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calm-and-wine · 4 years ago

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(I’ll give you) the best years

part I (moodboard)

Hello lovely people! Here is the start of a little drabble series about Nulu’s future (you can catch up on Down the line here). The biggest thank you to Anna @silverrank for editing and giving the best tips. Please come talk to me about those two anytime of day or night!

April 2022

“My mum’s been busting my ass with questions about the wedding. She’d love to help us plan things,” Niall said between bites of his breakfast.

They were in his house in LA, Niall had been putting finishing touches on his new album, while Lucy had a week off before going to Europe for clay season.

“Umm sure, I mean I’d love to have her help, but it’s not like we have a date set or anything. We haven’t even really talked about what we want it to be like.”

They had been engaged for a few months, but had yet to breach the topic of their wedding at all. Lucy quite enjoyed this phase of their relationship. Of course she wanted to take the relationship to the next level - hence the engagement - but after Australian Open, they hadn't spent more than two weeks together. The worst part of it was that those two weeks hadn't even been consecutive, thanks to Niall being busy recording his album and Lucy with playing.

“I know. But I think she’s just excited. And she assured me she doesn’t want to make decisions for us, just help with the organisation, since we’re both busy.”

“She’s honestly the sweetest soul. I love your mum.” Lucy sighed longingly, because she really did; Maura was an angel who had welcomed Lucy into the family with open arms, even when they hadn’t been dating that long. Because of that, she made a mental note to call her, as it’d been too long since their last chat. “Well, how about September next year? I could probably take a bit of a time off after US Open, skip a couple tournaments. I mean, it’s the end of the season anyway…”

“I’m gonna be done with touring by the end of July, so yeah, that’d work. Did you have a location in mind?”

“London,” Lucy said without a second of hesitation

“Really?” Niall looked at her surprised. “No destination wedding? Like a beach or something?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “London’s home and I’d love to do it somewhere there. Would you prefer somewhere abroad?”

“No, London’s good. I would be okay with a destination wedding, but it would be a pain in the ass with all the guests flying in and stuff. And some people wouldn’t come, so that would be a shame. Look at us, we already have a venue and a date!” Niall said with a big smile on his face. Apparently planning a wedding wasn’t that hard, all you had to do is have a chat with your partner and voila, everything was set!

Lucy laughed. “We do not have a date and a venue, we have a month and a whole city area.”

“Okay, party pooper.” Niall stuck his tongue out at her. “What about people? How many are you thinking?”

“I don’t know, about a hundred?”

A concentrated frown made Niall’s eyebrows scrunch together. “A hundred people for each of us? I guess I could make it work…”

Lucy made a face. “I meant a hundred altogether, actually.”

Niall looked at her with surprise. “Wait, what? A hundred people total?”

“Well, yeah. How many were you thinking?” Now Lucy was the one confused.

“I don’t know, around three hundred or something,” Niall mumbled, picking at his food like he was embarrassed.

“Are you serious? I wouldn’t know even half of them!” Lucy raised her brows and waited for Niall to raise his head, but when he did, he just shrugged. Lucy sighed. “And you wouldn’t even have enough time to talk to three hundred people.”

“So you want a small wedding, then?” he said after a minute.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I mean, I’d rather have fun with the people that are closest to us than spend half the night wondering if I talked to everyone and if no one feels left out or annoyed I’m not giving them attention.”

Niall hummed, but stayed silent for a moment, thinking it over. “Maybe you’re right. I think we should start making a list, see how many people we come up with.” He had his phone in his hand in a second, ready to type. “What?” he asked, when he looked up at Lucy only to see a wide smile and bright eyes.

She shook her head slightly, but the smile wouldn't leave her face. “It just kinda hit me that we’re really doing this. We’re actually getting married.”

“Are you regretting it already?” he asked with raised brows, but with a smile that matched hers.

“No, but I might, if you actually want to invite three hundred people.”

Niall’s laughter filled the place and she joined him, thinking that she might even endure a night in the company of three hundred people or more, if it meant hearing that laugh and making a man she loved happy.

February 2023

Lucy went dress shopping with her mum, Niall’s mum, Laura, Mia and Natalia. The latter was Mia’s girlfriend of almost a year. Lucy always had limited time in London, so instead of going to a variety of different stores, she looked through an online catalogue of the one they were in, now presenting the five dresses she’d chosen. The first one had gotten mixed reactions from her company, so it was a no. The second was beautiful, but Lucy found the narrow, mermaid style bottom of the dress a little too constricting.

The minute she put on the third dress, Lucy knew her mum wouldn’t like it. And she was proved right as soon as the dressing room’s door opened.

“Oh no, this one brings too much attention to your arms and shoulders and you don’t want that, honey,” said Megan right away.

Lucy didn’t even bother making her way to the mirror in the room, nor did she grace her mum with a response. They’d been through similar situations so many times she’d lost count. The rest of her help committee was rendered silent and she didn’t want to make the atmosphere even more awkward, so she just went and changed into dress number four, losing hope of actually finding one everyone would like, herself especially.

Two out of the pre-picked dresses were nice, the first and fourth one, but none was amazing. Not one made Lucy go, ‘Wow’. Maybe she just expected too much, she always thought that she would just know, she would try it on and just feel that it’s the right one. She wanted to fall in love with her wedding dress; was that too much to ask?

“Let’s maybe look around for a bit? Maybe something will catch your eye, it’s always a bit different than browsing online.” Mia stood up as soon as she saw her cousin’s disheartened expression after looking at her reflection in the last dress.

Lucy smiled with gratitude before stepping down and heading towards the racks full of all types of wedding dresses. The other women joined them, spreading around the room to look through the garments. The group worked quietly, the main sound in the room being the scraping of hangers and background music. Lucy’s attention was brought to whoever called her name to show her one of the dresses, but she mostly replied with a shake of her head. Diana, the shop assistant, was observing the scene, ready to bring whatever was needed or take a dress to wait for Lucy in the changing room.

“What about this one?” Natalia spoke up for the first time since they started looking. Lucy looked up, and she felt her eyes instantly starting to sparkle when she looked at the dress in Natalia’s hands. It was so beautiful and delicate, breathtaking, yet not too much, all at once. She was scared to like it too much right away, before even trying it on, but the thought that this dress might be the one made her heart do a little jump.

“Yeah, I kinda love it.” She gave Nat a wide smile before turning to Diana. “Do you have my size?”

~~~~

After the visit in the bridal shop, Lucy, her mum, Maura and Mia went to lunch. Laura had a meeting about one of her new work projects, while Natalia had a photoshoot location to look at. It was nice to actually spend time with her family and friends and Lucy was relieved that most of their conversation topics weren’t about her wedding. Obviously she was excited about the whole thing, but she had been the centre of attention all morning and it was nice to get away from the spotlight a bit.

After lunch she had a session with her psychologist. They’d been working together for a few years now to make sure she had the right mentality on court, as well as helping with general mental health. As soon as the appointment was over, she had a proper training session with her coach scheduled.

It had been a good day, but when evening came, she was more than happy to be back home, enjoying a quiet evening with a steaming mug of tea and catching up on some tv shows. And when her phone finally rang with an incoming facetime call, she didn’t even try to contain her growing smile. She loved being back in London, but it was always a bit bittersweet if Niall wasn’t around. It didn’t feel completely like home.

“Hi, love.” Niall’s smiling face filled her screen and her heart instantly warmed.

“Hey. Are you leaving for the venue soon?” She could see he was still in his hotel room, shirtless as always and it looked like his hair was wet. He had a show tonight, though - in Chicago if she remembered correctly - so he should be heading out soon.

“Yeah, but I wanted to chat with you for a bit before. Did you have a good day?” He was lounging on his bed, his attention focused solely on Lucy. It was one of the things she loved most about him, especially because sometimes he found it quite hard to focus on one thing, but never when he talked to her.

“Really nice day. It was so good to see everyone and spend time together. I do miss you, though.” She pouted, an action Niall mirrored.

“I miss you, too, Lulu. I’m counting down the days for that week and a half together before clay.” He smiled sadly. They had a few small visits planned, but it was usually for two or three days; they had to wait until the beginning of April for a longer visit.

“48 days,” she said with a smile; she had an app counting the days.

As if to change the subject before the mood became too sad, Niall asked, “How was the dress-hunt?”

“Terrible, at first,” Lucy laughed. “But it got better.”

“I heard your mum made some comments…” Niall said, a bit tentatively.

“Did Maura tell you that?” Lucy asked, at which he nodded. “Yeah, she hates my arms and shoulders, but what else is new. Well, those arms and shoulders got me a spot in the top 10 best female servers for a few years now, so I really don’t care if my mum thinks they’re not feminine enough.”

“I love you, Lulu,” Niall said with a fond look in his eyes. She was appreciative that those were the words that left his mouth, not that she was beautiful; somehow it made her feel better and it was like he knew she didn’t really need that boost of confidence.

“I love you too, baby.” They stared at each other through the screen for a while, giving each other gentle smiles and supporting looks. “I hope Maura didn’t have a terrible time today.” She had to ask... well, indirectly, because she always had this creeping fear that maybe people didn’t enjoy her company as much as she enjoyed theirs. And with her mum making it awkward for a bit and the dress search taking longer than expected, she’d hate to think that maybe Niall’s mum became irritated at some point or would rather spend her time differently.

“Don’t be silly,” Niall said instantly. “She called me today as soon as I’d woken up and wouldn’t shut up about how great you are and how lucky I am to be marrying you, like I didn’t know already. You know she adores you and she felt very honored that you wanted her there. I’m pretty sure she actually texted me the minute you invited her.”

Lucy laughed. “That woman is so cute. Did she tell you about the dress?”

“Oh, you found the dress?” Something in Niall's tone made Lucy raise her eyebrows. A beat of silence followed, before Niall broke it with a sigh. “Well, she didn’t say much, refused to give me even the smallest description, but she did say you look absolutely stunning in it. She also said I’m gonna be completely speechless when I see you in it. I might not be able to say ‘I do’ if that’s the case. Do you think a nod will do?”

Lucy looked at him very unamused, while he cackled to himself. “Why, oh why, have I agreed to marry an idiot?” she asked.

“Oh please, you love my jokes. You think I’m hilarious.”

“I don’t think there’s a person on this planet who’d ever use that word to describe you,” she retorted, though without heat or malice.

They just leveled each other with a daring look until Lucy broke and started laughing, with Niall following suit.

“I really can’t wait to marry you, Lulu,” he said when they calmed down, with smiles still painted on both their faces. “Why haven’t we decided to elope?”

She snickered at that. “May I remind you that not so long ago, you actually wanted a wedding for three hundred people?” She raised her brow daringly, at which he laughed and shook his head.

“Well, good thing I’m marrying such a smart woman; at least she’ll always get my head on straight.”

Lucy let out a soft chuckle and silence engulfed them for a split moment before another thought hit her. “Oh, I told Mia we’re gonna come do the tasting in the week after Wimbledon, she said Monday would be best, cause they’re closed then, so they’d just come in for a few hours for us. You’ll be back then, right?”

Mia was a sous chef at one of the best restaurants in London, so of course they wanted to hire that team for their wedding. Obviously Mia herself wouldn’t be working as she was the maid of honour, but her colleagues would be just fine without her watchful eye.

“Yup, I’m flying back Sunday afternoon, shouldn’t be home too late, so Monday works for me.” Lucy nodded while Niall took a minute to consider something before speaking again. “I’m going to sound like a dick, I know, but is it extremely awful that I kinda hope you won’t become a Wimbledon champion this year?” he asked sheepishly.

She wasn’t offended at all, just looked at him softly, with a little tilt of her head. It just so happened that he was playing this tour’s last concert the day of the women's final at Wimbledon.

“Well, a part of me is kinda hoping I’ll lose early on, so I can come see you at least for the last show,” she said. “Maybe even a couple, if I lose in the first week.”

They shared a look with which they tried to transpire an unspoken message of ‘I miss you’ and ‘I love you’. This was their normal, not being able to experience all of the big moments together, having to make tough choices, knowing when you could be selfish and when to put the relationship first. Some may think that was too much trouble, but through their years together they learned to navigate it somehow. Sure, they still made mistakes and were torn between decisions, but as cliche as it sounded, communication was the key. And neither of them would ever exchange their relationship for something easier. After all, Lucy was a firm believer of working hard on things to truly earn them. And working on her partnership with Niall might actually be the most pleasurable work ever.

September 2023

“Man, you’re actually getting married, that’s so wild!” said Mully clasping a hand on Niall’s shoulder with a big smile on his face. “I mean, it feels like you two has been together forever, so no one really had a doubt that you’d be endgame, but just… You’re actually settling down, that’s crazy.”

“You’re one to talk… Should I remind you that you proposed to Jordan three months ago?”

“Touché,” Sean laughed.

“Can you go see how everything's going out there? And get me some water, please,” Niall said to his childhood friend, mostly because he wanted a minute to talk to his father.

“I’m on it.” Mully gave a salute and left the room with a laugh.

The rest of his groomsmen were out there as well, making sure their partners and plus ones didn’t feel abandoned and giving Niall a moment to breathe.

“Why are you so nervous, son? I thought you were a million percent sure she’s the one,” said Bobby, noticing Niall’s bouncing knee and unfocused gaze.

“I am, I mean I’ve never even been in love like that. I want to spend my life with Lulu, of course I do, but, like, what if things don’t work out? What if we actually won’t last? How can I know that?” he asked.

He loved Lucy with his whole heart and soul, he’d never been more sure about anything, and he knew she felt the same way about him. But some part of him was worried, because sometimes things just didn’t work out, right? Things happened and feelings could change. He was sure his parents were in love when they got married, yet their marriage didn’t last. And so did so many others. Maybe love wasn’t everything and marriage wasn’t the road they should take? Just thinking about losing Lulu was making his insides churn and if he focused on it for too long, he might just throw up his breakfast.

“Niall.” Bobby came closer and looked at him with a soft, but sure look. “There are simply no guarantees. That’s just life. But let me tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a relationship as strong as yours, or two people so determined to make it work, just because of the love they have for each other. Sure, life will throw all kinds of troubles at you, but I think you’ve worked through a lot of the hurdles already. As long as you’ll stay like this, honest and open and wanting to make it work, you’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure of this.”

Niall looked at him with glazed eyes. His father wasn’t one for inspirational speeches like that, which made it even more meaningful.

“And I hope you know how proud we are of you, me and your mum. For everything you’ve done and what a beautiful life you’ve built.”

“Thanks, dad,” he said, enveloping Bobby in a tight hug.

He didn’t doubt Lucy and their love, he doubted life and happy endings. He doubted just how much goodness and happiness one could get from the universe. His life had thrown so many good things his way already, there was so much luck involved in all of his successes, and he just felt that someday it’d have to turn around and some gloom would take over. And maybe not seeing Lucy since yesterday and spending the night without her brought a bit of self-consciousness and worry. After all, she was usually his voice of reason. They lifted each other up. And deep down he knew it’d always be like that. They wouldn’t let each other fall, and together they wouldn’t hit the ground, because there would always be one to hold the other up.

“I need to see Niall,” Lucy said, when her hair was finally perfectly arranged and she was left in a room with her and Niall’s mums, Mia, Natalia and Laura, who were her bridal party.

“What?” asked Megan, brows drawn together in confusion.

It was less than an hour until the start of the ceremony. Lucy hadn’t seen her soon to be husband since late afternoon yesterday, as they’d decided to follow that bit of tradition and spend the night apart, with him staying at home, while she was at the hotel with her parents and Mia. She was very much regretting that decision now. They’d texted and talked on the phone before falling asleep, but she still missed him, it was different knowing he was so close, yet they weren’t together. It didn’t feel right. And now, when she was so stressed, not about the whole marrying him thing, but just about the whole ceremony and having all eyes on her throughout the day. At least she was glad that they’ve managed to wrap up the guest list just under hundred and fifty people.

Her and Niall were not supposed to see each other before the big walk down the aisle, but she needed his presence to calm her nerves.

“Can you please ask him to come meet me?” she asked Maura.

She looked at her a bit surprised, but nodded and brought a small smile to her face, even though her eyes looked a little worried. “Of course, sweetheart.”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad, I just need to see him,” Lucy assured before Maura left the room.

“We’ll give you a moment,” said Mia, squeezing Lucy’s shoulder as she passed, ushering everyone out of the room. Megan gave her an unnerved look, but left the room.

While waiting, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing her perfect dress, her hair was done just the way she wanted, part of it pinned up and part left down in soft curls, her face adorned by quite delicate makeup. Everything was just the way she imagined, even better.

There was a quick knock on her door followed by a nervous, “Lulu?”.

She took a deep breath before saying “come in”.

Hearing that Lucy wanted to see him and then standing outside her door, Niall thought his heart might just beat out of his chest. But when he walked in and saw her, standing there, a mirror behind her, a soft glow coming from the window and lighting up all of her best features, he felt like his heart just left his chest. He felt nervous and suddenly calm at the same time. His mum had been right - he was very much speechless, because Lucy looked like a vision.

“Is, um, is everything alright?” he asked, searching for any signs of distress in her eyes.

“Yes, of course. I’m about to marry the most wonderful man in the whole world. I’m a bit nervous, though, and just needed to see you,” she said a little sheepishly. She hadn’t really thought about how it might look to Niall when his mum showed up and said his fiancée wanted to see him, hadn’t considered how panicked he might get.

He took a step closer, not being able to stand the distance between them any longer, especially since he was sure she wasn’t about to call the wedding off or anything like that. When he was close enough, he noticed her hands were shaking and instantly engulfed them in both of his.

“Nothing to be nervous about. It’s just people we know out there. And I’m gonna be there, waiting for you at the altar and then be by your side the whole time. Plus, I have to say, just… wow. You look so incredibly beautiful, Lulu. I knew you would, you always do, but this... this is just a different level. And knowing you’re gonna become my wife today, somehow it just makes you even more stunning.”

When she finally looked at him, her eyes were already starting to water. “You look incredibly handsome as well.” His face finally lit up with a big smile and she almost launched herself into his arms. “Can we share our vows now?” she asked quietly into his ear.

Out there, in front of everyone, they’d decided to go with the traditional vows, to try and not make each other cry. But they both wanted to do their own, special ones. It was agreed to exchange them sometime later, probably late at night, when the wedding festivities were over, but she didn’t want to wait. As they were standing in this small room, both ready, wrapped up in each other, she wanted to be his already. Even if it wouldn’t be officiated, she wanted to have that promise between them already. She wanted to walk down the aisle with his vows playing in her head. She needed the confidence that his words would give her, the reminder of his love and devotion.

“Of course, whatever you want, love,” he whispered. “Do you want me to start?” Even though he didn’t see her because of their embrace, he could feel her nod. He planted a soft kiss on her cheek, right by her ear, before slowly pulling away, but keeping his hands around her waist.

Lucy felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest. It was fluttering around her ribcage, when she looked at the man in front of her, ready to soak up his every word. Even though her heartbeat might say differently, she wasn’t nervous.

“My Lulu,” Niall started, looking straight into her eyes. He’d use her full name out there for their proper vows, so now, as it was just the two of them, he really wanted to call her by his favourite nickname. “I promise to love and to cherish you every second of every day, no matter what’s going on or where we are, together or apart. I promise to not let you lose yourself, especially not in my own life and dreams. I promise to always be your number one fan and supporter, to always believe in you, always let you shine and remind you how bright you are. But most of all, I promise to be your partner, through thick and thin, no matter what life throws at us, to stand by your side, hold you tight and lift you up. I love you, Lulu and I promise to try to be the best husband possible.”

About halfway through his speech, Lucy’s eyes not only sparkled, but full on watered, tears eventually spilling down her cheeks. Niall quickly wiped them away with a soft smile and a look that said he’ll always be there to do just that. He didn’t even need to say it out loud, she already knew.

Before she started speaking, Lucy reached up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss right on his lips. “Niall, baby, I knew I should have gone first, cause you’re better at words than I am,” she started, at which he chuckled and squeezed her waist encouragingly. “I promise to always make sure you know how much I love you, through words and gestures, to always make you feel secure and confident, just like you do for me. I promise to always have your back, cause we are a team and together we can do anything. I promise to always try to understand you and consider your feelings. I promise to be open and honest, just like you want me to. I promise to never lose sight of how amazing you are and not let you to, either. I promise not to let you sacrifice yourself too much for me, even if you want to. I promise to make you laugh, just like you do with your stupid jokes, and to play with your hair and rub your back when you’re tired or can’t sleep. And I promise to always strive to be exactly what you need. Even though I can’t promise to be the perfect wife, I promise to try my hardest and always be the best for you.”

Just as she was saying the last sentence, a tear rolled down Niall’s left cheek, which she wiped with the tip of her finger, just like he’d done to her a few minutes earlier. She’d barely finished, when he pulled her closer and enveloped her in a tight hug while planting kisses all over her face and neck. This moment was just so blissful, they both wanted to stay in it forever.

Neither of them could even say how long they’d spent alone, after their vows they just stayed in each others’ embrace, sharing kisses every other second, inhaling one another, swaying back and forth on their feet, even though there was no music playing. They were wrapped up in their little bubble of love and excitement. Until there was a knock on the door.

“Please stop mingling in there, you’re supposed to get married in twenty minutes. I can’t believe you couldn’t even keep your hands off each other for one day.” Mia’s voice was slightly muffled through the doors, but her words were still clear. Niall and Lucy shared a shocked look, not even thinking of what anyone might think they were doing (they truly didn’t care), before erupting in laughter.

~~~~

When Lucy was coming back from the toilet, someone pulled her hand before she reached the main room. She turned her head to see it was her husband. He had a wicked smile on his face and put a finger to his lips as a signal to keep quiet, even though she was pretty sure no one would hear them over the loud music coming from the dancefloor anyway. He laced their fingers and led them into a corner of the hallway passed the kitchen.

Niall propped her against the wall, but put a hand around her waist to soften the hit.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, quietly bringing his body closer and leaning in to kiss her cheek before moving on to her neck.

Lucy let out a lovely laugh. It was a sound that he wanted to hear for the rest of his life. “We got married today, baby, we’ve been around each other for hours.” Despite her words, he kinda had a point. Sure, they were always together, holding hands or wrapping an arm around the waist to keep the other by their sides, but they were constantly around other people, listening to congratulations, well wishes and just making conversations with their guests. It was lovely, it was a part of the whole wedding ordeal, and it was their family and friends, who they were so happy to share this moment with, but she did want a minute alone with her husband as well.

“Yes, but I want you just for myself for a moment. You’ve been my wife for hours now and I’ve barely even kissed you. It’s a bit outrageous, don’t you think?” He whispered it all straight into her ear, nibbling on a skin once he was done.

She hummed. “Very much so” she agreed. She grabbed the back of his hair to pull him away from her neck and finally bring him in for a proper kiss. Both of them were hungry for it, their mouths working hurriedly, like anyone could interrupt them at any given moment, which was kind of true in this situation. Niall’s hands were rummaging around her dress, sneaking from around her ribcage to her waist and then travelling down and in this moment Lucy was both glad and mad at herself that her wedding gown was floor length, because she missed the warmth of his skin on her, even though this definitely wasn't the time and place to be doing that. She wanted to do nothing more but rake her fingers through his soft hair, but it was still perfectly styled and she didn’t want to ruin it, especially since it would probably create quite a buzz between the guests.

“Man, I can’t wait until the party’s over” he sighed, throwing his head back, when Lucy pulled away with a groan to force them both to catch their breath. “Is it really awful that I’m saying that about my own wedding?”

“Nah, I kinda feel the same right now,” she admitted with a giggle. At this moment, when they were sneaking around the party for a bit of a make out session, she felt like a teenager with butterflies in her stomach, not an adult with a husband. But there was a certain beauty in that, how Niall could make her feel giddy and excited with the simplest things, no matter how long they’d been together.

“Should we sneak off to the bathroom or something?” he asked with a glint in his eyes.

Lucy chuckled, knowing, well, hoping at least, that he wasn’t actually being serious. There was no way she was having sex with her husband for the first time in some filthy bathroom at their own wedding. Well, maybe not filthy, cause the whole place was very nice, but the sentiment was very much the same. It was not the place (nor time) to engage in marital sex. She and Niall had slept together too many times to count, but both of them wondered if this next time would be different, because of the official commitment marriage brought, if anything would change in their connection. Lucy had a gut feeling it’d be better than any time before and that they’d feel close and connected like never before, although that’d never been an issue for them. Their intimacy always brought not only their bodies, but also their minds and souls as close together as possible.

“Absolutely not,” she said, planting a kiss on his lips to soften the blow. “But we should get back. Theo looked pretty sleepy and I promised him another dance. Also, Harry made me swear to save one for him as well.” She smiled at the memory of sharing a dance with Niall’s ten year old godson not even an hour ago, and at the conversation they’d had with his former bandmates, which involved a lot of teasing of her husband.

“No,” Niall whined languidly. “Why do I have to share you? I’m fine with Theo, he’s a good kid, but Harry can suck it, he has his own girl.” He pouted to emphasize his words, at which Lucy laughed and reached her hand to smooth his features.

“Well, you could dance with Meave or another of the boys’ girls and then we can swap to get back together. I’m the bride, baby, a hot commodity, nothing we can do about it.” She shrugged her shoulders with a smile.

He sighed and pulled her closer to hide in the space between her neck and shoulder, which might just be his favourite spot on her body. “Okay, let’s go, I want to get it over with,” he said after a minute, standing straighter up. The smile on his face and the kiss he gave her before pulling away and lacing their fingers to head back to their party told her what she already knew, that he wasn’t actually grumpy and he did enjoy the night, even if it meant sharing her the whole night. Because in the end, she was his and he was hers and they had a whole lifetime together ahead of them.

Right before they entered the room where most of the guests were gathered, he pulled her to her chest once more and whispered a simple sentence right into her ear, but that few words sent a thrilled chill across her whole body: “Can’t wait for our honeymoon.”

#1dff #niall horan fanfiction #one direction fanfiction #niall horan fan fiction #one direction fan fiction #writing #dtl #down the line

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wichols · 5 years ago

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This is my first time ever doing any type of fan prompted writing event for myself and let me tell you I have some thoughts!!

But before thoughts let’s talk numbers.

Start Date: 1/8/2020

End Date: 1/24/2020

Total Fics Created: 9

Total Word Count Posted: 11,935

Prompts Received Anonymously: 5

Prompts Received By Users: 4

Longest Fic: Burning Intentions (2,203)

Shortest Fic: Attorney First, Wife Second (754)

Thoughts:

It was interesting to see which pairs and couples my general audience was requesting. By far the two most popular requests where anything to deal with Kyoya (my OTP) and Mori. You wanted my two favorite boys to get some comfort and happy endings and I was happy to supply them. Now that I step back and look at them, I will give you little fun facts or interesting thoughts I had while writing each one (mostly because I think it is interesting how writers explain their process of writing or their opinions on their own writings). The list starts chronologically from first to last fic posted.

1. Bland Cereal & Pregnancy Brain (Mori x Haruhi)

I imagine that of all the hosts these two will have the closest thing to what Haruhi would deem a normal life. They will make time for each other and always try to check in on each other. If Haruhi wants normal life filled with a steady stream of love then Mori is her guy. I giggled my way through this prompt at Haruhi and her oblivious nature (my favorite quality about her). This prompt took two sittings to complete. The first to write it and second to edit. Overall one of the quicker ones I wrote in this batch.

2. Attorney First, Wife Second (Kyoya x Haruhi)

This fic is one of my favorites that I have written. It is also the first posted fic where stuff gets steamy. I was gasping and eeping the whole time writing their steamy elevator interactions. This story took 1 sitting to write, edit, and post.

3. Solemn Tears (Kyoya x Mori)

As stated in the original post this is the first-ever M/M fic I have written. IT WAS SO HARD. Not because it was M/M but because both characters don’t really ever let their guards down long enough for them to cry. Not only that, I really had to dig and analyze what would really push them to the point that they would cry. Have you ever seen two brick walls cry? Cause I sure haven’t! Their dynamic is interesting and I am glad that I got this prompt to stretch my writing skills. Multiple sittings required because I had no idea how I was going to write it.

4. Shrouded Kiss (Kyoya x Haruhi x Tamaki)

Oh, the angst! Out of all the fics posted this one felt the most OOC. My first thought when I received the prompt was, “Kyoya never does anything by accident.” Haruhi was a little OOC in my opinion but that’s because of how Kyoya proposed the idea of finding love. Do I believe what he says about only knowing once you have tried things with different people? No, but there is merit to say that each relationship and person you are with is going to feel different. Some people are just naturally passionate people while others are more subtle with their love. From what I recall this was a pretty easy write and edit.

5. Obliviously Pregnant (Kyoya x Haruhi)

Haruhi probably couldn’t even surprise Kyoya with a pregnancy even if she tried. She might not have married a doctor but when you marry into a family who is a leader in the medical business nothing will stay a secret for long. On top of that, I am sure that Haruhi is so focused on work that she would actually just convince herself that she is sick rather than being pregnant. Now reader, I know you are curious as to why I decided to bless them with twins. Well, you see…..plot device. That’s really it. Plus, after I asked Google about multiples and pregnancy I was plagued with diaper ads. Note to self, use incognito more often when asking questionable questions.

6. Salmon Side Effects (Tamaki x Haruhi)

This was the first “Free Space” prompt. And I was in the thick of writing and posting. By the time I got to this prompt, I was tired. Not long after I got this prompt I experienced a depressive episode and spent the week slowly crawling out of the pit. I just couldn’t bring myself to work on this fic. I knew I would have to write Tamaki super excited and all I could think about was trying to make it throughout the day without crying. But I got out of the pit and finished it. Multiple sittings needed for completion.

7. Unyielding Devotion (Mori x Haruhi)

I am not sure when it comes to other writers but I cannot read and write fic at the same time. And after binge writing the last few fics I needed a break. I needed to read some fic! One night I was scrolling through FF.Net and decided it was time to start working through my 70+ fics waiting to be read. Picked a fic and I was off to the races (Something Honorable This Way Comes by ilovemori9). It was sweet and wonderful and totally the opposite of a break-up prompt. I think with the break up he was trying to do right by her, wanting her to not be held back by what was required of him. When I first started brainstorming this prompt I was going to have Kyoya lurking in the shadows waiting to take Haruhi as his own but the story wrote itself and it wrote Kyoya out of the story. I think it is better that way.

8. Broken Banner (Mori x Haruhi)

TINY HAMMER! Running joke between @ohshcscenerios and myself. This was such a fun story to write! Once I started I just had to finish. I don’t normally lean towards cute and innocent so it was a nice change of pace. Mori is held in high regard but he is, after all, a high school 3rd year. And he has a soft spot for Haruhi. Also, did you know that Mori is 6’2” while Haruhi is 5’1”? How do you accidentally kiss someone who is a foot taller than you?? So part of the issue in creating this story was how to get their mouths close enough to bump lips. I think the outcome suited the prompt. This was a two sitting story.

9. Burning Intentions (All Characters)

The final prompt….this prompt I tell you what. I will be honest I loathed this prompt in the beginning. I was utterly at a loss as to how I was going to write this. I opened the doc, stared at the prompt and closed the doc multiple times over the span of a week. It was like that episode of Spongebob where he had to write an essay and he felt like he was doing so much work but all he did was the fancy-looking “The”. I almost gave up on it. I almost posted an apology instead of actually trying to write something. In a last-ditch effort, I pulled up Pinterest and searched the word ‘fire’. And then an idea hit me! I wrote part of it one night and finished it up the next day. This story quickly became a favorite because of the witty banter between the hosts. I was laughing at my own writing. I am now very proud of this story!

Final Thoughts & What’s Next?

Throughout the last 16 days, I have accomplished many things when it comes to writing! I went from only having posted 4 fics to now having 13 fics. Today (1/24/2020) on FF.Net Boundless Opportunities (Kyoya x Haruhi) reached 200+ views. On top of the 11,935 words I have posted I have also written an additional 9,124 words for other projects I am currently working on. That is a grand total of 21,059 words written from January 1-24! In my free time, I also finished The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and am 13 chapters deep with The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On top of everything else, I created a beta profile! I have done so much this month and I want to thank everyone for their support and kind words! They really do me so much to me!

January has been busy! So I am looking forward to celebrating Freedom February!! I am giving myself permission to do whatever I want in February. I still have 11 more paper books to finish as well as 100+ fanfiction stories waiting patiently waiting to be shown attention. Basically what I am saying is I want to spend more time doing other hobbies as well as work on some of my wips that I have been neglecting since I started this project.

Speaking of wips I will be spending February obviously working on my Kasanoda x Haruhi fic but also an idea that sprung up into my head this past week produced a very interesting idea for an AU bad boy fic with Hikaru x Haruhi that has some potential to become another multi-chapter story. Too soon to say if anything will come of it but I want to keep my options open!

TL;DR: January was crazy. Lots of writing. Background information for each fic posted from the bingo prompts. A list of January achievements. Don’t expect me to post anything prolific in February. Using my free time to explore hobbies other than writing. Diving headfirst into digital and paperback stories. Hopefully, make progress on my two main unposted projects. Stay tuned for updates and questions regarding my wips. Thanks!

Special shout out to @ohshcscenerios for helping me out so much! Half of my stories wouldn’t be nearly as good without your help!! Thanks for pushing me to write some fluff instead of just sad angsty fics! Go check out the blog for all your burning host club asks.

If you would like to read any of these fics you can find them on Tumblr, AO3, or FF.Net.

#100 hits bingo #OHSHC #ohshc fanfiction #haruhi fujioka #tamaki suoh #Kyoya Ootori #takashi morinozuka #mitskuni haninozuka #hikaru hitachiin #kaoru hitachiin

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doctorocsid · 5 years ago

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THE MAKING OF PHOENIX WRIGHT’S SECOND DAY OFF

Or: The Immense Struggle of Trying to Make Decent Content

A good year and a half. That’s how much time passed between me starting Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off and me uploading it to YouTube. What a hell of a load off my back that was. If you couldn’t tell, making this video was a bit of an undertaking, to say the least. And by “undertaking” I mean “an exercise in pure agony”. So, I figured I’d do a bit of a writeup here so I can get across to you the absolute hell of an experience making this video was.

PART 1: THE INITIAL PLANNING STAGES

The original “Phoenix Wright’s Day Off” was released in February 2018 to, though not a lot of views, a generally very positive response. Despite its janky animation, people seemed to enjoy it for its complete ridiculousness, comedic timing, and overly-choreographed fighting. Not to mention literally being the only Ace Attorney-themed Garry’s Mod video ever made that actually uses the Ace Attorney characters. (I’m still the only person to ever do that as of the time of writing. Woohoo.)

Given the positive reception and the fact that I literally ended the video with a “To Be Continued”, I was ready as I could ever be to start work on a sequel. The first one only took me a couple weeks to make, so surely a sequel wouldn’t take much longer, right?

Oh, how wrong I was. Still, I started planning out exactly how things would go. Throwing around ideas in my head. I needed it to be bigger and better than the original, of course. How was I gonna do that? Well, my initial plan was, uh, misguided, to say the least. What I wanted to do at first was create the sequel entirely in Source Filmmaker, along with giving it a darker, more serious tone to contrast the ridiculous slapstick of the first. Not a great idea for a sequel to a video that mainly relied on throwing ragdolls around for comedy.

https://streamable.com/taxrn

The original intro for PW2DO, based off the intro for “Fargo”. A lot less cool-looking than the final intro I made. (Even though I intended the video to be made in SFM, I made the intro in Gmod solely because I could just film myself driving the car instead of having to animate it manually.)

The final intro was done in a not too difficult fashion - the characters were animated in Garry’s Mod on top of greenscreens, which I then imported into Premiere and changed to solid colors. Added some extra video effects I found in places. Set it to an instrumental of Propane Nightmares. I’m proud of how it turned out, mostly. I won’t deny after I introduced the characters I didn’t exactly know what else to do with it, so I just filled it with some random actiony shots I thought might look cool. Incidentally, this was the only part of the final video that was made in Premiere - the rest of it was just edited together in Vegas Pro. Which crashed many times during editing. Fun.

PART 2: THE PAINS OF INDECISION (AND ALSO SOURCE FILMMAKER)

Nonetheless, I got to work, despite not actually knowing how to use Source Filmmaker. “I’ll figure it out as I go along,” I figured. And over time, more or less, I managed to figure it out. Sort of. And by “figure it out” I mean “become subject to the true hell that is SFM”.

Let me give you some quick background here. SFM has two main editors for animation: The “motion editor”, and the “graph editor”. The motion editor uses a relatively easy-to-understand method of animating: you select an object you want to animate (a prop, weapon, ragdoll, etc), select the span of time in which you want the thing to move to its new destination, and then you move it to the new destination. Sounds simplistic, but can be used extensively to create good-looking animation. (I myself used this method for the bar fight in PW2DO.) The graph editor on the other hand, is much more involved, depending on the tried-and-true method of using keyframes for animation. Some people prefer this one because it allows you to directly edit and fine-tune each little animation curve to your liking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXnpk8xDLg

This unfinished PW2DO prototype was animated entirely with the graph editor in SFM.

Really, you can use either one for animating, whichever suits you best. For me, personally, the graph editor feels like something designed in the seventh circle of hell specifically to torture me. Why does adding a new keyframe screw up all my preexisting animation? Why does adding a new keyframe make the ragdoll’s bones stretch out to infinity? Those are just a couple questions I shouted at my computer screen while trying to figure it out.

Eventually, I just gave up. I came to terms both with the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with what I was making, and with the fact that trying to use SFM’s graph editor to animate was making me want to julienne my keyboard. (I hadn’t figured out, or really even considered the motion editor at the time.) “Screw it,” I said to myself. “I’ll do in Gmod, like the last one.”

PART 3: OH RIGHT, GMOD SUCKS TOO

The first PWDO was relatively simple to make, at least compared to the second one. There were two main tools I used: Stop Motion Helper (a tool for animating stuff within Gmod itself without the need for actual stop motion or whatnot), and the classic technique of “throw stuff around in front of the camera”. I had little to no experience doing 3D animation when making it, but it worked out anyway. It let me practice some camera framing stuff, too. All I was really doing for most of it was animating the characters moving along with the camera. But for the second video, I desperately wanted to up the ante. I wanted it to be cooler. More edgy. More cinematic. Turns out, there’s one main reason that proved difficult for me. And that’s that Garry’s Mod kinda sucks for long-term animation.

Here’s the difference between animating in SFM and animating in GMod. SFM is made for animation. GMod isn’t. So, if you want animating in GMod to be anything less than horrendously tedious, you need some addons to help you. Stop Motion Helper is a neat little addon that lets you animate stuff in Garry’s Mod with the “tweening” type of animation. Simply put, you pose something in point A, make a keyframe, move it to point B, and then make another keyframe. Stop Motion Helper will then automatically animate it moving between the two points. Thus, instead of the stop motion method where you have to pose every individual frame, you technically only have to pose the beginning and end. Not that it looks very good if you only do that. Of course, like any kind of animation, it’s still something that requires a lot of effort if you don’t want it to look cheap and robotic. But it works. Sort of.

Doesn’t work too well with vehicles, though.

There were a multitude of small limitations and annoyances, however, that proved to be annoying to deal with in GMod nonetheless.

FIRST PROBLEM: Because GMod isn’t made specifically for animation, resuming a project within it is kind of a hellish endeavor at times. Unlike Source Filmmaker where you can just open a project file and everything remains the same, Garry’s Mod’s saving tool doesn’t save a lot of the addon-related data when you create a save file of whatever scenario you’ve made. That includes stop motion helper animation. While SMH does have its own support for saving animations, you have to save every single animation as its own separate file. Take the scene in PW2DO, for instance, where Phoenix shoots those cops to get the security footage.

https://streamable.com/2ikd1

There are seven moving parts in this scene - Phoenix, the picture frame, both cops, the gun, the shampoo bottle, and the camera. Note how many of these are moving in each camera shot along with how many shots there are (ignoring after the cop goes out the window, because that’s not done with SMH). That’s ten shots, if you didn’t want to count. If I wanted to save this whole scene for potential later tweaking, I’d have to make a save file for the session along with saving the animation data for all ten shots - that’s ten separate animation files for this one scene - and then I would have to manually reapply the animation to each individual moving element.

On top of that, not everything can be saved at all just by sheer concept. The muzzle flash, for instance. While the flash graphic over the gun was added in post, the actual light emanating from it was something I had to do in-game, and it’s not something you can animate with SMH. Therefore, I had to play the animation in GMod, and then specifically time me hitting a button on my keyboard to make the flash happen at just the right point. That’s just one workaround in a program that, when animating in it, is like 80% workarounds.

But nothing about Garry’s Mod frustrated me quite as much as the final fight scene.

PART 4: THE BAR FIGHT

The final fight scene of PW2DO was the one thing that kept me from releasing the video sooner. Seriously, out of that year and a half or so, I’d say only a month or so was spent working on the GMod portions of the video. The rest was just that stupid, godforsaken fight scene. (And mostly procrastinating on making it.) Allow me to try and outline to you what I went through doing this.

Now, the fight scene went through three specific incarnations. They were all based around Maya and Athena tracking down Phoenix and beating the crap out of him, it just differed on two basic things: the location, and the fight music. The first idea I had was them fighting Phoenix in an alleyway while ABBA’s “Waterloo” played in the background. (i know that sounds silly but i swear i couldve made it work) That one didn’t get beyond planning stages - I’d kinda choreographed some of it in my head, I know Phoenix was supposed to get a crowbar at some point, but it didn’t get any farther than that.

The second incarnation was much more well-developed. The way I figured it was as such: Phoenix, after retrieving the security footage from his office, would go on the run and get on a bus. However, when he got on the bus, it’d be revealed that Athena was driving it, and Phoenix would fight Maya as they went down the road. (No comment on how Maya and Athena got a bus.) This was gonna be set to “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, inspired by the opening car chase scene from Kingsman: The Golden Circle. (Meh movie, neat fight scenes.) Eventually they’d crash the bus, all go flying out the window, and then Phoenix would get arrested by the cops as he did in the final video. Sounds neat, right? So, what stopped me from doing this?

jesus christ so many things

Everything wrong with this concept centered around one particular problem. I absolutely could not, for the life of me, figure out how to animate a fight scene in a bus that was moving down the road. In SFM that might’ve been possible, but in Garry’s Mod? Good luck with that one. I practically tore my hair out trying to come up with a single working solution to this. Allow me to present to you the various ideas I had and why they all failed miserably.

IDEA 1: Animate the bus moving and the characters moving in it at the same time

This was the fastest-thrown-out idea because the complexity of something like this was just too much for Gmod and an animation addon. What’s that? You want to be able to stay with the scene as it animates? No, that’s basically impossible to do. It’s not like SFM where you could just attach yourself and a camera to the moving vehicle and animate from there. It just wasn’t feasible.

IDEA 2: Create moving textures and place them outside the windows to give the illusion of movement

This one went out the window too, unfortunately, as rotating the camera to any degree kinda just seriously killed the illusion. I could’ve done the scene without the cool cinematic fighting camera movements, but… is it really Phoenix Wright’s Day Off without those?

IDEA 3: Create a 3d video of going down the street in GMOD and paste it onto a greenscreen outside the bus, and animate it rotating properly in Premiere

I don’t blame you if you don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about. See, miraculously enough, there is actually an addon for GMod that allows you to record 360 degree videos within it - and after a decent amount of finicking around with it, I actually managed to make one that seemed to work fine. It was from this point I actually set out and started making the scene - I got about ten seconds in, mostly comprised of driving shots, a neat easter egg with Homestar Runner (not something i’d do nowadays tbh) and a single shot of Phoenix beating on Maya. I was all set to get going.

And then Premiere just refused to work with the 360 video. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to animate it rotating and stuff, but it wouldn’t let me do this at the same time as the normal 2D video that was meant to be pasted on top of it. It frankly just. Wouldn’t let me. And after a lot of struggling, I just. Gave up. That ten seconds of video, trashed.

https://streamable.com/4omnep

I did manage to re-piece it together from the old files on my drive, though. With mostly missing sound effects.

So, that was scrapped. I wasn’t doing the bus fight. What, then, would work out better than a fight scene based off the first fight scene of Golden Circle? Apparently, my mind decided that would be the last fight scene of Golden Circle. Cool.

Thankfully, things went a lot smoother there, but it wasn’t without hiccups. Now, if you’ve seen Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off - I don’t know why you’re reading this if you haven’t - there’s a chance you might’ve found the music choice for the bar fight scene a bit odd. If you’re not aware, it’s a cover of the 1986 Cameo song “Word Up”, by a German country band called The Bosshoss. This is the song they used in the movie so you’re not allowed to question me on this.

Given how western-y the song sounds, though, I had to at least make the context fit. Despite that, I couldn’t really find any GMod maps that had a good enough bar interior for a while - and I really wanted it to be a bar fight. Bar fights are cool. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to find one. This one, in particular: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806759276&searchtext=

Yes, that’s a My Little Pony based map. I worked with what I had, okay? That was the least of the issues, anyway. By this point I’d had enough of trying to animate with GMod, and as such I’d decided to move back to SFM, but that caused a whole new issue. This map wasn’t made for SFM. And opening it in SFM just. Crashed. I won’t go super into detail of how I fixed this, but essentially I had to download a program called BSPSource so I could decompile the map, re-open it in Hammer, and export it to properly work with SFM.

Still left me with some annoying issues though, as you can see. Not too difficult fixes, though - The first one I just covered up with another corkboard, and the second thing was fixed by typing mat_specular 0 in console. Was a bit annoying that I had to do that every time I reopened SFM, but whatever. It was working, at least. (that’s something you’ll think to yourself a lot if you ever get into using SFM.)

Anyway, things went pretty okay from this point on. You know, aside from me proceeding to barely ever work on the thing for like a year and a half. I didn’t have many hardships during it other than my own procrastination, so instead take a look at some of the funny tricks I pulled to get this scene to go the way I wanted.

https://gfycat.com/OldfashionedForkedFlatcoatretriever

Engineer telekinetically swooces his shotgun back to himself.

https://gfycat.com/SleepyShadowyLadybird

I had to make Phoenix hover over Engie to let his arms reach him without his legs obscuring the camera.

https://gfycat.com/AptHomelyGoral

The rope was way too short to reach the soldier, so I had to have Phoenix basically throw the rope in order to reach his gun. I also forgot to detach the rope from his hand afterward, so it kinda gets flung around with it off-camera.

https://gfycat.com/AgonizingScrawnyAbalone

Phoenix apparently decided for himself he wanted to go out the window.

Aside from all that, though, things finally went okay. Eventually. I managed to finish up the animation, add some extra ending stuff in GMod, and do a neat credits sequence to David Bowie music. All in all, it went okay.

And that’s it. After all that waiting, I finally managed to put an 8 minute video out from one and a half years of it not being finished. It was quite a load off my mind, for sure, and to this day it stands as my proudest video. It’s silly, has its down moments, but I can at least confidently say it’s the best Ace Attorney gmod video. If only because there is basically no competition.

So, what’s in store next? Not much of anything as far as I feel right now. I could make a third one, one day - I did envision it as a trilogy - but although I do have some ideas for it, I still have zero motivation to actually make it. So who knows. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe Phoenix Wright will escape from prison one day.

So, this was the experience of making Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off. I hope this gave you something of an idea on how agonizing this video was to make, and totally means you should go and share it everywhere to get me more views because I DESERVE it after the hell I went through.

Seriously, though, thanks for reading, and may this post serve as a warning if you ever decide to do Garry’s Mod or SFM videos. Not a warning against it, mind you, you can make some totally cool stuff. Just be prepared to suffer a bit in the process.

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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February 24th-March 1st, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 24th, 2020 to March 1st, 2020. The chat focused on Whispers of the Past by Crona J.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Whispers of the Past by Crona J.~! (https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until March 1st, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

FeatheryJustice

So far, first impressions, holy cow the art is amazing.

Ash🦀

1. My favorite part about the beginning was the style. It immediately drew me in how everything was lovingly rendered in color that made me feel like I was seeing the world for the first time. It made me want to paint, too! 2. When we first see the man. Whoo buddy. Whoooooooo buddy. That was... a finely sculpted painting there. I could’ve framed him and hung him on my wall if the artist would let me. WHOOOO BUDDY. 3. My favorite character so far is Martel. I don’t write them often, but I love seeing kids in media, and I love the design of her hair. I know it’s a random thing to make me like her but I just... really like her hairstyle. She’s cute, and I’d guess she’ll be a breath of much-needed light air later in the story. 4. Mystery man and Martel are precious. 5. I point to answer 2 here. That lovingly sculpted chest? My heart was a-flutter I tell you what. 6. The art style is just... SO LOVINGLY RENDERED. The quiet moments of baking bread juxtaposed against a chaotic battle was SO. GOOD. Aaaaaah Could also be that that particular part is my favorite part of making bread so it was extra special aaaaaaah 7-8 I haven’t seen enough of the story to answer these yet! But the art is banging and I can’t wait to read more. Subscribed.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I've read this before and the art and story aren't really my thing. Since critique is allowed I could give art comments if CronaJ would find that kind of thing helpful? But even though I won't be following the story I was still impressed by how much care the author puts into it. Both from looking at their comic and from reading their comments on this discord and on the tap forum it's clear they've put a ton of effort into the art and story, and haven't cut any corner.s And all the panels are so rendered. I wonder how long it takes to draw a page?(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Hey everyone! I'm the artist and writer of Whispers of the Past. I want to thank you all for your kind comments and observations so far. It really means a lot to me to hear what others think of this heartfelt project. I know that the story is in the beginning stages right now. But I'm looking to post the end of the first chapter this week, so hopefully a bit more will be revealed soon. Please feel free to ask me questions about anything, or (to answer @Eightfish (Puppeteer)'s question), to offer critiques for how I can improve what I'm doing.(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@FeatheryJustice & @Ash🦀 I'm glad you enjoy the artwork. The painting process is probably what takes me the longest when it comes to pages. In response to @Eightfish (Puppeteer)... It takes me around 30-40 hours per page, and I try to post 2-3 page updates. Obviously, the amount of time spent per page varies depending on several factors, such as: the number of panels, the level of complication of poses, how many characters/background elements there are, and sometimes just whatever weird reason my brain isn't working that day ^^; So for my average 5-7 panel pages, they typically take longer than, say, a full-page spread. @Ash🦀 I'm so happy that the first few pages pulled you in! I spent a lot of time deciding on how I wanted to draw those panels, and what style to use, etc. I actually redrew the first 3 pages at least 5 times before settling on them as they are. And, you can hang and frame the image of our male MC if you want, haha, I actually don't have prints of it, but it is something to consider That particular panel was a one-page spread, so I was able to dedicate a bit more detail to it. Maret is a worthy favorite character. She is too pure and precious, and she just wants to make friends with everybody. Even when the "strange man" is kind of curt and unfriendly to her, she wants to befriend him. Also, I am SO unbelievably glad that you picked up on the juxtaposition in the bread-making scene! Ahhhh! I had a lot of fun with that one

FeatheryJustice

1. The Pacing, I love slow starts to comics because I get to absorb it and learn more. 2. Favourite Moment? Dude trying to climb out the window and failing. That was really funny XD 3. Mysterious dude from the water of course. He has pointed ears, you know something is up. 4. I like Maret and the mysterious man, it seems like a child being like 'this is new and I want to learn more' Also thank you for not writing a grating child character. They sometimes turn up too pure to be real, or too grating because they are too real. Maret at least has that nice balance of a healthy child will not acted spoiled but still want things because child like the scene where she was shoo'ed out of the room. 5. I think we talked about htis a long time ago, but I love the way you draw hands and feet! 6. Nothing so far, not sure where the story will head so I can't answer this. 7. I like the start of the mystery and the slow ramp up. We are just getting comfortable and I'm sure we are going to get rocky soon! 8. Art, from seeing Cronaj spend so much time on it, it's freaking amazing. I can almost feel the characters come to life.

Also on a side note, I want Maret to hear from the Conch shell (As a memey joke) "Under the sea, under the sea" XD

(Mysterious man has red hair, I wouldn't be surprised he turned out to be a mermaid XD Sorry I'm just on slight crack theory mode right now. He didn't sell his voice though)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

When I was first writing and planning this comic, I was a little scared about how slow the start was, but I'm glad that it has been interesting despite the slow nature of the exposition.

2. Favourite Moment? Dude trying to climb out the window and failing. That was really funny XD

@FeatheryJustice Accurate! He's kind of an idiot, and he panics over nothing. For Maret... I actually based her character partially off of my two younger sisters, so that might be a lot of what contributes to her personality and realism. We did talk about hands and feet before! I love drawing hands, because they are so expressive and complex, but hate drawing feet because they are complicated. But I did study from life to draw Maret's feet, because I felt like I would mess it up otherwise ^^;

Hahahaha! I could definitely make an edit of that, tbh.

FeatheryJustice

That would be a funny joke panel if you ever want to do one. XD It's like replace the diaolgue memes XD

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

And I was partially making a mermaid joke when I had the reference to mermaids in the comic because he is a redhead

Definitely an idea....

I would title the episode "Whispers of the Crack"

FeatheryJustice

OMG YES I would love to see that XD

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I have a WotP meme folder on my computer already

carcarchu

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic? Mystery man pretty 2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)? i liked the part where maret was listening to the conch for mermaids, had a lovely magical charm to it 3. Who is your favorite character? mystery man 4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most? not too many interactions so far but maret and the mystery man were cute 5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it! the sunset scenery had a nice vibe

also i can see why people were saying it reminded them of ruroni kenshin, mystery guy especially with his hair up and on the cover image is reminiscent of kenshin but storywise doesn't remind me of it at all

carcarchu

I have some critiques that i'll cover in case you don't want to see them. SPOILER The anime-ish emotes (the blush and the anger vein) to me clash against the realistic artsyle and detracts from the moments, some more subtlety with them would be appreciated. And Maret doesn't really look like a child to me, her face is very mature so it makes her look older than she is. Moreover the 3 characters that have been introduced thus far have very similar facial features. For maret and agatha they are siblings so it makes sense but the mystery man is (presumably?) not related to them so i'm not sure if that's intentional. In any case more facial diversity would be appreciated going forward (if it's just your style that's fine too). And this is a really small nit-pick but the first panel of chapter 6 has horse hooves with the sfx thump thump thump. In my opinion this sfx should be clip clop clip clop END SPOILER

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@carcarchu Thanks for the notes! I actually had a hard time deciding how to portray blush noticeably in a more realistic style, haha, but I can definitely see why it's jarring. Do you have any tips for how to depict blushing without anime emotes? I would just make it more reddish/pink, but it always looks weird to me (or too unnoticeable). As for Maret... She looks like a child to me? She's six, so she isn't quite a toddler, so I don't know if that changes your perception of her. She actually resembles my youngest sister a great deal, and my youngest sister was 5, almost six, when I designed her. (I just looked through the pages again, and there's maybe one panel that I think she looks slightly older in, so if anything, I'll try to fix that panel.) So yes, obviously Agatha and Maret look very similar, hahaha. They are biological sisters, so that makes sense. There will be at least two more characters introduced that are also related to them (and look fairly similar as well) and one character who will be mentioned who is also related and looks just like Agatha. Other than that, Izrekiel does look somewhat similar, I suppose, but it might also be partially that he canonically has a very feminine face as opposed to other male characters to be introduced later. It could be that and also a bit as a result of my style. I'm not sure. Ahhhh, sound effects! I also struggled with deciding what to do here. I wanted to do something different than "clip clop," mostly for a stupid personal hang-up. (I don't know why, but "clip clop" always looks so comical to me.) But if it helps translate the sound better, I might just have to bite the bullet and change it. Thanks for your feedback! Even if I don't agree with all of it, it does help me to take a closer look at what I've done with some different eyes. (edited)

carcarchu

That's fair! You don't have to accept anything just my thoughts (i hope nothing i said was too harsh) for me thump thump is a dull sound whereas clip clop or clippity clop is a sharper and harsher sound

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

yeah, I think you're right about that

thump is more like a heartbeat

or someone falling on carpet or something

carcarchu

and as for the blush question i think there are ways to depict a similar emotion without relying on the blush itself as a short hand like the softening of the eyes, the shape of the eyebrows, looking down and heck even body language can help with this. expression is more than what is shown on just the face

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Thank you. I always feel like my characters look too stiff, like mannequins. ^^; I'm probably not going to completely redraw any old panels at this point, but I might make a few alterations to these panels to make it more consistent with later panels down the line.

carcarchu

i also noticed that a lot of your panels are the characters looking straight towards the "camera" and i would appreciate more varied angles and perspectives

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Particularly with the first ten pages, that is certainly true

I got that note before, but I didn't redraw every panel, only some which looked particularly bad.

carcarchu

personally i never edit old chapters unless i 1. forgot to draw something important 2. there's a huge typo 3. it's missing a panel

any critique you can just keep in your heart and implement if you choose to do so moving forward

keii'ii (Heart of Keol)

2. I really liked "what if it's mama?" - a lot of hints condensed there: family history, how the topic of deaths/ disappearances are handled around children (either in that family specifically, or in that culture), and also a moment that shows a glimpse of Agatha's sisterly love instead of having the readers assume it.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Really loving the comic so far! Right now, I'm most interested to learn about this family situation. I'm guessing their mother is dead or missing, but what about their father? I suppose his clothes were still in the house so maybe he just went out? Or maybe they're both missing and it was just fairly recent?

Also, the paint-y style of this comic is just incredible

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

https://media.tenor.com/images/878a64d90a1139bcb1e863ee29bfa929/tenor.gif

I'm so happy that you guys picked up on the clues about their mother. It alludes to some pretty plot heavy stuff that very few people have really commented on so far.

eli [a winged tale]

Oooh I’m so excited for your story Cronaj! Here are my answers~ 1) I love the beach scene! Maret with the shell is adorable and you established their relationship right away 2) Fav moment is probably the scene transition to our lad waking up with Agatha going about her day. It’s very peaceful and I’m a sucker for slice of life stuff. 3) Can’t pick just yet~ I like Agatha as a solid protagonist though. 4) More Agatha x mystery man please 5) I loooove the illustration aesthetics. Bold colours! 6) haven’t gotten to the core theme yet I’m sure but first impressions/meeting are always exciting. 7) I’m excited for what is to come. Can’t wait for the call to adventure. 8) Strength is definitely the art - beautiful and bold. Keep up the wonderful work!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@eli [a winged tale] Woah!!! You're the first person I've heard say that they like Agatha! She's mah girl! (And don't you worry, there will definitely be a lot more Agatha x Mystery Man ) Thanks for participating

eli [a winged tale]

she’s a solid sister!

sagaholmgaard

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic? I like how the intro had a nice balance between art and text. Usually if there’s a lot of text on the first page I can get deterred from heading a comic, but here I think it worked really well! And the loverly painting of the ocean sunset also reeled me in and fit really well with the poetic text! 2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)? ”He’s the prettiest man I’ve ever seen!” LOL (and she’s right too…) 3. Who is your favorite character? I like the kid! But I’m excited to learn more about the other characters as the story goes on! 4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most? I liked Agatha and Mystery Man interacting, it felt very natural and I’m curious to see what comes of it. But the dialogue felt pretty strong which I gotta applaud 5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it! The beautiful shot of Mystery Man on the beach of course, lol! I love the way the hair is rendered, it really feels like it’s has weight and is spread out in the sand, if that makes sense? 6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores? It seems like it will explore a lot of interesting themes in the future, such as grief and finding where you belong, so again I’m interested to see what the story brings! I’m sure it’ll be good no matter what :D Overall I like what I’ve read so far! It’s not the type of art style I usually gravitate towards, but I can tell a lot of love is going into rendering and I think we’ll be seeing Crona’s art improve a lot as the story goes on, which is always exciting to see!

RebelVampire

What I like about the beginning of the comic, which also goes for what I like about the art in general, is the attention to detail in the background colors and lighting. I've never seen such a beautifully rendered (what I assume is) a sunset. It really makes everything have this great almost mystical atmosphere to it. In general, though, the art so far is definitely the comic's strength because you can see the sheer passion in every drop of it. My favorite moment so far is when Maret gives Izrekiel some flowers and then drags him off and he's just meekly protesting. It was both cute and comedic and the preciousness hurt my heart. This is also why this is my favorite pair of characters interacting so far. I think the age gap combined with the context of Izrekiel's situation is gonna lead to lots of awkwardness that I look forward to. As for fave character, though, I would have to go with Agatha right now. I don't know what it is about her, but everytime I see her I feel like I'm looking at an old soul. Like maybe someone who still has a lot to learn about the world, but is wise beyond her years in other regards. And it makes her a captivating character for me.

While I'm not sure if this will be an overall theme throughout, I like that the comic starts to deal with the theme of loss and hope. On one side you have Agatha who just kind of accepts loss and deals with it, and then you have Maret who just lives on in hope. And I kind of feel they represent two dynamic sides to the issue about whether its better to cling to hope or just move on and deal and how both can be harmful if not expressed in the correct way. As for overall story content, while we're not that deep in, I do like it starts with a multitude of mysteries cause mysteries are always great for making ppl want answers

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Since Crona said they were good with art critique: The main thing I noticed when I first saw the art was that, though lovingly rendered, the characters' faces and bodies are kind of stiff. They don't really scrunch up their eyes and faces when they emote- it's mostly just the eyebrows (this was especially noticable when Maret was crying, or on the latest page, first panel, where Agatha's face doesn't really match her body language or words). And characters often don't seem to twist their bodies as much as they should. Oh- also the same camera angles of faces and bodies are repeated a lot. Front, 3/4, and profile. It'd be cool to see some shots with foreshortening from above or below the characters. Also the lighting is pretty diffuse- the characters seem to be shaded about the same way, and with the same colors, regardless of the lighting situation. I can still tell where the light is coming from, because there are those strong bright highlights in the direction of the light, but other than the bright highlights everything else seems to be shaded as if there was another light source coming from straight ahead. Also, sometimes characters seem to lose their shadows? Like on this page https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/ch-1-what-the-waves-left-behind-pt-3/viewer?title_no=191366&episode_no=4 where Agatha doesn't cast a shadow on the man, or this page https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/ch-1-what-the-waves-left-behind-pt-8/viewer?title_no=191366&episode_no=10 where they're running.

Those things being said though, I was still very impressed by the sheer amount of effort put into this comic. 100 hours/ update is absolutely insane. And you pay so much attention to the inanimate objects of this world. It makes the story feel grounded. About what someone else said: I agree that the cartoonish blush looks out of place. But I disagree about Maret- I think she does look like a child. 5. Favorite illustration? Definitely Agatha's hands when making dough. Not a critique but just a question: I was confused on the location of the story. Where is this?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Ooof. Finally got a chance to sit down and respond to all these comments. I keep rereading them over and over again, so thank you so much for sharing your thoughts everyone! I've noticed a few themes with what people have commented so far: Maret is most people's favorite character, the panel of Izrekiel on the beach is also very popular, and the theme of loss/grief is apparent to the readers (which I'm very happy about.)

@sagaholmgaard I'm glad that you mentioned the theme of "finding where you belong" too, because it is and will be a very prevalent theme in the comic. And reading your comment about how the dialogue seems natural made my day. I used to worry about how the dialogue came off constantly, and to hear that it's strong is so encouraging.

@RebelVampire As is expected, your comments are very thought-out. The interaction between Izrekiel and Maret after he falls from the window is one of my favorite moments so far as well. I'm happy that Izrekiel's behavior came off as meek in this scene, because that is one of the defining traits of his personality. I'm glad for another Agatha fan! She is such a fun (and difficult) character for me to portray. There are so many layers about her that even I am still discovering. She is definitely an old soul, and he experiences growing up have definitely matured her beyond her years. As I mentioned before, the theme of loss is definitely a major theme of the comic overall. And hope as well, since I think the two are very connected.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Thank you for offering your critiques! Character stiffness is definitely one of my major problems that I'm working at. I definitely see what you mean about Agatha's face in the latest update. Her eyebrows look painted on (pun not intended). I have been looking forward to having some more dynamic poses, especially foreshortening, but I do find it somewhat difficult when most of what the characters are doing so far are standing, sitting, talking, and maybe doing something with their hands. ^^; Hopefully, in the future, when more "action" happens, it will be easier to do this. As for bird's eye or worm's eye shots, I'm not gonna lie, I struggle with them so much. I had two bird's eye panels, and those took so much time, and I still don't know how I feel about them. If you have any tips for exercises, I would be so grateful. (Finding reference isn't always possible.) I also would love some tips/resources on how to get better at lighting. Again, lighting reference isn't always possible for specific panels, so it would help me a lot to learn how light works in general. OOOOOOF! I don't know how I missed the lack of shadow on Izrekiel in that panel. That was 100% a stupid oversight on my part. The scene with Agatha making dough had some of my personal favorite illustrations for a while. :) Also, your question about the location, I'm not entirely sure how to answer it?(edited)

It's a high fantasy story, so the location is entirely fictional.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

The best I can answer that is to say that the story takes place in a country called Shai-Ryam, consisting of four major "districts" in a semi-tropical temperate peninsula called "The Aka Peninsula," named after the native people who originally lived there. As of right now, they are in a city called Gon Atam, a seaside village on the western shore of the Nuata District, near the Ocean of Saturuna. It is a city heavy in trade and with a long history, yet quaint and small due to a disaster several hundred years ago. It is only now being repopulated.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Where do you think Izrekiel comes from, and what is his past history that seems to haunt him? Additionally, how do you think he wound up with amnesia and seemingly abandoned by the sea?

10. How will Izrekiel’s past history affect events of the story? In particular, how will revelations about his past affect his relationship with Agatha and other characters?

11. How do you think Agatha’s life will change from her encounter with Izrekiel? Will it somehow lead her to a more exciting life? If so, will it make her miss her simpler life with her family?

12. What are the biggest questions you have so far and are hoping to see answered over the course of the story? Also, what do you think will happen in the story in general?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Ash🦀

9. Okay, so, here’s my theory. Just a guess. So Izrekiel is from a very war-friendly people up north who need land. Izzy just isn’t all about that life, but feels like he has no choice. Then he gets hurt fighting someone close to him (I’m putting money on brother or cousin who lives on the “wrong” side of things, hurt because he just couldn’t fight them at full strength. And then he realizes he can’t do it, while on the ship bound for new fight zones. His captain gets wind of it and is like “oh no I can’t let Mutiny Happen” so HeS all long ike “either fall in line or get off my ship” and Izzy is like “no I don��t wanna fight anymore heck you guys” and the captain proceeds to yeet him off the ship, leading him to the island, which, unbeknownst to him, is the next target. That’s my guess. Might be wildly off. He might be part mermaid. (Merman? Is mermaid gender neutral?) 10. Izzy or his bros probably killed one of Agatha’s family members, possibly the mom? Possibly violently? Which is why she never told babygirl what’s up. It’s probably going to be remembered in the buds of their relationship, hes going to try to hide it but it’ll come to light and she’s gonna be like “Izzy I hate you” and it’s going to make me cry. 11. She’s going to have a bread making partner in the end. They’re going to have adventures and go back to a domestic bread making existence, I speak it into being now /smacks table That may just be what I want to happen, though, as I very much enjoy bread making and wish others the same simple joy of giving dough a good smacking. 12. IS THE MOTHER REALLY A MERMAID OR WHAT Is Agatha a mermaid Are they like Selkies where they can come onto land a little Is babygirl a mermaid too(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Omg... I love reading these theories. I won't say you're wrong or right, but this is a riot. I'm thoroughly enjoying this.

FeatheryJustice

9. Pulls out my Crack Theory brain Okay, so Iz is actually not a very hot man, but actually a really hot princess, transformed into a man since she was exciled from her country but their rules are to give the exiled a new life so they shape shift them into something else. Iz got shifted into a man, and the lovely wide bare chest was because their top was lost to the ocean like how someone would lose their bathing suit top to the sea. Anyways, knowing nothing about themselves, Iz now lives their life as a man never remembering they were a princess in the first place. Ends Crack Theory 10. Don't know, can't say for now. 11. She could always politely kick him out later, so I can't say for now. XD 12. I want to know if there are monsters in this story or just like different species warring it out.

RT|NitghVision

^ I like this theory

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) Oh! I missed that it was high fantasy. I thought the story was historical fiction. No wonder mystery man has pointed ears. I was so confused- I kept thinking, oh, she looks Polynesian and lives by the ocean. But wait, her name is Agatha and she makes bread? And the houses look Japanese? What culture are her clothes from? The world being completely fictional explains all that. I think I was confused by the real names in a high fantasy story- you don't really see that a lot. Finding the right reference for lighting or pose is impossible for me. I have no tips. The only way I've found is to make my own references. I will sit in front of a window, or take a lamp into a dark room or something, and prop my phone up and take photos of myself in the poses and lighting direction I need. But hey, at least that way I don't have to worry about stealing someone else's work?

(i also like feathery's theory)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@FeatheryJustice Crack theories are best theories.

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) Oh! I had no idea you thought it was historical fiction No wonder you were confused! There's a lot of weird cultural-mixing shenanigans going on in the setting, and it's a bit confusing.

I should try that, for now the lighting has been primarily sunlight, or diffused sunlight (which I don't think I depicted correctly).

RebelVampire

Time to crack story theory. I don't know enough about the world to guess a name to where Izrekiel is from. However, wherever it's from, I get the impression its embroiled in a bloody war that is suffering heavy casualties. I imagine that Izrekiel mightve been in a battle and just wound up in the sea by circumstance - like maybe was taken as a prisoner of war and jumped overboard to escape. Something like that. As for the amnesia, well, Imma chock that up to PTSD cause the brief flashbacks we got don't look pleasant. However, I definitely think someone will come looking for him, and that these someone's will make trouble with the people he's just met - perhaps even forcing them to abandon their home with people in pursuit. And I'm sure as Izrekiel remembers more, others are going to really view him as potentially dangerous and blame him (but then get over it cause he's pretty O_O) Given that, I do think Agatha is gonna leave home because of Izrekiel's past running after them. I do think she's inevitably gonna miss the simpler life. Not to the point she won't rise to the challenge, but to the point that she's gonna be like "wait theres danger out here and i didnt even get a sword from an old man in a cave!" As for biggest questions, right now I'm just kind of hoping to see more of the world cause current world events really are gonna dictate a lot where the story could go.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Dude I was literally googling the names to see what country they were from because I thought they were from some obscure real island with a history of cultural mixing that I hadn't heard about before.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Hahaha! Yeah, Agatha is an English name. Maret and Kelan (a character that hasn't been introduced yet) are Irish names. Aalia (another character that isn't introduced yet) is an Arabic name. Kehhasan (another character) is a made-up name. Izrekiel is a made-up name inspired by the biblical names Israel and Ezekiel (although technically it is often spelled in their alphabet as "Isarikieru," which has a particular meaning and pronunciation in an even older—fictional—language). Ryukou (another character), is a real-ish name, based off of the Japanese names "Ryu" and "Kou," which mean "dragon" and "peace/light" respectively. Four other characters have fictional names: Ia, Tammamori, Soro, Ghita (although technically it's a Greek name, that wasn't my inspiration). And of course there are hundreds of side characters with a combination of weird names and name origins.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Deo101 [Millennium]

So! I don't really do so well with answering questions, but I do want to say it's inspiring to me to see just how much WORK is put into this comic. It's really lovely to see so clearly how much you care for it. Just want to give some general words of encouragement, keep it up!

Ash🦀

I’m most looking forward to seeing more of Izzy how the story develops along with your painting. There are so many hints and peeks at the world, and I can’t really guess where it’s going. I feel like I already care for these characters, and I can’t wait to see their journey. I am also not good at encouragement, as generally I’m fueled by spite. But I just wanted to say, keep going! You got this! We believe in you!

eli [a winged tale]

Keep up the good work Cronaj! Your art is beautiful and I can’t wait till we start rolling into act 2!

FeatheryJustice

I'm excited to see what else comes up next!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement everyone! I'm so happy to know that you are enjoying the story so far!

RebelVampire

I'm most looking to learning a bit more about the world structure I think. Since I think current events are really gonna hint at a lot what's going on. As for final words, this is an artistically wonderful comic with a lot of love put in, and I can only imagine how things will improve in the future!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I'm just really looking forward to seeing these characters grow! This is a beautiful comic, and I can't wait to get more of it!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Before the book club ends, I just wanted to pop back in and say thank you to everyone for their participation. Your kindness, insight, and critiques will stay with me for years to come. I'm so happy to have found a supportive community of readers and fellow creators!

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Whispers of the Past this week! Please also give a special thank you to Crona J. for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Whispers of the Past, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/whispers-of-the-past/list?title_no=191366

Crona J.’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cronasonlyfriend

Crona J.’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/cronaj

Crona J.’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/CronajArt

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #whispers of the past #crona j.

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ilovemygaydad · 6 years ago

Text

Friends in Dark Places [ch 14]

pairing: moxiety, eventual logince, background eventual remile, background eventual remy/emile/deceit

WARNINGS: kissing, implied making out, non-consentual touching and kissing, abusive ex, toxic relationship, self hate, sex mentions, mentioned threesome, rumors, depression, anxiety, depressive episodes, food mentions, unhealthy coping mechanisms, not eating, isolation, worrying, swearing, anger, yelling, swearing, homophobia, homophobic slurs, possibly something else

tag list: @hufflepuffgirl01 @cocobearthe4th @cas-is-a-hunter @band-be-boss-blog @theunoriginaldaisy

a/n: jsyk, it’s totally okay to ask for a modified chapter if you need it or if i need to add tags! i get it, and it’s no problem for me to quick edit a chapter or whatever :) also, feel free to send requests or questions that you have!

first - previous - next - companions

consider buying me a coffee (please)

February 18, 2016

Patton stepped over the threshold into Jay’s house. He’d spent a lot of time there, so it wasn’t being in his boyfriend’s house that was making him anxious; it was the fact that it was the first time they would be alone. Jay had begged him to come, so he’d obliged.

He shook the snow off of his coat and dumped it on the floor next to his boots. “Babe, I’m here!” Pat’s voice echoed lightly in the plastered halls. He heard shuffling a few rooms over and made his way towards the sound. The door swung open, and a half-dressed Jason stood in the doorway. He subconsciously noted the girl sitting on the couch, equally undressed and disheveled.

“Patton. Looking gorgeous as ever,” his boyfriend drawled. His lips were swollen and bright pink.

“What the hell is going on, Jason?” Patton’s voice was hard as he gestured to the scene in front of him. The girl inside stood up and walked to the door, wrapping her slender arms around Jason’s waist.

“He really is as beautiful as you’ve said, Jay. Those eyes truly are stunning. And you know how hot I think freckles are. I would have been a fool to refuse your offer.” Her words dripped like honey--uncomfortably slow and thick. Her hand reached out to cup Pat’s cold-tinged cheek, and he flinched back from her touch, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“What offer, sweetheart?” The anger was gone, replaced with a sugary sweet that held no warmth.

Jason gave his signature dashing smile. “I was thinking, right? You’re bisexual; I’m bisexual. And Lauren here has just been dying to try a threesome. It’ll be fun!”

“What?” That was ridiculous! What kind of thought process was that?

“C’mon, babe. I’ve seen your potential; you’d be an amazing partner in bed!” Jay quirked his eyebrow and pulled Patton closer.

“First of all,” Pat stated as he took a step backward. “You know my feelings on this matter. Second, no! I’m not doing that! We’re fifteen, Jason. Not to mention that you set this all up without even consulting me.”

“And I wouldn’t have had to do that if you’d just loosen up a bit and let me show you something actually pleasurable!”

Patton was about to protest once more when Jason roughly kissed him; his hands fumbled with his belt buckle. On impulse, Pat pushed him back, knocking both Jay and Lauren to the ground in a heap.

“What the hell, Jay?! I said no! What the fuck do you think that means?” The anger was back and more fiery than ever. He was pissed––no, he was furious.

“You fucking moralist! You ruin everything! I went as far as to make this perfect for you, Patton. You’ve done nothing for me, but I’ve done everything for you.” Jason slowly rose from the floor, redness rising in his face.

“I told you exactly what I was comfortable with from the moment you asked me out! I should have listened to Roman and Logan when they said you were nothing but bad news, but I was swept up by your ‘perfection.’” Patton spat back. He’d reached the end of his rope, and he was taking none of it.

“Those two were so much better than you are! At least they were somewhat willing to play to my needs; they were never so self centered as to refuse everything I want. Sure, they didn’t go nearly as far as I’d liked, but they’re better than you. You’re poisonous. You’re a bomb just waiting to go off and ruin all of my hard work! Now, either take your clothes off and join us, or we’re breaking up right here and now.” That stung. And for just a moment, Patton ran over the situation in his head. He was so devastatingly close to caving before he came back to his senses.

“Then I guess we’re done.” Patton swiftly put his shoes back on and wrapped his coat tightly around his body, stepping back out into the cold February air.

---

All discussion ceased as Patton, Logan, and Roman stepped into Westview. Every pair of eyes turned to them. Specifically Patton. A bright blast of chatter erupted once more, and Patton could glean little bits of conversation from them.

“I heard that he slept with three guys this weekend!”

“Yeah? I heard he had a threesome with some chick from South and Jason Keith!”

“Patton Shea is such a slut!”

“Not to mention he’s a fag!”

Patton Shea. Slut. Patton Shea. Whore. Patton Shea. Slept with three guys in one weekend.

Patton spun around and dashed from the school; Logan and Roman followed close behind. He could hear their furious voices behind him as they walked down the sidewalk to the nearest bus stop.

“I’m going to murder Jason! That dick deserves it! How fucking dare he hurt you like that, Patton; especially after what he did on Saturday,” Roman growled.

“For once I agree with your aggressive sentiments. Patton, you are the sweetest person I know. You deserve so much better.” Logan was normally calm—far too calm for most—but this angered him to the core. Pure hatred seeped from his voice.

Patton stopped and spun around. “Do I, though?” The words hung heavily in the air, and Patton’s voice cracked as he said, “Do I?”

“Of course you do,” Logan gently stated. “You are incredibly kind, generous, and genuine. I have never once known you to do something to hurt another person. Jason, on the other hand, is rude, egotistical, incorrigible, and… and… He’s just awful, okay? You deserve the world, and he deserves to rot in the deepest pits of hell.”

You break everything you touch.

“You’re wonderful, Pat.”

Whore!

“We love you.”

Poison!

Patton plastered on a fake smile. “Thanks, guys, really, but you should go to class. I’ll be fine—“

Roman cut him off with one fluid motion. “Yeah, just shut up and let us come with you.”

---

Jason’s words never left Patton, but neither did the rumors. As the months passed, they became less prominent, becoming floating leaves in the back of his memory. It wasn’t until much later that they would rear their head again.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.

---

Present

Virgil paced around his room. He was worried. Patton hadn’t woken up until 11 this morning, which was ages later than he usual. Then, he had refused any visitors to his room, claiming he was doing mass amounts of homework. Virgil brought him some lunch, but he had been instructed to just leave the plate outside the door for him to get in a moment. Patton wouldn’t even let his mother in!

It was, quite frankly, terrifying, and Virgil was glad he’d gotten Logan’s phone number.

Virgil

Read [2:32]

hey lo its virgil

im really worried about pat

he hasn’t come out of his room at all and won’t let any of us come in

Logan

Delivered [2:32]

Ah. It seems he has entered a depressive spiral. As I’m sure you’re familiar with the feelings, I’ll spare you the details. Just know that it is nothing personal.

Excuse me for one moment.

Logan immediately went to his text conversation with Patton and began typing.

Logan

Read [2:34]

Patton. It has come to my concern that Virgil is worried absolutely sick about you. I know that you have been feeling less than subpar today, but I need you to let Virgil in so that you two can work things out. He obviously cares a lot about you, and I know for a fact that you care about him just as much. You are one of my best friends, and it kills me to see you down like this.

As soon as the read symbol popped up, Logan went back to Virgil.

Logan

Delivered [2:34]

Go talk to Patton. If he doesn’t let you in, text me, and I’ll make him.

Virgil let out a light laugh at that. Logan was so caring and willing to help his friends, but he didn’t know how to do it in the most sensitive way. Just seconds later, he stood in front of Patton’s door. He hesitantly reached out and knocked. The door abruptly swung open, and a gloomy Patton motioned him in.

Virgil immediately took a seat on the bed. “I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. I didn’t mean to upset you like this; I just… I wasn’t thinking properly. I’ve been really worried about you all day, and like… I’m sorry.”

“That’s not the reason,” Patton mumbled, pacing along the blue rug on his floor.

“Then why have you been shutting me out all day?” Virgil’s voice was pained; the sound triggered something inside of Pat.

“Because I was trying to avoid this!” Patton gestured wildly at Virgil’s upset expression. “I didn’t want to hurt you, yet here we are! I’m poisonous, Virge. I do nothing but hurt people. I’m the apple from Snow White--sweet and nice at first, but I’ll end up killing you. You deserve so much better than me! You should have picked Roman or Logan; they’re smarter, nicer, more talented, and so much more. But no! You picked me of all people. I’m clumsy, stupid, reckless, emotional, and just plain pathetic. I have nothing to offer.” He sat down exhaustedly on the bed, flopping back onto the plush comforter.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding, right? Patton, you’re amazing. You talked a stranger that you had never met before out of suicide just because you wanted to. You let that same stranger into your home and then ended up allowing them to live with you. You are so much more than nothing. If anything, I don’t deserve you. Roman and Logan are both wonderful, but you have something special inside of you.” Virgil fell back, too. There were a few beats of silence before Patton spoke again.

“If you keep talking bad about yourself, I’m going to physically fight you...” Virgil could hear the smile in his voice. He was so glad. He couldn’t bear to live another minute without Patton happy.

“Come at me, bro.”

Virgil felt weight leaving the bed, but he’d only registered it a moment before he was hauled up by the wrists and propelled into a sweet kiss by Patton. He lightly smiled. God, it was good to have someone again. It was even better that said someone wasn’t an asshole.

“So, what are we?” Virgil asked a few moments later, when they had ended their kiss.

“I think the proper term is ‘boyfriends,’” Patton smiled.

“You sound just like Logan.”

“Satisfactory.” Patton let out a small laugh at Virgil’s irritated groan.

“Shut up and kiss me, nerd.”

#sanders sides fic #m writes things #moxiety #logince #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders

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modern-oedipus · 5 years ago

Text

Check-List for the Goals I settled for 2019

The funny mistake I’ve made earlier lead me think about what I’ve expected from 2019 when we started it. I found a list of the goals I made while we were entering the new year’s and here is a realistic evaluation of how it went.

• First of all, I wanted to manage my depressive episodes better. I wanted to have them less frequently. I wanted not to be absolutely crashed if a trigger hit me. Here’s how it went with a rough statistics (yes, because I’m a soon-to-be scientist, I actually made a graph of my own mood swings as if I am a test subject).

✔️ January was absolutely terrible for me. I had so much anxiety because of a toxic relationship and I wasn’t sure if I could ever live without that person. I failed two classes and withdraw a third one. I was super anxious about my internships. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be on the path I was and I was also having financial troubles. Also, one of my pet birds had passed away.

✔️ February was the month I truly felt like something in me was changing for the better. I felt like something clicked after the winter break— when I was, in a funny way, forbidden from consuming sugar for three days. I used to eat a lot of sugar/sweets to cope with my stress back then, to the point I still amaze at myself for not being overweight, plus size, or developing diabetes; because I really was eating too much sweets. But then I had a conversation with my father that feels unworldy, and combinated with the tree days no sugar diet and beginning of the new semester I suddenly felt like, even if I couldn’t fix everything, I could fix something. I had to start, regardless of how little. So I started by eating carefully— so significiantly less sugar consumed than I used to be, but I didn’t force it all at once. So if I were eating 3 brownies a day I decreased it step by step to 2 brownies a day, one brownie a day, and... At November 2019, it is probably a brownie once in 15 days. With even more pleasure than eating 3 brownies at once. (Don’t worry, I still let myself be free of eating whatever I want occassionally. I’m taking care of my health). Anyway. I started to hit up gym in my college for first time ever. I was so painfully inconsistent, but I knew that much was to be expected, so instead of getting angry at myself for not being a regular I just appreciated myself for going despite not being a regular.

✔️ March was a turnpoint. I decided to be bold enough to pursue my ex hobbies that I lost because of depression, one of them being writing. I’ve had a strong muse for Norman back then. I made a new account on Facebook. I knew no one, but to my luck I made so many friends. I drowned in NorRay ship with a very nice roleplay partner. I built new friendships away from the toxic partner of mine who was seriously causing a lot of damage on me. By the end of March we broke up and— surprise, my world didn’t end. I felt so refreshed, so alive, as if I was freed of my chains, and up until this day this feeling stands. I was more eager to pursue new hobbies, talk about my interests and do crazy shit instead of worrying my ex would think. I was happier. Much happier. This too, is still valid.

✔️ April was... unworldly. Because something that relates to my society happened as a big improvement and I was extremely positively surprised. This feeling is valid up to this day as well.

✔️ May... May was wild. I got kissed by a random stranger at the spring fest party. This fucking event lead me to write Conflict. Seriously. I built stronger friendships, online and offline, during this month. I felt truly connected.

✔️ June!!! June was so weird! It was my first break after one or maybe two years of depression. It was my first free holiday in which I didn’t reall feel like I was a waste of time, space, effort, money, etc. I got to walk around streets with a burden off my shoulders after so long. I got to look forward to the next days. The insecurities hit me up sometimes, but significantly less frequently, as I aimed in the beginning of the year. At this point I have had lost a good 5 kgs and had been eating very healthily too, and I was enjoying this new healthier lifestyle I adapted. This is still valid too.

Let’s examine June a little more carefully. At the end of the June I was going to go out of town to have an internship at a very prestigious university out of town. Which meant I had to stay in student dorms. I had no background about my field of internship yet. I was going to be utterly alone and I was freaking out about it. I’ve spent last week of June extremely tense because I don’t live in dorms normally and sharing a space with people and being alone at a professional place and things like doing laundry felt terrifying. But at the same time I was proud of myself because I’ve had always wondered how life would be living in a college campus, and this school I went was the best in my country equal to the university I am attending. Overall, it was prestigious and I was very excited.

Another important thing about June was that I’ve had written almost ALL of Conflict in my head with two of my roleplay partners eagerly listening to me and encouraging me whenever I plotted.

Have you noticed this?

My story was completed BEFORE I even posted.

At the end of June, a few days before I was about to leave for the internship, I had a breakdown. I had a bad breakdown. I had first draft of Conflict completed but I could never get to edit it. I could never get to post it. I didn’t even have an account. I didn’t really expect much interest in the story either, I just... I don’t know. I think I just thought, “Wow, this plot is so feelsy. I shouldn’t keep it buried in me. Maybe other people will love it too.” and I... kept Conflict waiting... for so long. Then I had a breakdown thinking I can’t do a fucking thing right and I’ll never get to post anything because I always let my “depression” take over it— which is a funny excuse because I wasn’t even depressed at June. Scared yes, but not depressed. I hate playing the victim. Objectively speaking, I wasn’t at my best but it wasn’t my worst either. Anyway. I left first chapter of Conflict linger there for a few weeks, hopeless that I could ever post.

✔️ Then comes July. I came to the internship city! It was AWESOME. I LOVED the campus, LOVED the experience, LOVED my field, and ENJOYED dorm life. I made many friends. I had roommates. I worked out more often. I went to sightseeing. I extended my network. I did A LOT of fun stuff.

On the first night I was at dorms, my two roommates were out. I didn’t know anyone yet. I had ONE night free to do anything. I was... in an awe. So I opened the documents. I looked at the pretty sight from my dorm room and I said, “Well, let’s do this.”

It was like a torture to finish that first chapter.

I had no expectations when I posted.

But oh my god, it felt like something clicked when I posted! Getting my story POSTED was a significant proof that I was SERIOUSLY moving on from the LAST traces of depression. It was something I created. It was MY productivity. It was ME. But in a way it was everyone. I felt extremely happy. Oh— did I mention Conflict is my first fanfiction?

Anyway, then I began to look forward to updating. Living in campus had it’s amazing advantages, such as no time wasted on transport, and ability to chill at coffee shops or 24/7 open library ALL NIGHT if I wanted. Which was wayyy less depressing than the environment of my house. I wrote. I felt super engaged. The simple fact that I could exist and produce something and have other people respond to it was something I could never imagine myself doing back on my depressed days. (But I could totally imagine this BEFORE I got in depression. In a way, I was back. I am still back. And I’m so grateful.)

I wasn’t only fooling around to write, though. I’ve been learning a lot. Experiencing a lot. Living a lot. It was amazing. I even binge watched Harry Potter with my roommate— and I hadn’t rewatched it before. (I had fucking forgotten that Sirius died, lmao.)

I also briefly fell in love again. It was a nice brief summer thing. Still think she’s amazing.

I need to go now, actually, so I’m abrubtly cutting this post off halfway to edit later. I don’t know what I earn by sharing this. I’m definitely not looking for attention— maybe you’ve realized it before but I give very little fucks about what people around me say (except for constructive critism). But somehow, I felt as if someone needed to see this. I don’t know that person. I don’t know who they are and when they are reading this. I just want people to know that there is an example of a girl who seriously changed a lot within span of a year by constant hard work, gentle-self-talks, and constant push-throughs even when she’s not motivated. Right now I’m far from being depressed nor suicidal, I’ve lost enough weight to dress up all bold clothes I LOVE to wear, I’ve built self-confidence, etc, as I will edit later. I just... want you all to know... even if this is not valid for everyone if you want something to happen you have to MAKE it happen. And it actually HAPPENS when you MAKE it happen. So, you don’t have to stay stuck in a bad cycle. You don’t even need a new year’s eve to do this. I started at february, see?

So do your best! I’m cheering for you!

Edit: I’m back. So point of this post was to check whether I’ve reached my goal of having less frequent depressive episodes. (Because I know I’m human and depressive episodes can hit ANYONE, so I didn’t have an unrealistic “I’ll never experience this again” expectation but I did have the expectation of “I’ll experience this maybe once or twice in a year, move on fast w/o unhealthy coping mechanisms and I’ll stay connected to LIFE instead of dissosciation” and I’ve achieved this.

A fast summary would be,

July built my self confidence at all aspects, from my hobbies to my career, my social skills to my curiosities. It was amazing.

August-September was vacation. One month of having a blissful vacation without feeling like a burden. One month of having full bliss. No depressive episodes not even once. I was regularly working out and I didn’t gain any weight even though I eat sweets and nice food everyday because of “holiday”. I went to a dietician in the end to find out my blood sugar is very healthy and my weight is normal now.

At the end of September & beginning of October I was nervous because of school, but I handled a lot better. I have done my best. I have truly done my best. I attended almost all lectures, I engaged in the material, asked all questions on my mind, went office hours, stayed active in newspaper, continued to hit up gym regularly, built more friendships, ALSO STAGED A THEATRE TEXT I HAVE WRITTEN LIKE THAT WAS AMAZING, and— and—

I don’t know, fast through November it doesn’t feel enough. I don’t know what I’ve honestly expected. But I expected to feel smarter or something, because science is hard shit. I expected better grades than this because I have honestly given it my all best. But the fact that my friends called me to reassure me made me really happy because one of my other goals was to build friendships and to think people, online and offline, check up on me makes me tear up. Especially when they are genuniely by my side as friends. It just feels so nice. So I’m feeling bittersweet.

I couldn’t lose any more weight since June, but I kept gaining/losing in some balance and I’m stable by now. My aim for February is to... lose 10 kgs in total— in a year. Which means I’ve got 4 kgs left to get rid of extra weight. I’m not really obsessed with body image, I’ve never been, but... What will I even do if I do not eat healthy and exercise? I mean, what’ll I even do? I like exercising and healthy eating. So I should just prevent stressful eating further so I can get rid of all the extra stuff. I’m already wearing all the pretty clothes I want and I do get stares because ;; idk they look cute I’m cute. Not in a narcissitic way. But self-love is important. I’m bi anyway, I do think girls are cute so since I’m a girl why shouldn’t I be cute as well?? A very feminine girl in fact, so like, hell yes, at least Nila can now wear whatever she wants and feels like she looks good on them so ONE OF THE MAJOR GOALS OF 2019 is fucking SETTLED!!

I’m planning to meet up my dietician again soon, and say that, “Look, I’ve come this far. Let’s lose 4 kgs in next 4 months. It makes 1 kg a month. Amazingly managable right? So guide me so I don’t ruin my health while thinning.”

So, I’ve managed my three major goals: Get rid of depression (learn how to burn it if it hits you); get a body you not only appreciate but feel genuniely HAPPY to be in; and built friendships and strengthen your bonds with people.

My two other major goals are incompleted, though. To cut it short, I wanted to get a better academic standing— from my first midterm grades I couldn’t really achieve that no matter how hard I tried, which is truly upsetting, but I have no choice but to go on. I love my major. I love science. I genuniely want to stay in this field. I don’t think I’m too idiotic to be a scientist. Sometimes I do think that, okay, but that’s a common thought in STEM majors. I do want to believe that what I work on will make a difference. It will have a meaning. So even though these results... are very discouraging to the point I felt really bad today, as if I could somehow, I don’t know, have a panic attack or something (I did not, I don’t have chronic anxiety or panic attacks or whatever, never experienced this). I just felt close to it, with increased heartbeat and feeling a bit dizzy and also very... imbalanced. But that’s probably because I didn’t eat well today, I unintentionally ate very little hence probably it exhausted me combined with bad news and saturday’s breakdown. Anyway. I have no choice but to go on, believing it will be better. My last major goal was to have a romantic partner, haha. Because I just want to. I mean, I don’t think I need to justify why I’d want a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and I don’t think I worked hard for this goal lol. I mean, I didn’t go out of my way to reach people. I liked like... three people this year, I still like one of them, but... It didn’t... go far. That’s probably because I still haven’t completely shaken off my shyness and unwillingness to get out of my comfort zone.

In conclusion, I have achieved 3/5 of my goals, which is more than half of it! So good job! For the girlfriend/boyfriend part, I, haha, I may neglect it for this year I mean it’s dumb to date someone just because??? You want to date before year ends right??? I mean, I’m not exactly angry at myself for that because it’s not only in my control so I think I forgive myself for not achieving that goal.

Academics though.

Ugh, academics are extremely terrifying to me.

That’s one big thing I need to settle.

On the bright side I have— two months! Silly me thought I have just one! So... let me... work hard in these two months!!!! And I’ll update if I can get a better GPA this semester. And if I get a lover. It’s ok not to have lovers but at least let me keep the GPA high I BEG you.

I’ve got new goals settled for 2020. But I will focus on achieving my last two goals before the year ends (academics mostly) and... update!

I don’t know who needs to read this. But I don’t mind having my journey posted at this point. I still feel very uncomfortable talking about depression, actually. But it was my reality. Now that I truly moved on, I can talk about it and critisize myself for all good and all bad.

I hope, to anyone who bothered to read so long, it gave some hope. That things can get better. That you CAN make things better little by little. 2020 can be your year. Or you can start on this very day like I randomly started on February (I didn’t have a thing for February, I just so happened to decide).

I’ll always be cheering those who do their best to make a difference.

Stay safe and let’s work hard. ❤️

Disclaimer: Some of my kind hearted readers were worried about me because Conflict describes unhealthy mindsets. Don’t worry— more than half of them are not based on my real life experiences! I’m not self-harming (never did, don’t think I ever will), neglecting antidepressants (I never used any actually), have suicidal tendencies (well, that part was real but no longer valid) AND I DON’T HAVE A RELATIONSHIP LIKE NORMAN/PETER sO Y’ALL CAN CHILL thank you for worrying about me I love you all

And I’ll be more than happy to be your goals-buddy if you want to change something about yourself as well!!!

#nila stuff #conflict #some stuff about #new year’s goals #2019 #depression #is not permanent #i believe in u #goals #time managament #college

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akanemachurida-blog · 7 years ago

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Love Crescendo’s Counter-Attack!

[This interview is from the February edition of EX Taishu. You can get it here: http://amzn.asia/dovqv2t]

-I’m interested in the pairing between Goto-san and Sugawara-san, so I’ve come to hear your story.

Goto: (while shaking Maya’s hand) Thanks for making this pairing with me!

Sugawara: (while shaking Rara’s hand) I’m glad!

-You two are close, huh.

Sugawara: It’s a business relationship.

Goto: Yup, it’s for work so we have no choice but look like we are close to one another.

-It doesn’t seem that way. (laugh) Does your unit have a name?

Goto/Sugawara: Kuzuzu.

-That name doesn’t seem like one that will spread very easily. (laughs) Tell us about its origins.

Goto: Maya and I often share a room when we get accommodation and we always stay up until 2 in the morning just wasting time. In that sense we are “kuzu” (crap). I want to see Kuzuzu spread, so please [help us]!

-What do the two of you talk about?

Goto: I listen to Sugawara’s worries. (laugh)

Sugawara: Hey, hey. Don’t I listen to your stories too? (Laugh)

Goto: Sugawara talks about SKE48.

Sugawara: Rara talks a lot about her studies or herself. She also talk about things high school girls talk about.

Goto: It’s always funny when the two of us are together. If she invites me to go to the convenience store with her and I refuse, she replies “Oh, is that so” coldly and turns into a tsundere.

Sugawara: I act cold towards to a friendly person, unfortunately. (Laugh) Rara is friendly to everyone, she spoils me too.

Goto: Sugawara surprisingly has qualities of an older sister, so I really want to pamper her.

Sugawara: Maybe I’m seen as an object, but I’m often used a pillow. But since I want a younger sister… Nah, I don’t really need one after all.

Goto: Hey ~ (laugh)

-Are there any things you’d like the other to improve on?

Goto: She uses me as her errand-goer. She asks me stuff like, “Hey, get a tissue for me over there.” (Laugh) I get annoyed but if I think about it I use her as a slave too.

Sugawara: We’re both the same, huh. (Laugh) As for the stuff I’d like Rara-chan to improve on, there’s quite a lot of it.

Goto: Huh, what? Probably how I don’t listen to your stories right?

Sugawara: Well that applies to me too. I want you to be quiet. When we’re in the same room she puts her music on extremely loudly and starts singing. I can’t stand it. I try telling her to shut up.

Goto: Ahahahaha! I thought you were happy when you told me that. I sing wildly even in the cars that drive and pick us up from work. For me, doing that is necessary.

Sugawara: When she did that I went to take a bath and when I came back she was sleeping. (Laugh)

-When Love Crescendo was formed it was believed that the two of you, together with Obata-san, would carry SKE48 forward.

Sugawara: That might be the case for Rara-chan and Yunana, but it was wrong to believe that from me.

Goto: She is negative.

Sugawara: I’m negative, but I’m also the kind to get very excited.

-You weren’t happy during Love Crescendo.

Sugawara: I was simply happy. Even though I didn’t appear in the first performance for the kenkyuusei stage and my position in the second draft was on the margins, I was still selected for Love Crescendo. A lot of people probably wondered why I was chosen. So I didn’t want to waste that chance.

Goto: I didn’t realize the meaning of the unit at the time. But the filming of the MV in Kumamoto was a lot of fun. We were made to do a lot of things that we normally wouldn’t be able to do in the great wild.

-After two years of Love Crescendo, Obata-san has become the center for Igai ni Mango and Muishiki no Iro.

Goto/Sugawara: *handshake*

Goto: It felt like we had been building up towards Igai ni Mango, so it felt right when it happened.

Sugawara: I, along with other members, hoped that Obata would have a position in the front. There was an impact in having her be the center for her first senbatsu, and I think being the center suits her.

-Did you feel that you needed to do better?

Goto: I wasn’t upset. I thought it was another chance for me. And with Igai ni Mango I felt like I was able to forget all of my past pressure. Those around me told me I got brighter as a result.

Sugawara: I’m hearing a lot fewer negative stories from Rara since then.

Goto: I’m serious at heart. (Laugh)

Sugawara: Could you not say that about yourself? (Laugh)

Goto: I had a lot of fun during Mae Nomeri and Love Crescendo’s Koppu no Naka no Komorebi, but I was frustrated with my worthlessness during Chicken LINE and Kin no Ai, Gin no Ai, and I drove myself into a corner.

-You didn’t talk about it with Sugawara-san?

Goto: I’m the type to be hard on myself. On the other hand, Sugawara is the type to pay too much attention to others, and when she was feeling deflated I cheered her up by saying I was there for her.

-Sugawara-san got into the senbatsu for Chicken LINE but got left out for Kin no Ai, Gin no Ai, and Igai ni Mango.

Sugawara: For a period I thought that the senbatsu was “whatever” and gave up on getting back in. I thought it was a time to focus on doing the work I was given. However, I felt Yahagi-chan’s effort as the first 8th generation member in the senbatsu, and I felt like getting back into the senbatsu. I feel like the time spent out of the senbatsu was a plus for me.

-I believe that the fact you are both in the senbatsu now is a big thing.

Goto: I was happy we were both in it. We get mails to inform us about the senbatsu when it’s decided. I thought, “Oh crap, Sugawara’s in it.”

Sugawara: Rara was the one who told me I was in it.

Goto: But she told me “I already know.” (Laugh)

-Love Crescendo has also been brought back, and four new faces have been added.

Goto: At first I wondered what was with this timing. Love Crescendo sang before the Unit Battle concert, and Jurina told us “I was told that the seven of us are the best, so let’s do our best”, so I felt fired up. However, a few days later it was decided that we would get new members, so I was surprised.

Sugawara: It’s because we love Love Crescendo so much. We talked to each other on LINE.

Goto: When we shot the MV I felt the energy of the new members, particularly the two 8th generation members. (Inoue Ruka, Nomura Miyo) My feelings were complicated but I felt like I didn’t want to lose to the new members.

Sugawara: There was a time where I was the only one in Love Crescendo left out of the senbatsu. Due to that I felt like I needed to try harder. I’m glad I’m able to be part of Love Crescendo.

-Do you feel like Love Crescendo’s time is coming?

Sugawara: If you compare us to our senpai in terms of name recognition, we’re no where close, but 7D2 has a lot of cute girls. (Laugh)

Goto: I really do think so.

Sugawara: I want us to appear more and be noticed more.

-Do you want to keep Kuzuzu going?

Goto: Yup. Sugawara is able to express her funny side, but although I’m able to joke around with my inner circle, I end up being in the background when I’m in front of many people. I want people to see me fooling around, but I can’t get it out.

Sugawara: That’s because I’ve got the joking character.

Goto: I’m jealous. I want to get a joking character too.

Sugawara: But I wanted to be known as a pure girl!

#Sugawara Maya #goto rara #ske48 #interview

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k-hiphop-trash · 8 years ago

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DPR facts / profile

“Dream Perfect Regime (DPR) is an independent, multigenre, music and video group. We create, direct, and edit all types of visual work as well as curate artists stemming fro a wide array of musical backgrounds and influences. Based in Seoul, our primary focus is to engage viewers by producing a unique and dynamic experience of both visual and audio output”.

DPR started with no major backing nor any financial support.

According to Chris, they all gather together to watch reaction videos.

CHRISTIAN YU

His Korean name is 유바롬 (Yoo Barom).

He used to be known as Rome.

His nickname is DPR +IAN.

He was born on September 6th, 1990.

He was born in Sydney, Australia.

He studied at the University of Sidney.

He is a Christian and his Christian name is Paul.

He speaks both English and Korean.

He moved to Korean when he was 18.

He is a singer, producer, director and chief editor in DPR.

He is 174cm.

He is good at B-boying. He used to be in a dance crew named Kill.U.Strate with DPR Live. He met Dabin through b-boy.

He isn’t bisexual nor gay.

He watches anime.

Small things make him happy.

He appears in CL’s “HWA” video.

He can’t watch horror movies because he is really scared of anything paranormal and thinks he is alerting it even by talking about it. However, DPR guys took him to watch Hereditary by Ari Aster and he has also watched Midsommar.

He used to be a member and the leader of the K-pop group C-Clonw. On October 5th, 2015 the group was disolved.

He debuted on July 19th, 2012.

He likes football and surf, swimming and being in the water. He also likes making music, creating and watching Netflix .

Hemade “Zombie Pop” in about 1’5 hours for Adobe Commercial.

Since he’s being living in Korea over 10 years, he started losing his Australian accent due to lack of contact with it.

He likes cooking for him and his friends and likes watching their reaction.

He always wanted to try the food Balut.

He collects professional cameras.

He plays the drums since he was young. He used to be in a band and really liked Heavy Metal. Now he listens to many different genres like jazz, acoustic and hip hop.

He wants to create short films and also a movie to show DPR’s progress.

He is the founder of DPR.

His biggest inspiration is his mother.

He doesn’t like flying.

He directed Mino’s debut MV.

He has a dog named Lori and his first dog was named Snoopy. He also has a dog named Choco.

His favourite colour is green but used to be blue, so it might change with time.

He wonders what’s like to be a zombie and thinks it can’t be different from being dead.

He is sacred of dying alone and hopes this won’t happen as it would make him very sad.

Asa kid, he would let his imagination go and think movies like Peter Pan were real.

He likes the songs “Diamonds” by Tory Lanez and “Have You Seen That Girl” by GoldLink.

He grew up surfing and likes to keep doing it when he goes to Australia.

He likes women who are passionate about what they do and doesn’t care about their height. His ideal type is and “in the moment” kind of thing. One thing he wishes about her girlfriend is that she is passionate about what she does, whatever that is. He also likes girls that are independent and strong. He doesn’t specifically look for this qualities, but he would appreciate them.

His favourite cologne is Giorgio Armani.

He is friends with BTOB’s Peniel and B.A.P’s Zelo.

He watched the anime Death Note and even has a Death Note himself.

He likes anime and also watched the animes Shingeki no Kyojin, Berserk and Fullmetal Alchemist.

He took vocal lessons with GOT7’s JB when they were trainees.

He is a homebody.

He considers DPR and their fans as a family.

He likes werewolves better than vampires.

He said he wouldn’t mind being reincarnated into a tortoise, but a human reincarnation would be ideal.

He doesn’t know why, but as a kid he was obsessed with Leprechauns.

He isn’t scared of insects or snakes.

He does a lot of Instagram lives were he answers fan questions and a lot of memes come out of this.

He watches the show Black Mirror.

He doesn’t like to upload full body pictures because he is shorter than he looks and doesn’t want to create false expectations. But he is fine with his height either way.

He likes his hair dyed black better.

His favourite foods are those that fill you up. He likes kebabs and his favourite dish is steak.

He can’t really eat spicy food.

He likes tattoos and motorbikes, because of this, people think he is abad boy but he is actually very kind and funny.

He doesn’t know what it means to be “skinny legend”.

He likes the song “Evil Woman” by Electric Lights Orchestra.

He vapes.

In 2020 he modeled for Adidas.

His life moto is “BE YOU, if you do you, you’re living life”.

He needs glasses.

DPR LIVE

His real name is 홍다빈 (Hong DaBin).

He was born in January 1st, 1993.

He was born in Korea.

He is also known as Jelly Man.

When he was 5 years old he moved to Guam.

He is about 169cm.

He is a rapper.

He used to work at Subway.

His most popular song is “Eung Freestyle”, featuring Punchnello, Owen Ovadoz, Sik-K and Flowsik.

He usually introduces his raps with the sentence “Coming to you Live!”.

His tagline “Coming to you Live!” is much like a live broadcaster reporting at the scene of a weather event to the viewers in real-time. This is related to the meaning of his artist name.

He didn’t take music seriously until he released “Till I Die” on his YouTube channel.

He wants to do his best in order to “give off the same lasting, meaningful impression a lot of artists that he admired, had on him. This kind of reflects hand-in-hand to why I ultimately chose my artist name to be LIVE”.

He came up with the name LIVE to remind himself of two motives: 1) ”to always LIVE LIFe in the present, both through ups&downs and through success&failures”; 2) “to always remain honest and true to one’s self and one’s craft”.

He is inspired by artists that create their own sound and colour.

He considers DPR his family.

He joined DPR around March 2015 and officially debuted on March 15th.

He likes the songs “Sacrifices” by Big Sean and “Colors” by Taylor Bennet.

His favourite song from “Coming To You Live” is “Right Here Right Now”. (He said this during an IGLive and he said that it was at the moment, so it might change).

He likes Skizzy Mars.

He is right handed.

He is a dog person.

He spent half of his life in Guam and half in Korea.

He prefers rice over noodles.

He says that being told to choose between Christian or Scott is like choosing between mom and dad.

He used to listen to a lot of rock music and one of his favourite bands was Paramore.

He got the scar on his forehead when he was five years old after he banged his head on a metal thing.

When he was younger he didn’t like americano coffee, but nowadays he thinks it can give you a lot of energy.

He already did his military service.

He likes tall girls.

He said he will not make an Snapchat soon since Instagram and Twitter are overwhelming enough.

He is right-handed.

He is excited to watch SMTM6 because Dok2, Jay Park and Dean are on the show.

After coming to Korea, he worked at a Subway for a couple months.

He is fluent in both English and Korean.

In his song “To Whoever” he mentions that he was bullied at school for his skin color.

He used to be in a dance crew with Ian called Kill.U.Strate and also was part of NEWE$T CREW.

CREAM

He is a producer.

His real name is 김경모 (Kim KyungMo).

He was born on January 3rd 1988.

He is about 180 cm.

He is a member of the duo LAYBACKSOUND.

He plays the piano since he was 7.

He used to think it was important to be very good in one genre, but now he thinks it’s good to be well versed in different styles.

He can sing, and he does some vocals in LAYBACKSOUND.

He doesn’t speak English, he understands and speaks a little, but he himself has said through IGLives that he is not very good.

His favourite song from the album “Coming To You Live” is “Laputa”.

He made tracks 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 from the album “Coming To You Live”.

He likes video games.

He has a cat named Lay.

His nickname “Cream” comes from his gamer ID.

He is influenced by classical music, jazz and hiphop among others.

CLINE

He likes video games.

He was born on the 29th April.

In one of their IGLives, Cream was teasing him about an Internet girlfriend. I did not watch this myself, I only read a transcrip, so I am not sure what this all was about).

SCOTT

His name is Scott Kim.

He was born on 21st February 1992.

He is fluent in both English and Korean.

He was born and raised in the United States.

He is the production director (PD).

He is the one in charge of making the merch (according to DaBin they are currently working on it).

He gave DaBin a jacket as a present.

He likes rap and hiphop.

He met Ian through a mutual friend and they used to play basketball together.

He used to make regular videos with Amber for the YouTube channel “What The Pineapple”.

KANG GUN

He has a cat.

He is the assistant director.

JUNGMOO JUN

Has a son.

He was born on the 27th March.

Disclaimer: facts in italics are not confirmed or at least I haven’t seen any real proof. Feel free to let me know if there is any mistake.

Crds: IG@/dpr.fanpage & IG@/coolnightcrew

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amydiddle-fanfiction · 7 years ago

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Moony: Curse of the Full Moon

A curious three year old boy, a grudge against a name, and the watchful moon’s silent gaze. The 27th of February,1964 the full moon shone down on a small house in Wales and a curse was brought upon the family that would change them forever. Remus John Lupin, only a small child when everything was taken from him and his family. Now the threat isn’t on the outside; it is him.

Note from The Author: This is a story I started back at the end of the my sophomore year of high school. It centers around Remus Lupin, a poor boy that had a terrible curse thrust upon him. When I started to write it, my motivation had been the fact that I really loved Lupin and I wanted to get background before I thrust him into a story about the Wizarding War.

Most of my original ideas have been lost to time but I am trying to pick it up again. This collection is the first three ‘books’ as the younger me dubbed them. The Bite, First Year, and Second Year. I have gone back through the chapters and edited/rewrote them to live up to my current writing level.

READ THE ORIGINAL VERSION HERE: FF.NET SLOWLY BEING RESTART VERSION HERE: Ao3

Moony: Book 1 - Chapter 3

Saint Mungo’s Hospital London, England March 1964

After Remus’s birthday, the young boy found himself in a pretty standard routine. He would wake up early and take the required potions, eat breakfast, wander around the floor he was one, be checked up on his nurse, his mother or father would visit and they would have lunch together, visit Lucy, go back to the room for a little bit of rest, have dinner and his potions, and go to sleep.

Things started to change when the week of the moon drew closer.

The young boy started to notice strange things happen around the hospital. A lot of the medi-witches and wizards had started to avoid him. He could pick up on small whispers of conversations they would have without them realizing he was close enough to hear them. Sometimes he would catch him giving dirty looks to his back.

He did not understand why they would do that.

The memory of his first night in the hospital had become a blur. His mind had deleted the completely lunacy that he could be such a terrible creature. There was no proof of any change into the monster of his childhood stories.

A werewolf was a terrifying beast that was clever enough to hide amongst its prey. The monster had a bloodthirsty need to hurt people, take children, and would not stop to make people miserable. Even when in their human disguise the werewolf was a terrible creature.

Remus being a werewolf was impossible. He still thought the same, and walked the same, and talked the same. He did not want to hurt anyone. He merely just wanted someone to play with. The most ruthless thing that Remus had ever done was kill a few flies that got into the house and even than he preferred to catch them and let them go outside.

People just could not see that and as the twenty-first dawned Remus’ routine was changed.

Paranoia was a powerful force and spread through the hospital as the dreaded day got close. Any of his usual wanders around the hospital were banned unless he had his parents or a healer with him.

The first time he got this new ruling the child had not listened. Remus had tried to leave on his own but was found not five steps away from his room and brought back. Now, with his parents only coming for a short time Remus found most of his days to be spent stuck in his room.

It was boring, stifling, and just plain maddening. The child only had a few things to entertain himself with. By the third day of being confined to his bed he had flipped through the story book ten times. Remus was sure he could describe each picture on every page perfectly to anyone if they asked. Maybe even tell them a few of the stories that were not too complicated for him to read.

The book did only so much for a distraction.

The longer he spent in his room the more it felt like the too white walls were closing in on him. He could feel them get closer and closer to him with each passing day. The threat of them closing in on him driving him up the very looming threat that wanted to squash him.

Normally the thing to be blamed would be just his toddler attention span but there was something else at work and it all had to do with the moon.

The ever-growing moon had started to have a weird pull on him. He could feel it in chest at night, something being swayed by the mysterious force. The child had taken to closing the thing curtains in the room to try and avoid the rays.

Remus had discovered a trouble sleeping. The child would lay awake at night and stare at the ceiling. His healer called his trouble sleeping insomnia and that is was normal this close to the day. Remus just wanted to stop being grouchy and for it to be more of a concern.

Other things that had been weird since this week started had been his change of taste. He had been given a hamburger for lunch once and refused to eat it because it tasted overcooked.

His eyesight had gotten better and made it hard to sleep at night because the room did not seem as dark as it should be. Remus could hear the whispers the healers and nurses said clearly as if they were talking to him and he could smell the weird sent that was potions brewing. It was not the most appetizing sent.

It scared him, these changes. The more he noticed the more he wanted them to stop. When he brought this fear up to his healer the man just assured him that they were natural things to happen for his ailment and not to worry.

But the man was worrying, Remus could tell. Even if these things were natural they were something to worry about for some reason. The healer was just as scared as Remus, if not more.

The healer was scared of him.

28 March, 1964

Remus Lupin awoke that morning with a great ache over his body. The whole week had been full of small aches and pains but this was all that magnified to a higher extent. Every muscle seemed to ache and his stomach was tied in knots.

He felt ready to throw up, like the time he got the flu. He wished his mother was here now to nurse him back to health.

The child rolled over onto his side and groaned a little at the shocks of pain that sent over his body. Any attempt to sit up and greet that day was stopped when the world around him began to spin just because he lifted his head a little.

When the nurse came in to give him his potions and breakfast Remus tried to turn it down. He could barely down the potions fully and the little bit of toast he managed to swallow quickly began to crawl its way to freedom. He did not care when the nurse left in a hurry with a still very full plate of food.

Remus did not even care about the complete silence out in the hallway of his room. He just wanted to sleep and with the potions help he did just that. His dreams were filled with a fearful rush to get away from a looming danger he could not see.

His feet ran and ran but the danger seemed to get closer and closer. He could feel the bright light of something getting brighter and closer. The child pushed through the obstacles in his way but he did could not get away. It was practically on top of him. He felt himself trip. It was here-

Remus woke up with a start. The sharp pain of his body from whatever sickness was in his system ignored because the adrenaline pumping through his veins. Sweat plastered his sandy hair to his forehead and he looked around to room in fear that the bright thing that had been chasing him was nowhere to be seen.

The only thing off about this too white room was the fact his door was opened and his healer had stepped inside. The man carried a plate and had a grave look on his face.

“Did not mean to wake up,” he said, “But it is good I did. I have somethings I want to talk about before tonight.”

The man set the plate down on the table at the end of the bed and sat on the edge of the bed with some hesitation. He did not look directly at the child but he could already tell the effects of the moon were settling in.

The four-year-old was as pale as a ghost and there were beads of sweat that ran down from his forehead. The poor child’s hands shook with unknown fear under the blanket where he had hidden them. He watched the man expectantly; not saying a word.

“I wanted…I wanted you to understand what is going to happen tonight,” the man explained carefully.

Remus continued to be silent. His wide brown eyes now had a ring of amber that held the hidden power the child was about to unlock. The healer could not look into them because he felt like something else was watching him.

“Tonight, I am going to take you to a place where it will be safe to change,” the healer explained. He chose his words carefully to the child could understand, “Some place where there is no way you can hurt anyone.”

He paused and looked away from the child fully.

“The transformation will be…painful. There is no way for me to ease that pain but I know you can push through it. You are a tough boy coming this far.”

The healer changed a glance over at the child and the boy had seemingly gone paler. His little body trembled under the fear of the situation he was in.

“I want to go home,” Remus whimpered and wiped away at the tears that had started to form in his eyes.

The healer sighed heavily and looked at his shoes. He had dealt with many Lycanthropy cases before. Most where older wizards and witches whose jobs were to go after the beasts. Those people had understood the gravity of the situation. Most had taken the better path once they learned of their ailment and ended it there before the pain of the first moon could come.

This child was too young to understand what was going to happen. All Remus J. Lupin knew was that he was sick and he was hurting. All Remus understood was that he wanted to go home to the two people he trusted to make the pain go away. He could not fathom that once this pain started it would never stop. That he would be a slave to the moon forever.

The healer thought over what he needed to say in response to the child carefully before he responded.

“Once tonight it over you will be going home.”

“Promise?”

Remus clung to that hope quickly. The healer knew he would. The man nodded and forced himself to look over at the child on the bed.

“I promise,” the man said simply and stood up from the bed. He grabbed the plate and Remus could see it had a few slices of toast on it. “Now eat this and get some more rest. You will need it.”

Carefully the man handed over the plate. Once Remus had it in his hands the man left without another word and Remus was left in that too white room, alone, once again.

The child watched the door silently after the healer left for about a minute. In that short span of time the fear and dread that circled his heart turned into a boiling sea of rage. He wanted to go home now. He wanted to stop feeling so sick.

The child threw the plate to the floor and watched as the plate shattered into pieces and the toast hit the ground. The rage left the moment the ringing of the broken plate stopped in the room. Tears started to form once again in the boy’s eyes.

“I wanna go home,” he whimpered and pulled his knees to his chest. “I wanna go home.”

Night drew closer and closer. With every hour that passed Remus just felt sicker and dinner had not been an option. As twilight approached Remus had decided that he was not going to move from his bed. The child was very disappointed that his plans were foiled when his healer pulled him from bed just as the sun began to set.

He threw a tantrum as he was led out of the room. His little heals did their best to dig into the slick floor but the fight was useless. He would not be spending the night in his room. The floor was cold on his bare feet and his stomach twisted terribly with every step.

The tears dried up as they entered the stairwell and started to travel down. He had never been down this passage before and curiosity took over the need to throw a fit. A few sniffles left him as he looked around.

There were a few windows in the stairwell as they traveled down it. Every time Remus got a glimpse outside the sky seemed to be a little darker and something seemed to stir in his chest. It sent a terribly shiver down his spine which made the aches more painful.

The windows ended as soon as they passed the ground floor and left the stairwell to enter a dark, cold basement. Torches were the only light source down there and only lit as they walked past them. The fire did not seem to make the place any warmer.

Their destination was a room at the end of the long stretch of obvious storage. With a flick of the healer’s wand the door opened and he led Remus inside. The child tried to look around but the man let go of his hand and held the boy firmly by his thin shoulders.

“You have to be brave,” the healer said, “This is going to be very difficult but you are tough. I know you can handle this.”

Remus stared at him with wide eyes full of fear. Handle what? What was happening?

The man gave no answer as he got up and left the room before Remus could get a word in. The door closed behind him with the defining click of a lock.

The simple click of the lock seemed to echo in Remus’ ear drums. It made him snap out of the frozen fear of swirling questions and bolt for the door. He must have misheard it. The man could not just lock him away. His mother and father would never allow that to happen.

He got to the door quickly and pulled on the handle only to find it would not budge. He tried it again; pulled on it, pushed the door; even kicked it. But he could not get it open.

The dark walls of this room felt so confining. He needed out. He needed his mother.

“Please! Please let me out! Mummy! Help! Let me out!”

Tears had started to fall down his face again as he pulled on the door desperately. The child all but screaming for help into the empty air. The scream of words only morphed into one of true pain as a sharp spike seemed to go through his chest.

That spike only bloomed into a burning sensation that spread outward to take over his whole body. The scream of agony got worse and more tears fell as he crumbled to the ground. It felt like his flesh was on fire. Like all his bones were breaking and being put back together.

Words were no longer an option as he curled up into a ball and his nails dug into his arms to try and get this terrible pain to stop.

Outside the room the healer stood with a blank expression on his face as the basement echoed with the small child’s screams. He took in a shaky breath and raised his wand. With a flick of a wrist the basement became silent as the man put a silencing charm on the room.

He stood there for another moment in the silence before he put a calming charm on the room as well.

With nothing else to do he moved to leave the basement. With every step the man sent a silent prayer up to whomever could hear that in the morning Remus Lupin would still be alive.

#Moony Trilogy #Moony #Moony: ReStart #Moony: The Curse of the Full Moon #Book 1 #Book 1 - Chapter 3 #Remus Lupin #werewolf #Hp #marauders era #marauders era fic #Marauders #mwpp #HP fic #harry potter fic #MWPP era fic #mwpp era

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flexgallery · 8 years ago

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Flex Gallery: The Work of Greg Oberle

In response to a lack of public art opportunities during winter, on January 11th, I launched Flex Gallery, a mobile public art space located on my left arm. For the project, I sent canvas armbands to six artists, requesting they turn them into artworks. Each artist works in a wide variety of media, and I provided them with no themes or limitations other than the dimensions of the band. In February for two weeks, I wore the most bizarre armband yet, the work of Greg Oberle, a local artist and member of the Collective Artspace. I spoke with him last week to learn more about his work and hir creative process.

Zachary Johnson (ZJ): How did you get started as an artist?

Greg Oberle (GO): My education really stated in high school. I took AP studio art twice because I’d run through all of the courses my high school had offered. And I went to U of M and studied industrial product design for three years, and everybody kept telling me, why don’t you just be an illustrator because you always seems most enthusiastic about the drawing stage of products? Not that the ideas were lacking, I just always was sinking all my time into the rendering. That was when I decided to switch over to Kendall in 2008. I finished with a degree in illustration.

But as you can see with this project, I really take almost more from industrial design coursework than I do the drawing. I still love to play with sculpture and things occasionally happen in 3-D like this.

ZJ: What has your career as an artist looked like since graduation?

GO: So after graduating in 2010, I briefly worked at a bank…and it was a really challenging environment. Authority’s always been a problem for me. So, having left that job behind, I decided I would do absolutely anything creative to be self-employed. So I’ve done illustration, graphic design, some sculptural projects, but over time the most regular niche I’ve fallen into has been working with restaurants, doing murals and illustrations and installations. Signage, menu design, all of that, and that’s all based in Detroit, so I spend a lot of time on the east side. So that’s what funds all of my other little side projects.

Reflecting on the past six years of freelance, I don’t know if I should be proud or infuriated that my portfolio is all over the map, stylistically and in terms of medium. I think it’s made me comfortable saying yes to things that I don’t necessarily know how to do because I’ve become adept at [problem solving] – I thank my industrial design background because I really appreciate problem solving, so I don’t get intimidated anymore by going well outside my comfort zone and working backwards. I like that way of working so much that in client meetings, I tend to deliberately think of some odd weird thing that I want to try, I’ll try to push that. To give myself something to wrestle with.

ZJ: When you’re not at work and you can work on whatever you want, what do you make?

GO: Sometimes my brain feels like a big messy, three-dimensional Venn diagram and new intersections are occurring all the time. The brief overlap of what’s occurring tends to take me in one direction briefly and then I shift immediately away from that. So, it’s all over the place. It’s drawing. It’s painting. It’s sculpture. My personal feelings come out in this work. I tend to be a bit grotesque, whimsical, off the wall, fantastical in my personal work.

I could tell you a funny story about what happened for ArtPrize last year. I experienced my first encounter with censorship. It was for a really great space called Michigan House. They had another local artist and I commissioned to come in and they told us both, like, “you do you.” After the fact they were saying, “Well, we were really thinking you were going to do a mural.” I bought seven ceramic lawn ornament lambs and affixed baby arms to their rear ends. Each arm was holding a leash that was connected to the next arm — it was this really bizarre inappropriate parade, and the work was up for a whopping hour before enough complaints were filed that they took it down. So, I was paid, and I performed, and I brought the work but it made everybody really uncomfortable, so I took it down. So, these [pieces on the armband] are actually the scraps from that. I still felt motivated to tinker in that realm.

ZJ: Besides the materials coming from your ArtPrize project, what was some of the other inspiration behind the armband you created?

GO: On a semi-regular basis I tend to deal with – I still feel very childlike in many ways. The world very often doesn’t make sense to me or I find it really disturbing or scary, but also delightful. So sometimes I tend to combine elements of adulthood with elements of childhood and show how strange it is to make that transition but still have one foot back into younger years. It’s not like it’s more innocent, but…in some ways I think we grow up too fast.

And I think too I’m a little antagonstic in my nature, and sometimes I like to make things that make me laugh and make other people question my sanity. I don’t think I have a very good sense of humor, so sometimes I like to try and make something that makes me laugh or makes other people laugh. Can I tell some kind of joke through a piece?

ZJ: Do you feel you begin more with materials and start experimenting from there, or do you start with concepts and let them dictate your materials?

GO: It’s very much one or the other. Sometimes things are finished before I even have a chance to think about what it is I’m doing or why and other times it’s more cerebral; I have something I want to say and that forces the decisions along.

ZJ: So, you, Maddie, Angelica, Megan, and I are all part of this project and members of the Collective Art Space. Why did you decide to join it?

GO: It was out of excitement for the people who were getting involved. I was friends with Rachelle [one of the co-founders], first and foremost. So she was the one who invited me, and I hadn’t been a part of the Grand Rapids art community until joining. I haven’t actively gone to seek it out, and I’ve spent so much time on the other side of the state working on those projects that are site-specific… So It’s been an opportunity to embrace the local scene a little more and meet new people.

ZJ: What’s next for you as an artist?

GO: I have some very loose and free ideas right now. I’m thinking more about interior design. Working with these architects and interior designers for restaurants has made me see spaces differently. And given me a taste for what it might be like to think about the whole space rather than just the wall that’s been given to me. I’ve even started investigating MFA programs for interior design. If I were to ever decide to move into more of a career format with my work, I think I would consider that. Then I’ve also on-and-off painted professionally with a company that does interior/exterior commercial painting, and as much as I tend to not like it very much and find it pretty tiring, all the different materials that we use have given me new ideas for ways to work. It’s really interesting being in that world of construction because it’s not one I’m really familiar with, but now when I see good work I acknowledge it.

And the methods and tools behind construction are really interesting to me now. So I’ve even thought about hiring some of these contractors to help me build different kinds of surfaces or potentially even designing whole sculptures. I was recently in a space where they had updated an old warehouse and because of the way they wanted to orient the floor plan, it was kind of at an angle to all the pipes, so there were all these really funny corners where the drywall was cut in these strange ways just to fit these pipes crisscrossing the rooms, and I thought that was beautiful. So I was envisioning working with a dry-waller and someone who knows plumbing to work to build some kind of crazy piece that I could install.

ZJ: Can you think of something you’ve seen in your life that was particularly visually striking?

GO: I studied abroad in Ghana when I was a junior at U of M, and we were there for a little over a month working to develop recycling programs in the bigger cities. I kept remarking to myself and to others in the group, to the point that they were tired of hearing it, the sky there just seemed like a different color, and the Earth too was this really rich red. It was the first time I’ve been abroad and felt like I was in a strange place, like otherwordly – and it was beautiful.

And then Japan too. Japan was another place where I found a lot of peaceful moments, more than I usually get. I’m a pretty hyper, anxious person, so it always stands-out to me when I’m in a place, or with people, or standing in front of a work of art that makes me suddenly feel relaxed. It’s almost startling.

The family I stayed with in Horishima took me to the coast on the west side of the main island, and we went on a one-night, two-day fishing trip, where they woke us up at 3:45 in the morning to get out to the boats and go to this little island chain to fish. And it was communal sleeping; everybody slept in this little main room in this tiny working fishing village on the tatami mats, with futons, the whole deal. And that was really beautiful and special. I never get up that early. Seeing the sun rise on the ocean with the topography of these quintessentially Japanese islands – like something out of a Miyazaki movie, that was something pretty incredible.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Posts by Zachary Johnson are also available via instagram and tumblr under the name Vis Ed.

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