word "zombie", so like the Abhorsen series I don't really consider this "zombie lit which I would hate." Mostly it's just a little soft and when I'm reading I picture big sweeping landscapes, like a Studio Ghibli film or Breath of the Wild. The Unstrung Zither--Lee just talks about the music stuff, but this one feels to me like Gundam Wing if I'd actually finished watching Gundam Wing because Gundam Wing had turned out to actually be anywhere near as interesting as the quantum versions of it I'd imagined. (Thanks to Lee's other stories, I'm now using "quantum" instead of "noodle incident".) Well, now I no longer feel any need to actually go back and watch Gundam Wing. Cool! It's occurring to me that Lee's works mostly fall into the category of: soft; this is the literal cost of genocide and occupation; and both at once. It's a hell of a lot better than ~the glory of war~. Anyway as I said it's all good.

Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin I actually quit reading this one pretty early on. Not exactly a quit, though. I wasn't in the right mindset; I just couldn't get through it and realized what I was in fact craving was Adventure. So I went on to reread The Prydain Chronicles instead and I'll pick this up again sometime later when I am in the mood for something quiet, reflective, domestic, and not big on plot.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interviews, ed. David Streitfeld This was interesting! Although I always have mixed feelings when I'm reading about authors talking about the craft. IDK I think it's a me-thing. Like, I pick up this essay expecting the author to tell me what works for them, and then I get annoyed because I decided the author was telling me "this is the only way" when that's bs and now I want to rebel??? Or maybe because Le Guin talked about how even a novel ought to be poetry and as someone who understands the theory of meter but has been flunking everything related to meter or stress since grade school in the practical sense, I find that idea Highly Overrated. I honestly don't remember what else was in here, because I waited for many months to do this write-up. I didn't actually hate reading this though so.

The Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander These are Peak comfort food to me. All I want to say this time around is, I should write some fics as Alexander's penance for making Eilonwy Very Cool but mistakenly doing so by making her Not Like Other Girls. (Crying and having feelings is gender-neutral in these books; what's portrayed negatively about Eilonwy through Taran's view, despite the fact that she's objectively better than him lol, is her ~chattering~. Which is annoying because not only does Eilonwy internalize that into putting down non-sword-women for "clucking like hens", Fflewddur chatters at least as much as Eilonwy, if not more, and because he's a guy it's never phrased that way even though we're all aware he's super flighty. I really wish this had been done with more nuance, because Eilonwy also has internalized misogyny about things like dresses and washing your hair and sleeping in a comfortable bed, and Fflewddur again is always the first person to be like "um but I would like to be comfy tonight though.") Anyway I just think that after Taran is king, if he wants to go someplace and keep his hands busy to think, presumably the gardens and fields are enough out of the way that this would make your king difficult to find. So instead, I propose that he goes to the spinning and weaving rooms, because that's literally in the castle, easy to find, he knows how to do that shit, Dwyvach schooled his ass good about how work doesn't have a gender in book 4, and he did enjoy weaving, and as a bonus he can realize that "chattering" is not bad and gossip is a good way to learn things you, as a king, probably need to know about the working of your castle, and Eilonwy can join him for bonding and realize this is not so terrible after all, and we will all value these women who spend a lot of fucking time and effort making sure you can have some goddamn clothes to wear. THE END.

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle Everybody really loves The Last Unicorn, by which I think they mean the movie? And I thought that I did as well, even though I remembered exactly nothing from it save for the title when we watched it once in either kindergarten or first grade in place of recess for a week because it was, idk, cold?? raining nonstop??? Anyway I always thought that I loved it and then I finally rewatched it as an adult and it was. Not. Great. And then I forgot and watched it again a few years later and was like Nope, still Not For Me. And now, finally, I decided to get off my bum because for me books are almost always better than the movie, and lo and behold, it is. From what I can recall, the movie is the general plot structure of the book portrayed as an Adventure, stripped of the thoughtful, reflective narration and the deeper narrative themes. Which is 100% why that movie appears to me to be some kind of acid trip. I wish I had read this as an early teen, so that I could have absorbed some of Beagle's writing style, his turns of phrase in simile and metaphor. "His scimitar smile laid its cold edge along their throats," etc. He never really makes it seem like Too Much. (Side note, that's something I notice about Yoon Ha Lee too. Very lush and descriptive similes and metaphors, very much get the job done and are not things you have ever heard before. Although Lee's tend to make me stop and go "wait what???", and catch me off guard. I suspect it's a mix of innovation and cultural difference, whereas for Beagle everything sounds so exactly right and smooth and perfect probably because everyone else has been copying off him for years and I'm familiar with diluted versions. Anyway what I'm trying to say is, I got a bit away from that in my writing, but dang I am gonna have to up my game and purple my prose a little bit more because I really love what these guys are doing!)

Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse Okay so Ann Leckie recommended this book to me, both in a general sense and also in person. And I looked at the description and thought, "Well, it's not my genre but it probs can't hurt me to pick it up and try." And so I finally did. Reading this was an interesting progression (probably most especially for my roommate who gets my live-reading reactions while she's trying to DnD) of watching me go from: "It's not my genre but it's not like the writing sucks so it's not bad" to "Well it is engaging and I do like garbage loner protagonist is a woman instead; I'm not compelled to buy this but I will read the rest of the series as it comes out from the library" to "Oh snap I love it when the critical reviews of a book were actually recommendations for me to read it" to "*weeping* Kai is a soft good boy and I support Maggie and her Emotional Support Shotgun, I will buy ALL THE BOOKS" At one point there was a perfect place, in the midst of a discussion about how you can like flamethrowers and makeup at the same time, Maggie, just because you don't like makeup, etc, to insert a joke about "it's called flaming gay for a reason". BUT in Rebecca's defense the entire scene was great anyway. The whole book was great. It's great. Read it. Oh speaking of the critical reviews, one of them was like "the protagonist claims to be unable to cook and then a few paragraphs later makes a 5 star meal, so this book is garbage." Lol was the reviewer confused because the word "bread" was used, and believes that bread is an art form unable to be accomplished by mere mortals (which, I mean, is how I feel about the idea of babying a loaf of bread all day)? Because bread only has to be "I made a paste of flour and water" which this. Basically was. Fried in a pan. And then the side dish was a can of beans with a can of chiles thrown in for fancy. This is literally the definition of can't cook, because you can't exactly order takeout on the reservation after the apocalypse when you prefer to live in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. I'm just saying, this scene was perfect. Also this was the point in time where I started summarizing all apocalyptic books as "After the events of the year 2020" to my roommate. It. It continues to hold true. Every year for like the past five years we've been saying maybe next year will be better, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm terrified of what 2021 will bring. One final visual: me, unable to pronounce Navajo words to my roommate when reading select passages, and also not being able to spell them on account of not knowing the names of accents in English: "so it's c-h-apostrophe-i accent aigu cedilla-i cedilla-polish l with a line through it…" (not an actual word, I don't remember the actual words, I returned the book to the library long ago, this is for illustrative purposes of my ignorance only)

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf I tried to read this because Le Guin praised it a lot in The Last Interviews, and it was on the Wizard's Library shelves and I thought maybe I should broaden my horizons. But I quit early on because I, a disaster of run-on sentences, could not parse half of these and I was not invested and if I don't have to read ~classics~ for literature class it probably won't ever happen. Honestly a lot of the contemporary literature I'm reading is better for me anyway.

Sunlight and Shadow, Cameron Dokey This was also on the Wizard's Library shelves and I like fairytale things in theory and despite reading the wiki summary on various occasions I really don't know anything about the plot of The Magic Flute, which is this a retelling of. This book queerbaited me. It's unfair of romances to always put more chemistry between the people who aren't getting together than who are. In this case, both girls and both boys, who were to pair off into het couples. There's literally an entire chapter of Gayna going from "You've ruined everything!" to "I wish I could hate you!" to "Oh no you're hot!" to "And that doesn't actually make me jealous oh shit!" to "Okay I'll help you" to "Oh no she smiled and my heart skipped a beat huhhh!" about Mina. The word gay is even in her name!!! What is the author doing with her choices??? Seriously what is the author doing with her choices, in the author's note at the end of the book I learned Statos (Monostatos) was originally "evil character just because he's a Moor" so Dokey Fixed It by making him just a guy who wanted Things like the rest of the characters want Things and he just happens to come off as bad because he's not aligned with them and also he's very, very white. Noooooo that's not how you do it, that's not how you fix racism, you redeem him while keeping him black. I also, as a rule, dislike first-person-narration-that-changes-each-chapter, especially when you're not skilled enough/don't care to write in such a way that the narrator can easily be identified, so basically for a long chapter and a half I assumed Lapin was a girl and when the Queen of the Night was like "fuck you, boy!" I assumed it was a sick burn and Lapin just ~wasn't pretty~ but it turns out he was, in fact, a boy. Also for a book that points out that you can be perfectly happy settling with a decent person and marrying your not-soul-mate (Lapin's parents and grandparents), it's awfully insistent that the main characters all be properly paired with soul mates. HM. Basically this is marketed as feminist but I think it fell pretty damn short on that mark.

[greengage-blog]

Of baths, the past, and healing

I went with my mother today to the baths. We imagined ourselves ancient romanas for two hours. But we also dug deep into her family history. I asked her question after question about our ancestors, and she answered every single one she could with precision and detail. Great Grandma Irene had a dramatic sense of interior design. Her first kitchen had a playing card theme: red and black cupboards, and black and white checkered floor. Spades, hearts, aces, clubs - or were there only spades? And a garden full of sweet peas that apparently were more fragrant in the late seventies than they are these days. She had a bad first husband who died when my grandma was twelve years old, but a good second one named Angus who worked for VIA Rail. In between, she worked for twenty years at Woolworth’s. When Angus bought them a house in Cape Breton, she fixed it up to her liking and had a silky dark purple cover on their bed. Everybody knew that Irene didn’t get out of her housecoat and curlers until noon. She’d putter around in her slippers, read this or that and sip her coffee all morning, but then she’d doll herself up to the nines and spring to life. She was an intrepid traveller by train, but probably never took a plane in all her eighty-five years alive. Maybe she would have lived longer had she not had a penchant for sweets: Dairy Queen chocolate sundaes with peanuts, buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar. 

My mom is writing about carbon offsetting and plane travel. She has boiled it down to three things she will care about when on her deathbed. First, did she spend enough time with her family? Second, did she get over her fear of writing and sharing what she writes? Third, Italy. The things like losing twenty pounds, buying a house, or having stuff will just not matter. Neither will whether or not people will shame her for flying. 

I tell my mom that mine are pretty much the same, but that I also hope to do something that will make a difference. This feels vague and I feel a sense of shame around having such an egotistical hope to “be the one” who makes injustice change. Especially when I still kind of care about doing those things like losing twenty pounds, buying a house, living minimally which in its own way is a privileged act, I realize. Then I think that the problem all along has been that I’ve wanted to “be the one” and not just one person. That I’ve wanted to embrace all things, les enlacer… fleuve et torrent, tous les arbres. I’ve wanted to be the one who has... everything. “Gizmos and gadgets aplenty. Whosits and whatsits galore.” I’ve been singing a siren song to myself with my writing over the past several years. Keeping it locked up in a submarine cavern. Building a narrative to my life has been impossible whilst tending to the secret garden of my inner world. Building a narrative is only possible with conflict, with others.

So I decide to reach out. To share, to show, to tell. What, exactly? A bit of all of it, all that I can. I don’t want more things. I want to enact. To make. Jouer. Dire. Écrire : rêve, utopie, amour. I want to embrace the “silliness” of the desire for beauty and the desire for peace and the desire for simplicity and joy for all people. All the beauty queen social mores. And I pull myself up to the table with all the upper arm strength I can muster in a mad attempt not to care if I’m going to get slapped with the label of ditzy-ass dreamer.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is traditionally “women’s work” and what kind of work women are doing today. As a white millennial woman with no real job who is supported financially by my husband who works a job he enjoys, I have the privilege of spending a lot of time thinking. For some time, I’ve been keeping my thoughts to myself because I feel guilty for not working and making money. I have felt obligated to always hatch a new plan to make money that I keep on the backburner just in case I need to whip it out to defend myself against the scorn of other women like me, or even just the outside world. If I needed to make money, I would, of course. I have done it before and I firmly believe that no work is “below me”. Each and every job that must be done must be done, and in my own way I work very hard. I mother. I scrub the toilet, I plan, shop for and cook family meals, I garden, I do laundry… in brief, I carry a hefty if invisible load. Although I am lucky not to do this all alone, since my husband helps me, which I know is somewhat rare in terms of a global scale, I am often left with little to no time to deeply explore whether that be inside my own self, through the mediation of art, or outside, in the world, with real people. A lot of my time gets eaten up with useless comparisons to what other women are doing, or to what men are doing, and I feel disempowered and vaguely depressed about 99% of the time because of this. I dream of escape sometimes, and in the past I have attempted to escape, if only on a temporary basis, through the use of substances that hurt me. Cigarettes and alcohol, mainly. These legal but lethal drugs had me floating along in a fog for a few years until I finally quit them, and now here I am with the same problems, the same need to attempt to eke out an existence according to my own values in a world that does not resemble my altruistic dreams and desires. 

What I am finally realizing is that the frustration and pent-up anger I tried to mask with my depressants and stimulants needs to be directed and used against the systems that keep me feeling guilty for living “easy” while helpless to change what is so, so hard and despicable in the world. A woman’s life today need not be an either/or of chasing the capitalist ideal or holing up in agoraphobic silence to wait it out in as much comfort as is possible given the state of things around us. Success, as a woman, does not necessarily mean becoming a “boss”, just as it does not necessarily mean remaining a housewife and “just a housewife”. It is, and always has been, proven as an ability to rise to the occasion at hand with an attitude of care and compassion, to take the high road of non-violence and of selfless love and nurturing. I am not just here to mother and house-keep, but I do all that and because I do, I am an essential part of the web that sustains “my people” whoever they end up being. The rise of feminism in politics is essential to creating a society based on justice and equality because the woman’s way is one that is intrinsically caring. 

This long ramble of a post was written two days ago post-baths and is the fruit of some of the thoughts I’ve been nurturing lately like so many little seeds. I aim, in the series of posts I will be writing over the next year, not only to revive this blog long gone silent (the silence started when I first discovered I was going to be a mother back in 2012 and continued through a full seven years!), but to work on refining my process in order to create more coherent work to be shared with others. This post is basically a line in the sand, a threshold or liminal space between the past self I was when I began sharing my work back in 2012 and the self I am today who, after a long period of silence, has consciously decided to jump back into the fray and raise my voice. The preoccupations that hold me in my present frames of mind and reference will surely change as the years go by, but for now, the gentle reader will most likely find posts on topics relating to untying the past and ancestry at both my own personal scale and a larger world scale, healing (again, both personal stories and collective hopes and action), labour, literature, art, and myth. This space will be a depository of bric-à-brac, une caverne magique, a petri dish for the inner workings of my mind as I relate to events both intimate and exterior as I attempt in my own small way to create a voice for myself in line with the precepts of écriture féminine and is in no way intended to be “good enough” to be “for sale”. I am here and now binding myself to write freely, to share gently the little stream of consciousness that is mine and let it flow into the collective waters of the dawning Age of Aquarius. So forgive me if I sometimes wax too poetic or oftentimes it seems that all I do is navel-gaze, or if sometimes the way I’ll try to decipher the stars seems silly, but this space is my Livre, it’s where je m’inscris, not too circumspectly, I’m hoping. Here’s to 2020 and looking back to look forward and clearly. In this year, I’m channeling Great Grandma Irene with her loud purple duvet, slapping my cards on the table, taking pause every morning, through writing in my housecoat, to smell the sweet peas.

[happy2bmyownboss]

*This post does contain some affiliate links which help to support our blog and our family.

Ohhhh! I am so excited to be sharing this post with you. The kids are pretty excited about it too! My fingers are going faster than my brain as I am typing and somehow or another they are managing to put into words what I want to say. I did show a sneak peak of some of the items we’ve received in this post here but now I am going to show you everything we have right now.

If you haven’t seen my latest posts about homeschooling check out the links here but if you are only interested in what we have planned for this year, please keep scrolling.

I’ve been talking about how excited I am for our next homeschool year and I just can’t wait to get started. I have actually talked about this curriculum before but its been awhile. My kids are finally at the age that I think this will work out really well for everyone.

I want to make it known that I am still a huge fan of Easy Peasy All-In-One-Homeschool and Discovery K12.com but right now this will be our main curriculum as I really wanted to get away from so much screen time. I’m just so excited although I know that this will mean more hands on time for me but I’ve loved this idea since I first came across it in 2016. At the time the kids were a bit young and I decided to wait but when they happened to see a couple of shows on TV and showed a lot of interest I decided the time was right.

Also this decision was made well in advance of the recent publicity that this series has had.  I purchased the main book back in 2016 before I had an inkling of what was going on right now.

Are you ready? Drum Roll please…..

This is the majority of it and I’ll break it all down piece by piece below:

I know this isn’t for everyone and it’s not the newest or most exciting thing this year but it is going to be so much FUN! We will be using the Prairie Primer… I plan to do a lot of the activities but as you know sometimes I venture off course and I may end up using this more as a guide. I have include affiliate links to the products we’ve purchased. Purchases made from these links cost nothing extra and help to support our blog.

I did buy this book here so I can read it aloud to the kids before we get started. I think this will benefit the older kids more so they can get a better understanding of who Laura Ingalls Wilder was. The kids are really enjoying the book so far. I read a little bit to them at lunch time and/or before bedtime.

I’ve ordered several items to go along with it as I really want to get back to some old school methods of learning and simpler ways of living. What better way than with The Little House on the Prairie books, which we already had on the book shelf? This DVD set is on my wish list as I really think the kids will enjoy watching them.

I’ve purchased these math books here:

I already had and used these readers and spelling books:

And these books for handwriting:

There are these for Home Ec and we have several other projects planned:

I think the girls will love the paper dolls and everyone will enjoy the coloring pages and the fun new to us recipes that we will find.

Then these for Science:

Nature Adventures! A Guidebook of Nature Facts, Songs, and Hikes in San Diego County

Kid’s Herb Book, A: For Children of All Ages

Animal Tracks: North American Animals A to Z

Animal Tracking: A Waterproof Folding Guide to Animal Tracking & Behavior 

ABCs Naturally: A Child’s Guide to the Alphabet Through Nature

Peterson First Guide to Trees

And Social Studies:

Sugaring Time

Laura Ingalls Wilder Country: The People and Places in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Life and Books

Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography

The Little House Guidebook 

Louis Pasteur: Founder of Modern Medicine

The little guys won’t let me forget Arts & Crafts:

Pioneer Crafts for Kids: 40 Craft Projects for Children

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Songbook: Favorite Songs from the Little House Books Paperback 

Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too

Here is a couple of other items we’ve purchased to go along with it as well:

These came from Lakeshore Learning which is one of my favorite places to shop for educational and special needs materials.

And then some of these for extra studies:

Circle Time Activities

Social and Emotional Learning in Middle School: Essential Lessons for Student Success

All Thru the School Year: 540 Reward Stickers

If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How to Write . . . You’ve Gotta Have This Book!

And these:

Merriam-Webster’s First Dictionary

Merriam-Webster’s Rhyming Dictionary

Uncommon Courtesy for Kids – A Training Manual for Everyone

I’ve also been rereading these for a few tips and encouragement before we get this next school year started:

The Organized Homeschool Life: A Week-By-Week Guide to Homeschool Sanity

Simple Organization for Homeschools: Tips for Getting and Staying Organized While Homeschooling

The Joyful Home Schooler

Academic Homeschooling: How to Give Your Child an Amazing Education at Home by Tracy Chatters

These are most of the books I ordered specifically to go with our Prairie Primer studies. There are a couple of others on my ‘Wish List’ that I am working on getting.

All work and no play would definitely make for some boring days. We’ve added a couple of new games to our collection to help build different skills through play:

Lakeshore Allowance Game

Little Treasures Monkeying Around

Hasbro Trouble Game

Building Bugs

Little Treasures Balancing Pile Up Game, Add Toppings on the Pizza But Don’t Let Them Fall of the Pizza Man’s Pie

Games can be so beneficial for learning different skills like time management, fine motor skills, math, reading, listening, sportsmanship, socializing, and so many more. I do have a couple more on the way soon!

We also have a slew of other materials and activities that we will be rotating through the year:

Tons of books! Not too mention the ones we now have access to with our new library cards! I’ve also been leaving a couple of items like this owl clock and abacus out for the kids to play with. Our newest counting abacus was keeping Jacob entertained when I took this picture.

The bottom shelves hold a lot of information and resources for other studies that we will be using from time to time throughout the year.

This book shelf holds our ‘Daily Readings’… I’m not exactly sure what I want to call it yet but these are books that are divided up according to seasons, holidays, and other events. I have them in order from January to December and there is a wide variety of topics included as you may be able to see.

I plan on making some sort of dividers and I had some of our seasonal activities here too but the shelf got too full. Now I have the activities in this purple/gray container here:

It is a bit full already so I probably need to weed through these and/or find a new storage solution for them. I plan on using the beige container to hold upcoming worksheets and such for easy access. I’m thinking that instead of buying a planner for me I am going to enter all of the lessons and ideas into Homeschool Manager and then print off the weekly schedule to keep in my planning binder. Then I can just check off the lessons as we complete them.

I still need to grab a few binders for the kids so we can keep up with all of these fun lessons. I’m really gonna try to do better with their portfolios this year and add stuff to them on a more regular basis.

We have most of the supplies in that we’ve ordered and I’m sure that the UPS and Fed Ex guys will be so thankful for that. I do have a few things I’d like to order and some that I need to reorder because of a computer glitch earlier this week but we are pretty much set to start soon.

I plan to incorporate some of the other items we already have into the lessons as well.

I’m really trying to be as frugal as I can and use as much as we already have. We have a lot of DVDs and other items that will go along with several of the lessons I’ve looked through already. These have been accumulated over a period of years! A lot of these items have been purchased through Amazon and Lakeshore Learning.

I have ordered quite a bit through William’s scholarship so that I can try to spend more one on one time with in some areas. Some items will be used to try to motivate him to work a little bit more independently as well. William is really interested in these bags with the big books and puppets that I have hanging up. I’ll try to work one or two of those into our daily reading soon. I also have some books with CDs on order and hopefully they’ll be here soon so he can start using his reading center.

We’ve been so excited every time a package comes in the mail. It’s been a job getting everything organized over the past couple of weeks but I am so glad we toughed it out. We still have some areas to work on and I hope we can get to them sooner rather than later… babysteps, I know, one step at a time. There are still a few things to order and reorder because of a glitch in the system earlier this week.

Now even though we are doing a lot old school stuff I’ll still be adding in some new tech/STEM stuff like these items that we already have on the shelf:

I am working on a few lessons so I can include the younger kids as the Prairie Primer is intended for grades 3-7. I know most of the lessons can be adjusted for the little ones but they will need a little bit more one on one time with Momma too.

I am hoping to incorporate our Spielgaben set into some of these lessons. We purchased this several years ago and unfortunately have not used it as much as I wish we had. The past several months it has just been an expensive, very expensive dust collector… that’s gonna change though. This link here is the a similar set of items.

We will also be having some/most of the kids starting up square dance lessons for PE. I thought this would tie in really well with our theme. Mr. Awesome will be teaching the kids gun safety which was part of the study suggestions in the Prairie Primer. This reminds me that I need to check on a hunter safety course so I won’t have a ‘restricted’ hinting license this year.

I’ll also still let the kids have some free learning on the computers and tablets as we will be doing this curriculum for 4 days a week. One day will be for free learning, library, field trips, and catching up. The kids have been begging me to sign up for ABC Mouse again so I’ll probably do that later this week.

Talk about field trips, boy do I have some really good ideas. We are fortunate enough to be close to a few places that will tie into this theme really well. These are some of our family favorite places to visit. We haven’t taken Mr. Awesome and his boys yet but I think that will change here in the near future.

The kids always love to visit the Mill Creek Retirement Home for Horses. Admission is a bag of carrots so we always try to bring the biggest bag we can find. Horses tie into the theme as well, right? Even if they don’t we always get a lot of exercising in and the peopl are always so friendly and give us a lot of information.

Then the Morningside Nature Center is just a hop, skip, and jump or two from us and the kids really love going there. They explore the cabin, play with the old time toys, and feed the animals. The volunteers are always so helpful and answer any questions that the kids have as well. We usually have a picnic lunch afterwards right there near the farm.

There is also the Dudley Farm Historic State Park and many other sites that we will be exploring. These sites also offer a wide variety of activities like making yarn dolls, cane boils, festivals, and other recreations of life in the pioneer days. How can you not have fun?

Be sure to follow along with our blog so you too can join in our homeschool adventures as we travel back to the pioneer days and recreate some of the wonderful stories told by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We’ll be taking lots of pictures, maybe doing a few vlogs here and there, and sharing a lot of the resources that we have found with you. We’ll also share links and deals to specials that we come across too.

If you are interested in trying this out you can use any of the affiliate links I provided in this post to check out what we are using. I’ll try to make up a printable checklist of materials that we are using here soon and I’ll update this post as I can with new ideas so you may want to bookmark the page for future reference.

I also have a whole board on Pinterest, Homeschool: Little House On The Prairie Resources, dedicated to this year’s studies. Be sure to follow the board for updates on new pins that I find. I’ve been pinning for a few years now and should have a plethora of resources on there. I have also started a board with ideas for new studies based on different literature. I am not certain if those will pan out or not but I hope they do and I will share them in the future. If you have some favorite books that you think our family would enjoy please share them in the comments below.

What are you plans for the next year?

Happy Homeschooling

Now that I’ve pulled everything outta the tote I’ve got to find a place to store it!

Kirby’s Kids: Our 2018-2019 Homeschool Curriculum Reveal *This post does contain some affiliate links which help to support our blog and our family.

[tanmath3-blog]

Influenced by Stephen King and Rod Serling, Sean Seebach has written three books: A Looking in View, Autumn Dark and Our Monsters Are Real: The Pig Man. When Sean isn’t writing or managing a wonderful barbecue joint with amazing people, he enjoys reading, cooking, and listening to rock n’ roll. He currently lives in Ohio with his wife, daughter, and son.

  Please help me welcome Sean Seebach to Roadie Notes……..

  1. How old were you when you first wrote your first story? I was probably in elementary school. I created a comic book with some “cool dude” who just did “cool things”. Cool things being riding a skateboard and hitting home runs, things like that. The first story was one called Blue Collar Diesel which I later named The Lake Shimmers. It’s terrible. I wrote that when I was 34. So I took the title Blue Collar Diesel and wrote a novella that better suited the title. It’s in my collection A Looking In View.

2. How many books have you written? I have written three books: Our Monster Are Real: The Pig Man, Autumn Dark, and A Looking In View.

3. Anything you won’t write about? Probably not. I tend to stick to what is called Quiet Horror. Nothing too graphic or obscene. That’s not really by choice. The story is the boss. I just try to transcribe what’s happening in my head the best I can.

4. Tell me about you. Age (if you don’t mind answering), married, kids, do you have another job etc… I was born in Lancaster, PA in 1980, moved to Columbus, OH around ’82. It wasn’t the best part of town, so I wasn’t allowed to leave the yard. At the time it was a bummer. Later on I realized being confined to just the front and back yard forced me to use my imagination. I could do (and be) whatever I wanted: a spy, a ninja, a jungle warrior, whatever. Then in 1988 I moved to Lithopolis, Ohio, population around 600 people. There, I could explore the woods and creeks, ride my bike, and go to The Wagnalls Memorial Library, which still stands and became the cornerstone for my development as a reader. I did my first book signing there in May of this year. It was surreal. I am married to a wonderful wife who supports me in every aspect of life. We have a baby girl and a son who just turned 2. I work as a restaurant manager by day/night, depending on my work schedule. Next to writing, cooking and working with fun people is one of my favorite things to do. I’m a very fortunate man.

5. What’s your favorite book you have written? I should probably say Autumn Dark. That book has gotten the best response from readers. But, in truth, because The Pig Man was the first it will always be special to me. I love the story, but it isn’t written as well as the others. Which to me is a good thing because it shows that I’m improving.

6. Who or what inspired you to write? I don’t really know who or what inspired me to write. I think it chose me. I had a desire to write in my mid-20’s but I didn’t have the courage to do it. I thought you were either hand-picked by God or were chosen by teachers at a young age. Maybe it was writer, director, screen writer, producer, and occasional actor Brian Koppelman. I found him on Twitter shortly after I gave up drinking three years ago. He had posted a series of Vines on his account. Vine was a service that featured 6 second video loops. Brian was giving people permission to create in the videos he made. I looked him up, saw his credentials (Rounders, Ocean’s 13, Solitary Man, among many others) and thought “Now, here’s someone who’s done amazing things and is telling people to go out and do it!” There are many videos and books out there that will say you must be some sort of special intellectual to be an artist. Those people are wrong and most are full of themselves, are bitter, and most haven’t accomplished much. Brian had. Following him then led me to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I was fortunate enough to have support in the beginning. Stephen King tweeted that he had a new story called A Death in The New Yorker and asked folks to comment on it. It was on their site and free to read. I thought, “Oh boy, who has the balls to critique it?” So I scrolled through the Twitter comments. There I found someone shamelessly self-promoting herself with a story she wrote called Alive. I read it and loved it. That person was Meagan Smith who then wrote as M.J. Pack. I reached out to her and we became fast friends. Shortly after she was hired on at Thought Catalog, an online publishing magazine. She asked to read my stuff. I sent her a cannibalistic story called The Best I Ever Had. She liked it and wanted to publish it. That gave me the confidence to crank out more stories. I’ve been writing regularly ever since. I owe her a great deal. She was kind of enough to write the Foreword for Autumn Dark which I’m very proud of. I’d like to collaborate with her one day. She’s a fierce talent. Also, during that time, author Tom Callahan befriended me. I reached out to him after reading his wonderful story called The Soldier, The Dancer, and All That Glitters from Dark City Lights, an anthology put together by the great American crime fiction author Lawrence Block. Tom and I emailed back and forth a lot. He read my stuff and encouraged me to write, write, write! He gave me advice and recommended a slew of books about writing to read. I owe him a great deal. And I continue to find support to this day. Author Lincoln Cole and I have become close over the years and he’s helped me in many ways. From creating a website to building a mailing list to formatting my books for self-publishing to finding cover artist (and author) M.N. Arzu to promotional tactics. He’s a good man and I also owe him a great deal. Just recently I did an interview with author Armand Rosamilia , also owner of Project Entertainment Network, for the Armcast Podcast. I also was invited in a flash fiction contest along with authors Stephen Kozeniewski, Gabino Iglesias, and Justin Bienvenue. Three big names in the horror community. Book reviewer David Spell has been in my corner since day one and I had the fortunate opportunity to meet him in Naperville, IL during Stephen and Owen King’s tour stop for Sleeping Beauties. And, now, this interview. Thank you, Becky! I’d also like to mention that since I’ve begun listening (and advertising) on The Horror Show with Brian Keene, a podcast dedicated to the genre, I’ve met all kinds of great people: readers and authors alike. It’s opened the door to many authors I was ignorant to before. It’s also highly entertaining. But none of this would be happening without the support of my wife. She’s my first reader, my Annie Wilkes, and I still like to make her laugh and cringe, and when I do, I know I have something worth publishing.

7. What do you like to do for fun? Watch movies. This year has been great for them. IT, Gerald’s Game, The Dark Tower, Baby Driver, 68 Kill. I’m really looking forward to seeing I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday by writer/director Mike Lombardo. The World Premiere is happening in Columbus, OH on October 20th at 2p.m. at Nightmares Film Festival. I also recently went on a hike with a close friend. No internet, no social media. Just us and nature. It was awesome to not only spend time with him, but to also disconnect from the world for a few hours. It’s something we’ll be doing regularly, weather permitting. I run on a regular basis. It keeps the head clear and helps me cope with stress. I also like to cook, try new recipes, and eat. All with balance. Dessert is okay if it’s not for breakfast. Sometimes. The most fun I truly have is building blanket forts, going to the park, and reading to my son. He likes flip books and monsters and dinosaurs. We read Harold and The Purple Crayon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Little Blue Truck… Watching him develop has been the ultimate high for me. I recently bought a stack of books off Mike Lombardo. YA horror, Goosebumps, Eerie Indiana, that sort of thing, for my kids when they get older. Maybe they’ll dig them like I did.

8. Any traditions you do when you finish a book? I go to Starbucks inside of the Barnes and Noble in the town over from me and get a piece of Red Velvet Cheesecake (they sell Cheesecake Factory cheesecake) and a coffee. Then I daydream that thousands of people will rejoice in being so entertained by something I created! Then I get nervous and think my writing is garbage then I publish it anyway and buy ad space on the Horror Show.

9. Where do you write? Quite or music? I write in my office in our basement at a desk. I used to write everywhere but I found in approaching writing like a part-time job its best for me to have a designated place to work. Like, I’m clocking in for the day! Time to go downstairs and get busy. I do write to music. I have a writing playlist on Spotify with four composers: Chad Lawson (who creates music for the Lore podcast), Lena Natalia, Danny Elfman, and most recently, Jon Hopkins. Most of it is classical. I get too distracted when I write to music with lyrics. There’s a Twin Peaks playlist on Spotify that I sometimes put on as well.

10. Anything you would change about your writing? The only thing I would change about my writing is improving it. Early next year I’ll be attending the Borderlands Press Writer’s Bootcamp in Maryland. I’m also reading How To Write Short by Roy Peter Clark. Once I’m finished with The Dark Tower Series, I’m going to start reading all the authors I’ve discovered from The Horror Show. One, for entertainment and, two, I think it’s good to read books by authors from different backgrounds. It gives the mind a new perspective on the world and offers a different voice, a different way to tell a story.

11. What is your dream? Famous writer? From a writing perspective, my dream is to become a full-time writer. As Brian Keene describes it, the main source of income. Now that I’m 37, the dream is to live long days upon the Earth (Dark Tower reference) with my wife and for us to raise our children to be loving, caring, responsible adults who follow their passion. Famous writer? No. Keep the fame. But I’ll gladly accept huge royalty checks!

12. Where do you live? A small town in Ohio. Surprise!

13. Pets? One dog, Chloe. She’s a German Shepherd. We took her in after my mother-in-law passed on. She’s great with the kids and patient with us.

14. What’s your favorite thing about writing? There’s a moment when I transcend into a story. The more I write, the more that happens. I’ll go back and polish what I wrote the previous day, sometimes not remembering certain lines that I had written. Sometimes I find myself next to the characters, oblivious to my surroundings. Sounds crazy (maybe it is) but it’s true. Writing makes me feel alive, as cliché as that sounds. It enriches my life. Also, one of the most rewarding things about it is when someone reaches out to tell you much they appreciated something you’ve created. That’s special. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s very touching.

15. What is coming next for you? A book called An American Monster. I won’t get into details because it’s not finished. I’m superstitious and if you’ve read anything I’ve ever wrote then you’ll know that I need all the luck I can get.

  You can connect with Sean Seebach here:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sean-Seebach/e/B01CUT2JMK

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seanAseebach/

Website: https://www.amazon.com/Sean-Seebach/e/B01CUT2JMK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1507564303&sr=8-1

Twitter: @seebach_sean

  Some of Sean Seebach’s books:

  For more on the people I’ve mentioned, here are links to their work: Meagan Smith (M. J. Pack) https://www.amazon.com/M.J.-Pack/e/B00O5APGTQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1507563809&sr=8-1 Tom Callahan https://www.amazon.com/Dark-City-Lights-York-Stories-ebook/dp/B00USBMIMY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507563913&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+city+lights Brian Koppelman (no link. Just watch Billions on Showtime!) Lincoln Cole https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Cole/e/B00AUIOU3A/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507564263&sr=8-2-ent M.N. Arzu https://www.amazon.com/M.-N.-Arzu/e/B013C7XY6O/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507563985&sr=1-2-ent Armand Rosamilia https://www.amazon.com/Armand-Rosamilia/e/B004S48J6G/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507564017&sr=1-2-ent Stephen Kozeniewski https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kozeniewski/e/B00FFLC5Y8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507564054&sr=1-2-ent Gabino Iglesias https://www.amazon.com/Gabino-Iglesias/e/B00AEBI0T8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507564085&sr=1-2-ent Justin Bienvenue https://www.amazon.com/Justin-Bienvenue/e/B072F3QYGW/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1507564119&sr=1-2-ent David Spell https://thescaryreviews.com/ Sean Seebach https://www.amazon.com/Sean-Seebach/e/B01CUT2JMK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1507564303&sr=8-1 Getting personal with Sean Seebach Influenced by Stephen King and Rod Serling, Sean Seebach has written three books: A Looking in View, Autumn Dark and Our Monsters Are Real: The Pig Man.

[allsortsotings]

Peñella y Pandenis

It’s been about three weeks now since I last updated. Perhaps because the pace of life has been more fast, but arguably because it has slowed down. I feel the need more to write when stressed, frantic or in waves of mania than when calm and relaxed. It’s said that the greatest art comes from depression, which might account for the radio silence in times of peace.

After Andreas’ we found a workaway in a tiny village called Peñella. We got the train from Novellana which had a quaint old waiting house and a big field of grass and daisies which allowed me to do yoga for half an hour whilst Nik went to buy lunch of pan, plátanos y naranjas. The train cost about €7 each and was an excursion in itself. Ubiquitous sights of mountains, rivers, fields and farms passed us as we headed to Infiesto.

On arrival we were greeted by the curly headed Maya; a delightful five year old with a wobbly tooth and a love of attention. Maybe I recognised some of my younger self in her which is why I often enjoyed playing with her more than partaking in the serious grown up chats/ ‘adult moments of silence’. We talked truffles over a litre of sidra and some crisps: Adam has started a truffle plantation in some flattish land - as flat as you can find on a foothill - and needs them to be constantly weeded in order to grow and produce.

It’s a big plan: the truffle trees will act as a working farm, in order to get planning permission for a barn in which Adam and his family can live. They currently reside in a beautiful self built house on the hillside with lots of crafted wood and amazing views. But! You say. Cultivating truffle trees? Impossible!

Yea, but nay. Adam’s trees came from a man in Barcelona who impregnates other tree types, in this case the ‘holly oak’ with truffle inoculations, then ships them out to customers. It’s surprisingly consistent work, due to the rapidity of the weeds’ growth. The trees however, are relatively low maintenance, almost cactus-like in their ability to withstand drought and lack of water for up to one year. With the all-sun or all-rain weather in Asturias, it’s perfect.

At Adam and Naomi’s we stayed in their old festival truck which was used for the Tiny Tea Tent (holla Glastonbury, WOMAD, etc), until he four children came and the new, improved Tiny Tea Truck was born. Complete with bunk beds, bath and pull-down bed.

The truck we stayed in was parked permanently on the truffle field, with a balcony built around the front and covered by eight year old willow trees. The view of the mist and the mountains at sunrise was quite mystical. We loved staying there. It had a gas stove, wood burner, sink, shelving, storage, dining area, and could still be opened up at the back so one could watch the sunset whilst hanging off the rear eating dinner, if one so wished.

Our cupboards were reasonably filled as part of the volunteering agreement which sparked the idea of masterchef style invention tests using what we were given. Arancini balls, aubergine parmigiana, fishcakes, hummus, kidney bean curry, peaches with granola and homemade yoghurt were some of the plates produced under the restrictions (in the loosest sense of the word).

On this note, we got really into food whilst there, even though we are always into food, but more so. On a special level. Something seemed to provoke an excitement in me to create and experiment with different dishes and tastes.

I say ‘something’ when knowing without a doubt that it was our celebratory trip to Los Llaureles; the gourmet ten course restaurant experience we went to for our anniversary (!!!). This was my first ever anniversary in life and I was greatly pleased to be spending it eating ten courses of food on the mountainside.

The dishes were (as named by us):

Honey Spoon Agave, mascarpone, almond cinnamon crisp

Laksa Miso broth, vermicelli, seafood

Mushrooms Date paste, creamy shrooms, salmon, cheese

Foetus Chicken shaped dough ball in an eggshell filled with clear garlic soup

Bao Bun Fish, apple gel, mayo

Croquette Brûléed whipped goats cheese stuffed date

Bitter Salad Mango, spinach, peanut sauce

Merluza Con mayo, rosemary, black sesame

Chia Seed Vanilla soy, mango, papaya, almond cinnamon crisp

Woman in a Gold Dress Wallflower: sponge, creme Catalan, Valencian meringue helado. Needed a ruby goji berry twist!!

So to sum up the food was fantastic.

During this time I was also awakened to the incomprehensible stress of being a full-time Mother: where is the time?

Seeing another person constantly so dutiful and aware and organised was slightly mind blowing. It’s clear to see that the children are unaware of any stress effects of this, and it made me realise how much you can take for granted as a child. I tried to help out and play with the kids and ask them stimulating questions, etc, but its nothing compared to the generally under-awarded gallantry of getting kids up in the morning; taking them to school; making food that everyone eats; keeping up with homework; cleaning; nurturing and getting again to bed at a reasonable time to do it all over again tomorrow. Life runs away quickly when it’s paced like this.

We were lucky to finish weeding at 2pm, amble up to the house for lunch, and amble back down for a leisurely dinner or stroll into Torazo. It’s not unusual to finish work at this time in Spain, which is definitely something I love. Work hard in the morning with high brain activity, eat slowly and generously during lunch, then relax into a siesta, a walk or reading for the rest of the evening. It feels like there’s more time in the day, and that its use is efficient.

We drank beer, sidra or wine most days with food. One Thursday after a smaller lunch we paired Asturian cheeses with Rioja, become progressively merrier as the mealtime went on. Food feels so good after manual labour, so much so that I’ve come to lose the same appetite without it.

Tea breaks feel like real, restorative rests. I’ve come to appreciate a range of biscuits and their dunking abilities. The pleasure of a black tea with milk is something inextricably linked with outdoor work. Read: builder’s brew.

We spent just under two weeks at the truffle plantation, it was a lovely time for reading and cooking. I finished 1984 which was one that has been on my list for virtually ever. So poignant. May save interpretations for another time.

Adam & Naomi know a small network of fellow ecoprojects and helpex/workaway hosts, so on our last Sunday we made a convenient switchover to El Toral with Liz & Steve via a barbecue. It was one of those moments where you’re glad of however life brought you to that moment. More mountains, hills, wooden decking overlooking a sheep field, delicious food and interesting people.

There was a man named Klas who makes stone masonry fires - they’re this amazing way of making the most out of heat energy by sending all the stuff through big metal pipes which are covered usually with clay. It’s a thousand+ year old technique but for whatever reason they’re relatively uncommon in Europe despite being incredibly efficient. They take a long time to build and are reasonably expensive but they last pretty much forever. Traditionally a family home will be built around one as the main pole of the house. Steve is reading a lot about their construction and kicking himself for not building one originally, as wood collection is a constant job here.

At the BBQ we also some girls doing English teaching in Coruna which which seems like a good thing/idea. Sort of considered it but the year is quite a commitment and after speaking to Liz freelance teaching seems like a good option. A one-to-one thing with locals for an hour or so.

Liz & Steve’s is a place currently focussed on hosting guests in la cabana (the guesthouse) and the blue rainbow caravan. We sleep in a little box attached to their old caravan, wher Hugo currently resides, in a field shared with some lovely orange cows. Hugo is a talented guitarist from Madrid who has been here for half a month.

We met on the Sunday and quite quickly entered inspiring philosophical conversation. We talk about literature, ideas, music and feelings. Nik and I were immediately pleased to be chilling with him for the duration of the stay. We take it in turns to cook dinner and eat overlooking the field, the stars above us and the moon sometimes hidden by the clouds.

No topic is bounded and the other day we did a creative activity which involved taking ten minutes to draw what we visualised when imagining the superego. All three were distinct and different. And of course, in true Freudian style, in some way interpretable as phallic.

The week here has fast gone by. Starting with cleaning the chicken coop and laying down straw and manure to enrich the garden soil, ending by cooking a banquet of roast sumac cauliflower with squash, red onion, apricot and black olive tagine, spicy onion rice, mustard leaf zhoug, tahini sauce and walnut tzatziki. We eat really well here. Liz is a fantastic cook and Steve goes by the ‘Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall approach’, which is nothing to complain about.

Always a bowl piled with fresh garden greens, a hot pasta or salad and fresh bread with olive oil. Food is something they may endeavour to move onto when more comfortably in the swing of bnb work. Yesterday there was a double booking which meant convincing one party to sleep in the Mongolian yurt. As a team we somehow went from empty field to fully furnished round sleeping house with wooden steps and concrete paving (Nik’s toil). Everything inside is painted and embossed beautifully, with purple curtains behind the bed and various fabrics from Steve’s travels to Turkey and Tibet sparkling around the walls and floor. Luckily, we may have to sleep in it next Wednesday to make room for a new volunteer.

Next week we’re heading to Bilbao to get some respite before embarking on a new adventure: Classroom Alive. It’s a one week boot camp in Barcelona with the aim to plan a journey from 2 - 6 months by foot with rucksacks and tents, learning in a classroom-style format for half the day, then walking for the rest of it to the next destination. It sounds crazy and I’m excited to see what it will bring. If anyone is interested, let me know!

For now, it’s raining, but we’re not going to let that deter us from our Easter Saturday trip to Nava’s sidra museum. Hopefully there will be samples.