#small rough sketches i can't really do anything with

[spectrearia]

for as much as i keep reblogging posts about writing and my personal thoughts on it (eg: going on about how i gotta just write what i want and have fun etc), it's incredible that i haven't been able to lay a single word down in any WIP doc for so long now

[castlebyersafterdark]

yes mikes an ass guy, but he's also very much a thigh guy

(A day at the lake. And later that night.)

Mike can't believe his luck sometimes, as he watches Will from across the grass. That's his best friend, the love of his life. Sweet. With the capacity to snap a cutting remark, to tease and twist words with an ease, an art. He always says Mike's the one good with words, but so often Will leaves him speechless, breathless. Now is one of those moments. He can't get over it. Will's standing by the picnic table, leaned over the old wood as he flips through his sketch book, glancing through his work from the morning so far. The pages are full of interesting trees along the lake and some sketches of the old abandoned dock, but mostly Mike. All of his sketchbooks are littered with Mike. He's wearing his green shorts. Tight, lined with yellow piping. Barely covering the curve of his ass. Showing off the thickness of his tanned thighs. They're a little shorter than he'd normally wear, but this section of the lake is isolated. They're alone. That's the point. And Will likes to tease. He knows Mike loves to watch him.

He's well aware that he's being observed as Mike struggles to set up their tent for their impromptu camping trip. It's nice to sneak away, find time for themselves. A little hidden slice of the world, away from crowded houses and an escape from basements and bedrooms and the cramped backseat of Mike's car. None without merit, but none provide freedom. It'll be different when they leave for college at the end of the summer. For now, the lake. Will leans further against the slightly broken wood of the picnic table and imagines the eyes that are burning into the back of his legs. He shifts his hips. He never used to feel this confident. Everything about being with Mike leaves little room for anything else lately. It's addicting. Will hums and chuckles to himself, not having heard the hammer against tent peg for a while now. How long until Mike snaps?

Not long.

Mike's on him moments later, arms around his waist, lifting Will off the ground breifly in a somewhat possessive hug before dropping him back down. Will adores when he does that, makes him feel wanted and loved. Mike laughs into his neck and presses kisses where the sound touches first. Firm, but soft. Humming into his slightly sweaty skin from the summer heat. It's the reason why he's wearing so very little to begin with. Mike lost his shirt first, and his bare chest presses against Will's own slick back as wandering hands trail from hips up his sides, fingers gentle before they fall dramatically to his ass, giving him a rough squeeze as he bites at the back of his neck. Will involuntarily squeaks from the sudden motion and spins around, pinching Mike in the side in retaliation. Mike squirms but then brackets Will against the table once more, hips pinned to hips.

"You are ridiculous," Will chides with a fondness so deep from within, and leans up to steal a kiss. Can't really steal what's freely given, but he steals another, too.

"Hmm, title belongs to you. These shorts, Will. I swear you do this on purpose."

"Of course, I do. What am I doing, though?"

Mike hopes he doesn't fuck this up, and take the risk. He scoops Will up, arms under his legs, and deposits him on the table. The old table groans under his added weight. Will immediately winds his arms around Mike's neck, legs around his body, and draws him back in, mouth hot against his own.

"Distracting me," Mike says into his mouth, kissing him open and biting, bottom lip between his teeth, pulling away to press several small kisses to his upper lip and the mole that resides right above it. "Tent's never gonna get built at this rate."

"We have time."

Will wraps his legs around Mike's hips tighter and traps him close. Not needed. In no world would Mike try to get away. He places his hands on those thighs and feels the smooth skin under his palms, drags his fingers through downy hair and teases along that yellow edge of the flimsy fabric.

"Maybe if you'd help me," he squeezes the supple flesh, like his large hands are mapping and molding it to his satisfaction, "it would get done quicker."

"I wouldn't really know what I'm doing," Will adds with a flirtatious lilt, and scoots closer, barely contained on the edge of the table.

Mike's weight keeps him sitting, pressed together from chest to groin. His feet are crossed at the ankle, behind Mike's own legs. His thighs clench around Mike's body and he gets another deep, lingering kiss for his efforts. Sitting like that, Will still has to look up a few inches to see Mike eye to eye. They pull apart with a wet noise, and Will beams, chin on Mike's chest as he squints up. The sun is behind Mike's head. It's hard to look at him directly. Will nuzzles into his chest, kisses a slow line down the center of his pecs until he can't lower his head further. His mouth drags lightly up the path in reverse. Mike's breath catches. Will's thighs tense again as Mike slips his hands briefly down the back of his shorts, kneading once and bring him closer still.

"You know what you're doing. You absolutely know what you're doing."

"Fine. Have it your way." Will pushes forwards suddenly and lands on the grass, bare feet hitting the ground. "Let's build it."

He trots over to the half dilapidated tent and shoots a look over his shoulder to Mike, left standing with whiplash.

---

An hour or so later, full of bickering and little arguments laced with laughter, and more distracted bouts of handsy grab-ass and traded kisses - the tent was secure along the tree line. One less thing to worry about. Mike's next worry is finding the self control to not immediately pounce on his tempting, unfairly hot boyfriend currently tanning by the water's edge. He's laying on his towel, fresh from a quick dip in the lake. He'd neglected to change into swimwear and the green shorts are dark with water and cling to every curve, leaving nothing to the imagination, basically painted onto his skin. Will's head is pillowed on his arms and his satisfied grin rivals the laziest cat, stretched along a cherished sun spot. Mike shakes his head. Ridiculous. Genuinely ridiculous. How is this his life?

He's recruited to help apply sunscreen as Will tans and the game continues. Doesn't know what he's doing, psssh. He knows. He's cruel. He's so fucking sweet. Mike gets to run his hands freely over Will's body and he wants nothing more to pull the shorts off entirely, press him into the grass and dirt and embrace the primal side that flares up from deep within from time to time. Take what he wants, given willingly. Will feigns innocence but he shifts against the ground and spreads his legs just enough to make Mike's voice catch in his throat at the sight. When Mike's finished with his back, he turns to Will's legs. Traces the toned length of them with his hands again, rubbing in the white lotion until it blends into his skin, leaving them shiny and smooth and so nice to map, again and again. He doesn't need that much sunscreen, the sun's on the descent anyway. Doesn't stop Mike from applying more lotion to his hands and passing across the smooth backs of Will's thighs again, tracing the soft inner portions that the sun wouldn't even hit, carding up the flesh that's slightly clammy from the cool lake water, ass perky and softer still under the edges of those shorts. Will adjusts yet again and dips his back slightly, an exaggerated curve as he lifts back against Mike's wandering hands. Will moans into his arms and Mike flops down next to him.

"Mmmm, Mike. Why'd you stop? Felt really nice." His gentle complaint is borderline a whine.

"Because I don't think I could stop myself if I kept going." Mike stretches out, and mimics his position. "Rain check for later."

"What happens later?" Will teased. He loved riling Mike up. It was so easy. He faked a yawn, not his best performance but it did the trick. "Feeling kinda sleepy. Might turn in early tonight."

"Are you kidding!? That's the whole reason we came out here!"

Will let out a laugh at Mike's gentle outrage. Like he genuinely could resist him, either.

"The whole reason? Maybe I just wanted to work on my tan. Mission accomplished."

"Oh, that's right. Of course. And having me put the tent up was just for your sick amusement to watch me struggle."

"I needed something to entertain me."

"I love you but I'll throw you back in the lake. No hesitation."

Will cracks an eye open and smiles, expression a challenge, a dare. It's not taken. Mike moves close, sides pressed together as he inches across the edge of the towel that Will's hogging. Their feet kick together as they lay on their stomachs next to the lake, soaking up the remaining sun rays in late afternoon. Will pouts, not unhappy, but willing Mike to read his mind instead of genuinely asking for a kiss. He's too content to make the effort to move and strain his neck. Mike complies immediately and cranes over, gives him a wet peck before falling back onto his own arms.

They tease each other and lay close until the cicadas start singing, having talked through the early stages of sunset. Times like that, they forget how easy it is to lose track of time and get lost in one other, conversation flowing as easy as the summer breeze. There was no rush. Not for the moment.

---

Will's back arches as Mike touches him again, hand dipped under the hem of his shorts, slightly uncoordinated as he groped at his clothed cock while he mouths hungrily and presses kisses to the inside of his thighs. Theyre spread out inside the tent, sprawled over sleeping bags and illuminated by lantern light. Will gasps as Mike's teeth graze his skin again, biting and kissing and biting again, sucking bruises into the soft, pale parts of Will's inner thighs. He loves marking him up, seeing the reminders bloomed under his skin the next time he buries his face between Will's thighs. Hickies rarely have enough time to fade before Mike revisits them. Will's the artist out of the two of them but Mike takes pride in the colors he paints on such beautiful skin.

"Mike, Mike. Please. Here," Will begs and guides Mike's hand from out of the bottom of his shorts to where he's shoved them slightly down and pulled himself out, hot and hard and leaking with needy attention.

He loves the teasing, the harsh kisses and teeth embedded in his skin, but he's been pent up since the picnic table. Worse off than Mike's desperation. Mike needs no further instruction and seals his lips around Will's exposed length and sucks him down, bobbing and moaning as Will whines high and breathy underneath him. He slides his hands under Will's shorts again, both palms splayed wide against his cheeks, tugging his body closer as he sucks him. Will's thighs tighten as he feels the pleasure building, pressure threatening sooner than he'd like. It had been a long, teasing day. And Mike was relentless. Will comes down his throat, thighs so tight around Mike's head at the peak that the sounds he makes are muffled as plush muscles hold tight to his ears. Mike loves how Will sounds lost in pleasure and misses them. But, the night's still young.

"Holy shit, Mike. Get up here."

Mike crawls over his body, hovering above as they exchange a kiss, sloppy presses of tongue and lips as they share the taste of Will's release. Will inclines on his elbows and pulls away, smirking as he reaches a hand down to palm at the pronounced bulge in Mike's underwear.

"Loved that, but I meant bring me this," he teases, stroking the shape of him through the fabric, fingers lingering on the outline of the head where he's so wet and sensitive. Mike groans, mouth falling open at the feeling, eyes fluttering shut as Will tries to work down the boxer briefs one handed.

"Will. God, hmm, fuck. Ok." He takes a breath, takes the plunge, and asks, "Can I try something else?"

"What do you want to do?"

Blushing in the low light, he asks Will to turn over. He complies, allows himself to be moved and positioned how Mike wants him. Face pillowed on elbows, chest flat, ass raised. It's still a little weird, still a little vulnerable when Mike asks him to turn over like this, but he trusts him. He always makes him feel good, feel wanted. They've been trying a few things, explored with tongue and fingers a few times. He's still so shy, almost embarrassed by his pleasure. But Mike gets him through it. Mike always takes care of him.

Mike's got his hands on him again, always grabbing him like he doesn't quite know what to do with all that skin, with the permission to feel up all that pliable flesh. Will's heart races as he let's himself be played with, still finding it thrilling that Mike desires his body in such a way that he doesn't even know where to start with him. He jolts as a hand comes down hard on him, palm loud against his right cheek. The sting is lessened by the fabric, but with little recovery as Mike follows with his mouth, delovering a moan and a bite. Will can't help but giggle into his arms as Mike traces down the seam of the shorts, dragging his finger over his approximation of his hole, lingering a moment. He's correct and Will whimpers. Mike doesnt know what he wants, but he wants. They haven't done that yet but he wants to. They haven't really talked about it yet. Not in detail.

"You look so good like this, baby. So good. Don't even know," Mike begins to ramble as he gets up on his knees and presses his aching cock to the clothed swell of Will's ass, sliding fabric to fabric.

The friction is nice. Skin would be better. Being inside would be otherworldly, he knows it. Not yet. Not tonight. His mind swirls with ideas, though. He works them down and pulls off his briefs, completely bare while Will remains in those tight green shorts. Mike pushes at the fabric, watches as it clings to skin as he moves it higher and exposes the bottom curves of Will's ass, so incredibly soft. He presses forward, cock hard and hot against the inside of Will's bare thighs. Will doesn’t know if he wants to close his thighs or spread them. He doesn't know what Mike's thinking.

"Wanna fuck you. So bad, baby." Will's voice catches in his throat at the deep reverb of the statement, unsure how to respond. There's the clarification. He doesn't know what to say. It's the first time he's heard it so blatantly from Mike. "Can I? You can keep these on."

He snaps the elastic band of the shorts against Will's waist, where he's pushed them to ride up in want of exposing more ass and thigh. Will groans in confused arousal as Mike's cock slips against him again, barely more than a passing caress against his own trapped dick, rapidly filling up again under the intense attention.

"Mike? What? I don't... I'm not sure I'm ready to, you know. Go all the way right now?"

He feels embarrassed as he says it, red faced buried in his own arms. Mike leans over his back, presses reassuring kisses to his heated face and neck, the parts he can reach, and wraps his arms around him in a soothing, grounding embrace.

"I know. Me either. I kinda want to try something. I don't even know if it'll work." He kisses Will on parted lips once he turns his head to the side. The angle's awkward but he can't move away until he really kissed him. "Do you trust me?"

"I do."

"Cool. Here." He hold his hand out, under Will's mouth. "Spit."

Will does it without really questioning it, something deep within him churning with strange arousal at complying immediately to the odd request. Mike does the same, lets his saliva join before wrapping his wet hand around his cock, spreading his palm along his length. It's all he's got to ease the way, but he doesn't think he'll need much.

He presses forward, cock sliding between the channel of Will's thighs. As he moves, he pushes them closer together, trapping his cock between the supple skin, thrusting slowly to test, in and out. He moans low in his throat. It's so fucking good. Oh. Will understands with a thrill, and instinctively closes his thighs tighter, muscles tense as Mike fucks him, clock slipping hot between his skin slick with sweat and spit. Not what he was expecting. But he likes this. A lot. Mike's hands seem enormous as they grip his hips and alternate between holding him firm and steady, or slamming him back harder to meet careful thrusts.

"You could have taken my shorts off. I'm ok with it," Will says as Mike holds his hips even tighter. The band is digging in his skin, sure to leave a deep impression from the sheer strength of the grip Mike has on him. He hopes it bruises.

"That's okay. Like them on you."

"What is it with you and these shorts?"

"You've seen yourself. No way you're this clueless. Haunted me for years, ohhh."

The word years rattles around in his brain as Mike falters in rhythm, barely registering as he's pushed further into the sleeping bags, shoved flat as Mike pulls out of his thighs and finishes hot against his back with a strained, stuttering moan. Another first. Will liked that, too.

Mike flops down beside him, a repeat of their positions earlier by the lake. Out of breath and feeling a little awkward, Mike watches Will's expression, unsure what to say after his little adventure.

"Was that ok? I don't know what came over me. Kinda weird, I guess."

"Well," Will started with a light sigh, mirth quirking the corner of his lips. He brushes the sweaty strings of hair from Mike's forehead. "At least I know who came over me, though."

Mike stared at him, mouth agape, as Will turned his face into his arm and laughed quietly with embarrassed glee.

"Holy shit, Will. Wow. Wow." Will continued to laugh, but turned in his arms, exposing one eye to take in Mike's expression, full of fond disbelief. "Uncalled for, hate you so much."

"No you don't," Will sing-songed.

Mike leaned in and pressed a loud, smacking kiss to his equally sweaty forehead. "Yup. Guilty. Huuuuge liar. I fucking love you. You're incredible. Are you... sure that was ok? I mean -"

"Mike. It was great. Kinda loved it, to be honest. And I love you, too. We should lose the shorts next time, though."

"Fine. I guess."

"Can you maybe take them off me now? You didn't, um, didn't get it all on me."

"Yeah. I know," Mike admitted with the audacity to appear bashful at the admittance.

"Gross."

"Yeah well, you liked it."

"True." He sat up, grimacing at the feeling of cooled, drying come on his back, and was struck with an idea. "Hey. The lake's right there. If you want to..."

"Yes. Hell yes. Bucket list item!"

"Skinny dipping is a bucket list item?"

"Totally. Let's go."

He was out of tent and half way to the lake before Will could even ditch the shorts quickly enough for him to finally see him out of them.

✅️ ✅️ ✅️

[son1c]

i'm thinking so deeply about my sonic prime au... of course, sonic and the boscage crew succeed at their little game of hacky sack. sonic catches the shard right as he grabs hold of shadow's hand and they both get zapped out of there. the prism shard falls to the forest floor and the megaflora is FURIOUS at they lost their precious "gift"... their rapacious roar follows him out into the void, but it's already over. they can't reach him or shadow anymore. as the two of them pass through the gate to no place, sonic curls around shadow (who hasn't moved or said a word) while their momentum sends them into a free fall.

in an awesome moment of coincidence, there just so happens to be a small wooden skiff floating empty in the vast sea below them. sonic manages to point himself and shadow toward it, and they're able to get on board (though sonic basically had to drag shadow's limp body over the side). the boat is in pretty rough shape, with seaweed growing over the bow and a strong sense that no one has used it in many years. but it still floats, and that's better than treading water, so sonic is grateful.

sonic hasn't let go of shadow. they're both sitting in the boat, but shadow has this dead-eyed stare to him that freaks sonic the fuck out. he saved him, right? they're in a totally different world now, so the plants can't get to him anymore... right? well, yeah. that much is true. but after spending weeks under their green thumb, shadow's not unchanged.

behind that blank stare, shadow is waiting for the plants to tell him what to do. but it's so deafeningly quiet that it unnerves him. it wakes him up. slowly, he comes to his senses. and that's when he asks sonic if he's free and those sketches i made take place. after being forced to work and move and fight nonstop for those weeks by the plants, shadow is exhausted. he's finally free... and that means he can finally rest.

and sonic could wake him up. he could be like, well, i'm happy you're back, but we gotta save the universe NOW... but he's already fucked up once by ignoring his friends. he already destroyed the universe once by being hasty. so, he doesn't do that. and he lets shadow sleep as the little boat rocks softly on the waves...

i think shadow wakes up first. and for a minute, he's back to that almost catatonic state like, he's suffering from Plant Withdrawal(TM) or something. but then the disgust settles in and he snaps out of it again. finally, he remembers where he is and who he's with and he's able to take in, for the first time, just how BEAT UP sonic is. because it was no east task fighting through a whole jungle of killer plants just to save him. and ofc sonic wouldn't show it... he's tough... but shadow can see with his eyes that he's injured.

so he uses his chaos powers to help sonic heal. and when sonic wakes up he feels really good, and can see the last of the glow fading from shadow as his powers recede. and he understands without words that that was his "thank you."

but yeah, i wanted them to be alone for this so they could have a cinematic moment where the sunrise is coming over the vast sea, and they have a little handshake of understanding, and sonic grins his wide determined grin and things finally look like they're gonna start getting Better. like maybe they Can do this. now that they're working together. now that shadow understands that sonic truly regrets his mistake and is willing to do ANYTHING in order to fix it... which sonic proved by nearly destroying himself to save shadow. yk? i just think it really works.

[casteliacityramen]

Dev Post - Workshop

From concept to end, this is a breakdown of how I did this plot post.

Concepting

This is when I put my thoughts onto paper. Each line in [brackets] is a drawing, followed by text.

Rough Rough Drafts

Dialogue is revised, with each line as its own bubble. Descriptive text in the brackets is cleaned up a little. The thumbnails become sketches, with references getting added to each drawing to make life easier for me later

The order of pictures also got revised. This is where I noticed that I wanted a certain "beat" or "rhythm" to my drawings. This is where two more thumbnails are added and the images are swapped

Sketch/Lining

This is where it gets time consuming--getting the right angles I want. This is where references photos get stretched or warped. This is also when I bust out sketchfab to find 3d models so I can find decent angles.

The "items in motion" was so difficult to me because I simply didn't get it. It took a lot of studying Hajime no Ippo and with some help by the mods of askdeoxys and light-of-unova (I don't feel like tagging them I don't think they'd be interested in this long write up lol). The end process involved duplicating the line layer, saving one in case I fuck up, and erasing/hatching the line layer in the direction of the movement.

A lot of the choreography advice was taken from here, which is a FANTASTIC write up of how to show someone getting punched. This entire page was re-done after reading and interpreting the timing.

This part was a challenge because I wanted to tackle two things I struggle with--fights and backgrounds. Eventually, I had to settle on a style, so i started with the outside shot to get a feel for what kind of colors I wanted to use for this post

Originally, I wanted to go with a yellow/black color contrast, but I couldn't get it to look right. So, I settled on a dark blue / dark blue background combo that matches the overall vibe I've had so far in the rest of my blog

Stuff like distant lights was a little challenging, but I found a brush and altered/stretched/cut items where it looked fine and moved on. I really liked the pinkish light spilling out from the ground, and it set the tone for the rest of the post.

God, even an angle like this was difficult, especially since perspective never feels right until you reach the "ah hah!" moment that's at the end of the process. There's a lot of little things like the direction of the steps and how it would look going down and make sure it didn't look like you were looking up.

ONE THING that I really liked to use throughout this process was a "stamp" brush so I can keep my character proportional, because I didn't want to have him look too tall or too short so I used a stamp brush.

It's hilarious.

After the backgrounds, the order of drawings that got finished next were in order of difficulty. This was when I decided on a lighting vibe.

These colors are striking on their own, but I thought it was a bit too stark of a contrast and it made my lines disappear, so I duplicated my lighting layer and Gaussian blurred the hell out of it and turned it into an "add" layer

Colors

I have this thing: I try to find a way to make it easier to do a monochrome post, but end up doubling/tripling my work process where it'd be easier if I used regular flats... I can't say that I don't like the end result. If anything, I love it. But man, was it time consuming.

Since the pink layer was duplicated, it was both my coloring and shadow layer, which was too time consuming. I think I'm going to be doing stuff like this sparingly, even though I really enjoy the lighting.

This took the longest amount of time, so long that I forgot to take meaningful screenshots throughout the process! Oops.

Final Touches

Small items like "wait, there's supposed to be a small crowd" were added last minute!

I decided to bump the light up to a harsh degree. Arguably, the one on the left is easier on the eyes, but I didn't want that. I wanted this to be up in your face. I wanted this to hurt.

Other edits include some sparks/electricity in the closeup with Aila's dad. I thought about extending his leg past the frame, especially it'd symbolically make sense because Aila's dad is literally pushing him down, but it looked awkward. I settled for a spark going over the border, instead.

For my favorite page, I added a background shot of some moving lights were added afterwards. I thought it'd be too jarring to move from locker room straight to the apartment.

It's also a fun throwback! I thought it'd be fitting to have him symbolically lower, yet again. This time, he really knows that he's staring at rock bottom. He's actively looking down, watching the shadow he casts gets swallowed up by what awaits him below.

This was a LOT OF FUN! But man, if I work on something for too long, I think to myself: "Is this too much? Am I pushing my characters too far down the misery hole?" And I'd start second guessing the entire post as I'm making it. I had to learn to take that voice and shove it in a locker.

I decided upon the "self harm" content warning because... well, it is. The imagery doesn't match what's typically shown in media, and a part of me thinks that the content warnings are overkill, especially since it's not explicit. I thought I'd play it safe.

However, it's also a meta way for me, the author, to tell you that this is Jack actively hurting himself. The act of purposely losing a fighting match is an act of self loathing and self destructive behavior.

I hope you found this interesting!

Time Spent from start to finish: 2 weeks Time spent working those 2 weeks: ~ 5 sessions, each varying from 2 to 5 hours

[a-s-levynn]

Okay so the tags all day under my high water small offering genuinly made me super emotional..

I don't know if anyone would be interested in it seeing almost step by step while i ramble about it a bit? But i did it anyway. I'm missing a lot of stages because i wasn't planning to do something like this. I'm not even completely sure why i scanned some of the steps to be honest. But at least you can see some of the progression of it?

Anyway if any of you is interested in it i put a rundown under the cut. Also the obligatory measuring tape/ruler shots at the end of it, because yes i've seen those tags as well. Spoiler for those who understandably do not want to chew through my pointless ramblings: yes, it is fairly small.

Disclaimer: It's long and rambly, you have been warned

Just to preface this: this is not advice on art because i can't give you that. If you ask me how i do stuff i can tell you but beyond that i'm useless. This is just for funzies.

Okay so i don't have the step with sketching Vessel, but you still can see some of what is left from his torso and head and spine-line under the cloack. Maybe even traces of the right arm connecting to the torso.

When i draw figures, i usually start out with a line for a spine and then build it outwards. And i always draw them semi-naked first. It's so much easier for me to dress them, rather than go for the clothed version immediately. Helps me a lot with the fold placement.

Also for pose references i use a free browser app. I certainly can't draw human figures from scratch if the pose is more dynamic or the angle is something more complicated, but i'm decent at eyeballing what i can see. This one didn't really needed that 'cause Vessel does this a lot and i looked at the man's pictures and videos so much at this point, i can kinda mock it up. And like.. i usually draw up a standard male figure and just.. make it slightly skinnier and bam. Vessel proportions. Or something close enough to pass for it. But in general i look up a lot of reference photos for stuff because it is easier to understand something you see rather than something you imagine. At least for me.

Initially i was planning to add tendrils into the waves to indicate that those are raising the water around Vessel. That pulling himself beneth the waves maybe not so much just his own decision he just can't fully see the outside force hiding inside the water or something something i don't know i'm not smart for stuff like this.

What you can't see is that i was thinking about putting a faint silhouette of the tmbte moon behind the clouds but i quickly forgone that, because it was just not dark enough visually that way and also felt far too busy.

So i laid out a rough shading idea for where i want stuff to sit tonally and was like, nope, still not dark enough.

And so darker it got. But the sky felt flat, it needed something. So i was like, okay i have no moon or anything but like i could warp the clouds towards Vessel. Like as if the sky is collapsing into him or sending him a sign or maybe it's just in his head or whatever? I'm still not smart enough for concepts.

Also rain had to be added, because "wash me clean again before..." you know. To stick to the prompt.

It's almost there at this point but the waves look so sad and got smaller than the initial sketch. But i knew there is going to be froth on top of them so it was not a big deal. I knew they would be a sorry sight if i only do it with pencil anyway. It was never an option. So the trusty gel pen came out and it is such a drastic difference:

It also gave Vessel and the stone he stands on a sharp edgelight which is super dramatic looking. Also lifts him out from the background a bit more so he doesn't fully disappear into it. And the waves actually started to look like waves insted of weird grey cones.

And here again the finished version:

There is not much thought or like amazing skill that goes into these, i'm just trying to hide what i can't do and lean into what i can. And what i can do is shading. Someone told me close to two decades ago now that "don't rely on the outlines, shade behind the things to create depth" and that is something that my brain just latched onto and wanted to do that. And so i did. Or at least tried. Didn't took long for me to really start to enjoy shading and got fairly good at it, because i did that most of the time. And that's it, i guess.

Also yes it is small-ish. I'm using two relatively small sketchbooks, the "larger" one (with the ecru/yellowish paper, which i use for the small offerings <- this is where tha name came from originally) is 15x10,5 cm, and a slightly smaller one (with the grey-ish reused paper, which i use for everything else currently) which is 14,5x9,5cm. The card i did Ash's ballpoint pen iii is 16,5x11,4cm.

Basically everything i do is kind of small. I don't know how to draw large anymore to be honest. If i can't see the entire piece properly in one i mess up proportions big time. And i love detailwork and if i draw small the less detail i have to put into it. Because i'm also lazy.

So Vessel is about 4,5cm tall here... which is only a cm taller than the average height of Tiny Token.

[pekoeboo]

tiny merling boyo because I haven't drawn him in a little while!! (*^▽^*) it's a really rough sketch tho because it's actually VERY small on the page, so I couldn't add too many details or anything lol

still really like this design for Khalan, tbh :'0 hopefully I can draw him more often, but I have so many other projects I also want to work on as well so I can't make any guarantees >A<;;

please do not remove caption or repost. also on deviantart

[thedeal-if]

Ohh y además eres de habla hispana?? A D O R O! Automáticamente te has convertido en fav JAJA

I will continue in English just in case, but I didn't expect you to know Spanish! Lol I have a question, when you write, did you do it in Spanish and then you translated to English or you did the write in English from cero? I want to try to write something sometime but I don't really know what way better ngl (well that's only if your mother tongue is Spanish as I'm taking it for granted lol)

Now let's talk about business... What romances have/will have more angst? Just for research purposes 👀👀

And I don't really know if you answered this before (if that is the case, sorry!) But can you please tell us what kinda action/words can make the ROs meltdown? (But in a sweet romantic way, like RO.exe stop worked I forgot the word for that lol not a meltdown for anger, but if you think is more funny that way, works for me too)

Sisoy 🫂 JAJSJJAS (soy española 😶‍🌫️ a que quieres que te gane)

I write in English! I have for many years lol it helps internalize things better but I do remember translating things at first (I knew like... 0 English at the time lol). It takes some getting used to but I recommend you try and see how you handle it ^^ grammarly helps too when it comes to checking spelling mistakes and all that.

I made an angst top but tbh all romances are angsty to some degree ✨

Imo, the top 4 (Nathan/Aliyah/Lilith/Victor) have pretty... rough moments.

Words that would make them stop functioning below! (crushing stage)

RO.exe stopped working...

Dante isn't exactly shy but he does tend to get a little wordless when he's very embarrassed by MC. He recovers quickly enough so I wouldn't say it wrecks his mind to be flirted with. Instead, the way to probably turn his brain to mush is through art. Dedicating songs, sketches, aligning Dante's existence to that of a muse— worthy of that affection.

Lilith is very sweet and doting her route is pretty much full of repression and forbidden love (Inferno and Succubus lore spoilers, you'll understand when you meet her). Prior to establishing a romantic connection with her, Lilith's brain would melt if MC were to call her out on her attraction toward them.

Honestly, he's known MC since they were very young so it really depends, I think he'd be desensitized at this point lol. In the case that MC is normally very extra, Josh would be pretty much immune to anything they might say— if they're normally more guarded sincere words would break him. Surprises are something he can't handle well.

Villanelle is very sweet and naive, her initial reaction to most affective things MC says or does is to accept it wholeheartedly and return it eagerly. To really really break her would be easy tho lol, flirty MCs would completely shatter her expectations. Villanelle kind of doesn't know how to flirt.

Yeah, no words are getting through to him lol. Victor places no value in them, he needs MC to put their money where their mouth is. Taking care of Victor, small tasks and such, is the best way to startle him. MCs would need to be two steps ahead of Victor. He would be beyond lost, he wouldn't know how to respond to being taken care of.

Aliyah is very calculating and guarded with her true emotions. Even if she's surprised she's going to swallow it all down. I only see one and one thing only completely breaking through her walls and that is MC committing themselves to helping free Aliyah of her shackles.

Honestly, even she admits that would be a terrible decision. But who knows ^^?

Rather than shameless flirting or compliments, Nathan's mind would be blown by genuine and heartfelt words. No sugar-coating it either, just an admission from the heart. He doesn't know how to approach sincerity all that well. Just a very honest “I’m so glad to have met you” would make Nathan's mind get the blue screen of death lol

I don't really see her being all that impressed if MC tried to compliment her in any way lol and she would receive and reciprocate most affective actions naturally. Startling Eden would take effort— taking her by surprise, with her guard low enough that she entertains you. Subverting Eden's views and expectations of MC while she's distracted, for example.

[robo-drake09]

Brawl Stars Dragon AU dump 💃 on my main account for a change! Extra content/rambles under the cut

(Reminder I usually post rough sketches like this over on @brawlstars-dragon-au ! All content for this au is reblogged there as well!

First drawing is Penny:

I was tossing up designs for her, and I feel like I wanna change her from a wyvern to a western dragon (2 legs, 2 wings > 4 legs, 2 wings).

Tossing around with the idea that her feathered wings were clipped after the incident that made her lose her eye. What was this incident, you may ask? No idea!

Second drawing is Sandy:

As before, I kept the lung dragon appearance with the long body.

I also played with the idea that if he was fully awake (not as his sleeping self now), he'd be extremely powerful 👀 (ty to a mutual friend for idea <3) In quotes are possible names for this form he has.

More often than not, you'll find Sandy floating around while he naps. Sometimes, he'll accidentally float away, and either Tara or Gene will have to reel him back in.

Third drawing is Colt:

Just a pretty boy! He hasn't changed much apart from generally fitting my style more now. I want to lessen his dual...features though. Maybe the double sets of wings and split tail was a bit much, but I still really like it 🥹

Colt sings. My GOSH he sings very well, but sometimes he gets too confident and butchers a note heh

Also preens quite frequently to keep his feathers in tip-top condition. Can't go out without making sure he looks his absolute best!

Fourth drawing is Nita:

Definitely changing her from a wyvern to the 4 legged dragon. She shares the same general build as Leon, but her wings are very small and entirely incapable of flight. She does do happy flaps when she's excited tho!

She doesn't have any fire breath, but her innate magic and pendant allow her to stomp the ground to create shockwaves and tremors. A little bundle of power!

Bruce is gonna stay a big bear rather than a dragon bear :) This was also thanks to some input from a mutual, but it seems to fit better. If anything, perhaps he'll be like a slightly realistic bear? Not sure yet!

And yeah! That's all :) These were lots of fun hehe, so if you read this far, just drop a brawler you want me to make into a dragon, or even one I've already done that you want a sketch page for, just comment/reply to this post hehe

[polgarawolf1]

Barriss Offee Day - Character Study

Sorry for the wonky format - it's because I'm too wordy for Tumblr's limits to have all my notes formatted like I want them to be!

This is rough and not really edited (the title is just a working title right now!), but I'm posting now because it's Barriss Day today!

I feel as if I can't say this enough: please be aware that this character study piece is meant to go along with a SW AU series of mine that I've been writing in, off and on, since the same summer that RotS came out in theatres! This is my headcanon Barriss for that specific AU series, which is my main SW AU series, so she's based mostly on the old SW EU (or Legends, as DISNEY calls it) with some of the newer DISNEY!SW canon adapted enough to be useful to me/make sense given that she's a Jedi Healer, but she's still an AU version of both versions of the official SW Barriss Offee character!

Title: “Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

Pairing: None as yet, though Kornell “Uli” Divini definitely has an enormous crush on Barriss during their shared time at Rimsoo (Republic Mobile Surgery Unit) 7, on Drongar, during the Clone Wars.

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline PG-13, maybe (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: This is thirty-three random but chronological moments from the life of Barriss Chanah Offee, a strongly Force-sensitive Mirialan given to the Coruscanti Jedi Temple for training as an infant. Barriss is technically not quite an agemate of Anakin Skywalker’s, though she’s often grouped with those who are. She becomes close friends with Ahsoka Tano over the course of the Clone Wars and is generally known for her empathetic heart, her healing touch, her calm and grace, and her unshakeable loyalty to her friends and Jedi family. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )

Warning: This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Barriss Chanah Offee’s life, as she has been and is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series You Became to Me. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask!

Author’s Notes: 1.) For anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU series You Became to Me, including the trilogy Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith, if you squint at a few things sideways and view a couple others solely through the lens of Barriss’ eyes. This is probably also technically compatible with a lot of other potential AU ’verses where the Clone Wars do not, ultimately, end up going like Sidious plans, but the majority of it should be at least mostly consistent with the old EU (barring what I’ve altered about Ferus Olin, etc.), at least up until roughly the Battle of Coruscant during RotS.

2.) My Barriss is and has always been based on the version of the character as she originally appeared in certain scenes/cut scenes for AotC and RotS and was initially written in the old EU, prior to the reboot for the Clone Wars period associated with the animated film and TV series. Thus, she’s closer in age to Anakin Skywalker than she is to Ahsoka Tano, a natural Jedi Healer, and does not end up falling prey to despair and the Dark Side and bombing the Coruscanti Jedi Temple, as is portrayed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I have made some concessions to the version of Barriss found in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the current DISNEY!SW version of canon – she is about a year younger than in the old EU, for example, and does take part in some missions/battles that also involve Ahsoka and Anakin – and I am technically in the midst of revising/expanding Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith to include some more characters from the show, but please be aware that my main SW series is an AU and so certain characters and events and the timeline for the prequels/the war in general involve a slightly different/longer timeline as well as multiple changes from what’s depicted in the show (and even in the old EU, occasionally).I’m aware that Barriss is considered a Muslim-coded character, in large part due to the show, though it’s rather horrifying for me to consider that Filoni et al apparently made the choice to present her as being coded this way and yet still deliberately turned her into a terrorist bomber.

Please be aware that, since I first started writing what would become my Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio shortly after Revenge of the Sith first came out in theatres and I saw it and read (as fairly new hardbacks) both the novelization for RotS and James Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil (which, for those who don’t know, acts essentially as an immediate predecessor for RotS) and I had it in my head from fairly early on that my AU ’verse would (eventually) involve the survival of a useful version of bota and, thus, Barriss Offee as a Jedi Healer (as I’d already read the MedStar duology by this point), a lot of my personal headcanon for Barriss (and also, by extension, for her Jedi Master, Luminara Unduli) and for Mirialan culture in general predates by at least three-four years both the start of the show and my awareness of the fact that she’s considered Muslim-coded. (It took me several years before I ever watched any of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and I am not a techy person, so it’s probably more like ten years plus before I had any actual personal knowledge from watching the parts of the show that include the ret-conned version of Barriss.) If anyone has any questions or is upset or bothered by anything, please let me know!

3.) Although this is technically modeled on part of a prompt set that I found ages ago and made a copy of from somewhere or another on the LJ, it’s not really meant to function as a response to whatever the challenge actually is or was that’s associated with said LJ prompt set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Barriss and, since I’m working under a time constraint for the Barriss Day celebration, it’s entirely possible that I’ll come back to this and expand on it at some point in the future.

4.) Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters (such as Uli Divini) or for original characters (like Jedi Shadow Knight Leyala Riani), for that matter, should please just probably ask me, rather than consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ, since I need to update all of them and what’s on the LJ (https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/) is very old! Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name (certain family members of original characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish!

5.) Mirialans are considered near-human (they are cross-fertile with human norms in the EU and, likely, with many other types and/or species of near-humans, as well) and resemble human norms closely enough, physically, that I’ve always considered they may very well have originally evolved from human norms due to specific conditions found on their homeworld, Mirial (many of the “near-human” species in the GFFA seem to be humans with just enough genetic differences – from adapting to living on specific worlds/moons, mostly – and/or just enough cultural differences from more generic human norms to have been given a specific label, based on their homeworld). I mention this here because my headcanon is that Mirialans essentially age/mature like human norms do and also because I believe the tradition of Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters taking on Mirialan Jedi apprentices is based on wanting to pass on direct knowledge of Mirialan culture and Force-based spirituality, not any form of xenophobia.

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

“Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

01.) Incidence: Though one would hardly guess it, from the raw numbers alone (evident humans or human norms outnumbering so many other known sentient species in the galaxy by such a large margin), statistically speaking, as an entire species, Mirialans have an even higher overall incidence of sensitivity to the Force than human norms do (most likely due to the fact that survival on Mirial, their largely cold, dry homeworld, requires them to be more naturally in tune with their surroundings – and, thus, more open to the Force and its influence – than most of the worlds and moons where humans have proven both willing and able to settle); this greater percentage of Force-sensitives doesn’t always translate individually to higher levels of stronger Force-sensitivity, though, meaning that there are many Mirialans who make their homes both on Mirial and elsewhere who have midi-chlorian levels that are higher than average and yet still lower than is generally required for admittance to the Jedi Order for training, and so the number of Mirialan Force-sensitives in the Jedi Order is lower than that of human norms (and, indeed, several other types of near-humans, as well), enough so that the Mirialans in the Order thought it would be best to establish a tradition whereby Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters would, whenever possible, take on Mirialan apprentices to train, so that Mirialan culture and customs could be taught directly from Master to Padawan, along with Jedi traditions and training.

02.) Process: Barriss Chanah Offee is found not on Mirial or any other inhabited planet, moon, or station, but rather on a starliner in deep space, by a Jedi not on a traditional Search but rather simply en route to Coruscant after a successful undercover mission in the Corporate Sector, who is still in the process of settling back into her own skin (after living under a false identity for the better part of four months rather than as Jedi Knight Leyala Riani) and is rather startled to find herself called to the ship’s infirmary, where a routine blood test given to a newborn has yielded a midi-chlorian count easily high enough to justify admittance to the Jedi Order for training (the infant is named by her tearful parents, given a slightly modified traditional blessing, and then promptly given over to the Jedi Shadow, who manages, after only a handful or so of incidences of usual unexpected interruptions, to safely get both herself and the by then several month old baby to the Coruscanti Temple).

03.) Routine: Barriss’ first real memories are of the Jedi Temple’s crèche – of having patient, kindhearted Jedi Carers helping her with her meals and with the layers of her youngling robes, modelled after the traditional Mirilian dress of a Force-sensitive spiritualist leader-in-training and a little more complicated than many of the robes worn by her crèchemates and friends; of accidentally running into a friendly Jedi Tender during a game of tag and being sent laughingly back to the proper Sept or age-group of her Initiate Clan; of going practically everywhere in a crowd of younglings, all in the same age-group or Phratry if not necessarily all belonging to the same Clan; of having a compassionate Twi’lek Docent gently drying her eyes after taking a hard tumble and spilling the contents of her lunch tray seemingly everywhere; of entering the Halls of Healing for a routine inoculation and being drawn to the Healing Crystals blazing with the Force in the hands of a gifted Jedi Healer, who, noticing her rapt attention, promptly made a notation in her permanent file indicating an interest in and likely proclivity towards Force healing – and of Master Yoda, watching her with a pleased, benevolent smile as she uses the Force to retrieve a favorite toy (a blue ball, just the right size for her small hands and exactly the same vivid color as her own eyes) gone astray, bouncing from the crèche out through an antechambers and into one of the main large open spaces of the Temple proper.

04.) Manage: Crèche Masters and other Jedi whose calling place them either exclusively in the crèche or else mainly in the Temple as trainers and teachers – the Jedi Carers and Tenders who specifically look after the younger Initiates; the Clan Leaders who are in charge of the various Initiate Clans and the Sept Heads who manage the specific Septs or age-groups of those Initiate Clans; and the Jedi Instructors and Pandits, as well as certain Jedi Artisans, who lead specific classes, training courses, and hands-on modules for both younglings in the crèche and Padawans who’re still in training – routinely go out of their way to offer both methods and means by which individual Initiates and Padawans can learn about and even (to an extent, at least) incorporate the cultures of the specific peoples and species from which they hail in their day-to-day activities and lives, though of course no one is ever forced to learn or to do anything in regards to such a culture if that individual finds a tradition or custom uncomfortable: Barriss thoroughly enjoys such cultural seminars (including almost all of the more generic modules that cover other near-human and humanoid cultures), though she takes it for granted that, if she eventually trains as a Jedi Knight (and eventual possible Master) instead of joining one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, she will eventually be taught more about Mirialan culture and spirituality when she’s taken on as an apprentice by a Mirialan Knight or Master.

05.) Path: Her personal path forward as a Jedi – whether as a Knight and possible future Master or as a member of a branch of the Jedi Service Corps – would be easier (or at least more assured) if she were only drawn towards healing or if she were only drawn to the path of Knighthood, since then she could either declare for the Medical Corps or else focus more on what would make her more likely to be chosen as a Padawan; however, she feels equally drawn towards both callings, which is somewhat problematic, given that all of the Mirialans currently in or associated with the Order are either younglings like her or else they’re members in good standing of one or another of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps or Knights or Masters of the Order, meaning that there are currently no Jedi Healers who are either Knights or Masters who are also Mirialan.

06.) Honor: When Luminara Unduli – a Mirialan Jedi Knight and a Master by courtesy (given that she is currently helping an orphaned Commenorian Padawan by the name of Suanne Tephee through what should, hopefully, be the last handful or so of years of training and preparation necessary to make her ready/able to pass the Trials of Knighthood) – approaches her, Barriss fears, at first, that she will be forced to make a decision between eventually training towards Knighthood and training as a Jedi Healer that, in her heart, she knows she cannot make and does not feel as if she should be forced into trying to make, either (she understands, logically, that, since the annihilation of the Sith and their Brotherhood of Darkness and the consequent end of the New Sith Wars, the so-called “restructuring” of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order by the Ruusan Reformations essentially dissolved the Jedi Army of Light and stripped the Jedi of much of their authority and power in the galaxy just when the Jedi would be most needed, out in the greater galaxy, in order to help heal the wounds of that disastrous and exhaustively extensive conflict, meaning that the pathway of Jedi Knights all but instantly became much more important than it had been even at the height of the war. That Barriss can understand it rationally, though, does not mean that she has to like the fact that, in almost thousand years since then, the prestige of being a Knight has grown so much that the pressure on Jedi Initiates to choose that particular pathway [whether it would suit them as individuals or not] has concomitantly increased, too, to the point where younglings consider themselves to be failures if they aren’t chosen as Padawans and instead end up in one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, such as the MedCorps, even though Jedi likely to be injured in combat logically would need trained Healers to tend to their injuries and Jedi Healers are, frankly, able to do things with the Force to help preserve life and speed healing that even the most gifted and experienced of non-Force-sensitive Healers simply cannot do); happily, though, Master Unduli indicates that, if Barriss continues to show excellent progress in her training as an Initiate and she is willing, Luminara will happily arrange for her to have further training in the healing arts with Jedi Healers if Barriss will do her the honor of one day becoming her apprentice.

07.) Attention: Although Barriss normally tends to listen to others more than she talks (except for in classes when she knows the answer to whatever the instructor happens to be asking and she’s not sensing anyone else particularly wanting to be the one to be called on to answer, of course), the Jedi Order is essentially one enormous extended family of choice made up of many, many generations of interlinking lineages of trained Force-sensitives and many more who might, one day, be given the choice to join and extend those lineages, so there actually are very, very few real (serious) secrets among its members (it’s not so much that Jedi are prone to idle chatter as it is misleading to claim that Jedi are too good – or too snobbish and self-important – to gossip when, at least most of the time, there’s simply no need for idle chatter or rumormongering when it comes to the vast majority of incidences that happen both in the Temple and during mandated missions since both any official reports and private, individual deductions and conjecture about such occurrences tend to all quickly become known by virtually everyone who’s paying even a modicum of attention to the Force – which, after all, is naturally constantly being influenced and shaped by the thoughts and actions of basically all living creatures, especially those strong in the Force, and also frequently quite deliberately being outright given strong emotions, both negative and positive, by Jedi who want to establish better control over themselves – and/or what’s going on around them in the Temple, including what individual Jedi are actually physically telling the High Council about their specific missions, when they return from them, and what those same individuals are also either gleefully spinning stories about or else quietly complaining about outside the Council Chamber) and, since scandals (or even just possible indignities or outrages) tend to spread at a speed easily comparable to that of light, especially when a Temple favorite or a favorite of Yoda and/or one of the other High Council Masters is involved, she’s well aware of (and has opinions about) Qui-Gon Jinn and his tendency to essentially blame everything on the will of the Force (often quite blatantly in order to win arguments or to get away with doing or not doing something he really shouldn’t be allowed to do or to shirk doing) long before he brings an almost ten-year-old boy by the name of Anakin Skywalker to the Temple and shocks everyone by telling the High Council that he ought to be allowed to take the youngling on as his apprentice (even though he already has a perfectly wonderful Padawan, one who, so far as Barriss can tell, most of the residents of the Temple all agree Qui-Gon Jinn does not deserve. She’s heard so many incredible stories about Obi-Wan Kenobi that, if she weren’t Mirilian, if Master Unduli hadn’t already spoken to her about becoming her Master, and if she weren’t aware of the fact that there’s at least one youngling, just enough older than her to be in the next age-group up from her, who’s made it extremely well known that he believes himself destined to one day become Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Barriss might actually be tempted to try to catch Obi-Wan’s eye, in hopes of eventually being asked to be his apprentice) because the boy’s midi-chlorian count is supposedly so high that (according to Jinn, who’s widely known, much like his former Master, Yannis Dooku, to be just a little bit too interested in Force prophecies, to the point where some claim that they’re both obsessed, to unhealthy degrees, with Jedi mystics and the records of their so-called “visions”) it must mean that he’s the Chosen One.

08.) Potential: Anakin Skywalker blazes in the Force like a star that’s somehow continually going nova – there’s no disputing this fact and Barriss honestly doesn’t see the point in even trying – but he’s simultaneously far too old for the crèche and both too untrained and too young to become the Padawan apprentice of anyone expecting to go on any active missions outside of the Temple for likely several years to come, and, from everything she’s heard, he also pretty clearly doesn’t have the right sort of temperament to become a Jedi (he’s afraid, but he not only won’t admit to it, he refuses to acknowledge his fear and even outright lies to the Council about what he’s afraid of/for and why; he’s unabashedly angry when the Council Masters try to point out that he’s not telling the truth about his fear and, worse, he behaves as though the Council Masters are the ones at fault for pointing out his lie, rather than him for his dishonesty; and he’s undeniably all too attached to the single parent he’s ever known, who has, for some reason, been left behind – in slavery, as it eventually comes out, months after the fact, when it also becomes widely known that Skywalker’s mother was left behind due to the fact that, even though Qui-Gon Jinn apparently thought nothing of gambling with the lives of others and even the potential wellbeing of an entire system’s worth of imperiled people, if it meant that he could legally take Anakin with him, even if it meant that he would have to take him as a slave, he evidently didn’t quite care enough to cheat on the bet that he made with Anakin’s owner sufficiently to include the boy’s mother in his potential winnings, along with the boy. There are many people in the Order, besides Barriss, who are quite upset, if perhaps not necessarily all that surprised, to learn about these facts, and many of them also feel sorry for the boy, though it’s difficult to maintain much empathy for someone who so clearly has a chip the size of a Hutt on his shoulder about his background – on Tatooine, a Hutt-controlled world in the Outer Rim Territories that Barriss is fairly certain she’s never even heard of, before, and which turns out to almost be far enough out to qualify as bordering on Wild Space), so she honestly doesn’t understand why it’s ever even a question whether or not Skywalker should be accepted for Jedi training (either with or without Qui-Gon Jinn), high midi-chlorian count or not and prophecies of the Chosen One or not, not when, if anything, Skywalker seems far more suited to something like the Exploration Corps.

09.) Secret: Barriss honestly can’t decide which piece of news from Naboo is more shocking and upsetting – that the Sith not only apparently survived Ruusan, somehow, but have continued to survive in secret for almost a thousand years and have not only revealed themselves now, in the process all but proving that they’ve been involved in some way with the Naboo Crisis, but have also killed a Jedi Master in the process, or that, following the death of his Master at the hands of one of those Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi evidently not only swore that he would fulfill his Master’s dying wish and take on Anakin Skywalker as his Padawan, with or without the approval of the High Council (and, thus, the legitimacy and backing of the Jedi Order), but that he essentially told Master Yoda this (in effect essentially blackmailing the Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order into allowing him to apprentice Anakin, once he’d been acknowledged as a Jedi Knight, for having defeated and slain the Sith Lord who’d just murdered his Master) – but she knows that she’s not the only one who thinks that Knight Kenobi has gone from somehow having a Master who definitely didn’t deserve him to having a Padawan who almost certainly doesn’t deserve him, either, and she finds herself in the rather unexpected position of feeling sorry for Ferus Olin, currently one of the most popular and widely respected younglings near to her age in the crèche (even if, to be honest, she’s always felt somewhat ambivalent towards the slightly older boy. Ferus generally gives every indication of being a good sort, but everything always seems to come awfully easy for him, in a way that doesn’t feel quite right, somehow, and the way that some of the other younglings act around him – like they’d cheerfully do anything he might ever even think of asking them to do – makes her feel weirdly almost vulnerable, in a way that both bewilders her and makes her want to avoid him altogether, which makes it strange to feel sorry for him now), since a Jedi can only have one Padawan at a time and this means that (short of Anakin Skywalker somehow dying in the next two years or so, which she would never want to happen, no matter how messed up the whole situation with him and newly Knighted Obi-Wan Kenobi might be, and which seems extremely unlikely to happen, anyway, since he’s not likely to make it back out of the Temple again until he’s made a serious effort to catch up on all that he’s behind on, from having come to the Order so comparatively late in life and from almost certainly having a less than thorough education on Tatooine, even if that’s not exactly his fault) Ferus Olin can never become Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan.

10.) Sense: One would think that a boy from a desert world would know better than to allow himself to be goaded into accepting a challenge involving swimming, of all absurdly unsuitable things for him to try to do, but then, Skywalker does seem to be rather more emotional than any Jedi with sense would ever allow themselves to be, so perhaps the overly emotional numpty will prove her wrong and actually manage to get his fool self killed at some point while essentially confined to the safety of the Temple and Obi-Wan Kenobi will once again be free to choose his apprentice by himself (rather than being stuck with his former Master’s choice, which is just so many different levels of wrong that it makes her want to grind her teeth down to dust for sheer frustration over the fact that Qui-Gon Jinn is dead and now she’ll never have a chance to get away with telling him to his face that he’s an arrogant, self-centered twat) and Ferus Olin will prove to have been right all along and will become Knight Kenobi’s new Padawan.

11.) Behind: Skywalker may very well be behind on essentially everything except for anything having to do with mechanics, droids, maintaining all sorts of different kinds of vessels (from basic skimmers to advanced starship fighters), and piloting in general – the stories about how he managed to accidentally destroy the Trade Federation’s Lucrehulk-class Droid Control Ship are entirely too crazy to be made up and actually makes Barriss want to like him, despite everything else (the Trade Federation did horrible things to her homeworld: as a Mirilian, she feels all but honor-bound to side with someone who’s had such an important role in thwarting their plans to do the same sort of awful things to another inhabited world and system, even if she’s starting to wonder if the High Council Masters only allowed Knight Kenobi to take Skywalker on as his Padawan learner just to keep him somewhere they could keep an eye on him and be sure that the Sith would have a hard time trying to get to him. Knight Kenobi might have killed the one Sith, but the general consensus is that there should have been two of them, meaning that the surviving Sith would have multiple reasons to be interested in a boy like Skywalker, who’s so strong in the Force, so emotional, and has the kind of traumatic background he has, especially since the Sith were so clearly involved in the Trade Federation’s plans for invading and conquering Naboo) – but it seems as though he’s a natural with a lightsaber and, much to her surprise, she finds herself enjoying the times when she’s practicing in the salles at the same time that he is, in part because it’s astonishingly fun to see how quickly he picks up many of the different formal katas meant to help students master some of the different forms of lightsaber combat and partially because he’s such a shockingly unpredictable fighter, when turned loose to spar instead of just practicing basic katas, that he seems determined to combine apparently random bits of various katas from entirely different combat forms (so it’s always interesting to see which combination of moves he attempts will or won’t actually work together, whether she’s the one who’s been tasked to spar with him or not, though some of his more disastrous efforts make her very, very glad that training ’sabers aren’t actually strong enough to do much worse than singe fabric. Sometimes, it’s even more fun – and even instructional, when some combination of moves that doesn’t seem as if it ought to work actually does – to watch than to be the one trying to match his unpredictability. They don’t really talk, much, but it doesn’t truly bother her, since she’s of the opinion that sparring partners are actually more useful when they aren’t also friends who might be tempted to hold back out of fear of hurting each other’s feelings), which tends to make sparring against him a nice challenge, even if he does tend to win a ridiculous number of bouts for someone so new to Jedi training.

12.) Fear: Her Healer training is going well – in addition to the more basic courses required of basically all Jedi Padawans, she studies under a handful of different Healers, based on who’s available when and who specializes in or knows more about what, all of them operating under the oversight of Master Healer Vokara Che, who’s already made it quite clear that she expects Barriss to one day join the Circle of Jedi Healers, which is simultaneously both a wonderful and a mildly terrifying thing to know, since the Circle is comprised of the most gifted and powerful and absolute best of all Jedi Healers – she’sfound her kyber crystal in the ice caves of Ilum and successfully built her own lightsaber, and Master Unduli is evidently so pleased with her overall progress that she’s already talking about how best to coordinate things so Barriss shouldn’t fall behind in her Healer training when they undertake her pilgrimage to Mirial (a time-honored sort of rite of passage generally undertaken around fifteen or so standard years of age), but Barriss is beginning to fear that her apparent inability to keep ahold of her new lightsaber long enough to truly master even the most basic of katas is going to end up rendering the entire issue moot and her apprenticeship with Master Unduli void when a Jedi Knight, noticing her struggles with her lightsaber in one of the smaller, less often frequented training salles, introduces himself as Tutso Mara (actually Tutsoded Bayardeth Mara, though few refer to the half Kiffar and half Chalactan Jedi by his full name, at least according to Knight Mara) and then kindly shows her the proper hand grip for her lightsaber (after which, with her permission, he physically adjusts and readjusts and keeps on readjusting her grip until Barriss finally has it down pat and her grip – evidently adequate enough for a training ’saber but not at all sufficient for the power of a real blade – is no longer throwing her off, no matter which training kata from which form of lightsaber combat she attempts), sparking a mentorship and eventual friendship that will push her to learn a Jar’Kai version of Djem So (a combat form using two lightsabers or a lightsaber – be it a single or a double blade – along with a shoto) as well as the Soresu and Shien that Master Unduli favors.

13.) Return: The traditional pilgrimage to Mirial (which is both colder and drier than the norm for most inhabitable planets/moons with Type I atmospheres and sentient populations, in ways that make the more customary sorts of Mirilian costumes, with their layers, long lengths, and head-coverings of one sort or another for essentially everyone, make all kinds of practical sense. Much of the land is either desert or tundra, with some taiga towards the far northern and the far southern tundra and some grasslands at the borders between the taiga and the deserts, much of it occasionally broken up by high plateaus and mostly extremely tall, jagged mountains. Though Mirial has technically been known to much of the greater galactic community and considered part of the Galactic Republic’s Outer Rim Territories for approximately four thousand years, when the Trade Federation “rediscovered” it some two hundred years ago, in one of the Great Reunification’s last pushes to supposedly “reconnect” with and discover more about the Outer Rim and Wild Space, its greedy representatives pillaged the entire system of much of its natural resources, often using crude, cheap strip mining techniques to get at precious ores and carelessly discarding slag and poisonous wastes without bothering to treat any of it, to the point where the planet is still recovering from all of the habitat destruction and environmental contamination. Truthfully, Barriss finds Mirial rather sad and, afterwards, is not entirely sure that she’s felt a real connection with either the planet or its people, even after all of her cultural studies and even though she truly does respect the traditional Mirial view of the Force and their widespread belief that each individual’s actions contribute not only to that specific person’s destiny, building on both past successes and failures to ultimately drive those beings towards their fates, but that such actions also ripple throughout the Force, affecting the destinies of not just the individuals directly involved but of whole peoples and, at least potentially, in some cases, even species all across the galaxy, which, to her, seems like a somewhat simplified version of the Jedi understanding of the Cosmic Force) goes well enough, but she’s both more tired and more glad than she’s expected to be, when they finally return to the Temple.

14.) Master: Luminara Unduli is, in many ways, a wonderful Jedi Master – she’s very grounded and steady, a formidable fighter who’s also a highly respected diplomat often called upon to act as an advisor to several high-profile system and planetary leaders and politicians, many of them in the Galactic Senate, meaning that she’s well-suited to understand the needs of an apprentice who’s drawn to what, to outsiders, might seem very opposing ways of being a Jedi – but she’s also downright tricky, sometimes (Barriss isn’t entirely sure she’s ever going to completely live down the fiasco of trying to force herself to master Floating Meditation in the space of a single afternoon, so she could rise high enough to accurately count the number of pastries in a bakery’s window across the way, when, at any time, she could’ve simply stood up on the balcony Master Unduli had brought her to in order to see them), often in ways that seem embarrassingly obvious after the fact and remind Barriss almost painfully of Master Yoda’s particular brand of teaching by trickery in order to fully and memorably drive a point home, and, though she’s increasingly sure that she wouldn’t ever want any other Master, sometimes Barriss can’t help but wish that her Master would spend just a little less time being cleverly oblique and a great deal more time just straight out telling her whatever lessons she’s trying to teach her, if only so she wouldn’t feel as if she’s wasting so much time failing to immediately grasp whatever moral or object lesson has been so cunningly hidden in or only hinted at sideways by whatever random task or strange, rambling story Master Unduli has decided to indulge in using to teach her by first tripping her up or otherwise tricking her.

15.) Hair: It takes multiple cups (and pots) of nice, calming teas and more than a few cups (and pots . . . and jugs) of tea bracing enough to (as Knight Suanne Tephee [“Suanne, please! Really, just Suanne is fine. You’ll make me feel old, otherwise, Barriss!”] would jokingly phrase it) put hair on one’s chest, but eventually, with some help from her not quite older sister in lineage (but not quite not, and so they all basically act as if she is, including Knight Suanne, on the rare times she’s in the Temple and not so exhausted or so injured, following a mission, that she’s stuck either in her rooms all the time or else in the Halls of Healing and so not up to visiting) and, shockingly enough, some really useful tips from Skywalker (who very nearly physically trips over her in the Room of a Thousand Fountains one day and ends up earnestly explaining that she’s focusing on the wrong bit of the exercise – the meditation part, not the floating, which, as Knight Kenobi has explained it to Skywalker, basically translates to a kind of very personalized field of antigravity – and that she should be thinking of it less as something mental or spiritual and more as something that can be physically done with the Force, closer to telekinesis than to actual meditation and strong enough, in an emergency, to help either save a Jedi who’s falling from a dangerous height or else to rescue someone else falling or about to fall from a potentially lethal height); much to her satisfaction, though, she does eventually manage to properly learn (if perhaps not to completely master, as she’s eventually capable of using it to keep herself from a bad end, after flinging herself – under Master Unduli’s watchful eyes, of course – multiple times out of various windows and off of several balconies in the Temple Council Towers, but isn’t entirely sure she’d be able to use it on someone else in a true emergency) Floating Meditation.

16.) Information: It’s next to impossible to truly keep secrets in the Jedi Temple – in terms of knowledge for training, information can be restricted to things like Jedi Holocrons, datachips, info crystals, and even old-fashioned books that are themselves regulated, so that only certain kinds of individuals can access them, but in terms of what happens in the Temple or what is spoken of in the Temple, well, it’s difficult to all but impossible to keep things a secret from individuals strong enough in the Force to not only regularly use it to help augment their senses and abilities but to be able to sense things (such as the thoughts and emotions of others) through their connection to the Force – which is why (even if impossible and improbable aren’t quite synonyms) it’s so weird that no one seems to really be talking much, afterwards, about the disastrous mission to Korriban, to apprehend dangerous criminals Jenna Zan Arbor and Granta Omega, even though four Masters and their Padawans were sent there but only the Masters and three of the Padawans returned alive . . . at least not until after Ferus Olin has been dismissed from the Order for intentionally manipulating the minds and wills of Jedi (from Masters all the way down to Initiates, apparently) and not only purposely causing a mechanical defect in the lightsaber of a fellow Padawan (Tru Veld, a fertile unfixed hermaphroditic metamorph Teevan – meaning that Tru can and often does phase from male to female and back again, basically at will – who’s apprenticed to Jedi Shadow Master Ouwain-Kli Ry-Gaul. Barriss isn’t much more than vaguely familiar with either one, since Jedi Shadows tend to keep to themselves and Veld’s nature has all but guaranteed that the Teevan would become a Shadow since the moment Veld first came to the Temple) that would directly lead to the death of another Padawan (the apprentice of Master Soara Antana, Darra Thel-Tanis, who apparently threw herself in the pathway of a deadly blaster shot, even though Tru almost certainly could have survived being struck by it, given the ridiculously rapid rate of regeneration Teevans are [in]famous for. Barriss is a little more familiar with Thel-Tanis, but can’t imagine why she’d ever do something so foolish, which makes her wonder, a little sickly, just how much influence Olin might have had over her, at the time), but attempting to conceal his actions by deliberately, maliciously shifting the blame for the lightsaber’s failure at the critical moment to yet another Padawan (Anakin Skywalker, whose Master evidently had to all but break down the doors of the Jedi High Council Chamber – and is rumored to have called on the Force in a way that somehow instantly shattered all of Ferus Olin’s manipulations – to save his apprentice from being wrongfully accused of negligence and being at cause for Darra Thel-Tanis’ death, which likely would’ve resulted in Skywalker being unjustly cast out of the Order), and then she’s left at least halfway wishing that the relative silence about the mission had never been broken, even though she knows, logically, that nothing good could have come of keeping Ferus Olin’s perfidy (which apparently even extended to his own Master, Siri Tachi, who’s such a wreck, afterwards, that the Council orders her on a five-month spiritual retreat, to recover) a secret.

17.) Help: It’s not exactly fair to feel wary of Skywalker, after the mess on Korriban and Ferus Olin’s banishment from the Order – Barriss knows that, even if it only serves to make her feel frustrated with herself for being overly cautious and even less inclined towards thinking all that kindly of (must less trusting) him – but she’s still not completely sure that having Skywalker on Ansion is going to be all that much help with the mission (even if it means that Obi-Wan Kenobi will also be with them) until after she’s been knocked off of her suubatar into Torosogt River, Skywalker’s immediately leapt into the water to try to save her, and they’ve both managed to survive their dunkings none the worse for wear (at which point she starts to think that it might actually be possible for them to become good friends, if only Skywalker will prove to be even halfway as willing to open up and speak honestly with her as he has been to fling himself – however wholly unnecessarily, if undeniably gallantly – headlong into danger on her behalf).

18.) Horror: Geonosis is . . . unspeakably terrible, so much needless death and suffering (and for what? For the pride and satisfaction of a former Jedi like Yannis Dooku, who deserted the Order after the murder of his former apprentice, Qui-Gon Jinn, during the Naboo Crisis? The traitor is essentially endorsing those responsible for the situation that allowed his former Padawan to be cornered and slaughtered by the Sith! If not for the greed of the Trade Federation, Master Jinn would [probably] still be alive, for pity’s sake!) that she’s quite certain that she’s going to have nightmares about it for the rest of her life . . . though the news, shortly afterwards, that the battle is only going to be the beginning and that the Republic is now officially at war with the self-declared Separatists is so awful that it very nearly eclipses even the horror of Geonosis.

19.) Fire: It’s not very Jedi-like of her, but after the third time that she essentially almost dies because of Geonosis and the second time that she’s only survived because of Ahsoka Tano’s ingenuity (and sheer stubborn refusal to ever give up) and just the absolute horror of one of those times involve parasitical brain worms that burrow into a host and essentially turn said host into a mindless zombie at the control of either the worms or the Geonosian Queen, Barriss believes that she should be forgiven for feeling as though they should just gather every ship they can get their hands on and have them all open fire on that entire blasted world from high orbit until there’s not a single living thing left alive on the entire accursed planet and it’s all reduced down to slag!

20.) Fortune: She honestly doesn’t expect to like Ahsoka Tano as much as she does – the young Togruta is almost painfully brash; she has no concept whatsoever of subtly; she’s so blasted busy rushing headlong into everything that she wouldn’t recognize the concept of strategic thinking if it became embodied and bypassed her two side lekku to deliberately bite her on her rear head-tail; and she quite clearly feels no loyalty whatsoever to her original Master, Togruta Jedi Master Yrannia Tey, since she’s thrilled when the idiots in the galactic press start calling her the Golden Child of the Golden Team (though, to be fair, as Barriss eventually finds out, there’s a very good reason for that. Xenophobia to the point where one believes that only a potential apprentice of the same species as one own self is not a good reason for taking on a Padawan, no matter what Master Tey might believe. Meanwhile, Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker would literally give their lives for Ahsoka’s and she would do the same for either one of them in a heartbeat, so obviously she knows how to be faithful and she’s just as patently chosen the correct Jedi to give her devotion and allegiance to): on the other hand, she’s one of the most constant and reliable Jedi (if also easily one of the most stubborn, which is saying something, given she’s essentially been apprenticed by the Golden Team while her so-called “real” Master recovers from all of the damage she took at the First Battle of Geonosis. Master Unduli is right: those three Jedi truly do deserve one another, no matter what anyone else might seem to think on the subject, and they would all do anything and everything in their power to keep each other safe, just as they’d do all that they could to help a friend in need, as Barriss herself has had reason to learn, Ahsoka having saved her on more than one occasion that otherwise likely would’ve been hopeless) Barriss has ever had the good fortune to meet – but she trusts her to a degree that, rationally speaking, likely should be frightening, and faith, like friendship, is something that is not easily won, in these dark days of war, so Barriss fully intends to keep that trust and so remain worthy of their resultant friendship, however unexpected it might’ve initially been and however occasionally frustrating it might occasionally be.

21.) Fall: Umbara is such a complete horror show and Barriss is just so messed up from it (not only because of Jedi Master and General Pong Krell’s treachery and fall to the Dark Side, but because she can’t help but realize how much worse it could have so easily been, if Commander Rex had simply obeyed orders from Krell and hadn’t had the courage to contact Master Kenobi and, thus, discovered General Krell’s duplicity before he could deliberately pit unwitting clones from the 501st against clones of the 212th Attack Battalion. Krell still lost far too many men and slaughtered still more, when he was revealed as a traitor, but things came so appallingly close to being so much worse that Barriss feels sick whenever she thinks about it) that, afterwards, she barely even knows what she’s doing, much less what anyone else is saying or doing around her; that’s really no excuse for taking so long to realize that Letta Turmond (the wife of an Abyssin Temple worker and a self-professed pacifist who keeps trying to strike up a conversation with Barriss about why the Jedi aren’t doing more to end the war and how Barriss could be doing more to help stop the fighting) is a liar or just how conniving, hypocritical, and homicidal she actually is, though at least Barriss and Ahsoka manage to contain most of the explosions from the nano-droid bombs, even if they do kill both Turmond and her seemingly unwitting dupe of a husband and inflict enough damage on that specific Temple hangar both to injure a few dozen nearby Temple workers, clones, and even Jedi and to kill more than a handful of other innocent bystanders (though, thankfully, no Jedi die as a result of the only mostly thwarted bombing, or else Barriss honestly doesn’t know how she’d ever be able to live with herself, afterwards).

22.) Demand: It is not just and it is not right that the Jedi High Council should essentially punish Ahsoka for her efforts to help Barriss fix the mess that her distraction and failure to see what was directly in front of her nose so very nearly caused and, in some measure, did still cause, even with the both of them doing their utmost to try to either keep the explosions contained or else to channel them somewhere that they couldn’t cause any (measurable, irrevocable) harm – Yrannia Tey has no right to demand that Ahsoka be given back to her as if she were nothing more than a thing the Togruta felt she owned, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum because someone else has been playing with one of her toys while she’s been indisposed! Ahsoka may have said that she will go back to her old Master and Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi may have allowed her to make that choice, but anyone who knows anything about any of the three Jedi involved in the decision must know that they have only done so because all of them are unwilling to be the cause for the High Council has a reason to issue the kind of formal censure and reprimand that would just end with all three of them being ordered apart from each other – and Barriss feels so betrayed by Yoda and the majority of the other High Council Masters (nine of whom have, like the Grand Master, backed Master Tey’s demand that her apprentice be returned to her) that, for a few moments, she almost wishes that she could just be selfish enough to simply turn her back and leave the Order that is so clearly failing three of the absolute best of its members behind.

23.) Bribe: Knighting Barriss so soon after Ahsoka has been ordered away from her true Masters and back to Yrannia Tey feels awfully like a bribe for not raising a fuss about such a perfidious act; Master Unduli insists that she deserves it (that what Barriss still has to learn of the Force can only be learned by taking on the duties and responsibilities of a Knight who might, one day, be both able and willing to take on an apprentice of her own), though, and, when Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi (who know about it because Master Kenobi is a member of the High Council and apparently voted in favor of her being Knighted) take the time to comm and congratulate her on her Knighting, Anakin earnestly adds that, if she were able, Ahsoka would absolutely be the first in line to tell her that she deserves it, so, after most of a day and a night of quiet reflection, Barriss decides that she’ll allow herself to accept the honor, even though (in her heart of hearts) she’s still not entirely sure that she deserves it or that she even truly wants it, any longer.

24.) Chaos: Drongar somehow seems to evoke all the chaos and all the energy of the Living Force all concentrated into one bizarre planet of adaptogenic, mutagenic insanity and, if not for the bota fields (which both sides covet for its miraculous medical properties, though there are other forces at work – criminal cartels – who’d gladly steal the bota out from under them both if they could. No one has actually come out and said so, but she’s fairly certain that part of the reason why she’s been assigned here, to Republic Mobile Surgical Unit 7, is because someone in a position of power here is highly suspected to be working with one of those cartels and the High Council would prefer, if possible, to put an end to such nonsense without having to involve any military tribunals. Given what Tarkin almost managed to do to her and Ahsoka – which was only stopped because of the support that Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker and, by extension, Ahsoka have in the Senate, not because of anything that the Council Masters did or said – she finds it almost painfully ironic that the Council has chosen to send her, rather than someone else, more likely to still feel strong bonds of trust and loyalty to the High Council), Barriss honestly isn’t sure that anyone would find the myriad (and often changing, usually for the worse) risks involved with trying to establish a military presence there at all worth it, particularly given the fact that almost everything else on Drongar except the bota seems designed to make trying to live on Drongar in any kind of safety as dangerous and close to impossible as is at all possible.

25.) Wrong: It is an injustice so great and so unequivocally wrong that a vicious, sadistic thug like Phow Ji should be reported as a hero, when he’s been caught on cam outright murdering Salissian mercenaries employed by the CIS who’ve already surrendered and has essentially deliberately suicided by Separatist drop ship and thermal grenade in order to escape the so-called dishonor of having to live with the knowledge that he not only owes his life to a Jedi Healer like Barriss, but that he owes his life to her specifically because she’s used the Force – which he’s always loudly claimed does not exist – in order to heal him, that she’s not at all surprised that Den Dhur (the Sullustan reporter who’d written an exposé about the Bundukian mercenary and Teräs Käsi champions murderous ways) ultimately refused to have his name on the story at all, after his editor essentially changed everything in it, with the excuse that the Republic needs more stories about heroes during such turbulent times (and not, apparently, hard-hitting exposés about war crimes being perpetrated by mercenaries on the Republic’s payroll).

26.) Amateur: Healer and specialist surgeon Kornell Divini of Tatooine – Uli Divini, as he smilingly insists on being called – is both younger than Barriss has expected (she knows that Jos Vondar, the Chief Medical Officer and another Healer who’s specialized in surgeries of all sorts on multiple kinds of sentient beings, likes to complain that Healer Divini looks as if he’s about fourteen, but that’s clearly an exaggeration – or even a complaint – and not to be taken seriously. She’s been expecting someone in his early- or even mid-twenties, given the sort of education and training he must’ve had, to be stationed on a Rimsoo, but “Uli” looks like he’s very close to her own age, meaning he’s almost certainly not even twenty standard years of age yet. He reminds her of Anakin Skywalker, in a way, and not just because of his accent or his fair hair and blue eyes, though his skills as a surgeon, however phenomenal, can’t quite compare with Skywalker’s prodigious strength in the Force), and kinder than she quite knows what to do with, particularly when he somehow charms her into letting him see to an injury she’s accidentally inflicted on her right foot that she could have dealt with entirely by herself, with the Force, explains that he’s out in the swamps of Drongar in the first place (after she challenges him about being in the swamp) because his mother (renowned mudopterist Elana Divini, as Barriss eventually realizes) collects Alderaanian flare-wings and he’s interested in seeing what sort of comparable insects might call Drongar’s jungles home, smiles in a way that makes her realize that, once he’s old enough to have laugh lines, he’s going to be stunningly handsome (though why such a thing should ever even occur to her – why she should be looking at the young man closely enough to ever realize something like that – completely escapes her ability to understand), and leaves her so unbalanced that she feels even more like a rank amateur pretending to be something/someone she’s not than she had when, only moments before, she’d somehow managed to let herself be startled enough by an unexpected, brief but strong shift in temperature to lose control in the midst of a routine kata to the point of hurting herself with her own lightsaber (even though she hasn’t fumbled her lightsaber badly enough to injure herself since she’d been nine, and then it had only been a small nick to her left wrist, far less serious than the puncturing gash she’d inflicted on her poor foot).

27.) Precious: Bota is known to act as a potent broad-based antibiotic on humans and to have similar effects on several kinds of near-humans, as well, and the clones, being based on the genetic profile of Jango Fett (a registered genetic [if borderline] human norm Mandalorian originally from Concord Dawn, according to the Bounty Hunters’ Guild, which keeps track of such things), qualify as human norms (for the most part, anyway, though the few truly obvious aberrations tend to number among those the Kaminoan cloners categorize as genetic deviants only worth decommissioning, so they often end up – occasionally after being literally rescued by Master Shaak Ti or another Jedi stationed on Kamino if Master Ti cannot be there, even though Knight Kenobi demanded that all such decommissionings stop when he “accepted” the clones from the Kaminoans and every Jedi on Kamino since then who’s been there long enough to speak to any of the Kaminoans about the progress of the clones still in training has reiterated this order – in support positions in the Temple, rather than in the fighting forces of the GAR), which is almost certainly why Zabrak Healer and specialist surgeon Zan Yant had gone to the trouble (prior to his tragic death, during a Separatist attack on the Rimsoo) to seek out patches of bota growing wild and to (illegally) process it (bota being so prized that all of it is supposed to be shipped offworld, for sale, the harvested and stabilized/processed bota being considered too valuable to “waste” on mere soldiers) and put the results in muscle-poppers in the first place, which is why (after Jos Vondar admits what he’s found, when gathering up and clearing out his friend’s belongings from their shared quarters, and they take the risk of trying it – to miraculous effect – on a dying clone soldier) Barriss thinks of attempting to use one of the precious few bota poppers on a Rodian lieutenant with chronic smashbone fever, in hopes it will help (she’s already decided that, if Healer Yant could be brave enough to find and illegally process wild bota, so he would have some on hand to use on the worst cases in the medical wards, then she can and must do the same. Bota grows wild in many places in and around the swamps and jungles. There will be more poppers, if this one is ineffective. It won’t be a waste to try it, and it could very well help with a disease that, as yet, has no cure), and why, when caught by surprise by a particularly strong muscle spasm, she ends up accidentally injecting herself with some of the bota.

28.) Unique: Bota, like basically all known lifeforms native specifically to Drongar, is naturally both adaptogenic and mutagenic and always has been, at least to some extent – though it’s not (yet) been proven so, logically speaking, it’s adaptogenic properties likely have a great deal to do with the fact that bota has different kinds of effects on and medical uses for so many different species and no known negative side effects to any of those species, even though they use it for such wildly different reasons (from narcotic painkillers to powerful stimulants to broad-based antibiotics) – so it probably shouldn’t be so surprising that the plants (which technically aren’t exactly plants, being instead a unique type of lifeform somewhere between a mold and a fungus. Since no one has yet bothered to try to formally classify what bota exactly is, yet – it being more important to protect it and harvest it so that it can be dispensed or tested further on new/different species – most beings refer to bota as a plant, anyway, for simplicity’s sake) are mutating (and apparently have been for some time, though someone with deep pockets – most likely hoping to profit from the information somehow – has apparently been going to great lengths to try to keep this fact from getting out) towards the likelihood that bota might, one day all too soon, become, for all extents and purposes, inert and therefore useless (and worthless) as any sort of drug; given the reactions Barriss has had both to her unintended injection and the injection she’s deliberately given herself, to see if it would replicate the effects of her accidental dose, though, the fact that they could lose bota before ever discovering what it could mean, to Forceful individuals like the Jedi, it means that she has to contact the Council of Reassignment and, thus, the Circle of Jedi Healers and the MedCorps, as well as the High Council, at once, so that the Masters will know what bota can do to strengthen/deepen one’s connection with the Force in time to try to do something to save it.

29.) Communiqué: She is, in all honesty, shocked to see Master Kenobi (he isn’t a Healer, after all, though he is known for being an excellent emergency battlefield medic and it is, thanks to the war, increasingly becoming obvious that he’s among one of a handful of the most powerful Jedi currently in the entire Order. He explains, only a little sardonically, that he has contacts with the AgriCorps and, since the hope is that a fixed or stabilized version of the most potent remaining extant strain of bota [which, hopefully, will be unlikely to ever mutate to an ineffective form] can be successfully transplanted to at least a few suitable planets/moons known only to members of the High Council and a few high-ranking [and/or sworn to secrecy members] of the ExplorCorps and then raised and harvested by highly gifted and thoroughly vetted AgriCorps members for processing by the MedCorps and use by them and Jedi Healers, he’s here at the request of both the Council of Reassignment and the rest of the High Council), among the various Jedi Healers and Jedi Service Corps members who’ve stealthily responded to her communiqué (she’s even more astonished to see him without Knight Skywalker at his side, though the explanation that a majority of the High Council has decided that his friendship with Chancellor Palpatine – who, after all, is responsible for the policy that forbids the Healers on Drongar from using bota on their patients – makes him too much of a security risk to know about what they’re trying to do here); ultimately, though, Barriss ends up being extremely glad that he’s come, as she’s almost certain that they wouldn’t have succeeded in their aims without Master Kenobi’s raw strength in the Force and his startling ability to persuade the bota to grow in a way that should make it much hardier (and, thus, more likely to survive being transplanted) and perhaps even more potent, in the long run, since its nature should now be prone to adapt only to make it harder to kill and not to keep wildly mutating until it share so few similarities with what it is now that it will no longer be effective as a drug.

30.) Traitor: To keep their actions (which are illegal according to the Chancellor’s policies and Republic law, though she would argue that it is the laws that are immoral, not the actions of the Jedi, especially not once she learns that the hope is that the transplanted bota will thrive so much that the MedCorps will be able to experiment a little and perhaps come up with a bacta-bota mix that can surreptitiously be added to every Jedi’s standard field pack and be regularly provided in bulk to clone medics and other such doctors and healers in the field, with the explanation that it’s an experimental Force-enhanced strain of extremely effective bacta, for emergency use. Bacta technically is also legally restricted – Chancellor Palpatine has, over the course of the war, quite foolishly limited its production even further than it used to be, instead of expanding it so that the GAR will be guaranteed more than enough supply, supposedly to make it harder for Separatists to get their hands on any of it – but it’s always been something of an open secret [among Jedi, in any case. It’s not their fault if the politicians and the corporations have forgotten!] that, because of their Service Corps, the Jedi can and do produce their own bacta, and frankly Barriss regards the decision to secretly try to save and transplant an effective strain bota as an extension of the same policy that’s seen the AgriCorps and the MedCorps producing bacta for Jedi use for the past four thousand years or so), a secret, she must act as if she’s dismayed when the secret comes out, about the bota mutating to uselessness and the order comes that the Republic is abandoning Drongar; she doesn’t expect another traitor (Eqani Minder Klo Merit, of all beings! The loss of his homeworld has evidently driven him mad – after all, the Jedi have no records of a Republic weapons test, such as he claimed destroyed Eqanus, and they would surely know, if it were true – as well as driving him to betray the Republic to the CIS) to be exposed and shot by Jos Vondar in the chaos of the Separatist attack that very nearly derails the Republic retreat, though!

31.) Two: Barriss knows that the High Council have been assigning both orphaned Padawans and Padawans whose individual Masters have been injured to the point where they can no longer adequately do their duty by their apprentices and continue see to their training to other available Knights and Masters without waiting to see if anyone will volunteer for such a responsibility or even bothering to ask, first, if anyone has a particular preference – she’s friends with Ahsoka Tano, so she cannot help but know how Master Yoda persuaded (most) of the rest of the High Council to assign Ahsoka to Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi – but she’s barely been a Jedi Knight for two standard months, so the absolute last thing she’s expecting, when she returns to the Temple after Drongar, is to be summoned to the High Council Chamber and informed that she’s doing such an excellent job that the Council Masters are assigning her Selonian Padawan Zonder – whose Master, Armann Asantuen, one of the two dozen Corellian or Green Jedi who decided to fight with the Republic, even after Senator Garm Bel Iblis invoked Contemplanys Hermi and the entire sector technically closed its borders, back when the war was just beginning, is currently missing in action – until either Zonder’s Master can be found or else definitive proof the man’s demise is discovered.

32.) Awkward: She and Zonder are doing their utmost to try to make the best they can out of a truly awkward situation (though neither one of them is really all that comfortable with the High Council assigning them to one another. Zonder insists that his bond with his Master is unbroken, meaning the man is alive [a fact that she likely finds entirely too reassuring, given the likelihood that the High Council will just assign someone else to her if Zonder’s Master turns up and is able to take Zonder back on again], and that he should be out there looking for him, which Barriss can understand, even if she doesn’t quite agree with him. There are Jedi Shadows who are looking for Master Asantuen, after all, and Shadows are far more suited for such work than any Padawan could hope to be) and she’s tentatively beginning to think that they might be starting to find a rhythm together that works when the Separatists suddenly invade Coruscant, General Grievous kidnaps Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and things proceed to pretty much try to go to the lowest levels of Sith hells in a bloody handbasket.

33.) Attack: They were supposed to be dispatched to Felucia, but the unexpected invasion of Coruscant and all of the chaos surrounding that derailed those orders long enough for Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker both to discover that Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, is actually the mysterious second Sith Lord (Sidious, according to what little they’ve been able to uncover, since the Naboo Crisis) and has quite deliberately been playing both sides of the war all along and to then confront and defeat (and, in the process, dispatch) him, after which there was the attempted attack on the Temple to deal with (because, apparently, the clones all had biochip implants in their brains that could be triggered to force them to follow certain commands and the cowardly, traitorous Sith attempted to trigger Order 66 – labelling all Jedi traitors to the Republic and calling for their immediate execution – when confronted by Kenobi and Skywalker), and then, well . . . the war may essentially be over with, but Barriss is a Healer, so she’s going to be needed to help deal with both the problem of those Sith accursed biochips and the fact that the Kaminoans so cruelly designed the clones to age at twice the speed of average human norms, so no one can possibly ever highjack the free will of any of the clones ever again and the clones can hopefully still have long and productive lives as free citizens of whatever it is that the Republic is reorganizing itself to become, now that the Sith have been exposed and dealt with and their plans have also been exposed and ruined.

[whooambouttamakeanameformyself]

Beautiful Bloodshed

Otis Driftwood x Transmasc! Reader. (18+)

Chapter Five.

(Chapter Four can be found below)

Same summary and warnings apply.

(A/N: This story is being put up on my Wattpad! The latest chapter/s will be posted after they are posted here. I wanted to put them all together in one book so they could all be read together. Each chapter will be posted on Tumblr first so don't worry if you don't have Wattpad!.)

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(Two weeks after the events of Chapter Four. Otis and Y/N pretend that the hug never happened, but Y/N is slowly starting to realize their feelings for Otis.)

Y/N was sitting on the floor in Otis's room, sketchbook on their knees, drawing while Otis paints on the other side of the room. He finally got around to finishing the painting he'd been working on, a fairly big canvas painted totally black with a large human heart painted in red in the center. Y/N wasn't able to see what he'd been painting around it, but from where they were sitting they had a perfect view of his profile.

Perfect.

They smiled softly as they began to draw, starting with small lines, then moving on to longer lines. They took about 10 minutes to do the rough sketch, then they began to work on flushing it out, adding more details like hair strands and small markings.

By the time they were done Otis had moved on from his painting, now behind the curtain, no doubt working on another one of his sculptures. They let out a soft sigh, closing their sketchbook and sliding it back into their bag, getting up from their place on the floor. They walked out of the room without saying anything, not wanting to bother Otis while he was working, he tended to get grumpy when anyone bothered them (though he wouldn't mind a bit if it were Y/N).

They made their way down to the kitchen, where mama was sat just like last time, but this time she was by herself. She smiled at Y/N, watching as they grabbed a beer from the fridge.

"You sure do like to drink, huh Y/N?" Mama said with a chuckle. They shrugged with a smile, taking a seat across from her, opening the beer with relative ease.

"Eh, keeps the voices in my head at bay." They joked, making mama chuckle again.

"Those voices tellin' you things? Good things I hope." Mama's motherly tendancies never ceased to make Y/N feel welcome and loved. They shrug again, not really sure how to explain what the voices are telling him.

"I suppose so, maybe lies though." They said, thinking back the the time the voice in his head constantly talked about that nickname Otis gave him. He brushed it off, reasoning that Baby's name wasn't actually baby and it started out as a nickname from Otis too, so it wasn't unusual for Otis to give nicknames.

"How could they be lyin' to ya? They tellin' you stuff that don't seem right?" Mama asked, looking a little concerned.

Y/N gave her a small nod. "Suppose they are..."

"Like what?" She probed further, hoping to maybe help them.

"It's nothin' I can't handle myself." They say shaking their head.

Mama let out a soft sigh. "Well... promise you'll tell me if there's somethin' I can help ya with. I'd hate to see any of my babies sufferin'."

Y/N nods, clearing their throat slightly.

"I actually wanna ask you somethin'..." they mess with the bottle in their hand, worrying that maybe this was a bad idea.

"Go on then, darlin'! I'm all ears." Mama smiles warmly.

"I um... I've been feeling a little... off? Lately all I've wanted to do is hang out with Otis. I know it's makin' baby mad, but I can't help it, and I don't know why. I dunno, I thought maybe you would know..." they felt stupid asking a question like that, but they figured an outside perspective may help them understand.

Mama's smile grows as she let out a laugh.

"Sweetie, I think I know what your feelin'. I think gou might have some feelins for my little boy, and from what I've seen, so does he." She says happily.

Feelings? For Otis? No.... Y/N had never had feelings for anyone, or atleast they'd never noticed them before...

There was no way what Mama said was true, they didn't have feelings for Otis.

......Did they?

As the days go on Y/N started to pay more attention to the feelings they get when they are around Otis.

The little tingles in his brain every time one of his stupid jokes made Otis laugh.

The butterflies in his stomach every time he noticed Otis looking at him.

The jolt of his heart every time Otis said his name....

By the end of the week Y/N couldn't deny it....

Mama was right, he was in love...

He was in love with Otis.

The worst part was they were sure that if Otis found out he'd never want to see them again, or worse.

The very thought of Otis getting mad, demanding that he leave and never come back, hurling those nasty words from his art piece at him... it all made him feel sick to his stomach.

So Y/N decided to keep it quiet, thinking it was better to keep quiet than lose a good friend.

Saturday night, before heading home, Y/N approached Mama Firefly who was sat by herself in the livingroom, smoking a cigarette.

"Mama, you were right...." They said awkwardly, fidgeting with the hem of their shirt.

Mama gave them a confused look, unsure of what they were talking about. "About what, sweetie?"

"About... ya know... me havin' feelings for O-Otis..." they stuttered slightly at the end, their voice quiet, not wanting anyone else in the house to hear.

Mama's eyes lit up, a smile spreading across her face. "I told ya, darlin'! A mother always knows!"

Y/N began to panic and hurriedly shushed her, their eyes darting between the stairs and the doorway to the hall.

"Shhhhhh! Please, I don't want anyone to know..." they begged, the panic evident in their eyes.

Mama immediately saw the panic and gave them a knowing nod. "Ah, you haven't told him yet. You know you'd feel better if ya did, besides, he might surprise ya." She said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, with a knife in my throat." They responded making Mama gasp.

"Honey, he wouldn't do nothin' like that! Not to you!" She said putting a gentle hand on their shoulder.

"Sweetie, trust me, as your mama, tell him."

Y/N shook their head 'no', looking away from her. "I can't, he don't like me like that, and I don't wanna ruin everything like I always do."

Mama shrugged and took a long drag off her cigarette. "Whatever you say, darlin', you have a good night now." She pats their shoulder before sitting back on the couch, allowing them to leave.

Her words echoed in their mind as they drove back to their apartment. Maybe he should just admit his feelings to Otis, the worst thing he could do is yell...

Otis killing him would be a great mercy over living with the embarrassment.

End of Chapter Five.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hi! Author here! I'm sorry if this one was a little sad! I would like to warn that some future chapters will be pretty emotional, I'll put a warning before the emotional parts so you can skip them if you need!

[dandyshucks]

i keep thinking about it and i really think the way Junebug finds out Guz likes them (because I'm an overthinking goober) is a drunk confession from him 😭

he probably gets really wasted one evening celebrating some sort of win for team skull and I'm sitting in another room where it's quiet and I'm doing something like reading or drawing, and he comes stumbling in because he misses me even though it's only been like less than an hour since he last saw me, and WAIT this is turning into an actual writing thing okay um uh - (1k words on the dot comin atcha)

Junebug looks up from their berry studies, grinning when they see what a mess Guzma is. "How're you doing there? You look a little rough around the edges," they tease, setting their book aside.

The man's face twists into a sloppy grin and he chuckles. "Nah, nah, nah, m'fine, m'fine. Jus' missed you, wanted to see ya...." He makes his (slightly stumbling) way over to the desk Juno's sitting at, before slumping down to the floor and leaning back against one of the trainer's legs. "Missed ya soooo much, missed seein' your face."

The face in question is now bright red, and Juno twists their head around to shield it from Guzma's gaze. "Sorry if I left too early, I just-"

"Nah, nah, not'n issue. Jus' like seein' your face. Havin' ya around." He leans back and sighs happily. "Makes me feel warm inside."

Face aflame, Juno sits for a moment, lost for words. "Oh, uh, I'm... glad I can... do that for you." He's not implying anything extra. You're just friends. This isn't anything other than a good friendship. Juno repeats this over and over in their head as Guzma settles even more heavily against them, leaning his whole weight against their leg now. Juno pulls themself together, the weight grounding them. "Guz, you're gonna knock us both over if you keep leaning on me like this. Here, let's adjust if you're going to hang out for a bit, okay? If you want to talk that's fine, but otherwise I'm just going to keep working on my studies here."

Guzma groans as he sits up, and Juno moves onto the floor over to the wall behind the desk.

Patting the floor beside them, they say, "Come over here, okay? Just don't crush the leaves in this bag; I'm sketching them out right now."

With another groan, he shuffles himself over to sit against the wall, before grabbing the bag Juno had held up from their lap. "S'bunch'a leaves?" he slurs out.

"Berry plant leaves," clarifies Juno. "I'm drawing them for some notes I have." They point to one of them, brushing against Guzma's hand as they do so, and say, "These one's are from the Oran plant; I brought them from home to compare with any I find here."

With a smile, Guzma grasps Juno's hand with his, carefully setting the bag down so he can bring that hand to trace the outlines of their fingers. Juno feels their face grow hot again, and they look away to the right. "Your hands are so small..." he muses, sounding almost awed.

Juno stays quiet, but turns their head back to look over at him again.

"I like your hands," he says decidedly. "Like 'em a lot." He looks up at them suddenly, a shy grin stretched across his face. "I like you a lot, too, the whole you. Every piece of ya. Nothin' I don't like." He raises a hand to place against their face. "Y'so pretty... 'n' small... like one'a my bugs..."

They can't help but laugh at that, and he laughs too, feeling them shake with mirth under his hand. "Your bugs are pretty?" Juno asks with a disbelieving smile.

"Not prettier than you. You're the prettiest bug around."

Juno laughs again, shaking their head and pulling away from him. "Guz, you're so drunk right now."

Guzma shakes his head, placing a firm but gentle hand on their face to turn it back to his. "Nahhh, I'm - ... well yeah, I'm pretty fuckin' wasted right now, I know that, I know." He laughs before continuing, "But I also know I like ya a lot an' I'm happy I'm finally tellin' ya. You really are the prettiest goddamn bug I ever saw, a little Junebug, and I'm so fuckin' glad I caught ya out in the forest that day or else the best goddamn thing in my life woulda passed me right on by!" He stares at their eyes earnestly, trying to convey just how real this all is for him.

As he talks, Juno's face softens, their eyebrows creasing up. "I'm glad I'm here, yeah," they say, pausing. They look down, opening their mouth to say more, glancing back up at Guzma's face, and then look back down as they shut their mouth again.

"Junebuuug," he says pleadingly. "You're holdin' out on me here, what're y'thinkin'?"

They shake their head, biting at their lip nervously.

He sighs. "Aight, aight, m'not gonna push ya. Lemme just sit here for a bit an' then I'll get outta your hair." He lets go of their face and leans back against the wall with another sigh. "Meant what I said though."

After a couple minutes of silence, interspersed by pencil scratches against paper, Juno finally asks quietly, "Which part?"

Guzma rolls his head around to look at them. "Huh?"

"Which part did you mean?"

He scratches the side of his nose. "Which part did I - oh, oh, wait, I gotcha. Am I really that drunk or did it just take ya forever for you to say anything?" He chuckles, slinging a hand over to shake their knee.

"Sorry, I was jus-"

"Don't worry about it, I'm just fuckin' with ya. You make it too easy!" He turns his body to face them properly and plants a heavy hand on their arm, still obviously drunk. "M'gonna say it again for you, really spell it out, aight?"

Juno bites at the inside of their cheek, looking up at him to meet his eyes, hands fidgeting.

He glances down to see that, and smiles, taking their hands in his. "I like you, Juno. An' I think you're a real goddamn catch. And I want you to stay here as long as you can, maybe forever, but I like ya and I like having you around." He pauses, searching for the right words in his alcohol-addled brain. "An' I'd give up a shit ton if it meant you'd be mine, y'know? I like ya a whole fuckin' lot."

[trickstarbrave]

Better art ask: What Brushes do you use?

uhhhhh oh fuck

well mostly i use csp and custom brushes from the asset store. for details and jewelry and blood splatters and more i kinda just go ham with a bunch of them. but as for brushes i use all the time unfortunately some arent available anymore :( but sure i'll show them

most lines i actually use this brush:

its more of a pencil but was in fact designed for lines. at a small size and on a large canvas you dont notice the texture that much it just gives it a lil smth smth. outside that i also use what im pretty sure is the default textured pen bc i just like my lines with a bit of texture.

for sketching i will use the standard colored pencil default brush

to get the basic shapes as it is pretty light to start off with and i dont want anything too detailed, before i move into

uhhhh this one i also can't find. i know its kind of a graffiti style marker supposedly (at least based on what i can read of the name tho i am illiterate rn given i am abt to pass out)

onto coloring--i will fill in colors with a standard hard-round/g-pen or the textured pen depending on what im coloring. and as for shading it is almost always

before fully moving to csp despite liking pretty much all of it more i struggled with coloring as i was deeply attached to the watercolor tool in csp. i tried and tried over and over to find a brush that worked the same and finally found one which was close enough. over the years i have tweaked it here and there. but when people say "i love your rendering!" it is almost always this bad boy doing most of the heavy lifting.

bad example but it can do hard or soft edges depending on the pressure. its soft, kinda transparent, and easy to control (for me anyways). you can also drag the colors around when blending which is helpful because i also use this to like. erase and redefine shadows too. i would link you but uhhhh i think i found this brush in. 2018-2019???? and i havent found it or the others mentioned unfortunately. problems that come with people deleting or privating brushes and also dling a bunch of them but i might have also changed it so much its not really the same thing anymore LMAO

also honorary mention for the standard round airbrush for gradients and to get very rough shading and form down. and also i will use the standard default colored pencil brush for highlights sometimes on skin or shiny fabric because i feel like it looks???? more realistic???? cause skin and fabric has texture. yknow.

if you guys find any of these feel free to link them bc i havent had any luck even googling the name or digging around my downloads history

[desultory-novice]

Ask game let's hear it for: 2,8,9

Wah! Thank you!

2 / Favorite Thing About My Style

Probably that it's fast? XD I remember worrying early on that I'd never be a really stunning artist because I didn't have as much time to devote to it as other people. A smart friend told me to just focus on making pieces I could call "complete" in a short amount of time.

Basically, adjust my view of what my "art" would be. And it worked! I have other artist's styles that I like more, but I realized too some of my favorite fanart back in the day was fanart that looked like it was pulled right out of someone's sketchbook. With big chunky lines and little marks and forms that tell you where their focus was!

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[More Answers Below!]

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8 / Most Fun and Least Fun Parts

I really enjoy the "concept" phase. You put just anything down, and because I'm a Kirby fanartist, that's usually a circle and then you just keep adding onto it. A pair of triangle horns ears? You've got a Magolor. Big eyes? A Marx. Draw a circle on top? A Meta Knight. Draw a circle halfway below it, a Dedede. Etc...

I'll often pick a perspective at random and then start filling in what the character might be seeing/doing from that!

Least fun is figuring out things like light and where my characters are in space. I've got a vision impairment that means I can't see "depth" in RL so perspective is hard for me. I found a trick for lighting that has you douse the object in shadow and then "carve out" the light, which helps because I can imagine what's on "top" easier than what casts shadows, but I still haven't gotten perspective down. I've even used 3D models but things just get more confusing somehow!! :cries:

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9 / Finished Piece and Original Sketch

Here's two, based on the fact that I have two different brushes I use for sketching and that leads sometimes leads to two different styles.

The first one, for my Father's Day piece, I did the rough sketch in PaintStorm Studio, which is an under-appreciated little app (It doesn't work flawlessly on iPad but it's highly functional) and is my favorite app for concept sketches because it's like the FocusWriter of drawing apps. Then I imported it to Clip Studio, adjusted the size (I draw my concepts VERY small, usually starting with a box to help figure out how much canvas I want to use) and built it up from there.

The second, I did the sketch in Clip Studio using this soft painterly builder brush I made based on some other artist's brushes. This style of sketch is more "chisel-y" and I'm frequently carving out areas as I draw them by lowering the brush's alpha to zero. It's pretty easy to apply colors on top in this style (as opposed to the previous style, which requires cleaner line work.) I also started this piece as just a solemn, lonely Magolor looking "captured" and regretful. Adding the crown and then adding the reflection in the water came later on.

I was gonna have him be hanging by some Dark Matter looking vines originally, but then I remembered I'd seen someone on JP Twitter say that his magic circles in Soul form were almost like handcuffs restricting his actions, which is why I switched to those.

(You can't see it here from the sketch, but I knew from the beginning I wanted it to be color on a black background.)

One last thing because I think this is probably something weird only I do? (But maybe other novice artists will find it freeing??)

When I'm drawing sequential comics, even for the four-panel ones, because I can lose my train of thought easily, I tend to draw them completely OUT OF ORDER, going with whatever image is strongest in my mind first. Then I just scatter the rest over the page wherever there's room as I get ideas, finally using the lasso tool to re-arrange them later! You can see everything in the proper sequence here!

(You can also see that originally, Marx shows some barely concealed sorrow that Kirby doesn't recognize his childhood friend after all that he's been through. In the finished piece, I had him respond by going all fangs-out crazy instead. He IS a villain after all!)

[comicaurora]

How long have you been sitting on Dragon Tynan?

Oh buddy, it was rough. I really didn't wanna spoil it.

The idea of Tynan's second healthbar involving turning into a dragon was sort of a mid-game concept - well before the storyboarding, but after the broad-strokes arc timeline was complete. Fight choreography is a much more granular part of storytelling than almost anything else - tiny details and small character choices can wildly reshape the scene - so I've learned not to try to pre-plan the specific details of fight scenes too hard before I reach the storyboarding stage. Big fights like this one usually involve a broad-strokes "the team assembles, they fight" plan, and then once I start sketching out the boards I lay out the actual specifics of the character movements and choreography.

While I was working out the general timeline for the Tynan fight, the first issue I ran into was that Erin's plan for beating him would work. They really could just sling enough fire at Tynan to weaken him, drive him back, etc. This would be slow and tedious and wouldn't make for an interesting spectacle, and it wouldn't give the other characters any real opportunities to show off, but it would work unless Tynan found a way to stop it.

So Tynan needed a countermeasure for Erin's war-of-attrition strategy. He tried taking out Erin directly, but Kendal and Tess did too good a job of protecting him to make that viable. He could just wait them out, since they get tired and wounded and he doesn't, but that's not interesting to watch either.

More than that, Tynan was going to realize that he couldn't just repeat his last big win and expect it to have the same impact. In Tynan's head, his terror strategy worked every time but one, so there was no reason to think it wouldn't work again now that Vash wasn't there to spoil his party - but between his dawning realization that his strategy wasn't working how he wanted it to, his growing fury at mortals genuinely managing to fight him, and Kendal's insight that Vash defeating him was not seen as a one-time fluke but an inspiring victory that completely changed how Tynan was perceived, Tynan would conclude that he'd need to get creative.

Now there are a lot of ways Tynan could do that, but it is important to remember that Tynan is a basic bitch who relies on theatricality and tropes. What would he do to make himself scarier and more dangerous? What every basic bitch bad guy would do: turn himself into a dragon.

Tynan always had one major well-established tactical advantage over the good guys: his body was decorative and very flexible. He previously mostly used that for the "you are helpless to stop me, your weapons do nothing" gambit while letting his storm do the terrorizing, but against people like Erin and Tess who favor overwhelming force, that strategy is ineffective. He's never had to actually worry about the people he's terrorizing being able to hurt him in any way before. So while it takes him more work, he can make himself the biggest, strongest thing on the battlefield, crush their resistance, and then go back to his old playbook of overwhelming wrath of nature stuff.

So I knew I was gonna make Tynan a dragon and it was gonna totally tilt the fight back the other way. And as the story built up to it, I became very confident that this was the right call, because I think until now my story has been worfing the gods a little bit. I mean, I started the story with a god losing. Tynan is the first god we've met who's actually shown to be in any way dangerous, but because his body is decorative and he really can't beat Kendal in a straight fight, Tynan just seemed like an environmental hazard with a punchable face - because functionally that's what he was. Plus, Erin's confidence and own OP-ness started affecting the audience. I saw people genuinely expecting the fight to be over in a few pages, as if I would really let the arc-ending bossfight fizzle out because Erin had one idea.

So on a large scale, it was very important to let Tynan turn into a dragon, because it forever establishes in the story what exactly godhood means. I can talk all I want about divine oversouls and sentinels and domains, but sometimes you just gotta let the character say "fuck it" and turn that theoretical power into something tangible, like a giant lightning dragon.

Fun fact, though, Erin blowing himself up was a surprise. I knew he was gonna be out of commission after Tynan snagged him but it wasn't until I started boarding that page that I realized, yeah, Erin would absolutely blow himself up if it meant flipping one last megaton bird.

Good work, team!

[steamberrystudio]

23/01/2021

Hey everyone! Time for the last tumblr update of January. It's been a busy two weeks, so here we go!

Summary:

Edited 6-7 CGs

Completed all Jack CGs, all Lance CGs and some Magnus CGs (So about 6 or so CGs completed)

Finished Quill Ch 2

Started revamping the glossary

Sent steam page for review

The Ramble:

First of all - CG edits.

I have been going back to tweak older CGs off and on for a while now and in the past couple of weeks I went back and edited quite a few CGs. In some cases the edits were because I didn't like the CGs, in other cases, I changed the scene up a little and had to make continuity fixes to things like character outfits. My style has shifted a bit since I first started the game as well and there were a few CGs where it was particularly noticeable, so I fixed those as well.

And in one case I noticed I just flat out forgot to shade one character's eyes. So I needed to fix that.

Eventually, even if I'm not totally happy with a CG, I do have to set it down and walk away and wash my hands of it because I cannot reasonably edit CGs forever. At some point a CG has to be "done." Sometimes I get to the point that I can't even tell if I'm fixing anything anymore or if it's flaws in new and exciting ways. LoL

Ultimately though I do want the CGs to be as good as they can be so I do revisit old CGs occasionally and have been doing that a lot in the last couple of weeks.

In addition to that I have completed all of Jack's remaining CGs, all of Lance's CGs and one (and a half) of Maggie's remaining CGs - he has two left to complete. One is about half finished - still need to finish rendering the characters in it.

The other is in a rough sketch state at the moment so the staging and composition are blocked in but I still need to do the final line art and colour it.

Then, of course, both of those have to be recoloured and coded.

Once these two CGs are done that is all of the CGs for the first release.

52 CGs. 8 per love interest + 1 of Morgan and 1 intro CG each for Yuu, Reuben, and Quill.

I have so many regrets (in terms of. . .deciding that this much work was something I could handle. Because it was something I could handle. But just. And with a lot of pain killers. And heat packs. And other treatments to get me through the very real pain I've inflicted upon myself.) But. . .ITS DONE (almost).

Moving on from CGs. . .

I also spent a day working on a new cover art for the game. I was setting up the steam page, which requires approximately 1.1 million images, each one with unique dimensions. (Thanks, I hate it.)

I just realised that using the sprite art really wasn't going to work for these images. I couldn't cram 9 love interests into the various "capsules" and "covers" and banners and headers. . .and Morgan's sprite alone just doesn't really give enough of an idea what this game is like.

So I really needed an image that was more versatile, more interesting than just Morgan's sprite.

So I made that. And then made my 1.1 million images with their annoyingly unique dimensions and uploaded them. And sent the page for review. Steam is always an adventure so we'll see how long it takes to get the page reviewed and set up. (I really just put in the basic information and may try to spruce it up later on. . .)

In regards to actual game development. . .

I have also been working on revamping the glossary screens and writing up some new glossary entries. Finishing the glossary is really going to be the next major thing I try to finish, I think. I still have a lot of other small polishing things (adding in some SFX and stuff) but the glossary is kind of the biggest remaining feature to finish. And I want to spruce it up a bit since what is there right now is. . .functional. But not necessarily what I want to have in the final game.

So that is on the horizon once I finish up the CGs. BUT will probably happen after I implement all the corrections the beta testers have offered up and sent out a new beta version with all the CGs in it so that we can verify they are working correctly.

Lastly, I have done some writing. Not a lot since I'm focused elsewhere, but I did finish Quill's second chapter and have started editing the outline for his third chapter so I can get started on that as well.

So yeah. Busy two weeks. But we are getting there.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

Upcoming Weeks:

I did want to be done with CGs by the time I posted this but I'm still 1.5 CGs away from completion. I didn't account for - editing a ton of CGs and doing new art for Steam, etc. I will definitely finish up CGs this week.

And then with those out of the way will have to really start focusing on detailed to-do lists so I don't forget any of the small things needing to be done.

Very close. My spreadsheet says we are ~98% of the way there.

[ohmyartref]

hi, i need advice

i am trying to improve my anatomy for poses (I've been drawing for nearly 10 years) and I just can't seem to get it.

I've tried figure drawings but they all look so bad, I get discouraged and I never want to do them again. And I have anatomy books but I don't know how to use them.

Right now, I'm tracing over the refs and trying to copy the pose but it's never accurate and all my artist peers point this out constantly due to its many tiny mistakes.

I don't know what to do and I'm afraid I'll never be an illustrator because I can't draw anything right. I don't know if college classes will help me out neither :(

Now, I'm not the most articulate or best at wording what I think, but I'm going to try my best, because I genuinely think this is an issue of perception and perfectionism, and not an issue of not actually growing.

Figure drawings, in my opinion at least, don't really need to look 'good'. They are meant to be quick practice that breaks the body down into simple shapes and lines of action. Generally, with a lot of figure drawing practice, you start small and with reference, 10 second sketches, to 20 second, 30, etc. They are rough, they are messy, they are practice, and honestly? Practice doesn't often look 'good' or perfect. It will look bad, it will look messy. The key with those figuring drawing practices really is to just keep doing them, no one can have enough practice and no one stops learning or is a master that is no longer in need of practice and warm ups. Repetition will help you learn and experimenting will help you develop your own style.

Tracing over a reference is a valid way of practicing and learning! If you don't already, try not relying on the tracing too much. For example: When I need a hand in a specific pose and I just can't find the reference? I will pose my own (or a friends) hand how I need, take the picture, and trace it, but the tracing is very basic, the basic shapes, the details and fine tuning I do on my own.

I didn't go to college, when it comes to art some find it helpful, some find it to be a waste, but definitely look into colleges in your area or online that might have some free classes or events that you can attend. Some places have walk in figure drawing classes, and in this post I've discussed online resources.

But again, I think perhaps the actual issue here is perfectionism and self perception. And this is coming from personal experience:

The idea of 'pretty' and 'perfect' practice drawings or figure drawings is unfortunately a negative effect of social media and perfectionism. I think most people are guilty of it- spending time on a piece that is definitely more than a sketch, posting it, and captioning it with 'quick doodle' or 'rough sketch'. It creates an illusion of something being easy, natural, seamless, 'perfect' for other artists viewing it, and though no one should compare themselves to the work of another, I know we're all guilty of doing it.

I know I am extremely guilty of perfectionism, its something I tackle a lot with my therapist. This I think might be a useful resource and group of module work books to help anyone dealing with perfectionism, these are the exact ones I use and they are free! Sometimes we are our own worst enemies with growth, and we're the ones that stop ourselves from growing the most with our feelings of discouragement. I know it can really suck when artist peers critique and point out mistakes, sometimes it can come from a place of wanting to help and sometimes it just sucks. I certainly get discouraged, much like you're talking about, its important to focus on yourself, and your own goals rather than the opinions of others unless you are asking them specifically for advice.

Its not always easy to combat discouragement and those feelings of perfectionism, but I believe that you can! You can absolutely be an illustrator! There are so many professionals and illustrators that have struggled just like this or who took their time getting into the field. You can absolutely do it!!