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seerofmike · 4 years ago

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31 Days of Apex: Day 24 (Hobby)

pairing: crypto & pathfinder

word count: 1.3k

tags: spoilers for the broken ghost

fic summary: Crypto draws when he’s bored, and Pathfinder wants to learn.

ao3 link

read below

Taejoon had a headache.

It could be for any number of reasons, really. It could be the fact that Witt hadn’t shut up for the past half hour, talking so enthusiastically about himself to anyone who was willing to listen. It could be that Silva was playing three video games at once and shouting every time he won, or lost (which was far more frequent). It could be the drone and hum of the dropship, so deep and rumbling he swore he could feel it in his soul.

Any one of these would be easy excuses, but he knew the real reason; it was because he had been staring at a computer screen for the better part of nine hours without once stopping.

Taejoon massaged his temples with a groan, eyes squeezed shut, but he swore he could still see the lines of code burned into his eyelids. They had another two days until they dropped onto this new planet, and while mostly everyone was avoiding him, he could perhaps take this time to enjoy some of his other hobbies without having anyone breathe down his neck.

Shutting his computer off, Taejoon knelt down onto the floor to pull out a small box. It contained a few books and pencils, and he picked up the battered copy of a cheesy romance novel he’d read through about ten times already. The plot was about two esports players falling in love, and while Mila had gotten it for him as, like, a joke, he unironically liked it. It was funny, and sometimes, he needed funny.

This time, though, Taejoon could only stomach a few pages. The words seemed to be swimming before his eyes, physically hurting his retinas, and with a sigh he shut it and put it back in the box. Okay, so he wouldn’t be able to read due to his headache. Maybe he should try something else.

Eyeing the sketchbook in his box, which hadn’t been touched in months, he wondered if he should even bother. The dropship occasionally rumbled, and he hated making mistakes, but it was really his only other form of entertainment at this point that didn’t involve worsening his headache. So Taejoon took it out of the box, wiped the dust from the cover with his sleeve, and settled down on his cot with a pencil in hand.

He didn’t really have a goal in mind as he drew--just doodled whatever came to him, and before long the page was filled with sketches of his drone and the occasional cat. He flipped the page to draw on the next one, this time having someone in mind--the main characters on the cover of his novel. He drew two faces side-by-side before starting to sketch their hair, giving one of them dreads as described in the book and the other one wild bedhead. He was just starting to add detail to their faces when a voice made him freeze.

“Hi, friend! I like your drawing!”

Letting out a short puff of breath, Taejoon held his sketchbook close to his chest and glanced over at Pathfinder, who was standing there, his screen its usual smiley face.

“What are you doing here,” Taejoon said, much too flat to be a proper question.

“Mirage told me to go away, so now, I’m here. I saw you drawing, and I wanted to say I like it very much!” Pathfinder’s screen changed to one with heart eyes. “Could you teach me to draw?”

“No,” Taejoon said.

“I think I would be very good. I can make poems, too. Do you want to hear a poem?”

“If I say yes, will you leave me alone?”

“Hmm...maybe!”

Taejoon sighed, closing his eyes briefly, before nodding.

“Okay!” Pathfinder knocked against his screen to get it back into its smiley face, and then started: “My name is Pathfinder. I like writing cool poems. I want to be friends.”

He stopped, and seemed to look at Taejoon expectantly, who raised an eyebrow in response.

“That’s it?” He asked.

“It was a haiku!”

“...It was nice,” Taejoon lied, not really caring for poetry. When Pathfinder didn’t move, he jerked his head a little to the wider area of the dropship, hoping he would get the memo. “You can go now...”

“But I want to watch you draw!” Pathfinder said, and Taejoon sighed to himself. His head was hurting too much to argue, so with a reluctant sigh he set his sketchbook back down in his lap. He would finish this page and then turn in for the night if Pathfinder hadn’t left yet. Going back to sketching, he gave the characters eyebrows and eyes with ease, but had to erase their noses and redraw them about ten times each.

“Are you having trouble?” Pathfinder asked, sounding curious, despite not much changing in the inflection of his voice.

“I keep making their noses off-center,” Taejoon mumbled distractedly, before finally managing to give them both proper noses and moving on to their mouths. He almost forgot Pathfinder was there as he sketched their clothes, giving the both of them what he always pictured them to be wearing--Dante a baggy hoodie, and Chul a patchy jacket and torn t-shirt.

“Who are you drawing?” Pathfinder suddenly said, reminding him of the fact that he was still standing there and watching him.

“Characters,” he answered through gritted teeth.

“From what?”

“A book.”

“What kind of book?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Taejoon said, because god forbid anyone hear that he liked cheesy romance novels.

“What’s it about?”

“Why are you even here?" He finally snapped, slamming his pencil down and fixing the robot with a bleary glare. "Shouldn't you be avoiding me like everyone else?"

"Why would I avoid you?" Pathfinder sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Because nobody trusts me." His fists clenched at his sides as he recalled the moment his drone flew around the room, speaking with Revenant's voice, and he felt a hollow feeling form in his stomach as he remembered Wattson's shocked face. Why didn't Pathfinder just leave him alone, like everyone else? Even after Gibraltar had revealed the true culprit, they all still tiptoed around him, untrusting.

He was tired of being framed.

"I trust you," Pathfinder said, and Taejoon stared at him.

"...What?"

"I trust you! Because you're my friend, and that's what friends are for."

Taejoon stared at the other for quite a long time, trying to formulate a response, before he slowly picked up his sketchbook and mumbled, "Shut up."

The MRVN went quiet after that, but he didn’t go away. Taejoon finished up his sketch after giving both of the characters basic-looking sneakers (he wasn’t very good at drawing shoes) and slammed the book shut, glad to get rid of Pathfinder as he leaned over to put it in his box. When he straightened up, Pathfinder’s screen had changed into heart eyes once again.

“I loved your drawing!” Pathfinder said, and gave a little clap. “Your lines are very smooth! Your expressions are very fun! I can tell you really like art!”

Taejoon felt heat rise to his face, but turned his head away under the guise of shoving the box back under his bed as he tried to formulate a response. He’d always liked receiving compliments on his drawings, had usually showed them to Mila so she could list off everything she liked about it to give him a bit of a confidence boost, but he hadn’t had that in years. Finally, Taejoon straightened up, and said coolly,

“Thank you. Maybe I will teach you one day.”

“Well, I look forward to it!” Pathfinder suddenly raised his metal hand, and asked in as hopeful a voice a robot could manage: “High five?”

Taejoon stared at it for a second, debating with himself, before quietly obliging, and Pathfinder’s screen was the most ecstatic he'd ever seen it.

#crypto #pathfinder #apex legends #shut up mike #31 days of apex

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sebthesnipe · 5 years ago

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Pencils

A prompt that myself and @gilby-the-geek-girl decided to do a ‘write this in your style’ involving Logicality roommates and Ticonderoga #2 Pencils

You can read her’s here.

Also check out her main AU that its based in on AO3 here.

If you’re interested here are some links to my work as well:

The Collection (My Oneshots)

My Dearest Procyon (My Multi-Chapter Magical!AU)

Other works by me

Now! Lets get this party started!!!!

Logan gave a small curse as another one of his pencils broke inside his cheap sharpener. He tilted the small plastic container to get a better look inside. Sure enough, a large piece of lead was stuck inside the small cone, pressing against the razor’s edge. He wouldn’t be able to resharpen his pencil until it was removed.

As he took the small pencil sharpener apart, he couldn’t help but let his mind wander. Perhaps, he could rearrange his budget to allow him to purchase some better writing utensils. Patton had already convinced him to spend some extra money on the ‘B2p’s. He had been right about them. The pens were 89% recycled water bottles, which was good for the environment, and they wrote very smoothly, which helped ease the pain that writing caused.

Carpal tunnel syndrome was far more unpleasant that Logan had expected it to be. Of course, he hadn’t expected to enjoy the tingling or numbness, but the sheer amount of pain it caused was staggering. The simple act of holding a pen longer than half an hour was something he could no longer do without the help of an anti inflammatory. His all night note taking sessions were now cut by more than half, and that was on a good night with a decent writing implement.

Surgery was possible, but it would pull him out of school for far too long, and cost more than he was willing to spend without the proper insurance. He was far too close to graduation and couldn’t afford the recovery time, mentally or financially. At least, not yet. For now, he would bide his time and push onwards towards his end goal.

He sighed as he pressed his pencil into the cleared sharpener and twisted. For now, he would make due. The pens Patton had recommended were more than satisfactory, but he only had a small budget for his supplies.

He removed the pencil and examined the now sharpened tip. The graphite was uneven, but pointed enough for his note taking, though the wood around it was rough and almost fuzz-like. It would smudge the graphite’s markings if he wasn’t careful. Luckily he was accustomed to such cheap craftsmanship and could make due with what he had.

He set the sharpener aside and took stock at the desk before him. Everything had its place. His box of untouched pencils sat perfectly parallel above his notebook, directly right of his lamp. His three subject college ruled spiral was open to a half written page, marked with a small blue tab indicating that it was on the topic of Mathematics (specifically Number Theory). Behind the blue tab, a number of tabs could be seen, neatly lined along the pages, each representing a different course. To the right of his spiral lay five sharpie brand highlights, each a different color, placed in a perfectly straight line. Every color had its purpose, just as every tab of his notebook did.

Logan could not compromise when it came to certain tools. He needed a brand of highlighter that would not bleed through his textbook pages or smudge his notes whether he wrote in pen or pencil. He needed pens that were a bit more pricey so as to ensure a smooth glide without bleeding or ink transfers. He needed index cards made of a decent caliber to avoid damage or creases. All of these things were important. Far more important than the way a pencil sharpened, or turned fuzzy or smudged when he tried to erase it.

There was no more room in the budget for any pencils better than the ones that he had and that was that. He would just have to live with the way the graphite would snap when he tried to underline something. He would have to deal with the way the lead would fall out of the faux wood, or the lines seemed muted unless he put more force behind it, which made his hands hurt even worse. It was all a sacrifice he must be willing to make. He couldn’t afford better.

He couldn’t help another small growl as he made a mistake on his graph and moved to erase it, the cheap eraser ripping through the paper. He stared at the spot for a long moment, willing himself to just leave it. It was just a small hole. He could work around it. He didn’t need to redo the entire page.

It was just a hole…

A tiny inconsequential hole…

Miniscule… infinitesimal….

UGH! Logan ripped the page from the spiral, crinkling it in his hands before tossing it into the bin next to him. Everything had its place! Everything was meant to be somewhere and a hole was not meant to be in the middle of his notes!

He pinched the bridge of his nose trying to push away the headache he could feel coming on just as his phone’s alarm began to sound. It seemed more time had passed than he had expected. Logan pushed to his feet, producing his phone and swiping away the alarm as he moved to pack up and head to his first class of the day.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Logan pushed open the door to their shared dorm, dark locks falling into his eyes as they dripped water onto the mat beneath his feet. He was silent as he kicked the door shut and began to shed his outer layers.

It was late. Far later than it should have been. Logan did not like when things didn’t go according to schedule. His second class ran long, which meant he was late to lunch, which didn’t give him the sufficient amount of time to go to the library as he had planned without skipping his meal. Which made him feel a bit lethargic during his third and fourth class, causing him to forget his bag, which had him missing his train. Which meant he had to wait forty-five minutes for the next one. Then the rain started, which was not in the forecast; which meant Logan’s ten minute walk home had him soaked through completely.

It had not been a good day.

He took stock of the small apartment. Patton must have already gone to bed. The poor man had four a.m. classes. Most culinary students started earlier than the rest of the students. It was no wonder the man was so early to bed. Well, ever since Logan provided him with the optimal schedule for his ideal personal time to study/class ratio that is. It seemed to be working out for him, though Logan didn’t get to see him much anymore, which was surprisingly disappointing. The man was far too chipper, but he certainly knew how to make Logan smile.

Logan headed for his room and the attached bathroom, dropping his bag next to his desk and trying not to drip too much on the carpet. He needed to get out of his sodding clothes before he caught a cold.

Fifteen minutes, a hot shower and some dry clean clothes later and Logan felt like a new man. He checked the time. There were still a few hours before bed. It wasn’t as much as he had hoped, but he could still manage some studying.

He moved to his desk, pulling out his chair and sinking down, thankful the day was beginning to wind down. He pulled his bag closer and dug out his spiral, opening it to the page he had been working on earlier that morning and laying it out neatly exactly where it belonged. He reached for his pencil and…

He froze. His usual box of 12ct #2b cheap off-brand pencils were buried. His heart skipped a beat as he stared at what lay atop them. He couldn’t believe it. Atop those horrid, demonic, sorry-excuse for pencils lay a box of 24ct Dixon Ticonderoga premium wood #2 pencils with latex free erasers.

Logan took a moment to calm his excited heart. Before he knew it, he was reaching out with a shaky hand, collecting the box for examination. The clear plastic had been unopened, each stick perfectly preserved within the transparent packaging. Logan turned the object over in his hands, admiring its beauty as he caught sight of thick black words scrawled in sharpie on the back.

‘To Logan, From Patton. I saw these and thought of you. So, I bought them. It just felt ‘WRITE’! XD’

Logan couldn’t help but give a snort at the joke before fumbling to open the box. It almost felt like Christmas had come early as he pulled one of the pencils from its place among the others and set the box aside. He took a moment to examine the utensil in all its glory before reaching for his sharpener.

He inserted the blunted wood and twisted. Once. Twice. Thrice. He heard the sound of the graphite against metal and pulled the pencil out, bringing it to eye level for inspection.

The sharply pointed lead was smooth and crackless, forming a seamless cone with the sleek pale wood that surrounded it. It had glided so perfectly against the razor’s edge and now stood regal and polished before him. It was perhaps one of the most stunning sights he had ever laid his eyes on.

His chest tightened as his smile widened, moving to redraw the graph he had damaged earlier. He drew the lead across the paper gently, the line coming out smooth and dark. Just as it should be. He flipped the pencil in one quick and fluid motion and erased a small portion, the graphite coming off cleanly and without much force. It was satisfying and rejuvenating.

How could he have ever thought a day like this could be bad?! He had everything he ever wanted! Warm clothes, a perfectly tempered room, his desk organized exactly as it should be, and a friend who cared enough to-

Realization hit, ‘The World’s Best Pencil’ falling from his fingers and clattering to his desk (without so much as chipping the perfectly pointed tip) as he brought his hand to cover his mouth in shock.

His heart pounded against his ribs almost painfully. His other hand tangled in his still damp locks. This couldn’t be happening. He wasn’t prone to emotional outbursts. Everything he did was purposefully calculated and scheduled. How could he… He wasn’t…. This wasn’t possible…. But the evidence was building against him.

Logan Sanders was falling in love with his best friend.

Taglist:

@nightashes

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the-space-above-the-stars · 5 years ago

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my name on your...

lee taeyong x reader

Summary: As a tattoo artist, you’ve seen a lot of weird requests in your shop. But something new is when the florist across the street stumbles into your shop drunk as all hell and in the market for his first tattoo.

Warnings: none, i mean drunk taeyong?

Genre: fluff, like entirely

Word Count: 1.7K

A/N: Requests are open!! This is based on an AU prompt I saw, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the URL of the person who put that post out, so if you see this, I’m sorry! Just a short fluffy thing.

Rubbing sleep out of your eyes, you put down your tattoo gun, wiping the last bit of excess ink off of your client’s arm before passing them a mirror. “There you go, Yeri, how do you like it?” You ask, crossing the room for the coffee pot you’ve set to brew. It was near midnight and Yeri, an old friend and new client came through your doors a few hours back asking for a tattoo.

“Wow, Y/N,” she gaped at the art on her arm, two intertwined snakes, one in black ink and one in white. “This looks awesome!”

“Here,” you wrapped a bandage over the slightly inflamed red skin around the tattoo. “Give that a few weeks before you go swimming, take a bath, or go into a hot tub, okay? If you think something’s wrong, just come back, I’m usually here.”

“Okay!” She grabbed her bag and with a wave, was out the door. Silence falls over the shop as you finish your coffee, heading back to the small workspace in the backroom where you threw up some ideas for designs. The walls were covered with tacked up drawings of tattoo designs you had done in your sketchbook. If you really liked them, you would redraw them more neatly and hang them up outside.

Recently most of the drawings are flowers, a byproduct of your time spent drawing inside the florist’s just across the street. The shop was owned by Lee Taeyong, a boy around your age who was kind enough to let you come in and hang around the shop to sketch the flowers he arranged. He was shy, kind, and made incredible displays. Another fact was that he was drop dead, absolutely, positively, gorgeous and you had more than a few drawings of his stunning profie in your sketchbook.

You pull another page from your sketchpad, several different sprigs of lightly etched wildflowers. Taeyong had a special bouquet set up for a customer, a personal friend and had gladly allowed you a few pictures to sketch it. It was nice, and you picked up your pen and a piece of paper.

You had barely laid down the first line of the drawing when the sound of a bell ringing alerted you to the door opening. Just afterwards, a small crash and what sounded like some cuss words. Rushing outside, your eyes darted around to assess the damage to your shop, but there seemed to be nothing there.

Except for a blue haired mess sprawled out on your floor clutching their side. “Hey man, are you okay?” Rushing forward to help them, you noticed that they were very obviously drunk, stumbling as you helped them into a chair. “Do you need- Taeyong?”

“Yes?” The boy hiccuped and laughed, kicking his feet like a toddler. “Hey, you’re the girl that comes in to draw my flowers, right?”

“Yeah, bud-” you didn’t finish as his attention shifted from you to your tattoo gear in the tray next to him, picking up the gun. “Uh, Taeyong, did you get drunk alone?”

“No, uh, Mark was there, I think, I remember someone saying “let’s get it” but that could be Haechan imitating Mark or it could be Jaehyun, oh wait, maybe it was Lucas! But the voice was kinda quiet, so maybe Jungwoo? Wait, no, Doyoung was there! I remember cuz he drove us there. Did you know Doyoung doesn’t drink beer-”

“No, I did not know that,” you tried to stifle your laughter at this drunk man-child, putting your tattoo gear a safe distance away. “Okay, so you didn’t drink alone, did you walk here? Just nod or shake your head.” He gave you an overly exaggerated nod of his head, eyes drifting to the designs on the wall.

“Did you draw all these?” His eyes were wide with curiosity as he stood up, stumbling over his own feet as he reached the wall. “Wow, you’re talented and pretty-oh shit,” he giggled, not aware of the way your face was flushed bright red. “You’re not supposed to tell a girl you think she’s cute, right? I don’t know, Johnny told me that. Should I trust him, he’s pretty tall, so- hey! Can you give me a tattoo?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, buddy,” you try to evade, the kill bill sirens of unethical business going through your head. “I don’t think you signing the forms while you’re drunk is very legal.”

“I’m not drunk!” He pouted, sitting back down in the chair and tucking his feet up under him.

“Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?” You held up three fingers, and unexpectedly, he reached forward and grabbed your hand, counting each finger off.

“Three! Can I get a tattoo now? Renjun went out with Jeno and Jaemin to get a tattoo on his ass, he almost actually went through with it- wait, was that your shop?”

“No, Taeyong, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that. And I wouldn’t recommend an ass tattoo-”

“But I want an ass tattoooo,” he whines, head falling back on the chair.

“What do you even want tattooed on your ass?” You grabbed another cup of coffee, and an extra for him.

“What’s your name again?” He slurred, suddenly entranced with the pop-socket on the back of his phone.

“Y/N.”

“Okay, I’ll get that. Cuz you did the tattoo, might as well be your own name.”

“Okay, Taeyong, first of all, chug this.” He took the coffee and took a sip, pouting at the bitterness. “Please? For me?” Still pouting, he finished the coffee. “Okay, now can you give me your phone, please? unlocked, I need to call your friends.” He fumbled through his pockets and found the slightly cracked iPhone, passing it to you. “Okay, I’m going to call your friends to pick you up, just wait here.”

“What about the tattoo?” He grabs your hand as you turn, stopping you swiftly. Why were his reflexes still good when he was fucking drunk off his ass?

“Okay, I don’t know how to explain this simply, but basically if I give you the tattoo now, you’re going to not like it when you wake up in the morning. So go home with your friends, go to sleep, and if you still want my name on your...on your ass, you can come over and I’ll tattoo you.”

“kay,” he lets go and you go through his contacts until you find Doyoung. It fings twice before someone picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Taeyong?”

“Um, hi, this is Y/N, I own the tattoo parlor opposite Taeyong’s shop, is this Doyoung?”

“This is he. What did he do, I’m so sorry, we just turned around for one second and he was gone-”

“Doyoungggg!” Taeyong calls from the front of the shop, catching on to who you’re on the phone with. “Hiiiiii, I’m getting a tattoo!”

“You’re not really giving him a tattoo, are you?”

“No, god, I’m not crazy. Can you come pick him up?”

“Yeah, we’re almost there, we just left the bar.” He hangs up and you pass Taeyong his phone.

“Y/N, can I tell you another secret?” He whispers, even though there’s no one around. “I really like it when you come to draw my flowers. You look really pretty.”

“Really, Taeyong?”

“Yeah,” he nods expressively. “When you’re drawing, your eyebrows do this thing where they just-” he squishes his own eyebrows together. “And your hair keeps falling in your eyes, it’s really cute.”

“Thanks, Taeyong. You’re kinda cute yourself.” A black car pulls out, three guys coming out. “Are those your friends?”

“Oh, yeah! HI DOYOUNG, HI JAEHYUN, HI MARK- OH, it was Mark who was saying let’s get it!” Jaehyun and Mark help Taeyong up, the tpsy boy immediately pulling them both into a hug. “I love you guys sometimes,” he mumbles, and- wait, is he crying?”

Doyoung, flustered and obviously worried, shakes your hand. “Thanks for looking out for him, he didn’t do anything too weird, did he?”

“Uh, well except for asking for a tattoo of my name on his ass, no, perfectly normal drunk person.” Doyoung thanks you once more and gets into the car.

“BYE, Y/N!” Taeyong waves through the window and you wave back as the car drives around the corner and out of sight, finally exhaling.

*** The next morning, you’re almost done with a girl getting her boyfriend’s name on her neck- a choice you’re sure she’s going to regret- when Taeyong walks in, wearing heavy sunglasses and holding a bouquet of flowers. “Hey Taeyong, give me a minute here.” He nods, somewhat meekly and takes a seat as you wipe away the excess ink and give the girl the normal post-tattoo warnings before she heads out. “How’s the head?” You ask, taking a seat at the reception desk.

“Hurts every time I look at anything that isn’t black. Uh, these are for you,” He sets the pretty arrangement of yellow tulips on the desk. “For an apology for bursting in on you drunk and asking for an ass tattoo of your name- I was way too drunk-”

“Taeyong,” you laugh, taking the flowers. “It’s okay. Honestly, I’ve had sober clients come in asking for weirder things. The flowers are beautiful, thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything else last night, did I?”

“Uh well, you called me pretty, like twice, but I think that’s about it.” His face flushes a deep red, and you can’t help but smile. “And I don’t know if that’s just the alcohol talking-” “It’s not!” He stutters as a clarification, getting even redder. “I mean- okay, I’m not trying to make this even worse for myself, but I think you’re really pretty, Y/N, and I’ll let myself out now.” He turns to leave, but stumbles when you lean over and grab his sleeve.

“That’s good,” you grin at the bewildered look on his face, your laugh breathy. “Because I, for one, think you’re really pretty as well, Taeyong.”

A/N: this is short, but i kinda like it. it’s chill. Requests are open!

#taeyong #lee taeyong #long flight #nct taeyong #nct lee taeyong #nct u #nct 127 #nct 127 taeyong #nct u taeyong #lee taeyong x reader #taeyong x reader #nct taeyong x reader #reader insert #x reader #taeyong fanfiction #lee taeyong fanfic

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violetganache42 · 5 years ago

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Today marks the 11th anniversary of SonicSong182 joining YouTube, signaling the beginning of a journey into what it is today. There was no way I wanted to miss out on celebrating a monumental moment of my favorite Sonic YouTube channel and I had to make something for the occasion.

For starters, I went with some lineless art when drawing Amy and Knuckles, and seeing that LINE! released a series of stickers based on the sketches from the Japanese manuals of the first three Sonic games, it provided some good influence. The Master Emerald and Piko Piko Hammer were also done without any lineart though working on the hammer was much more difficult than I anticipated… Of course, that was nothing compared to coming up with a background. That left me stumped because I wanted to try and reference the channel intro used at the start of Ask the Sonic Heroes while also incorporating each lineless piece I did and how long this channel has been around for, but it didn't work out the way I wanted. On top of that, nothing was coming up on an idea for an alternate background choice… until yesterday.

There are times where I would read random issues from the Archie Sonic comic, especially from the rebooted continuity, and fortunately, it gave me the inspiration I needed to continue and finish this up. You know there is always a recap page in the later issues that has a section containing the major characters, also known as the "Character Select" column? If that's what this image reminded you of, then you guessed correctly. I was determined to replicate how it typically looks, from redrawing the ring that's around at least one character to finding the closest matching fonts, and it left me with some satisfying end results.

From myself and every member of Team182, we would like to say, "Happy 11th anniversary, SonicSong182!"

#my art #sonicsong182 #team182 #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #piko piko hammer #master emerald #anniversary #11th anniversary

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jkrawling · 6 years ago

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25-May-2019 viewer, Greg Simcock here. Author J. K. Rawling if you want to know the author’s pseudonym, but you were never given the opportunity to get to know me for my art and design drawings or stories, inventions and tunes. The theft of my work has seemingly followed my activities over many years and so I feel I am rewarded in as much as God has been since the Heaven's and Earth turned in time. Nobody really knows for sure how the universe was formed and no one will ever know. It is a long-standing mystery, so great in dimension, that only the broadminded persons alive can understand its well-established geophysical existence in what is simply an infinite voluminous void called space, but if it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t be able to read this message now. So that is why the lord God was invented by man. God was the answer to the questions so many people never gave much thought to. You see if there was no God people could not think of a better reason that would explain their existence. The stories in the bible are indeed written by people exploring the existence of God as they sorta purposeful answer to their nagging question: Who created the world, with all its splendours?, and; How did man originate from nothing?“ In order to reveal that information, I would have to take one back in time to when the universe began to form. From there it would evolve, eventually becoming the God-forsaken place people are prepared to believe was created by one being. Let me explain. God is an invention of man that only stands to let people imagine well enough that there is a logical answer as to why such a thing exists. It isn’t something taught in schools. There would be no need to query anyone for the real answer of why we live, eat and breathe, if any one person could provide the unequivocal answer to that finite question without disagreeing by anyone, so God was invented to allow people to recognize there is a reason for mankind and every other living thing in the world, be it on planet Earth or somewhere in the universe. That brings me to thinking about why I am an individual who is one of the creators who has, for many years, developed a mindset of knowledge so vast that I have found nobody to believe in what I know to be true. I believe my mind to be a sponge for knowledge. I was a curious boy from the time when I was a baby, sucking on my mother’s breast nipples, which I remember vaguely doing on occasion, and looking at the stars, wondering where the planets and galaxies I heard about were in the night's sky. From an early age, I was imagining how the features where I lived would appear from the sky, where birds appeared to fly as they flew by. I began to draw things from an early age the things I imagined, such as creatures that lived in the sea, boats, cars and girls I liked. I became creative in my way of thinking and drew numerous mechanical things, such as planes, trains, tractors. I pulled apart many items, whether they needed fixing or not (that rarely went back together or worked again) and from doing that I developed an inventive mind. In 1978 I joined the Australian Army to hopefully get a job that I could build a career of. I scored the position of a cinema projectionist (ECN-320) and entertained hundreds of thousands of soldiers, screening motion pictures made for cinemas in the motion picture industry. I served nine years, mostly with the rank of Corporal, until 1987 when I had to resign after sustaining a lower-back injury. That was a two-edged sword for me. For one thing led to another and while I was out of paid employment, I worked long days, well into the nights, for about 9 years, designing things, drawing many characters, and creating hundreds of stories with the range of characters, creatures, and machines I drew for use in designing my projects. Nothing I drew went to waste. From fishing reels I drew, I created vehicle designs and a range of characters. From a computer mouse and a cleaning tool for the mouse tracking rollers inside the mouse, I created more characters. Drawings that failed to meet my needs became unusual characters of things. One drawing of a wobble-head lion car-dash ornament, which I was creating drawings for to become a product I could sell, was ruined from excessive lines I drew on its neck. I simply drew the lined thick around the neck and had what appeared as a three-headed guard dog. As it was an unusual drawing, I put it in my story file, eventually adding it to my stories of a wizard boy I saw myself as. I had served nine years screening to people of all age groups, including children from preschool, juniors, teens and adults. I loved my work and play while in the Army, as well as after being left on my own to recover from my emotional time of seven years afterwards. When the designs of my stories and inventions were all well developed, with many of them showing good prospects to become a breadwinner for me and my needs to settle with a desire to raise a family after my work on creating things was done, but that didn’t go to plan. I was robbed of my work over many years. The Harry Potter story developed into five stories, with two extra titles and the ending scene drawings made, which was showing the clash between Lord Voldemort and Me as Harry Potter. I was robbed of my work and the families I had grown to love and imagine were my own family members. I cried many nights after accepting my work of hundreds of stories and inventions had gotten stolen. I could not raise anyone’s attention when I spoke of my lost drawings, many technical design drawings, songs, tunes and animations. All with names of the main characters and titles for the programs I had tirelessly built up from my creative mind and the activities I had been accustomed to doing over the years I was actively pursuing my goals. All I had left was time, so, after my tears dried, I began sitting and thinking, staring into nothingness, as I tried to fathom what had happened to my artwork for such a lot of projects. I had been seeing things come onto the market and wondering how someone else had thought of the same thing as I had designed, but my mind would not let me think about those things and the reason they had managed to become products on sale in shops. Eventually, my mental flashbacks of things I had designed and seen on sale, or in motion pictures, began to bother me, so I began to draw what I could remember of something that had flashed a mental image that caused me to wonder why that had happened. Although I cannot remember how long those flashbacks occurred, I eventually had drawn enough segments of some inventions one designed that I was able to redraw them. Only then was I able to realise my mind had been alert enough to recognise things I had drawn and after my loss, it was all the while on the watch for to help me remember designing things I chanced to see with the mind's eye. One night, I wanted to see a children's program but it was being broadcast in the early morning hours, so I set the video recorder to record the program as I slept. When I viewed the program in the morning, I was shocked to hear the theme tune and song for Thomas The Tank Engine. I had created the song lyrics and tune for Thomas The Tank Engine. The engine was drawn using an un-needed drawing of a caster-ring fishing-reel I designed and patented. I drew my initials in the circle at the front of the engine's boiler so as to give it what became the characteristic face of Thomas. I was delighted when I first created it, thinking it to be a really useful little engine for use in my children’s story about a tank engine. Even the program was based on my setting for the screen animation I had hoped my work would be used to make for children. Drawings of the mouse cleaner were made into characters for other animations. One I named Boom And Reds, their Boom was a messed up drawing, creating the monster named Boom, and Reds was curved lines from a drawing of my mouse cleaning tool design. When a man named Alan Page asked me about the characters, I told him it was a children’s animation in which the characters would move along and hide under their curved hat. The monster thought he was useless, so the Reds characters befriended the monster (Boom) and made him feel happy by playing a game with the Reds. Flamo has no hands, but I drew my initials in a stylized way to save me having to draw hands and to code my drawing.Sam Sam was named after an uncle who had died. Master Raindrop was named after I had observed raindrops running along a rope I had tied between two veranda posts. I was amused by the energy in the raindrops running back and forth, so I went into my loungeroom and drew the raindrop on my design page of a project. The character eventually got drawn from that downpour of rain. Alan Page showed an interest in what I had drawn and asked me why I had drawn it, so I told him about the rain running along, back and forth, under the rope. He then asked me if he could have the rope. I allowed him to have that rope, as I had the memory of the actions of the raindrops and the character drawing, so I created the programs story-board for what I named Master Raindrop. Alan Page asked me many questions about other characters, stories, drawings and program ideas they were in, all set in sections of my design files and story-board files. That includes numerous drawings and theme elements in the story-boarded stories of my Harry Potter series. My writer's name is J. K. Rawling. I created that pseudonym after I had created the story-boards for my story I named The Lion King. My third story I named Finding NEMO. Up to 2009, I had given a police officer, named James Langley, six compact disks (CD’s) of notes and images of things I had discovered on sale to do with my projects work. In that year, he got promoted to Sergeant and was posted to Fremantle, Western Australia. The Rockingham police did not assist me in any way, but from then on I simply wrote notes and became lost in this mad, uncaring world I was living in much as a hermit may live. Recently, I found an early notebook of 2009 with some of my drawings in it I had drawn to remind me of characters and programs I had designed to be made. They are not as tidy as my original artwork would have shown, but, since that is not at hand, I post a number of photocopied pages with drawings of some of my characters from my notebook for your perusal. I have mentioned only several of my stories and some characters but the majority of my characters, inventions and stories remain to be discovered.They formed story-boards for productions such as Jurassic Park, Spiderman, Batman - The Dark Knight, Avatar, Terminator, True Lies, and many more titles. Posted 3 minutes ago Tagged: j. k. Rawling, jk rowling, jk rowling, boom and reds, Thomas the tank engine, master raindrop, flame, the dark knight, avatar, the lion king, finding Nemo, the plagiarist.

#j. k. rawling #jkrowling #jkrawling #boom and reds #thomas the tank engine #master raindrop #flamo #the dark knight #avatar #the lion king #finding nemo #plagiarist

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thesoundofnat · 6 years ago

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Stained Fingertips

Tony/Steve

Summary: Steve is maybe slightly obsessed with drawing Tony. Not that Tony minds.

[Read it on AO3]

Words: 3 058

Steve had been so focused on getting the shading just right that he didn’t even notice that he was drawing a blush onto the subject’s face until his pen stilled and he glanced up to get a proper look at Tony.

He was sitting across from him on the bed, pretending to be reading an old book they had lying around just to have something to do while Steve sketched him. The light from outside was illuminating him just right so that Steve could practically see every twitch of his mouth.

He put his notebook down. “Why are you blushing?” He’d tried to merely sound curious, but Tony’s flush deepened anyway, which was interesting.

“I’m blushing?” A brief moment of eye contact before he looked down again. “I didn’t realize.”

“Well, I know it’s not because it’s warm in here. What’s up?”

Tony exhaled loudly and put the book away. “I just started overthinking.”

“Overthinking what?”

“The whole sketching thing. You’re basically examining every inch of me and it made me flustered.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hey.”

“Come here.” Tony did, scooting closer and letting Steve capture his lips in a kiss. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Why must you insult me today?”

“You started feeling self conscious as if there’s anything about you I don’t love.”

“It’s not that,” Tony insisted. “I just- you’re watching me so casually, entirely unaware of what your gaze does to me.”

Steve’s lips quirked. “As if drawing you isn’t a pleasure.”

Tony pointed at him. “See? A guy can’t just sit there unaffected.”

“You’re sweet.”

“Oh, so now I’m sweet? I thought I was an idiot and ridiculous.”

“You can be all three simultaneously. You usually are,” he added, laughing when Tony gaped at him.

“Excuse you,” he said, fingers finding Steve’s ribs, making him laugh for different reasons. “Rude. Disrespectful. So many more words.”

“Stop it and let me finish drawing you,” Steve said, grabbing onto Tony’s wrists. “Unless you can’t handle my gaze on you.”

“Wow. I’m never telling you anything again.”

Steve grinned. “I’m not letting go until you kiss me.”

“That’s a threat.”

“As if you don’t like it.”

Tony gave his lips a peck, which turned into a longer kiss that Steve was very smug about when they pulled away. Tony just rolled his eyes and sat back down on the other side of the bed. “Paint me like one of your french girls.”

“I’m gonna pretend as if I understood that reference.”

“You- no, you know what? We’re watching Titanic the moment you finish sketching my perfect body, and that’s a promise.”

Steve started drawing Tony more often after that, if only because he now knew Tony had more feelings toward the whole process than annoyance. In fact, he didn’t seem to be finding it annoying at all, despite acting like it.

“You like that I like drawing you,” Steve said one evening, in the middle of shading Tony’s lips, so perfectly curved as Tony started grinning.

“Maybe,” he said, barely moving. “It’s kind of flattering.”

Steve added the mischievous glint to sketch-Tony’s eyes, redrawing an eyebrow so that it was slightly raised. The picture of smugness, very different from Tony’s blush a few days prior.

“I know you don’t draw just anyone,” he continued, and Steve felt his own cheeks heat up. A ghost of embarrassment, even though he had no reason to be embarrassed. Tony was well aware of his feelings toward him.

“That’s true,” he said, putting the pen down momentarily to rest his hand. “But then again, lots of artists draw anything they see.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want you to believe it always means something, even though it of course means something in this case.”

“Drawing people is different though, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“What’s it for you?”

“Drawing?”

“People.”

“I- well, I don’t always ask permission, but I never draw strangers.”

“Have you drawn me without asking?”

Steve hesitated. “I have.”

“When?”

“Before, well, everything. And after.”

“Can I see?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on.”

Steve grabbed the pen again. “I barely let you see the ones I have you pose for. You think I’m gonna show you the ones I never intended for anyone to see?”

“Well, now I’m curious.”

“Curiosity kills.”

“Fair enough.”

Steve was glad he’d captured Tony’s previous expression, because now he just looked skeptical. Lips slightly pursed, the hint of a crease between his eyebrows. Eyes on the wall next to Steve.

Steve ran the tip of his pen down the chin, giving Tony a neck, shoulders, arms, stopping only when it was time to sketch his bare upper body. Tony met his gaze now, sensing Steve had something to say.

“For what it’s worth,” he started, licking his lips. “I’ve only ever drawn you without asking.”

Tony’s expression changed again, and Steve scrambled to turn the page to capture the utter joy before it was gone.

“Are you building a shrine?”

Steve rolled his eyes, letting them fall on Sam who was trying to peer down at his notebook. Steve barely had time to close it, but the damage had been done.

“I was just touching up a couple of drawings,” he said.

“All of Tony?”

“Well-”

“Obsessed, is what you are.”

“Or a man in love,” Nat said, suddenly in the room as well. Maybe she’d been there the entire time and Steve had gotten so used to only seeing things directly in front of him that he hadn’t noticed.

He rubbed at his neck. “Is it a crime to admire one’s partner?”

“Nah, we’re messing with you.” Sam sat down beside him, chair scraping against the kitchen floor. “But I miss the days where you drew me.”

Steve snorted. “I can still draw you.”

“But you never ask to. It’s not like I can just walk up to you and demand it, as much as those internet trolls seem to think it’s okay.”

Nat started rummaging around the fridge, and Steve wondered why he’d thought the kitchen table would be a good place to do work at.

He leaned back, pen still in one hand and his notebook under the fingertips of the other, just in case someone would get the idiotic idea of grabbing for it. He wasn’t even sure why he felt so protective of it, even when it came to Tony. Everyone knew what they would find in it. Nothing was obscene or twisted. It was just sketches, mostly of Tony, some even unfinished, but it felt so personal anyway.

Steve started tapping his fingers against the book as Nat sat down across from him with a bowl of blueberries. The afternoon light was hitting her just right, and Steve suddenly wished Tony was sitting in her seat instead. The room empty apart from them. Notebook open and pen hurrying to capture the moment.

Tony had once said that it’d be quicker to just snap a picture, but it would feel less authentic. Yes, he was a pretentious art student at heart, just like Sam had once claimed.

Steve reached out and stole a berry, popping it into his mouth before Nat could protest - not that she would.

“Careful with the juice,” was all she said. “It stains.”

“Hey, you think you could paint with the juice?” Sam asked, eyeing the bowl but not grabbing for it himself.

Steve hummed. “Maybe? It’d be harder than paint.”

“Have you experimented much with different painting methods or do you stick to pencil?”

“I’ve always stuck to pencil,” Steve said. “Didn’t really have access to anything else back in the days.”

“I’m sure Tony could order in a bunch of stuff if you wanted to try.”

“What if I’m not good at it, though? I reckon it’s different.”

“Won’t hurt to try.”

So that was how Steve ended up getting his own art studio in the Tower, located on the same floor as his and Tony’s shared room, big and bright and filled with anything you’d need if you called yourself an artist. Seriously, Steve almost felt overwhelmed just looking at it.

“You didn’t have to get me all of this,” he said, breath not entirely caught yet. “I would be fine with a tube of paint.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “As if I’ve ever done anything halfheartedly. You deserve to practice and try things out.”

Steve shook his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Also sweet and an idiot.”

“Exactly.”

But Steve kissed him with so much passion they almost undressed then and there, restraining themselves just in time.

“Don’t feel bad if you don’t end up using something,” Tony said as he walked toward the exit. “Try things out, but don’t force yourself to use something you don’t agree with.”

Steve mock saluted him. “Yes, sir.”

“Ha ha. Now go draw a mosaic of me, won’t you?”

Steve didn’t know where to start, or how, so he decided to grab the first thing he saw and recreate his oldest piece of Tony merely to relive his own obliviousness from back then, but he stopped himself just as he tipped a brush into watercolor. He’d ruin Tony if he did this. Better save all his Tonies to when he’d mastered the art more properly.

So he painted the buildings outside and the equipment inside and even brought in a bowl of fruit with an apple on top just to be a cliché. Before he knew it he’d been painting in his studio for weeks, taking breaks to go outside and socialize with coal and oil and paint coating his fingertips. Suddenly he understood why Tony would shut himself in his workshop for days. It was enthralling to have so many things to do with your hands.

When he finally asked Tony to model for him again, he decided to paint him with acrylic paint.

“It’s one of my favorites,” he said when Tony questioned him about it. “I thought it only right to use it for my grand premiere.”

“Why’s it one of your favorites?” Tony asked, sitting down on the armchair Steve had brought in for this exact reason.

“You can use it without water. The lines will look uneven, but I like the effect that creates. It almost looks like the subject is moving.”

Tony hummed. “Interesting. Do you want me in a more mobile pose?”

“Let’s just start with a normal pose and we can move to more complicated things later.”

“I have a feeling I’ll spend much time in this chair.”

Steve grabbed a smaller brush and got to work, watching Tony relax into the chair, phone in hand, thumbs constantly moving over the screen. Steve decided to exaggerate their movements once he got to Tony’s hands.

“That took forever,” Tony complained a couple of hours later, stretching his arms above his head. “Do I at least look good?”

Steve hadn’t included as many details as he might’ve had this been a finished pencil sketch, but he liked the simplicity of it, especially since he knew it had taken long. It was simple but not effortless.

“You always look good,” Steve replied. “Though I must say my drawings can never fully capture it.”

“Oh hush, you’re gonna make me blush. And kick your ass for being self deprecating.”

Steve showed Tony the painting, having gotten better at sharing the finished results with him. It was always fun watching him examine it, after he got over his own mental panic. Tony looked so flattered and pleased and overwhelmed all at once. He’d once confessed that he didn’t understand why Steve insisted on drawing him of all people, and Steve had to spend half a night convincing him he was lovable.

Now he watched the man he’d come to know and love so deeply watch the canvas, expression unreadable. It should’ve been worrying had Steve not seen him clutch the hem of his shirt. That was code for so-overwhelmed-he-didn’t-know-what-to-do.

“I don’t really believe in magic,” he said, clearing his throat. “But I’m almost certain you’re a goddamn wizard, Steve Rogers.”

Steve would remember those words for the rest of his life.

They didn’t spend all their time in the art studio. As much as Steve appreciated it, it was harder to bring those things with him, so he still carried his notebook everywhere he went. You know, just in case.

That afternoon they were in Tony’s workshop, Tony elbow-deep in one of his suits. A thin stripe of oil on his cheek that Steve was currently sketching out in his notebook. He might’ve brought an armchair into his workspace purely for Tony, but Tony had always had a couch in his. He refused to tell him why when Steve asked, but Steve suspected it was to nap if he needed it.

The music in the room was low, probably mostly for Steve’s sake than Tony’s. Steve liked that Tony cared enough to build an atmosphere that Steve enjoyed. He knew Tony prefered to blast the music until his was almost deaf.

“Wait, be still for a second.”

Tony froze, wrench in hand and head craned slightly unnaturally in order to get a better look at his work. “Hurry please.”

“Sorry, I’ll be done in a moment.”

He sketched down a messy version of Tony’s hair falling in his face, having broken free of the wax he used. Beautiful, Steve thought.

“Sorry?”

And apparently said aloud too.

He cleared his throat. “You’re beautiful. You can move now.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Tony straightened, head tilted as he kept looking at Steve. “You don’t look too bad yourself, you know. If I could draw you’d be my life long subject as well.”

That was practically a proposal. Steve’s heart was suddenly much less calm.

He put the notebook and pen aside. “Come here.”

Tony looked at the suit. “Uh, kinda busy here.”

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“Steve, I-”

Steve didn’t listen. Only crossed the room and locked his lips to Tony’s.

Tony let out a surprised yelp, but used his free - and clean - hand to cradle his neck, leaning into the kiss so immediately it was probably a reflex, but the fact that he didn’t pull away was what told Steve this was real. Even though they’d been going out for a few months already, he still sometimes couldn’t believe this was his.

Maybe that was why he kept drawing him. If all this would get ripped out of his hands, at least he’d have proof it wasn’t a dream.

Steve found himself drawing Tony in dreams sometimes. Creating images with colors that wouldn’t go anywhere near a drawing of Tony and somehow still making them look good. He always woke to a slight disappointment it hadn’t been real, and if he ever remembered them for long enough to get to his studio he would try to recreate them. Maybe he had a problem. An obsession, as Sam had called it, but he didn’t know how to stop.

He drew other things more often now, because he was scared he’d forget how to if he didn’t. Tony was a good subject and all, but a line existed so that it wouldn’t be crossed. Steve wasn’t about to cross this line.

He was in the middle of sketching one of Tony’s abandoned projects that had somehow ended up on their bedroom floor when Tony entered, walking quickly toward him without stopping. Steve barely had time to save the notebook before Tony had pushed him down the bed, hovering above him with such hunger in his eyes that Steve forgot all about art.

“I can’t draw,” Tony said, breath hitting Steve’s face. “But I want to describe just what a piece of art you are, if you’d let me.”

Steve nodded wordlessly, his pulse quickening.

Tony drew Steve that night, using his hands and lips and words. Steve was an artist, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to return this, though try he would.

In the dark, stars twinkling outside, Tony ran his lips over Steve’s skin, describing the texture, the color, the sensation. Making Steve laugh when he called colors their “fancy names”, such as turquoise, mauve and crimson. Fingertips ghosting over his hips, arms, neck, describing curves and sweet spots and removing articles of clothing at the same time.

“I’m gonna make you see every color on the spectrum,” Tony told him, and Steve wondered how he’d ever lived without that man.

Tony was in the room with him when Steve finally painted another person again, sneaking glances at the canvas while Nat sat patiently in the armchair, book in lap and eyes actually taking in every word. Steve didn’t reprimand her for moving whenever she turned the page, but he did tell Tony off for crowding him occasionally.

“I just like seeing your process from the other side of the room,” he said. “It’s interesting.”

“It’s easier,” Steve replied. “Nat doesn’t complain as much.”

“Hey.”

“And I haven’t drawn her in months, so it doesn’t come as naturally. It’s good practice.”

“Ah, so taking a break from me is good for your artistic skills.”

“It’ll be good to draw you again with a fresher mind.”

“If I knew this would get me first row to your private conversations I would’ve volunteered to do this ages ago.”

Tony snorted. “He wouldn’t have let you.”

“Whatever you say, Stark.”

Tony tried to mock draw him one day, grabbing a blunt pencil and a torn out page from Steve’s notebook and pretending to be thinking hard, frowning exaggeratedly when Steve couldn’t stop laughing at the mess of a drawing he showed him.

“Excuse you, I tried my hardest.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Wow, you’re rude. Let’s see you build a robot then.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You know what, I will not stand for being insulted.”

“So sit down- hey!”

Tony tackled him onto the couch, both laughing when Tony made a poor attempt at pinning him. Steve stopped Tony’s fingers from doing more than graze against his ticklish spots, and soon they were kissing, because maybe Clint hadn’t been too off when he’d told them they were like teenagers.

“So I’m not an artist,” Tony said when they pulled apart. “But I love doing art.”

“What-”

“You’re art.”

“Oh my god, Tony.”

He was still sweet, ridiculous and an idiot, but Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.

#stony #superhusbands #stevetony #stony fic #superhusbands fic #stony fluff #artist!steve #avengers fic #fluff #mine #nat writes #stained fingertips

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doodleniella · 4 years ago

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Part 2 - Jikoshoukai (it’s looooooooong so please bear reading it at your own risk orz)

* I’m in my late twenties, but looks like a teenager; one time a jeepney driver mistaken me for a college student and gave me fare discount.

* Am a Taurus, I think iirc an A+? (have forgotten about it since high school, during our physical examination at the school clinic), and my birth date sounds like a Star Wars phrase pun.

* Height’s more or less a 5’5” (until that realization a month ago, I always go on believing that I’m a 5’3” lol).

* You can describe me as a (kinda) my-pace type of girl, but in my case, more like a girl who does things in a whim and more or less likely to regret doing them.

* Always bullied since childhood, that’s why I hold grudges until now haha

* First impressions (when I see one) are hit or miss. When a person did something that make me, say, cringe... 👎🏻 unless I can see some progress.

* Also cringed at wrong grammar and spelling (gdi so many apostrophe S’s I kennat—), no offense.

* Is a cat person nyaa~

* Always been drawing stuff since childhood, wherever I can set my pen/pencil/coloring materials/etc on....even on borrowed books at our university library. Shh~

* Speaking of books, since the age of two I frequently read and read and read lots of reading materials—ranging from novels to newspapers to magazines etc. Had a collection of them at home btw, paperbacks and US magazine backissues, mostly. Amongst them, had a few Jan Karon books (under the Mitford Years series) and some Lorna Landvik novels.

* Speaking of library, this is like second home to me... lots of books, computer stations, wifi (lol), air conditioning system (another lol), solo study cubicles to take a nap on whenever time calls for it, and you can borrow almost all of the books (max. 5-6 at a time).

* I’m one of the lucky few who are referred to as the Batang ‘90s (‘90s Kids)—because, unlike kids nowadays, we’ve experienced watching Tagalog-dubbed anime during weekday afternoons after school in the 1990’s and 2000’s-early 2010’s, for one.

* An anime enthusiast, always watching anime and reading manga, one of the reasons why I draw until this day—the other because of my dear aunt (may God always bless her soul~ Also am the Secretary of my college alma mater’s anime club for I guess two years idk? Ahaha~

* Cosplayed twice during college: the first one is a disaster and my second one is super goooood xD (One of my club senpais joked about the colors of the cloth used on our maid costumes—during my first year, we’ve managed a Maid Cafe during our annual University Days—being bright and vivid as the colors of the jeepney routes in our province; he called mine the Marisol, after the Marisol-Pampang route—ctto pic)

* Been fascinated with Japan and the Japanese culture since childhood: during Grade 2, I’ve purchased a Highlights Top Secret Japan puzzle set; during Grade 6, my older cousin who now based in Japan with her own family gave me CDs of Hamasaki Ayumi and EXILE, among others.

* Collected anime posters, laminated cards, and stickers during Grade 6 until all my high school years. Dunno where they are now...

* Am picky with what I watch and read, whether it’s anime, manga, or a novel/book/magazine. ‘Cause I have a damn refined taste lol

* I also have multiple fandoms across some of the genres. I’m an Hello! Project fan since 2008 (first oshimen was Morning Musume’s Kusumi Koharu, now it’s the 15th gen’s Kitagawa Rio from Morning Musume ‘20; also a BEYOOOOONDS fan—but I love all of the girls like my younger sisters....even though my real younger sister’s a pain in the arse sometimes), a casual 48G fan since AKB48’s Heavy Rotation hit the Oricon charts—and kinda supported its international sister groups too, like our very own MNL48...but kinda laylowed since late last year. Aside from MNL48, I also supported its similar (but related?) local aidoru counterparts, Aidoru Sozai and CH4U, since 2018. But, ever since that goddamn COVID-19 virus and quarantine started, the need to support the members had gradually lost in my hands (don’t worry tho, I still checked out on their SNS even if not on a daily basis).

* Before, I always listened mostly to idol songs (75% of which are H!P), but when my old phone broke (and we have wifi now) I tuned in daily to Spotify and listened to some of its playlists—to which I select a few songs and gathered them in my own playlist full of J-Tracks and old stuff.

* I’m a huge fan of Takaya Natsuki’s “Fruits Basket”, ever since I have watched the Tagalog-dubbed original/Studio Deen version on TV every Saturday morning during the early 2000’s. Read the almost-150+-ish chapters during my high school and college days, read some of “Fruits Basket ~another~”, and now currently watching the 2019 version. Also have a dog-eared TokyoPop copy of the ~Cat~ fanbook skl.

* Due to the influence of some of my artist collab buddies and a certain redraw challenge (#HaikyuuRedraw), at almost three? months, I’m basically new to the Haikyuu!! Fandom. In less than a month, I’ve watched Seasons 1 until the first half of On The Top!!—including the OVAs, read the full 400+ chapters of the “Haikyuu!!” manga non-stop (because, ‘it’s fast-paced’ as I have told one colleague before), and its spin-offs “Haikyuu-Bu” and “Let’s Haikyuu”, and watched all four compilation movies. (Now rewatching Season 2 btw...) *whispers low* Not to mention countless fanfictions and doujins...... FUN FACT: If you visited my Pinterest page, you’ll be annoyingly (imo) amazed at how many Haikyuu!!-related memes, comic panels, fanarts and stuff I have saved in my two boards. Also made some chibi fanarts (first one being Inarizaki’s Capt. Kita; will post Kenma’s later tonight) and some WIP sketches (one Hinata, one Oikawa—on an UFO, duh—and a Yachi... all of them chibified) that idk when the fuck will I start to work on them again qwq (Whew... my longest paragraph so far, sorry~)

* Created my Facebook art page and began sharing my doodles and drawings to the public since 2017 (more then three years ago), then since early 2018 started doing MNL48 and other local aidoru groups’ fanarts in trad (colored ballpens and colored pencils on cheap bond paper halves). Then early 2020, I started doing anime fanarts as part of a collab for I think half a year now.

* I have been a member of two artists’ collaboration groups on Facebook—MFA48 (specializing in mostly MNL48-related group fanart collabs) and Anime Art Collaboration Group (an exclusive-for-Filipino-artists’ collab group specializing in two-week anime collabs and other art activities, to which I’m a part of its Council as the Fukaichou/Council VP). Also a staff member at a memeposting Facebook page for more than a year now (belated Happy Anniversary to me lol~).

* Did make some padorus, a few memes—including an all-in-one virtual powerbank charger, ‘patent pending’—and stuff.

* WIPs old and new kept on piling up due to many distractions (namely, this phone I’m using rn and its many installed apps) and disturbances (my fam, on the top of the list). And I really hate it qwq hence the frustration and stress...

* A lazy person actually tee hee~ (and a big eater but kinda slim like Miaka from “Fushigi Yuugi”)

...well? Ahehehe~ hope you stick on reading all of these bullshit till the end, tho. Ja~ see y’all again! （＾∇＾）

(Hope it can fit within Tumblr’s character number parameters or something...)

0 notes

dr-archeville · 7 years ago

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INDY Primer: N.C.’s Congressional Districts Are Once Again Declared Unconstitutional Gerrymanders [2018/01/10]

Hey, all. Today is one of the busiest news days I’ve seen since we started Primer. I’ll get through as much as I can. As always, you can check out the web-browser version of this newsletter here.

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1. ANOTHER N.C. GERRYMANDER STRUCK DOWN.

THE GIST: Big, big #ncpol news out of Raleigh yesterday. A federal court has struck the congressional districts the General Assembly drew in 2016 — to replace congressional districts that had previously been ruled unconstitutional racial gerrymanders — were themselves unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. A three-judge panel gave the NCGA until January 29 to solve the problem. This decision, of course, comes at a federal court in the Triad is about to redraw the state’s legislative districts — which, again, were redrawn last year after the original districts were ruled unconstitutional. I’m starting to sense a pattern. In any event, let’s go through the ruling and then talk about its greater import.

From the NYT: “Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina’s Legislature had been ‘motivated by invidious partisan intent’ as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”

“The ruling left little doubt about how the judges assessed the Legislature’s most recent map. Judge Wynn, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was a member of a special panel considering the congressional map, said that ‘a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation.’”

This is blindingly obvious to anyone who has watched the General Assembly work in recent years. Hell, Representative David Lewis said it at the time: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to ten Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with eleven Republicans and two Democrats.” As the N&O’s story points out: “The comment by Lewis has provided the underpinnings for a lawsuit that sets North Carolina apart from other partisan gerrymander challenges.”

The ruling (read the Google Doc here) relies in part on a study from Duke applied mathematics professor Jonathan Mattingly, who simulated more than twenty-four thousand configurations using a probability distribution of all possible redistricting plans. In those simulations, less than 1 percent ended up with ten Republicans seats and three Democratic seats: “Using actual 2016 congressional votes, a congressional delegation of 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats — the outcome that occurred under the 2016 Plan — occurred in less than 0.7 percent of the simulated plans (162/24,518), with a delegation of 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats occurring in approximately 55 percent of the plans.”

NYT: “Republican officials in the General Assembly said Tuesday evening that they intended to appeal the ruling, which many elected officials and political strategists were still scrambling to digest. Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, criticized Judge Wynn and accused him of ‘waging a personal, partisan war on North Carolina Republicans.’ In a separate post on Twitter, Mr. Woodhouse argued that Judge Wynn had concluded that North Carolina’s Republicans ‘should not be allowed to draw election districts under any circumstances under any set of rules,’ an effort he called ‘a hostile takeover’ of the General Assembly and legislatures nationwide.”

WHAT IT MEANS: The redrawing of the legislative districts being undertaken by special master Nathaniel Persily seems likely to end the GOP’s supermajorities in the legislature, whether or not there’s a Democratic wave in November. That would be enough to sustain Governor Cooper’s veto power, which in turn would end Phil Berger and Tim Moore’s carte blanche to do whatever they please. The congressional districts have national implications, however.

First, there’s the timing: The short period between when new districts would be finalized — provided the GOP’s appeal is unsuccessful — and when candidates have to file means there would be a scramble. Districts will change, perhaps dramatically. Districts that looked safe for incumbents won’t be. Politicians who aren’t currently running could spot opportunity and get in the game. In short, it will alter the playing field.

Second, there’s the big picture: Right now, estimates suggest Democrats are on track to pick up thirty-eight House seats in November, which would be enough to reclaim the majority. [WaPo] But even in a Democratic wave, a lot of those races will fall in Republican-leaning districts, which means they’ll be close. An extra two or three Democratic seats in North Carolina could be the difference.

Finally, there’s the rub: Yet again, the NCGA has proven itself incapable of drawing anything resembling a fair map. The Republicans’ thirst for political power prevents that. However, if the shoe were on the other foot, do you really think the Democrats’ intentions would be any different? It’s easy to harp on gerrymandering when the results run contrary to your ideological interests — as, in my case, the Republican gerrymanders obviously do. It’s harder to do so when that dynamic is reversed. Which is why it’s time to take this out of politicians’ hands, at least so much as is possible. The state needs to create an independent redistrict commission, split between the parties (and independents!), or hand it off to legislative staffers, or something. [INDY] At the very least, we need to acknowledge that the present way of doing things is irreparably broken.

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2. FUSION GPS FOUNDER DISPUTES REPUBLICAN CLAIMS OF DOSSIER FAKERY.

THE GIST: Last week, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley made a criminal referral to the FBI, asking the feds to investigate former British spy Christoper Steele, who contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate the Trump camp’s ties to Russia in 2016. Also last week, the former journalists behind Fusion GPS asked the Senate to release the transcript of Fusion founder Glenn Simpson’s interview with the Judiciary Committee — which includes a lot of conversation of Steele’s work — but Grassley refused. So, yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein released it herself (read it here). It’s long but important.

First, the context: Fusion’s research into Trump was funded first by a conservative site that supported another Republican for president and then by the Clinton campaign, a fact that has made it quite the political football. The so-called Steele dossier that research produced contained a number of salacious allegations, including one involving golden showers and Russian hookers. It was published by Buzzfeed last year (more on that in a second). Republicans have argued that this political oppo research (which wasn’t publicly disseminated until after the campaign) was the basis for the FBI’s investigation into collusion, and as such the investigation itself is suspect. But the transcript hardly suggests a political hit job; rather, it paints the picture of Steele as a researcher who became concerned that a potential president of the United States was compromised by a geopolitical foe.

NYT: “The interview, with Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS, provided few revelatory details about the firm’s findings on the Russian election effort or on President Trump and his campaign. But both the circumstances of its release and the vivid picture it paints of Mr. Simpson’s operation and his chief Russia investigator, Christopher Steele, provided fresh ammunition to both sides of a growing fight over the dossier. In his testimony, Mr. Simpson sought to portray himself as an astute researcher well versed in the Russian government and that country’s organized crime. And he said Mr. Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the campaign’s ties to Russia, had ‘a Sterling reputation as a person who doesn’t exaggerate, doesn’t make things up, doesn’t sell baloney.’ Mr. Steele believed that his investigation had unearthed ‘a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed,’ Mr. Simpson told the committee.”

Some key points, from WaPo: “Ultimately, the dossier claimed Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, something Trump has vigorously denied but also something neither special counsel Robert S. Mueller III nor Congress have ruled out.”

“Researchers weren't expecting to find what they did: The research started as open-ended, but as they uncovered more about Trump's alleged connections to Russia, Simpson said, he and former British spy Christopher Steele, whom Simpson hired to do the research, made a decision to go to the FBI.”

“There may have been a whistleblower in the Trump campaign: This is the biggest headline from 10 hours of interviews. Simpson says Steele told him that the FBI had ‘other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source,’ someone ‘inside the Trump organization.’” However, an NBC correspondent says the FBI didn’t actually have a walk-in source, but rather this was a reference to an Australian diplomat who heard a drunken Trump aide boasting about the Russian hack that got garbled in translation.

“Some news events have corroborated the memo's findings: Simpson points out that Steele's memo alleged members of the Trump campaign were eager to hear information from Russia. A year later, Trump Jr. released emails suggesting as much, when he said, ‘If it's what you say I love it’ to correspondence indicating that Russians had dirt on Clinton. The dossier also identified former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page as a potential intermediary between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Washington Post reported in April that Page was wiretapped by the FBI during the campaign, suggesting it had reason to believe Page was in contact with the Russians while he worked for Trump.”

“The FBI indicated it believed some of what was in the memos: After Steele and Simpson called the FBI to report that they had reason to believe the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia, Simpson said, the FBI asked Steele to share everything. A couple months after Steele gave the FBI a full briefing, the FBI said that it believed him, according to Simpson.”

But Steele cut off his talks with the FBI in October, after The New York Times — which, mind you, was in full Hillary-emails hysteria at the time — published a bogus story saying the FBI didn’t see any connection between the Trump camp and Russia. From Simpson: “There was some sort of interaction, I think it was probably telephonic that occurred after Director Comey sent his letter to Congress reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. That episode, you know, obviously created some concern that the FBI was intervening in a political campaign in contravention of long-standing Justice Department regulation. So it made a lot of people, including us, concerned about what the heck was going on at the FBI. So, you know, we began getting questions from the press about, you know, whether they were also investigating Trump and, you know, we encouraged them to ask the FBI that question. You know, I think — I’m not sure we've covered this fully, but, you know, we just encouraged them to ask the FBI that question. On October 31st the New York Times posted a story saying that the FBI is investigating Trump and found no connections to Russia and, you know, it was a real Halloween special. Sometime thereafter the FBI — I understand Chris severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn't really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them.”

WHAT IT MEANS: A couple of takeaways:

One, the release doesn’t likely change the state of play, other than making the Republicans’ attempt to portray Fusion GPS as composed of Democratic hacks look foolish. (There’s a reason Grassley and company wanted to keep this secret.) The Republicans will still try to muddy the waters, arguing that Democrats campaign funded questionable research to weaken Trump and thus the special counsel investigation is tainted. As NPR notes: “Nothing about Simpson's testimony will deflect the campaign of derision directed by Republicans against a Justice Department and FBI they call "biased" on behalf of Hillary Clinton and against Trump.”

Two, accept the dossier for what it is: raw, unfiltered intelligence. Some of it is wrong. Some of it is rooted in truth. But what Steele — an experienced spy who knows Russian tactics as well as anyone — saw in that raw intelligence convinced him that something pernicious was afoot, and he alerted the FBI. (And cooperated with the FBI until FBI agents fed the NYT false info a week before the election stating that Trump wasn’t under suspicion.) Which is to say, the allegations made therein should absolutely be taken seriously.

Three: The White House claims that all of this is fake news are crumbling. Was there collusion between people in his orbit and Russian intelligence? It sure looks that way, by any definition — see Don Jr.’s meeting in Trump Tower — even if Trump didn’t know about it or want to know about it. And if you accept that there is a there there, then that makes Republican efforts to shift blame and protect the president all the more troubling.

Related: One of Steele’s sources has apparently been killed. [ThinkProgress]

Related: Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is suing Fusion GPS and Buzzfeed over the publication of the Steele dossier.

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3. THE DACA TALK-A-THON.

THE GIST: President Trump did an unusual an interesting (and, for my money, good) thing yesterday. He allowed reporters in to record negotiations over the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Trump administration ended, and border security.

WaPo: “And for the 55 minutes that the scene unfolded on television, the president demonstrated stability, although not necessarily capability. In trying to erase one set of queries (is he up for the job and a ‘very stable genius,’ as he claimed on Twitter?), he inadvertently opened another: What, exactly, is going to be in that immigration bill? On that, Trump left a cliffhanger.”

“While Trump offered captivating television drama, he also muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions, including simply protecting the dreamers or a plan contingent upon funding for his long-promised wall at the nation’s southern border. ‘I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with,’ Trump said. ‘I am very much reliant on the people in this room.’”

“So pliant was Trump that when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the most liberal members of the chamber, asked if he would support ‘a clean DACA bill’ that protects the dreamers with no other conditions, the president sounded amenable. ‘Yeah, I would like to do it,’ Trump said. Trump’s apparent concession so alarmed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that he interjected himself …. ‘Mr. President, you need to be clear, though,’ McCarthy said, leaning over from his perch to Trump’s left. ‘I think what Senator Feinstein is asking here — when we talk about just DACA, we don’t want to be back here two years later. You have to have security.’”

As CNN put it, “Trump contradicts self repeatedly in immigration meeting”: “The President at times suggested he would be looking to sign everything from a stand-alone fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — set to expire in March — to comprehensive immigration reform, often appearing to being guided by lawmakers in the room to modify his positions. … At the end of the session, Trump suggested that ultimately, he would sign whatever he was presented with.”

WHAT IT MEANS: The key question, as yet unclear, is whether Trump will demand his long-promised border wall in exchange for DACA, which Democrats would never go along with, though they might be open to other border security efforts. Indeed, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the press yesterday that Trump wants “border security” funding but would not commit to the wall. According to the president, “his version of a ‘clean’ deal would include DACA, border security, ending ‘chain migration’ or family-based migration, and ending the diversity visa lottery. But those issues are commonly thought to only be achievable in a comprehensive immigration deal.” Two observations:

One: The president has a very tentative grasp of the issues at play.

Two: Later Tuesday evening, a federal court threw a wrench into the negotiations, temporarily reinstating DACA pending a lawsuit. [NBC] If nothing else, that strips these negotiations of at least some of their urgency and, because DACA isn’t going to end immediately, perhaps gives the Democrats some leverage. On the other hand, the judge’s decision also might also Republicans room to maneuver. As a political matter, they’re terrified of the repercussions of the popular DACA ending on their watch. This gives them a stay. The border wall is a fantasy. But those other things Trump says he wants — border funding, an end to chain migration — could be in play.

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3. TWELVE LOCAL HEADLINES.

This week’s cover story: The developers who are gentrifying Durham’s East End aren’t about to apologize. [INDY]

In 2016, the federal government fined N.C. nursing homes $3.4 million for failing to protect vulnerable residents. The Trump administration is putting a stop to that, at least temporarily. [INDY]

North Carolina has lost out on a sought-after Toyota-Mazda auto manufacturing plant. It will instead go to Alabama. [N&O]

The Dalai Lama isn’t coming to North Carolina either. His Holiness’s U.S. travel was canceled this year. [INDY]

The legislature is considering spending more money to address pollution. [N&O]

Eleven people have died in fires in North Carolina in 2018. [N&O]

Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench will have to go back to a Senate Judiciary Committee that now includes Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. [INDY]

Bernie Sanders is coming to Duke for a conversation with the Reverend William Barber. [INDY]

DPAC ranked among the most successful venues of its type and size in 2017. [DHS]

Durham’s city council and county commission are appointing a committee to figure out what to do with the now-dismantled Confederate monument. [INDY]

Triangle immigration advocates are condemning the Trump administration’s plan to end temporary protected status for Salvadorans; there are about six thousand TPS-holding Salvadorans in North Carolina. [INDY]

The powerful Durham People’s Alliance has endorsed Javiera Caballero for the vacant city council seat. [INDY]

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4. TWELVE POLITICAL HEADLINES.

After Trump ally Rick Scott, the Florida governor and likely Senate candidate, protested, the administration backed off a plan to force offshore drilling on the Sunshine State. Offshore drilling in California, Virginia, Maryland, Oregon, and New York is still scheduled to proceed over those states’ (mostly Democratic) governors’ objections. Hmmm. [Reuters]

Trump may not release his infrastructure plan this month. [Politico]

Republicans are pressuring the IRS to withhold less money from people’s paychecks so they believe that they’re benefiting from the tax cut. This would, of course, reduce or eliminate the refunds many people get at the end of the year. [Politico]

U.S. Representative Brendan Boyle has introduced the sublimely named Stable Genius Act, which would require presidential candidates to undergo a medical exam. [ThinkProgress]

The Supreme Court is taking up the case of a state (Ohio) paring down its voting rolls by eliminating inactive voters. [AP]

The White House says it will erase data gathered by Trump’s voter fraud panel. [The Hill]

Steve Bannon is out at Breitbart after falling out with Trump. [AP]

Joe Arpaio, the racist, birther sheriff who was pardoned by Trump last year, is running for Senate from Arizona. [AP]

Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White, told her followers to send her their January salary or face divine consequences. Nice work if you can get it. [Newsweek]

A federal judge has removed the Republican National Committee from a thirty-five-year-old consent decree intended to prohibit voter suppression techniques under the guise of “ballot security.” [ThinkProgress]

Democratic women plan to wear all black to the State of Union in solidarity with the #MeToo movement. [NBC]

Trump is going to an annual Switzerland gathering of global financial, political, and media elites who mostly detest him. [Politico]

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5. SIX ODDS & ENDS.

Mudslides have claimed at least thirteen lives in Southern California. [NYT]

Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million for reshoots on the movie All the Money in the World, which, at the last minute, recast a role played by Kevin Spacey. But his co-star, Michelle Williams, paid less than $1,000. [USA Today]

Jeff Bezos is the richest person in history. [CNN]

Half of the women in STEM fields have experienced gender discrimination at work, according to a new study. [NBC]

A DNA database is helping link international traffickers of rhinoceros horns to the scene of the poaching. [CNN]

Partly cloudy today, with a high of 52. [WRAL]

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#current events #NCGA #NC #gerrymandering #Fusion GPS #Steele Dossier #DACA #Trump Administration

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elesianne · 7 years ago

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A Silmarillion fanfic, chapter fourteen

Chapter summary: Carnistir is stressed, and the meeting for tea goes awry.

Story summary: Sometimes your heart chooses for you before you even know there is a choice to make, and then all that can be done is find out whether love can build bridges across differences and fears. This is my story of how Caranthir comes to be married, with Caranthir’s family members alternately helping and hindering his attempts at courting.

Rating: Teen and up audiences; Chapter length: ~5,600 words

Tag-type thingies for the whole story: years of the trees, romance, falling in love, family, courtship, anger management issues, the Noldor, the Vanyar, some fluff and some angst, happy ending

Chapter notes: Rowan/@acommonanomaly did three wonderful portraits of Tuilindien a while ago, please check them out if you haven’t yet! I gave descriptions of Tuilë's looks to Rowan but they drew her so much better than I was able to even imagine.

I think it's best to remind you guys of some tags that have been there since the beginning but are most relevant for this chapter and the next two: the 'anger management issues' and 'angst' tags. But to reassure anyone who might be worried, I have now added a 'happy ending' tag, because that was always going to happen and still is.

See end note for a mild warning.

(Also posted on AO3 etc.)

Chapter XIV // Lapses of judgement

There is an odd sense of weightlessness that surrounds Carnistir as he makes his way home along the familiar streets. A small part of his mind is by necessity concentrated on keeping Varnë from stomping or champing on anyone, but the rest is still in the glade filled with dappled golden light and the rush of water and the sensation of Tuilindien in his arms, her lips on his, her scent in his nose, their emotions and sensations mixing and being amplified between them.

He had felt so at peace, even while his blood ran hot and he wanted to hold on to her ever tighter.

Some of that peace remains while he tends to Varnë at the stables at home, giving her a thorough brushing for behaving well or at least not embarrassing him thoroughly, going as far as to feed her a few apples as a reward. His bad-tempered horse has mellowed somewhat over the years but Carnistir believes that constant reinforcement of good behaviour should be continued.

(He doesn't like to think of all the times his parents must have used the same method on him.)

When he's going to his room to wash and change, the last of the pleasant golden haze in his mind is dispersed when he sees Curufinwë step out of the room next to his. Carnistir tenses and remembers all the times, when they were both easily irritable adolescents, he demanded his parents that he be given be a bedchamber farther away from Curufinwë's. Fëanáro told him that he should consider his brothers allies rather than squabble with them, which Carnistir later realised was deeply hypocritical of him and anyway, Curvo has always made that difficult.

And still likes to do so, apparently, for he leans against the wall and smirks far too widely at Carnistir. 'I see your afternoon with your Vanya went well', he observes. 'I heard you humming from around the corner.'

'I see you have nothing to do but lurk around the house uselessly', Carnistir snaps back. 'And call Tuilë by her name, if you must speak of her. Even father calls her Ingolmiel now.'

'And grimaces every time he does.' As so often, Carnistir's attempts at sharp words have failed to wipe the smug grin off Curufinwë's face. Curufinwë continues, 'I must say, you are a most peculiar kind of lover, Moryo: you would have no talk of your sweetheart – of Ingolmiel', he corrects hastily when Carnistir looks at him threateningly and steps closer. He keeps going, though. 'I was a child when Makalaurë fell for Tinweriel, but even I grew bored of him talking about her all the time. Then again, you've never been the best with words.'

Carnistir knows he is bright red, knows his hands are clenched into fists at his sides; he doesn't know why exactly Curufinwë is doing this but he must be looking for a reaction, an explosive one.

With effort, he steps back and unclenches his fists. He opens the door to his own room and says to Curvo, 'I told you weeks ago: one day you will understand. Until then, shut your mouth about my personal affairs. You don't sound nearly as smart as you think.' He hates the wavering growl in his voice, but it is better than shouting where his mother and youngest brothers would probably hear it.

Curufinwë's smirk has grown less bright. With cheer that is so clearly false that even Carnistir can see it, he says, 'Don't be unsociable, Moryo.'

Carnistir shuts the door in his face.

Dinner is a half-miserable affair that Carnistir would rather have avoided. His mother asks about his day just as she asked about everyone else's, without pointing out the significance of his and Tuilindien's first private excursion outside of Tirion.

He tells his family very briefly, his temper already flaring in anticipation of teasing from Tyelko or Curvo, that the ride had been pleasant and Tuilindien had found the waterfall glade beautiful.

'That's nice to hear', Maitimo smiles. 'The twins have never been there, we should take them someday soon. They should be good enough riders in no time, based on their enthusiasm at least.'

The twins hasten to assure everyone that yes, of course they will. Relieved at the change of topic, Carnistir does his best to return Maitimo's smile. He feels deeply the value of his oldest brother's support, all the more when Maitimo continues to carry to conversation. Somehow he manages to keep to topics far away from courting, the visiting Vanyar and even Fëanáro's work in the forge. The last topic Carnistir would like avoid because he hasn't yet finished the designs for the improvements of said forge even though he has promised to deliver them to his father very soon.

Carnistir eats quickly and speaks little. He is good at both but unfortunately doesn't manage to escape all attention. When he rises from the table as soon as he deems it passably polite (perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't; he's never quite sure) his father speaks his name.

'Morifinwë. Will you have those plans for me tomorrow?' Fëanáro asks. 'Or have you been too busy with other things?'

Carnistir grips the ornately carved back of the chair he just rose from so hard that it hurts. 'I'll have them ready', he says curtly. Already as he leaves the room he is regretting the impulsive promise – there are many hours of planning work left, not to mention redrawing every page to make sure they look neat and well-presented enough for Fëanáro's exacting standards. He didn't stop to consider any of that though; the only thought in his mind was that his father mustn't have any reason to blame Tuilindien for him neglecting his work.

He curses his impulsiveness all the way to his room, and once he gets there he shuts the door with a bang.

Then he sits down at his desk, digs out the messy designs and wonders how he is supposed to finish them in one night. He feels like the string of a bow pulled too tight, overstretched, close to snapping. The serenity and sweetness of the waterfall glade are all gone now, and they feel hard to recapture.

That is for the best, he decides, for then the thoughts of the lovely golden hours cannot distract him. He sets to work, frowning.

He isn't certain how long has passed when there is a knock on his door, but he does know he hasn't made nearly as much progress as he wants to. He also doesn't know who is it that is knocking, but he is certain that he doesn't want company.

'Go away', he growls under his breath, keeping quiet in deference to the twins' bedtime that has surely already passed.

'I know you're awake.' Curufinwë's voice is equally quiet. 'I can see the light under your door.'

'Go away anyway.'

'Look, Carnistir, don't be an idiot. Let me in.'

Carnistir tosses his quill to the desk and goes to the door but doesn't open it. 'What do you want, Curufinwë?' Again he can feel his temper rising, and trying to control it places an ever-tightening metal band around his head, an almost-tangible thing.

'You said to father that you're going to present the forge plans to him tomorrow, but I know you don't have them ready.'

Carnistir closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the door. He is tired, and he holds on to that instead of the anger he's also feeling. 'I will have them ready tomorrow.'

'You must be planning to work all night, then –'

'Why did you come to my door, Curvo?' Carnistir snaps. 'To gloat at my mismanagement of my schedule? Or to distract me so that I surely won't have my work done by morning?'

'To help.'

Carnistir is so astonished that he finds himself opening the door. 'Really?' he asks Curufinwë. 'After mocking me and my courting for weeks, you suddenly want to help?'

'If you actually listened to what I say and didn't bristle as soon as I open my mouth, you'd know that I have mocked you much less than you think', Curufinwë snaps back. 'Now, are you going to let me in and let me do the tidying up for you?'

'Shh, it's late.' Carnistir ushers his brother into the room and closes the door behind him quietly. 'You mean you'll copy the final versions?'

'Yes.' Curufinwë crosses his arms on his chest, as if to offset his generosity by the brusque gesture. 'It's not like I can do the actual drawing, since you're the one father asked to do the designing and you're better at buildings anyway.' He scowls like he always does when admitting that someone is better at something than he is. 'But unless you've gotten sloppy recently, I know you'll want to redo the drawings and copy the notations in a neater hand. You and I always do that when we have something to present to father.'

'Yes, we do', Carnistir says, regarding Curufinwë less suspiciously as he is reminded that he and Curvo are close in this one way: they are the only ones of Fëanáro's sons, this far at least, who have chosen to make a career of pursuing the same crafts as their father. Maitimo, Makalaurë and Tyelkormo only enter the forge and workshop more rarely, and only out of a sense of filial duty.

'Fine', Carnistir says after a moment. 'I mean, thank you', he adds stiffly.

Curufinwë doesn't acknowledge the expression of gratitude. Instead he moves another chair to the desk and picks up topmost page of a stack of papers. 'This looks like the first page', he observes. 'Is it finished?'

Carnistir shakes his head to recover from the lingering astonishment at Curufinwë's behaviour. 'Yes, it is.'

'Your penmanship is atrocious', says Curufinwë, bending his head to start copying the page.

Thanks to Curufinwë's assistance, Carnistir manages to finish the forge designs and even get a little sleep, but he is hardly rested and relaxed in the morning when he drops the stack of designs at his father's place at the breakfast table.

When Fëanáro sees it he arches one elegant brow. 'I must admit, I didn't expect you to have them today, and it wasn't completely necessary either.' His countenance softens ever so slightly as he asks, 'Did you rest at all?'

'I rested enough', Carnistir says, his eyes down on his plate in the hope of hiding the pallor of his face. He knows he looks unwell, and it wouldn't matter, except – 'I am happy to go over the plans with you today, father, but I must leave for a few hours in the afternoon.'

'Ah.' Fëanáro sets the papers he's been perusing back on the table. 'I see. Another meeting with lady Ingolmiel. You hardly go a day without seeing her.'

Carnistir stabs at his food. 'We don't want to waste any time we could have together before she has to leave.' This is not a topic he likes to dwell on, for even if Tuilindien manages to stay a little longer than she was originally going to, there is still a separation ahead.

'Of course not, my dear', Nerdanel says, aiming a warning look at her husband. 'I'm sure you will have time enough to discuss your work with your father even if you meet Ingolmiel in the afternoon. After all, we have all been talking about these forge improvements for a long time and it will also take time to build them, so it is surely no great matter if you take two days instead of one to make sure that the designs are what both of you want them to be.'

Fëanáro nods, but his mouth is a thin line of almost-disapproval, and Carnistir's temper is again a thread stretched too thin, or a snake coiled up, ready and threatening to strike – all those things that are appropriate metaphors for a dangerous thing one needs to keep a watchful eye on.

His temper is stretched even tighter by the time he leaves his father's study in the early afternoon and hurries back to his room to change for his meeting with Tuilindien. He made good progress on the plans with his father, and Fëanáro thankfully refrained from making any snide comments about Tuilindien, but Carnistir still hasn't forgiven him for his earlier behaviour. Things between them are troubled and tense.

Along the way to his room he notices that his youngest brothers are doing something slightly suspicious in the garden, but he doesn't have time to investigate and decides to just pretend that he didn't see them digging up a flowerbed.

As he rummages through his wardrobe to find something suitable for a walk in a park and subsequent refreshments at a teahouse, he thinks once again of how odd it is to feel excited for something that is in itself so respectable and boring. In addition to excitement, though, he is also frustrated. He would so much prefer to go riding with Tuilindien again, as far away from the city as possible, but they don't have time for that this time.

He is roused from his thoughts by the realisation that he has thrown nearly all of his clothes on the bed and yet finds himself none the wiser as to what he'll wear. He doesn't have very many clothes suitable for these important but not formal meetings with Tuilindien. Unlike Curvo or Makalaurë, he has never paid much attention to having many nice clothes.

He settles for a dark maroon tunic with silver embroidery at the collar and sleeves that is presentable but slightly too tight at the shoulders for a few years now, and charcoal grey breeches. When he steps out of his room, in a hurry by now, he finds the Ambarussar in the corridor. They are leaning against the wall opposite his door but when they see him, they scramble to their feet.

'Where are you going, Moryo?' asks Telvo.

'I told you, he's going to see the girl again', says Pityo and shoves at his twin.

Telvo shoves back. 'You don't know that for sure. Are you going to see her, Carnistir?'

'It's none of your business if I am', says Carnistir, locking his door to make sure that curious little boys don't find their way there.

'See? I told you.' Pityo sticks his tongue out at Telvo.

Carnistir ignores the squabbling boys and walks away, but he can hear the patter of their feet on the marble floor as they follow him.

'Can we come too, Carnistir? We have had the most boring day.'

He just shakes his head without turning. They should know well enough what it means, and that it's not appropriate for them to come along with him.

The twins start listing their grievances. 'Father has been working with you, mother is working on her own, and Tyelko rode off in the morning to stay with Oromë again', Telvo says.

'And we don't know what Curvo is doing but we haven't seen him all day. Russandol is at the palace again, and we don't even have lessons', Pityo adds with a sigh.

The Ambarussar must be bored indeed if they are missing their lessons with their prim tutor. Carnistir pities them a little but not very much. After all, they at least have each other for entertainment and annoyance at all times, which is more than most children do.

'Your girl is much nicer than you are, I'm sure she wouldn't mind us coming.' Telvo, who fancies himself the more silver-tongued of the two, is trying his childish best to persuade his big brother. It would make his Carnistir smile on most days.

They are by the front door by this time, and Carnistir turns to face the boys. 'No, you can't come.'

'But –', tries Pityo, the more tenacious one.

'No, and it's final. Go pester the servants if you need more company than each other. Or don't pester the cook and he might give you biscuits.'

With this sage advice Caranthir steps out the door.

He is deep in thought all the way to the courtyard beneath the Mindon, trying to find some serenity, however little, at the thought of meeting Tuilindien, and in preparation for it. Thus this time it is she who notices him first and comes to him with swift steps rather than the other way round.

'Carnistir.' She greets him with a smile full of light and delight and offers him her hand to kiss. He does, of course, gladly, and then tucks her hand under his arm as they begin walking.

'There is a small park we haven't visited yet', he says. It is even more awkward than he'd thought it would be to have gone back to this sedate strolling along city streets, walking with her on his arm as if she needs the support, and knowing that this is the most physical contact they can hope to have with each other today.

They are far from the only members of nobility taking a walk in the heart of the city. They even pass lady Maquetimië, that irksome gossipmonger who spread the knowledge of their first meeting to everyone who would listen.

The lady greets them, and Tuilindien returns the greeting. Carnistir tightens his hold on her to ground himself in the reality of her being there, trying to keep away from the feelings of irritation and anger that this particular courtier has aroused in him since he was a child, and all the more recently.

Maquetimië tries to start a conversation, but either Tuilindien doesn't have very warm feelings towards her either or she can sense his irritation, for she politely tells Maquetimië that very regretfully, they are in a hurry and cannot stop to chat – but they will surely see again at some court function soon, she adds, because that is how she is.

'Thank you', Carnistir murmurs to her once they've escaped Maquetimië's clutches, dearly hoping that they won't run into her again any time soon.

'I'm not prepared to waste a moment of being with you to idle chatter with anyone else', Tuilindien says with the smallest of blushes, and Carnistir wants to kiss that blush and make it deepen.

Not being able to tenses up the restless thing inside him again.

'I liked the trees in that park', Tuilindien says as they take their seats at a table outside the teahouse, also situated underneath some trees. 'They were older than this city, weren't they? Wild things rather than planted here by your industrious people.'

'I suppose so. I don't know for certain, though. You would have to ask my grandfather.'

'Perhaps I will, if I get the chance.' It is hardly an outrageous thing to say, but she still feels shy, curling her fingers around her teacup and holding it close.

'He will like you, you know', Carnistir says, sounding like's only just realising it, and relieved about it. It feels like the tension that has seemed to surround him today dissipates slightly. 'Grandfather Finwë doesn't have… prejudices. He has many friends among the Vanyar.'

She doesn't quite know what to say in reply to that, so she just smiles. There is a lull in their conversation, less comfortable and sweet than yesterday's touch-filled quiet moments, while they sip tea and nibble at cake. Or she nibbles, at least. Carnistir has already polished off his.

She steals glances at him, thinking that he looks very nice in his rather tight brownish-red shirt that compliments his dark looks.

In the quiet between them, in spite of the chatter of other teahouse customers, Tuilindien becomes aware of a quiet rustling sound that appears to come from some distance away. Looking around briefly, she sees nothing unusual. Carnistir appears distracted by the noise, but Tuilindien decides she has had enough of the somewhat awkward silence. She asks if he has set a time for a riding lesson with the twins already, since he said the day before that he would do soon.

'I'm thinking of doing it some day next week', he replies, shifting his concentration from the surrounding noises to her. His hand creeps closer to hers on the table. 'I haven't spoken to them about it yet, though. I should. They seem so restless still, though things with my father have mostly calmed down. I think they need more to occupy their time, really. When I was leaving home to come see you, they declared themselves bored and asked to come along even though –'

They hear the rustling again, this time louder, perhaps closer. Carnistir appears bothered by it, which Tuilindien finds odd – while his emotions are volatile, she has never seen him startled by a small thing such as this.

She remarks that there are probably some birds looking for crumbs or for berries in the bushes, and at that Carnistir's face turns red and he stands up suddenly.

'Wait here, Tuilë.' And then he is gone, his long strides carrying him away from her before she can do more than open her mouth in astonishment.

She watches as he walks past several tables to the bushes in the direction where the rustling sound came from and reaches into the foliage. There is a sudden cry of pain, and another, and then two red-headed little boys emerge and are grabbed none too gently by their ears by their big brother.

Tuilindien stands up and gathers her skirts and hurries to where Carnistir is now fuming at his brothers. If he is trying to do it quietly, he is failing utterly.

'Carnistir.' She touches his arm and he lets go of his brothers and turns to her. He is clearly attempting to rein in his fury, but she can still feel him shaking with it. So much anger, directed at children.

She speaks carefully. 'I see your little brothers also have a craving for delicacies on this day. Good afternoon, Pityafinwë and Telufinwë.' She greets them, nodding as calmly as she can, as if it is completely normal to discover little boys lurking in the bushes while their brother has tea with a woman he's courting.

The twins bow clumsily back to her, attempting to behave now that they have been reprimanded, though their faces and ears are red and they have tears in their eyes. In spite of their misbehaviour Tuilindien's heart goes out to them: they are so young and look so contrite and scared at being found out and at their brother's anger.

'Carnistir, I think your little brothers should join us.' She looks at him meaningfully. 'Since they are here already.'

He looks at her like she is crazy. 'Come on, Tuilë, they don't deserve it', he grinds out, and goes to grab her by the arm as if to take her aside to speak with her privately. But he seizes her too roughly and she hears herself make a little surprised noise of pain when his strong fingers dig into her arm and twist as he tries to make her turn aside.

At her pained sound Carnistir lets go of her at once. 'I'm sorry', he says quickly, horror bleeding into his voice and into their connection that neither is managing to control. 'Did I hurt you?'

'It is all right', she says reflexively and makes a point of not touching her arm where his fingers gripped her, though it smarts. She tries not to tremble.

'I'm so sorry', he says again, looking dazed.

A part of her wants to comfort him but she cannot quite bring herself to. 'Carnistir, I think we should go back to our table. With your brothers.'

'They were spying on us. They followed me even though I had forbidden them to come. Our parents must be afraid of where they've disappeared to, if they have found out that they're gone.'

In spite of his words his fury is mere embers now, and she knows she can talk him into doing as she wishes.

Working hard to keep her voice steady, she says, 'It was wrong of them, I agree, and you can chastise them more for it later when you go home. But now I think we should go back to our table. No need for a scene here, Carnistir.'

She speaks softly but Carnistir seems to realise that he is being reprimanded as much as the twins. 'I don't care about people staring. Let them stare, I'm already notorious', he says, but the words ring hollow.

His anger that had burnt red-hot seems to have disappeared in a cloud of shame and regret, less alarming than the rage but just as stifling in Tuilindien's mind. She tries to close their connection and concentrate on the children while appearing normal to any curious onlookers. She doesn't like wearing masks but she can do it when required.

'Carnistir', she says again.

He shakes his head, frowning – Tuilindien feels him distancing himself from her, like she tried to do as well – and then says quietly, dejectedly, 'Yes, let's go. Come on, Ambarussar.'

Tuilindien takes each little twin by the hand as they walk back to the table where their abandoned cakes have attracted the attention of a few bees. She gently encourages them to move elsewhere, then sits down and encourages the twins to do the same.

She looks up at Carnistir who is still standing uncomfortably by the table. The twins have seated themselves on either side of her.

Tuilindien asks, 'Carnistir, would you go get some cakes for your brothers? And another pot of tea as well.'

He flinches a little at her formal tone as if it is an insult, but doesn't protest. 'I'll also pay someone to take word to mother that they are safe', he says and goes into the teahouse.

Tuilindien lets out a little sight as she stirs her now-cold tea, tries to gather herself and thinks of how to use this short time she has gained alone with Carnistir's little brothers. In addition to it being the right thing to do, it is easier to think of them than of the budding panic she feels at how things with Carnistir have suddenly taken such a terrible turn.

'Do you two often follow your brothers?' she chooses to ask first. They have done it twice now to her and Carnistir.

Two red heads are shaken. 'They don't like it, and mother and father don't like either', says the twin on her left that she suspects might be the elder, Pityafinwë.

'Then why did you follow Carnistir today even though he told you not to?'

Both of the twins stare down so she cannot see their faces from where she is sitting between them.

'Look at me', she says gently but firmly, the same way she often speaks to the children she gives writing lessons to. At once two small faces look up at her, pale under the freckles but thankfully no longer tearful.

'Do you not like him seeing me?' She glances at either little boy in turn.

The twins look at each other and don't speak a word, but Tuilindien gets the definite impression that there is a conversation taking place.

'He doesn't spend as much time with us since he started seeing you', says the twin on the left after a moment.

'He used to take us with him to many places, but he doesn't do that so much anymore. He never lets us come along when he sees you. And he is busy all the time, and grumpy most of the time.'

'And he keeps his door locked now', adds the other. 'Tyelko and Curvo almost never let us into their rooms. Russandol does but he's away at the palace or somewhere a lot. We liked spending time in Moryo's room, and he helped us with our homework often.'

'He also often shouted at us and sometimes threw us out', adds the first twin as if in the name of honesty, 'but that's all right. He shouts at everybody, it's not dangerous.'

This is said in the name of family loyalty and innocent love both, Tuilindien thinks, or hopes at least.

'We just wondered what he does with you that is so important and so secret that he won't tell us', confesses the twin on the left after a moment. He seems to be the spokesman of the two. 'So we came to see, and also because we were so bored. And you were just talking and drinking tea.'

'Not even anything exciting', says the other twin and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his tunic. Automatically, Tuilindien hands him her napkin, and then Carnistir's napkin to the other boy.

As they blow their noses Tuilindien thinks of Carnistir's brothers and remembers that the only married one is Canafinwë, the second oldest of the seven; the twins must have been very young when he was courting his wife. She wonders if they realise why Carnistir keeps seeing her.

Carefully, she says, 'Sometimes when a young man and woman like each other, they want to spend time together even if they do not do anything exciting. And they like to be alone together.'

The twins are staring at their feet again so she doesn't know how much they understand of what she says. After a moment, the one on the left says, 'We are sorry we ruined your tea meeting.'

'I forgive you', replies Tuilindien. 'I am sure you have learned that it was the wrong thing to do to follow your brother without permission. But you will have to apologise to him too, even if it is scary because he gets so angry.'

'We will', say the twins in unison.

Tuilindien is afraid to ask, but she has to know, for she has been wondering ever since she saw Carnistir drag his brothers out of the bush and grab them so roughly. And then he touched her so roughly too, so differently from all other times... 'Does he – does Carnistir ever hit you when he is angry? Or hurt you in some other way?'

Two pairs of horrified blue-grey eyes stare up at her. 'He would never hit us! He sometimes shouts and curses and breaks things –'

'– by throwing them. And he slams doors, he once broke the door of the garden pavilion', adds the other twin helpfully.

'But he doesn't hit us or hurt us. Well, except when he drags us somewhere, like he dragged us out of that bush. But he didn't do it to hurt us, just to get us out of there.'

Tuilindien is relieved beyond words. She is still very much unnerved by his temper and thinks that he should not treat his little brothers as he does, but her graver concern at least seems unnecessary. She takes a few deep breaths to compose herself.

'Lady Tuilindien.' Small hands reach out to touch hers and two little faces look at her beseechingly. 'Please don't be angry with Moryo because of us. We didn't mean to cause him trouble, or you.'

'We do like you, lady Tuilindien', the other twin says. 'We think that it makes Moryo happy to spend time with you. Even if he is grumpy with us.'

Tuilindien thinks that these two have a very good heart, though if they are naughty sometimes. And it seems that young as they are, they might have some of their mother's famous insight and wisdom.

She squeezes their hands and says, 'There is no need to call me "lady", just call me Tuilindien or Tuilë.' She smiles at them gently, happy that the three of them got this far before Carnistir returns.

'You can call us Ambarussar.' The twins are all light and smiles now. 'Or you can call me Telvo and him', the boy on the left points at his twin, 'Pityo. Our father doesn't like it when we are called by the same name.'

Just as Carnistir returns balancing a treat-filled tray on each arm, Tuilindien tells the twins that she will call them by different names when it is necessary to refer to only one of them, but otherwise she is happy to use the name they have chosen to share. She believes in the right to choose one's own name.

Carnistir distributes cakes and pours tea while Tuilindien keeps chatting with the Ambarussar until the last traces of paleness and upset have faded from their faces.

He notices that she is now in turn pale, and the light conversation she makes with the twins doesn't hide her uneasiness though she tries her best to pretend that all is well.

It is very clear that she has forgiven the twins' intrusion and won their eternal devotion, and he can only hope that she will forgive him too although his transgression is greater.

Though the tense thing inside himself disappeared after it made him snap, he feels far from light; he is more ashamed than he has ever been in his life.

And he can feel, in the connection between them that is never completely shut off these days even when they do their best to close it off, that though she keeps up a conversation with the twins Tuilindien is unhappy and scared. That makes him utterly miserable as well, and afraid of what consequences his actions will have.

He doesn't know what he could say here that would make things better, so he drinks his tea and stays silent.

A/N: Warning: there is some mild violence in this chapter courtesy of those anger management issues of Carnistir's. It's not very intentional but it does happen.

Several people have noted in comments to various chapters that Carnistir has kept his temper impressively in check. Well, now the pressure got to be too much for him. Tuilindien has a strong reaction to it, because this pre-darkening Valinor is a very peaceful place with no violence to speak of, and thus even small acts of physical aggression have significance.

In the next chapter, the 'Angst' tag is justified.

Please let me know what you thought!

#it has been ages but here is a chapter! a long one #it's really late now so last edits may have resulted in some silliness #pls let me know if you notice any #silmarillion fanfiction #tolkien fanfiction #your spirit calling out to mine #caranthir #caranthir's wife #tuilindien #romance #my fics #elesianne's fics

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thegladelf · 7 years ago

Text

Killian Jones and The Girl Who Lived 6/8

Ahhhh....we’re in the home stretch! I hope everyone has enjoyed it so far. I love hearing from all of you... A great big thank you to @icecubelotr44 for being such an awesome beta. Also a shout out to @prongsie and @jemmingart for being such great artists and cheerleaders. I’ve loved getting to see what their brains come up with to complement my crazy, little story.

As usual, this chapter is up on FF.net and Ao3 if those are your preferred platforms.

Word Count: 5.2k

Rating: G

First Chapter | Previous Chapter

Chapter Six: Nicholas Flamel

“You’re sure?” Mary Margaret asked.

The Great Hall bustled with activity as students slid into their places at the tables. Every now and then, the vocal exuberance of a reunion would punctuate the air. Students had been arriving at Hogwarts all day, most of them glad to see friends and excited for the second half of term.

Mary Margaret leaned over the table, her hand practically in the middle of a bowl of pudding as she quizzed the three of them.

Emma sighed, exchanging a long-suffering glance with David. “Is it possible to transfigure yourself into someone else?”

“That’s not transfiguration,” Killian supplied around a mouthful of biscuit—the kind that had rarely crossed the threshold back home, with decadent icing and sprinkles.

David squinted at Mary Margaret. “Are you positive about that? Because Mary Margaret sort of sounds like McGonagall on pop quiz day.”

“I just want to know if you found anything,” Mary Margaret said. She sat back with a huff, not even muttering as Killian reached for another treat.

“We already told you what we found.” Emma glanced around, her eyes lingering on the teachers—who looked considerably less excited than the students—as they ate their meals at the head table. “Nothing. We must’ve checked dozens of shelves off our list, but we didn’t find a single word on Nicholas Flamel.” On the last two words, her voice dropped even lower, so that even from right next to her, Killian read the words on her lips more than he heard them.

Mary Margaret pouted. “Well, that’s disappointing.” She stabbed her fork into her dinner, pushing her potatoes around like the answer was hiding somewhere among the butter and gravy. And then she smiled. “But at least I’ll be able to be here now if you find it. Emma, you said you’ve been checking off the shelves? I need those back if I’m going to redraw them and come up with another plan. We’ll definitely find it now that I’m here to keep you three on task.”

David rolled his eyes.

Killian gave him a look that said it was better to just accept it and reached for his third biscuit. He had a feeling he’d need the sugar buzz to keep up with Mary Margaret.

The first few weeks of term went much like that. They searched and searched, but found nothing new. At the same time, their teachers assigned more and more homework. Killian didn’t know how Mary Margaret managed to do that and pour over the diagrams of the library every night. The mystery of Nicholas Flamel and whatever was in that room gnawed at him, until it was all he could do to focus on his homework.

And then to add all that, Emma sloshed in from Quidditch practice one with disturbing news.

"You look like a drowned rat." David, who was sprawled on his back on the nearby sofa, lifted his eye to give Emma a chagrined once over as she ducked into the common room. His assessment wasn’t wrong. Her robes were soaked through and her hair had mostly come out of its braid, hanging around her face in loose, stringy waves. He patted his pocket where his rat probably slept. Sleeping was all the rat seemed to do. "No offense, Scabbers."

"A drowned rat that's just had its tail cut off," Killian added. He budged over at the table, sliding his school books well out of the reach of Emma's dripping uniform. She actually squelched as she sat next to him. "What's wrong, Swan?"

"Snape is refereeing the next match."

Mary Margaret's head snapped up from her homework. "He's what?"

"Shhh." Emma pressed a finger to her lips, which were tinged blue, and gave a quick rundown of what went down in practice.

"Well, you can't play,” Mary Margaret said, turning back to her books like that solved the matter.

"They won't let her sit out for no reason," David said.

"She could fake being sick," Killian suggested.

"Or she could fake a broken leg," Mary Margaret said.

David sat up. "She could really break her leg."

“That’s a terrible idea,” Mary Margaret hissed at the same time that Killian smacked the back of David’s head and snapped, “No!”

Emma tilted her head, as though that was the best idea she’d heard so far.

Before Killian could tell her how ridiculous that idea was—especially since Madam Pomfrey could just regrow the bone with Skele-Grow, one of David and Killian’s roommates quite literally hopped in, drawing the stares of the entire Gryffindor common room.

"Taking his last name a bit seriously, isn't he?" David asked.

Emma whacked David on the side opposite from where Killian had bopped him. "Don't be so dense."

The boy, who bore the unfortunate name of Archibald Hopper—though everyone except the professors called him Archie—finally lost his balance and toppled over onto the carpet. It was then Killian realized what Emma meant.

Archie was the unlucky victim of a Leg Locker Curse.

Mary Margaret scoffed as the rest of the room burst into laughter, silenced David's chuckle with a venomous look, and hurried forward as she slid her wand from her robes in one smooth motion.

David and Killian followed, extending their hands to him once Mary Margaret reversed the curse and helping him onto shaky legs.

"What happened?" Emma asked. Their books had been stacked on an empty chair, but she cleared them away quickly as Archie wobbled his way over.

"Regina was looking for someone to practice on." He sank into the chair gratefully, taking his glasses from Mary Margaret and putting them back on.

Emma's hands curled into fists. "You should tell Professor McGonagall. Regina shouldn't get away with something like this."

Archie twisted his fingers in his lap, pale eyes flicking to each of them. "She'll think I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor. No, don't deny it, I know you all think it too." He clutched at his bright orange hair. "I think you might be right."

"Nonsense," Emma said, hands on her hips like she meant to fight him until he agreed with her.

Killian thought that sounded like a very Emma thing to do.

"The hat put you in Gryffindor and as far as I can tell it hasn't made a mistake yet." Emma patted her pocket, pulling out a chocolate frog—her last chocolate frog from Christmas—and handing it to Archie. "Here. Candy always makes me feel better."

Archie stared at the box and swiped under his eyes with his thumb. "Thank you."

"You're worth twelve of Regina," she said.

"Thank you," Archie repeated in an even smaller voice as he carefully unwrapped the frog. He looked at the card for a moment as he munched on the chocolate and then held it out to Emma. "I've already got this one, do you need it?"

She plucked it out of Archie's hand with a smile. "Thanks, Archie."

He blushed so red his hair looked like tongues of flame and ran off to the boy's dorm.

"Odd chap," David said, "you know—ow, Emma, what?"

Emma was poking him repeatedly—and forcefully—on the arm, waving the card from Archie in her other hand.

"I found him!" she howled. "I knew I read it somewhere!"

"Found who?" David tried to grab the card from Emma, but Killian got there first.

His eyes widened as he read the sentence. "She’s found Nicholas Flamel—"

"Give that back." Emma snatched the card away, rolling her eyes at Killian. When she spoke again, it was much softer, "Listen...'Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with Nicholas Flamel'!"

Mary Margaret actually clapped her hands together and bounced in delight. She jumped to her feet and her homework fell to the floor, but she didn’t pay any attention as her scroll full of cramped writing unrolled itself on the plush carpet. She spun, ran halfway to the girls’ stairs, spun again, and ran back to them.

"Stay here," she said and she took the stairs two at a time.

"What just happened?" David asked.

Killian crossed his arms. "I'm betting she has some book up there."

"Sounds reasonable."

She did indeed return with a book. A massive, dusty looking thing with yellowed pages and a worn cover.

"Blimey," David said, "you could kill someone with that thing."

"I got this from the library ages ago. For a little bit of bedtime reading you know." Mary Margaret flipped the book open, rustling through the pages faster than Killian would ever have dared with such an old book.

"That's what you consider bedtime reading?" David asked.

Emma nodded. "You have no idea."

Killian admitted the book was a bit thick, even for his tastes, but Mary Margaret paid them no mind whatsoever.

"Aha!" she cried, tapping a page with her finger. "Here we are, Nicholas Flamel is the only known maker of the Sorcerer's Stone!"

Emma, Killian, and David all said, "The what?"

Which was a mistake on their part.

Mary Margaret's face brightened. “The ancient study of alchemy…”

“Alche-what-y?” David cut in. “I thought we were talking about rocks.”

“Hush!” Mary Margaret wagged her finger at all three of them, glaring at Killian and Emma as though they had interrupted as well. She cleared her throat and started reading again, her voice soft, but official. “The ancient study of alchemy— ” she paused here, eyes drilling into David, “—is concerned with making the Sorcerer’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal.

“And here’s the important part.” She tapped the page with her finger, though the writing was too cramped for anyone to read it without pushing her aside. “There have been many reports of the Sorcerer’s Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicholas Flamel, the noted alchemist.” She shot another look at David, the I told you so written plainly on her features. “Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle, six hundred and fifty-eight.”

There was a lengthy pause when she finished and closed the book with a flourish.

Emma raised an eyebrow. “Are we allowed to talk now?”

Mary Margaret nodded and Killian felt suddenly that he needed to raise his hand before speaking.

"Six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday?" David asked with incredulity.

"That's quite impressive," Killian added. He leaned around Mary Margaret, scanning the paragraph, sure that she hadn't left anything out, but wanting to see for himself.

"Well, that's one thing solved," Mary Margaret said. "Now we just have to figure out what to do with Emma and the Quidditch match."

Emma shrugged. "We've don't have a reserve Seeker. Gryffindor forfeits the match if I don't play."

# # #

David and Killian showed up at the Quidditch pitch early on the morning of the match, slipping into their seats while the stands were still mostly empty. Killian didn’t know what they could do from all the way over in the Gryffindor box, but he clung to the rail as though he could protect Emma by mere proximity. From the grim set of his jaw, David felt the same.

The stands started to fill and they scooted further apart, saving space for Mary Margaret. The wood groaned horribly and they looked behind to find Hagrid taking a seat in the back, his binoculars hanging around his neck. Killian felt in his pocket for the spyglass Liam gave him.

“Am I climbing over you two? Or are you going to budge over, David?” Mary Margaret’s imperious voice asked. She looked rather chipper for someone whose best friend would likely meet a grizzly end today. “Oh, don’t look so glum.”

She plopped down next to them.

David held his hand out to Killian. “Can I see your spyglass, Killian?”

“What? Why?” Killian clutched it tightly, eying David.

“I want to see if she’s done anything nasty to our least favorite professor.” He squinted at Mary Margaret. “I mean, I know she’s an incurable teacher’s pet, but for Emma she might forget that.”

Mary Margaret sighed. “I haven’t done anything.”

She waited, lips pursed together. Finally she bumped into David’s shoulder. “You’ll never guess who I ran into on my way here.”

“Well, you want to tell us, so spit it out.” David glared.

Grin broadening, she pointed to the teachers’ box.

Carefully navigating his way past Professor McGonagall and Leroy Jordan was a tall, thin figure in purple robes and a tall hat.

“Blimey,” David breathed. “Is that…”

“It is,” Killian confirmed, his eye pressed to the sight on his spyglass. He swung it about, seeking out the foreboding, black figure. The glass gave him a perfect view of Snape’s cold, black eyes fixed on the teachers’ box. Good. He had noticed too. “No way Snape tries anything with Dumbledore here.”

“Nope.” Mary Margaret sighed. “Emma’s safe.”

“For now,” David muttered, “but what happens after the game, when Dumbledore isn’t watching?”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Killian said, stowing his spyglass safely in his pocket.

David jerked forward. “Ow!” He glared behind him, rubbing at the back of his head.

“Oh, sorry, Nolan,” Regina said, daintily picking her way through the stands. Mal and Ursula were hot on her heels. “I didn’t see you there.”

Mary Margaret patted David’s shoulder. “Just ignore her.”

David exhaled slowly and obeyed.

Killian nodded, staring grimly forward as he watched Emma. Even with Dumbledore’s presence, there was a lot that could go wrong in a Quidditch game.

“Aw, c’mon,” David shouted as Snape awarded a penalty to Gryffindor because Happy hit a Bludger and it just happened to go in Snape’s direction.

“You know,” Regina drawled behind them, “I think I’ve figured out how Gryffindor picks their players. It’s certainly not based on talent, that Swan girl can barely stay on a broom. Remember last game?” She paused, waiting for her friends’ laughter, which was long and loud and turned into cheering when Snape awarded Hufflepuff yet another undeserved penalty. “But, of course, she’s got no parents, so they had to let her on the team. And then there’s Harold Nolan… his family has got no money. I bet he just boo-hooed a little and Wood let him on.”

A hand landed on Killian’s shoulder. He jumped, whirling to see Regina, a look of false pity on her face.

“Maybe you should ask to get on the team, Jones.”

Killian turned back around with gritted teeth. “I’m worth ten of you, Regina.”

“Jones, I’m just trying to help you have a little fun. Who knows how long it’ll be before you’ve got a room next to dear old mum at St. Mungo’s.”

“Shut up, Regina,” Killian muttered. His hand closed around the spyglass in his pocket, gripping it tightly to keep from lashing out. Emma. He looked up in time to see Emma make a spectacular dive. People jumped to their feet cheering and gasping. Killian gripped the rail with his free hand, his breath caught in his throat.

“No wonder you two get along,” Regina crowed. “She’s as crazy as you are.”

Something inside Killian snapped. He whirled on Regina, pouncing on her and wrestling her to the ground. She shrieked and clawed at his face, her nails tearing down his cheek and drawing blood. His fist collided with her nose. And then Mal and Ursula were on top of them, too. Someone—Killian didn’t know who—landed a solid punch to his gut. His breath whooshed out. He heard David bellow and jump in the fray.

Mary Margaret was screeching now, but he could only make out some of the words. “David—Killian!!! Where—over! Emma—Gryffindor---“

“Oh, fer heaven’s sake,” Hagrid’s gruff voice cut through all the fighting.

Killian’s feet left the ground. He looked up to find Hagrid staring down at him with disapproval. Regina hung from Hagrid’s other hand, kicking and thrashing the air. Killian, however, stopped fighting, staring at the boards beneath his toes as Hagrid shook both of them.

“My mother will hear of this!” Regina screeched.

“Let her,” Hagrid said. “Now, off with yeh. I don’t want to see no more foolin’ around.” He set the two on them on their feet and glared until Regina and her friends started off.

“Hagrid, I—”

“No, Killian, I heard what she said about yer mum. Just don’ let it happen again.”

And then Mary Margaret had a vice grip around his neck and David was clutching his other shoulder shouting, “We won! Emma did it!”

“Come on!” Mary Margaret cried, tugging at both their arms.

They raced down all the way back to the castle, joining the herd of Gryffindor students as they headed to the dorms. Several voices shouted the password all at once and then they were all piling inside. It was only a few minutes before the other players trampled in, yelling and pounding each other on the back.

Emma wasn’t among them.

They waited for what felt like hours. Twice Killian stood up, determined to go find her, but both times, David tugged him back down onto the couch.

"She's probably fiddling with that broom of hers," he said. "You worry too much, Killian."

Mary Margaret looked like she agreed with Killian, though. "Maybe Wood will know where she is. Dumbledore could have pulled her aside or something."

"Right." He didn't know why he hadn't thought of that first. He ducked through the crowd, trying and failing to find the Keeper. He could hear Oliver Wood’s voice mixed with all the other noise, but there were so many older students he couldn’t see a thing.

“There you are!” A familiar voice called as someone grabbed his arm. “Come on. Where is David?” Emma dragged Killian and Mary Margaret in the direction they indicated, refusing to say a word until they were all standing outside the common room.

“I followed Snape…”

“You what?” Killian and David snapped at the same time.

“Oh hush, he didn’t see me this time.” She leaned forward, her hands moving broadly through the air as she spoke. “He was meeting Heller in the woods.” She shot a look at Mary Margaret before she could say that they weren’t supposed to go near the forest. “He wanted to know if Heller had figured out a way past Fluffy and there was something about needing a piece of magic from him.”

“So Professor Heller is the only standing between Snape and the stone?” David snorted. “He’ll have it by next week.”

# # #

Now that the Mystery of the Thing beneath the trapdoor was solved, Mary Margaret moved on—to exams. She stopped to press her ear to the door on the third floor whenever they passed it and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Fluffy's snores, but she blatantly refused to worry that a professor was plotting the theft of the most powerful object in the school.

"We've only got ten weeks," Mary Margaret declared, dragging all of them into the library.

Truly, she only had to drag Emma and David. Killian was determined to be at the head of the class. He wanted Liam to feel he hadn’t wasted money on all those books and supplies. His feelings at the beginning of term—the desire to stay home with his brother—seemed a distant memory. Now he couldn't imagine going back to a time when he didn't know Emma or David or Mary Margaret. And chances were that he'd get to see quite a bit of Emma at least over the summer. The few details Killian provided in his letter appalled Liam and he replied that he would talk with Dumbledore and see what could be done about Emma's situation. She wouldn't be going back to the Dursleys if his brother had any say about it.

Which Killian considered as good as saying Emma would stay with them over the summer.

He was discussing that very fact with Emma over One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi when he a thump and a shuffle caught both of their attention.

Hagrid had bumped into a table on his way past them.

"Hello, Hagrid," Killian said. "What are you doing in the library?"

Hagrid seemed to notice them for the first time and his eyes narrowed. "What am I doin'? I should ask what yer doin'... Not still looking for Nicholas Flamel, I 'ope."

"Oh, we already know who he is." David sat back, hands behind his head, textbook forgotten in his lap. "And we know that dog's guarding the Sorcer—"

"Shhhh!" Beneath his beard, Hagrid looked about the same color as a marshmallow and he was sweating a little around the hairline.

"We did have a few more questions," Emma said. "Like..."

"I said SHHHHH!" Hagrid hissed. He looked from Emma to David to Killian, even to Mary Margaret who had only glanced up from her books. "Listen—if it'll end this nonsense, come see me later. I'm not promisin' to tell yeh nothin' mind...but yeh shouldn't be chatterin' about it here."

"Alright," Emma said, turning her thousand watt smile on him.

He turned away in an awkward, clumsy movement, trying to keep an object hidden behind his back.

Killian raised his eyebrows at Emma and David. "Is it just me, or was he hiding something?"

"Hold on," David said, hopping out of his chair, he caught the book in his lap just in time. "I'll be right back."

Killian got up to follow, but Mary Margaret tugged at his sleeve.

“He’d said he’ll be back,” she said, “and you two are supposed to be looking up the uses for dittany.”

Emma huffed and plopped down next to him.

David didn’t make them wait long. He came scurrying around the corner a few minutes later with more books in his arms than Killian had ever seen him carry before. He dropped them on the table with a thunk, catching even Mary Margaret's attention.

"Dragons!" he hissed.

Killian took a book from him, examining it. "So Hagrid likes dragons. It's not exactly surprising." After all, a dragon was only a few steps up from three-headed dogs.

In answer, David yanked one of the books from the stack, drawing an annoyed hiss from Mary Margaret as the rest tumbled on top of all their homework.

"Look!" David waved the book under Killian and Emma's noses.

Exasperated, Emma snatched it up, her eyes on the gold foil title. It read: From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper's Guide.

She shrugged. "Hagrid's always wanted a dragon. He told me so the day we met."

"It's illegal," Mary Margaret whispered.

"Yeah, dragon breeding was outlawed at the Warlocks' Convention of 1709." David glared at Mary Margaret, who looked surprised he knew such a specific fact. "What? I do know some things, you know."

"Of course you do," she replied in a tone that did nothing to contradict her surprise.

David threw one last dirty look at her and continued, "Anyways, can you imagine if every wizard..."

"Or witch." Mary Margaret added.

David sighed. “…or witch could have a dragon? Muggles would have known about us centuries ago. Kind of hard to keep a giant, fire-breathing lizard under control.”

“Well, he can’t have gotten a dragon’s egg if it was illegal,” Emma said, “so you’re worrying for nothing.”

Killian thought that sounded reasonable.

Just to be sure, they headed down to Hagrid’s hut later that afternoon.

Hagrid had a dragon.

Well, Hagrid had a dragon egg, sitting in his fireplace, blue and orange flames licking all around its sides. Killian caught a glance of it as the big man hurried the four of them into the hut. On such a warm day, the heat was stifling. He bustled about for a good while, until all four of them had a steaming tea cup in front of them. Killian took his more as something to hold than to drink... No way was he drinking that with the hut so hot.

"Stoat sandwich?" Hagrid asked, holding out a plate.

“No thanks,” Emma said, waving the plate away. “We just ate lunch. We’re all absolutely stuffed.”

Hagrid nodded, as though he expected that answer, and snagged a sandwich for himself. "Now, I think yeh had a question for me."

Well—” Killian started.

Emma cut him off. "What's guarding the sorcerer's stone besides Fluffy?"

Killian shot her a look, annoyed that she hadn't buttered Hagrid up a little first. Emma crossed her arms, staring up at Hagrid.

"Even if I could tell yeh that," he replied, "I wouldn't. You four don't need to be snoopin' around there anymore then yeh already have. The stone's here for good reason."

"Oh, of course," Mary Margaret said. Her teacup clinked against the plate as she set it down. "But surely you know something. After all, Dumbledore did trust you to bring the stone from Gringott's." She held up a hand as Hagrid started to deny. "We don't need to know the exact spells guarding the stone, we just were wondering who had a hand in doing the spells."

Hagrid, whose chest had swelled a little at the mention of Dumbledore's trust, narrowed his eyes at her, the gears turning in his mind. "I don't suppose that could hurt. Well, he borrowed Fluffy from me and he had some of the teachers whip up some enchantments." He rattled off a list of names, ticking each one off on fingers the size of sausages. “Let’s see…Professor Anton and good ol’ Doc. McGonagall o’ course and Professor Heller. Dumbledore did somthin’ himself and then—I’m fergettin’ someone. Oh, Professor Snape…”

"Snape?" Emma screeched.

"Professor Snape. Yes." Now it was Hagrid's turn to cross his arms and look belligerent. "Don' tell me yer still on about that, Emma."

Killian exchanged a glance with Mary Margaret and David. The three of them clearly shared Emma’s thoughts. If Snape helped Dumbledore with the defenses, figuring out the other professors’ spells was probably a piece of cake. All but Heller's, it seemed.

Emma didn't push the issue.

"You're the only one that knows how to get past Fluffy, right?" At Hagrid's nod, she went on, "And you would never tell anyone else. Not even one of the other professors?"

"Course not," Hagrid rumbled. "Only other person that knows is Dumbledore."

She seemed to relax at that.

Mary Margaret, however, took that as her cue to go on the offensive. "Hagrid, how did you get a dragon egg?"

The big man jumped, knee knocking into the table as he tried, belatedly, to shift his chair in front of the fire. Mary Margaret tilted her head, lips pressed tight together. Killian recognized the look. David and Emma were often on the receiving end of it when they chose to goof off instead of studying.

"Won it," he mumbled, ducking away from Mary Margaret's judgment. "Las' night. Chap seemed to be grateful fer me to take it off his hands, if I'm honest."

"And you're trying to hatch it?"

Hagrid practically glowed.

"Been doin' some readin'." He leaned across the hut and pulled a thick book from beneath his pillow. Killian struggled to read the title from this angle, but his friends’ eyes widened, so he had a good guess as to what it was about. "Got this outta the library. The mothers breathe on 'em, so I've gotta keep 'im in the fire and then when it hatches I gotta feed it brandy and chicken blood." He flipped the pages with delicacy, a surprising feat with such meaty fingers. "I've got a Norwegian Ridgeback. Rare breed, them."

He beamed at Mary Margaret.

She blinked at him, jaw agape.

"Hagrid," she said very slowly, "you live in a wooden house."

"Pshaw." Hagrid got up to stoke the fire again. "If I can handle Fluffy, I think I can handle a baby dragon."

And he turned away from her, humming as he stoked the fire. The four children finally gave in and said their goodbyes.

"Well, we tried," Mary Margaret huffed as they left the hut. "Now whatever happens is on his head alone."

"I wonder what it's like to have an easy life," David muttered as they trekked back up to the castle to the sound of Mary Margaret chattering about study schedules.

# # #

For the next several days, Mary Margaret refused to talk about Hagrid or the egg or the stone.

She refused to talk about anything, really, but what was on her color-coded exam review schedule. Any time Emma, Killian, or David brought up the dragon or the stone, she huffed and buried her nose deeper in her book. Killian found himself being dragged away from their books over and over again so they could have a conversation without Mary Margaret clearing her throat every few seconds.

She wasn't even phased when Hedwig appeared at breakfast a few days later with a note from Hagrid.

It's hatching, it read.

"We've just got Herbology," David said. "Sprout won't care if we skip."

"We're almost at the end of term," Mary Margaret snapped. "And you need all the lessons you can get if those essays you have me reading are any indication."

"Well, they'd be better if the professors didn't drown us in homework."

"I'm with Mary Margaret, mate," Killian said.

David looked at him like he'd grown a third head. "So you think the chance to watch a dragon hatch comes around on the regular?"

"Shhh!" Emma flicked her eyes at Regina, who was leaning toward their table, listening so hard it was a miracle her ears hadn't turned red.

Mary Margaret ignored David's needling and Emma eventually caved to her wisdom as well. Killian decided he might as well have skipped, though, he was so preoccupied with whether or not the dragon had hatched that he hardly heard a word Professor Sprout said.

As soon as the lesson was over, he, Emma, and David—Mary Margaret refused to go with them—rushed down to the hut and were greeted by a bright-eyed, red-faced Hagrid.

"Yer just in time," he said and ushered them inside quickly.

Through the deep cracks in the egg, Killian saw something moving, heard a clicking. He drew a chair up to the table and held his breath. The “something” inside the egg scraped against the shell and then it split open and a small, black dragon fell out of it with a squelch.

Emma raised an eyebrow, leaning into Killian. "It looks like a crumpled umbrella."

Killian hid his laugh behind his hand.

Hagrid dabbed at his eyes. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

“Hagrid, how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow?” Killian asked, jumping back as the little dragon snapped at Hagrid’s fingers.

“Well—” Hagrid froze, staring behind Killian.

“What? What is it?”

“There was someone lookin’ through the window.”

Sure enough, when Emma, David, and Killian peeked out the window, they caught a familiar figure rushing back up the slope. Killian’s blood iced up, despite the sweltering heat.

“Regina,” Emma growled.

#captain swan #csbb #captain swan fanfic #emma swan #killian jones

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kierongillen · 8 years ago

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 28

Spoilers, obv.

I mentioned in the back of the issue that I was thinking that Imperial Phase Part I would just end with no climax. As in, what would be more proggy and self-indulgent than to do that? Just to assume that people would accept a whole year of issues as a single trade, and have that slow build. And if people are expecting a surprise, not having a surprise would be the bigger one?

Except I plotted out the fucker, and realised this issue would end the trade, and that works pretty well as a climax. Not as big as any of the other ones, arguably, but wider and certainly a change of status quo. Plus it's an unexpected answer to the question of “Who's going to die?” undermining the assumption that it has to be one of our core cast.

This is probably a good example of how I talk about knowing everything in WicDiv, but the execution being more flexible. As in, all these beats are there, but working out how to play them came when planning these two arcs.

It's a hard issue for me, to be honest. WicDiv is definitely in a cause of anxiety place for me now, and thematically I can see why. WicDiv is always a juggling act, but I'm aware I'm juggling knives.

Jamie's Cover: The last of the first half of Imperial Phase. The design continues to the second half of Imperial Phase, with variations. I think this one is particularly beautiful, but pointed.

Elsa Charretier's Cover: We met Elsa when we were launching WicDiv in France. Glenat, our French Publisher, had commissioned her to do a WicDiv print. That was beautiful, and we asked her if she'd be up for a cover. And lo, this was born. The commission was glamour and sex – I think I suggested the idea of a sun in a martini glass. Elsa summoned this panorama that I just lose myself in.

It's also one of our rare Alt covers which is actually coloured by Matt Wilson, who took a pretty radical approach to the image. Matt Wilson for Eisner!

Page 1 Last time I talked about having a surplus of material and working out how to present it, and it actually all compressing down worryingly well. I had my list of things I wanted to happen before the party. I realised that some of them – mainly Sakhmet related – I could move into issue 29. Which left this, which I felt as an incredibly low-key mundane scene made a fun thing to hard cut from to the party.

Roehampton chosen due to me doing a seminar at the University there last year. I felt that Blake would be teaching in a place like it.

Jamie had a hefty re-write of this one when drawing it, and we chewed over the execution in chat a little. “The script is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.”

Wall stuff was also done in conversation. I gave Jamie a bunch of suggestions and we unpacked a little more. Shall I go though and say what they all are? I'm not sure if I can recognise them in fragments. That's Girl's Generation, the K-Pop band on the left. They were the primary visual inspiration for the Valkyries. Oh – and Jamie tells me that's Katy Perry on the right.

Page 2 I am very fond of the side-eye of Blake in the second panel. Strong Jamie expression.

Behind Blake is... League of Legends, Ghost in the Machine and Voltron.

And another really strong face in the last panel.

Page 3 Oddly, Cassandra's habit of little encouraging asides to people seems to be a thing now. How will people read them in world? Actually sincerely or patronising? I guess it depends how defensive they were feeling on any given day.

Page 4 A call back to Larkin's This Be The Verse, quoted by Luci in the first issue, recalled by Laura in issue 6.

My first draft title was Pride, drawing a line between Blake's parental pride and Sakmet's pride of lions. And then we remembered it'll also call to mind Pride, which when there's a slaughter at a pansexual orgy, is definitely not a comparison we wanted to make. So we went to this.

I suspect these writer notes are mainly my “here are some of the landmines we nearly stepped on” log.

Page 5 Originally the line was a lift of Lady Vox's in Phonogram, but something more noxious was clearly better. I called for the cocaine-tool, and Jamie out-did himself. The mosquito-like device emerging from the helmet is quite the thing. I suspect this is a left over Iron Man idea.

The visual element of the performance of the colouring-stage added symbols came from Matt. He was playing with various overlapping shapes, which were beautiful, but didn't seem to be anything other than a cute aesthetic. And then we realised that if we made them all Amaterasu symbols it'll integrate into the whole book. And lo, it does.

When plotting this issue, it's very much a “okay, what order CAN they be in.” I suspect I'd have rather taken more time to get to the confrontation, but everything else is more important to be in its place. Space is the interesting one – I suspect given an infinite budget we'd have have played more space to introduce this party/temple, probably with a issue-8 style dance-floor shot. But we don't, so we go completely the other way with this very TIGHT open, and put you in the middle of this slightly disorientating party you build up piecemeal.

Page 6 This involved some consultancy here, as I suspected (and I was right) that the original draft of Cassandra's dialogue let Woden off the hook too easily. We ended up tweaking a bunch to make her angrier to start, and still angry at the end, even after she takes Woden's point. I suspect I'd have gone even further given a chance to do it again.

(I mean, do you believe Woden that he didn't click? Plus that he knows the implicit threat by saying he didn't click – as in, he definitely could click if he wanted to. This is particularly noxious by Woden.)

End of the page is the closest we get to an establishing shot of the club/temple, btw.

Note that Jamie has moved away from a strict eight panel grid here, which suits the material. That panels two and five are these relatively smaller moments means that it would be dead space.

Page 7 And notice the strict eight panel grid here, which Jamie maintains as all these beats are basically of equal narrative weight.

Panel 7 is Jamie redrawing the splash from Brandon Graham's issue. Clearly relevant to what's coming further down the line.

In an issue of fairly bleak jokes, I think Woden's last panel takes the prize.

Page 8 The sequence is the last bit of set-up for the end of the issue. I suspect a re-read of the last couple of issues will see what I considered the necessary Sakhmet beats to get here. Next issue has more, but it's all very morning-after.

Special call out for Clayton for the second panel, which uses a PING! To basically split this panel into two panels in terms of reading. There's Amaterasu's first line... a small delay – and then the next piece of information. This is joined to the left-right movement across the panel from seeing the back of her head (I'm leaving!) to the right side of the panel (Where we then see she's looking at her phone.)

The softest beat of the issue, and probably one that I'd have stressed more if it was only a grace note, would be the reason for Baal's absence. Persephone assumes it's because that she is there, hence the segue in conversation on hurting people.

(In a boring practical way, Baal and Minerva not being here streamlines an issue which all the cast are present at. They don't need to be here, and their absence says more.)

The last three panels on the page are the closest that Sakhmet has come to a speech. Originally, there was about twice as much dialogue, but we worked it over obsessively to get to the core essentials (and try and avoid juxtapositions which we simply didn't want.) C and I shouting various takes and word-switches for about an hour in the living room.

All the WicDiv characters depress me. I think Sakhmet depresses me most of all.

Page 9 Anyway, yes, Sakhmet, that is a very good look.

Sakhmet's entry for the bleak joke competition, evidently.

Page 10 That we cut away from Casssandra means we get to cut back to her after the reasonable stage of an exchange and straight into this.

Hmm. There's something odd about this issue in terms of how pretty it all is, versus the emotions that are flying around. That's Amaterasu all over though.

The third panel was key for us to have Amaterasu's lines juxtaposed by Cassandra's response, so that it couldn't be taken out of context. A character responding to another character's incoherent racism is important context. I considered the archaic spelling “Moslem” but decided that while I'm sure that Amaterasu would use it, it wasn't worth putting in the text. It's offensive enough anyway.

Page 11 Some fascinating character work by Matt and Jamie on Amaterasu's speech to camera. The passive-aggressive nature of her threat is particularly sickly.

Cass' swearing is a delight.

I think I originally did something like “Clawing her eyes out” and tweaked as I) gendered ii) with where the issue goes, sets up all sorts of uncomfortable resonances with both Morrigan and Sakhmet. WicDiv is designed to be viewed as a hologram, so removing data strands that aren't intended is key.

(I mean, I talk about being anxious earlier? That's certainly a reason. There's so many moving parts in this fucker, and for all our efforts we can’t be sure that some of them are going to mesh awkwardly. We can always miss something.)

Anyway – there goes Cass, told to go home, the first of the people to leave the party. Everyone else gradually leaves, until it's just the people who remain. Woden doesn't get an exit, but let's be candid – no-one would have ever assumed Woden would be invited to the orgy.

And Dio takes over as the connective tissue. Hmm. Re-reading this after a few weeks is making me realise how tightly wound it really is. I had a friend write to tell me how many panels the last two issues had. 26 with 127 and 27 with 142. I did a quick count, and this one is (about) 119, so a little down, but when an average mainstream comic would have around 80 panels in (No more than a 5 panel beat, with average panel count lower than due to splashes, action pages, etc) it speaks to how compressed this is running on. No wonder I feel like it's going to explode.

Anyway, Dio. What have you seen?

Page 12 The main worry on this page was not making the storytelling too comic. The “someone leaves” And then “Someone unexpected follows pushing first person out of the way” can definitely come across as slapstick. Jamie doesn't do that, so phew. It's setting up for the destination.

The hyper-distorted close-up-to-reader Amaterasu symbols here are fascinating. Well done, Matt.

Page 13 And out in the street. Matt's glow from the door, into the cold blues of the street is strong. Immediate change of mood.

(Also, has me thinking of the break to darkness in issue 8 before going back to the party, as a structural parallel)

I don't actually use much contemporary slang in WicDiv. I suspect this isn't actually something people have noticed. As such, I had a good hard think before using Ghosting, but it's the right word and sentiment. And – well – Ghosting and Goths is an interesting line.

The goth kids absence from the comic have been notable. As they'd been major players earlier, they were always going to step back so other characters can move closer to the spotlight. I realised pretty early in planning Imperial Phase that the necessary retreat from the spotlight would be a way to explicitly introduce the plot. We could delineate their absence.

Page 14 Yeah, I'm uncomfortable too.

I don't think it's worth talking about this in any more detail now. Probably more later as we continue into the story.

Dionysus is the character who has most often surprised me in WicDiv. When he enters a scene, he goes in an unusual direction. He asks slightly different questions from most of the cast. “She chased him out the building and now he looks like this? Clearly...” seems a fair leap to make.

Page 15 “I love you, but...” is one of the more obvious bits of connective tissue in the issue.

Jamie does an interesting choice in terms of panel 4 and Persephone's response.

Another bit of peak Amaterasu here in the “What happened to my party?” response. Upset of her party not going according to her plans is, of course, how the arc starts for Amy as well.

Matt obviously gets the colouring interesting – all amber here – but Jamie is doing a lot to bridge the gap between two sub-scenes. That fifth panel re-sets it all, and hopefully Amaterasu's voice carries people back inside.

Page 16 The first panel landed very well. There's a lot of emotional weight that this has to carry, and suggesting of other things, and it seems to hold together. I suspect you can patch together all the Persephone Lines To Camera in WicDiv and get an interesting portrait of where she thinks she is.

(I mean, this is Jamie. It's never just about the line. I can't even imagine trying to write this stuff for another artist.)

My favourite person in all of WicDiv may be the guy in the hat in the bottom panel who goes “You know – actually, no, I don't think so. I think I'll have an early night” when presented with this offer. Good call, random person.

Interesting choice of panel breaking by Jamie on the last panel, which gets a sense of the rush of the response.

Page 17 Well, yes.

Page 18 When someone asked me about sex scenes a while back, this was already written and perhaps even being drawn, so I was aware of this in terms of a hypothetical WicDiv scene scene. Let's quote the thing here for reference...

We certainly don’t linger on the sex scenes. There’s an orgy in issue 11. There’s one beat where you see Morrigan and Baphomet in issue 16. There’s the repurposed Sex Criminal pages in 14. There’s very little kissing in terms of what you actually see - there’s one in 20 and one in 24, so far. While at the same time, characters having sex with one another is one of the things which drives the plot.

Speaking generally, I’ve got no moral reservation about sex scenes in stories per se. It always speaks to the effect the story is trying to have. To state the obvious, in erotica it’s very much the point of the thing.

There’s a couple of problems specifically in WicDiv…

1) Seeings someone have sex has a tendency to make the scene about you watching. Our characters are often, in their own way, viewpoint characters. Anything which makes a character perform for the viewer is against our intent there. There’s times we’ve approached it, and Jamie has very much backed away when we approached the page, as it was just extraneous. Why do it if it serves no purpose? 2) Probably more importantly, sex is usually dead pages in terms of drama. The fight scenes WicDiv does are almost always not about fighting. They’re about a change of dramatic states, a visually interesting way to push the plot along. Go through a fight scene and note down what you learn about each character in it. You can certainly do that in a sex scene… but dramatically speaking, the “decision to have sex” and “how you feel afterwards” are the key beats. So we linger on them a LOT.

But there’s certainly sex scenes I’ve written in my notes, and they’re much more character driven things, one way or another. I suspect one will come up sooner rather than later, though watching how we do it will be the interesting one.

That “interesting” sits uncomfortably with me, as it sounds like I'm foreshadowing this awful mess, when I'm talking in terms of craft. How do you do that and stay to our aims? The things I'd point to here is primarily Jamie's choices – how he chooses to frame nakedness, how he chooses to frame sex. Generally speaking, this is an illustrative scene. The neutrality is key – Amaterasu's nakedness in panel 6 would be a key one. There is no pose for the readers' eye's delight. This is a character who happens to be naked. Or at least, that's how we hope it's read.

(There's also other things – we thought that if Sakhmet is the first character to be shown naked just as she turns on a killing range, that has a lot of semiotics in there we'd like to avoid.)

Page 19 You know how life can just shatter in a second? I guess that's what we were going for here. Just one character being thoughtless, and...

(Fill in “That escalated quickly” gif, obviously)

For my money, perhaps Jamie's best art of the issue is the last two panels. The suspended glass, and then that close up – which is not one, but both of the best single expressions in the book.

Page 20-21 Amaterasu runs – I've seen some people think that Sakhmet killed her in this scene, which is one of those “you always must remember your audience is diverse in terms of how much they're aware of things like knowing what a character's power looks like, especially when a larger than normal percentage of your readers are new to comics.” I'm not sure there's much we could have done, except maybe a “come back!” from Sakhmet in the first panel. But that feels too crass for the people who DO get it. Balancing what is too opaque and what is too crass is basically 95% of comics for me.

This spread was budgeted as a single page, in terms of the amount Jamie has drawn. I may have done it anyway, but it is a way to ensure that we have a page turn onto the image on page 22.

(Also visual symmetry with Sakhmet in issue 17, where the black out image is also used.)

Page 22 I like how careful Jamie is here as well. I suspect the page with the most colouring tweaks in it, as Jamie wanted it to have the correct level of horror to it.

I originally had a more on-the-nose element to the image – a message scrawled in blood – but as much as I like a good System Shock homage, it was decided it was just too much. It's a Grand Guignol beat, sure, but not like that. It seems that there is a thing such as “too unsubtle” even for WicDiv.

Page 23 When originally planning the book, I thought this flashback was going to be at the end of Rising Action. After writing it, we realised we didn't need it – Persephone terrible and resplendent, with all the awful potential didn't need anything else. This is probably a good example of what I talk about in terms of when we say “we know all the material – it's just a question of execution.” I find myself thinking of how movies are really made by the editor, cutting scenes around.

(There's certainly things I've wanted to get in this arc which I've lost as something else was always more pressing. You may remember me saying one of my worries about year 3 in WicDiv was it was mainly girls being involved with girls, and there wasn't enough male/male intimacy? That would be an example of something which I'd like to find a place for, but have failed to do so far. Still, onwards.)

As a craft note, I'd point towards “6 months earlier” as a choice worth considering for creators. If you just write dates to control flashbacks rather than stating the relative position, you will lose your reader almost completely. They don't remember what period a story is set in just via numbers. They need either word based hand-holding or something much more visual in the story. Be very careful with this shit.

Page 24 In an issue as compressed as this, a page of Ananke way back in issue 21 me a luxury. But for someone like Ananke, it's so rare I hope it's interesting. Some strong expression work in here.

Clearly the advantage of that mask of hers is that it means it's harder for people to see that she's been crying.

Page 25 A “free” page in terms of budget, though Jamie clearly committed to it with the hand.

In the third year's hardback, we may include our somewhat hilarious lettering trial runs where Chrissy and Katie tried their handwriting. The final one is actually the work of Marguerite Bennett, who as a self-described Supervillain seemed a good person to ask to do it. Also, I've seen enough of her pen when signing issues of Angela, so knew she had a fascinating font. She was enormously ill and bed-ridden, so it was touch or go whether she would be able to do it, but thankfully it all came together. Thanks, M.

Page 26 A complete re-use of the opening of issue 21, with the final panel turned into a (tweaked) repeat of the penultimate panel. Once more we return and all that.

We'll be doing a little tweak to this page in the trade in the penultimate panel, to put a little glow on the machinery.

Page 27 We had to debate whether to put the present date or the flashback date here, but settled on this.

And that's it. Coming up shortly is the 455 AD special, which certainly fits thematically in with this arc and Andre (and Matt) have done wonderful work on. Then the trade in June, and back with Imperial Phase Part II in July.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #elsa charretier #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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mikemateiweb-blog · 6 years ago

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My TMNT Mario Paint Animation, a Retrospective – Mike Matei Blog

This is three lines drawn in Mario Paint at different speeds of strokes with the mouse.

The limitation of Mario Paint that’s probably the most regrettable is the dismal color selection. There are only 15 solid colors, and 15 extra colors which are the basic colors combined in various ways in a pixel checkerboard pattern.

There’s a reason why you don’t see actual pixel artists use patterns like this for coloring, because the results are usually hideous.

Unfortunately, an artist working within the restrictions of Mario Paint will have to use these extra colors sometimes, for better or worse. Outside of these 30, there’s also several pages of stuff that I rarely find a use for at all.

There’s no shortage of eye-melting color patterns to choose from, although these look better using the Spray tool.

This is due to the limitations of the hardware of the SNES. I’m not a programmer and I wasn’t able to find any detailed information on how Mario Paint’s code works, but here’s my best guess of what’s going on: The canvas area of Mario Paint is 248×168 pixels, which means it’s made up of 8×8 tiles, 31 horizontal and 21 vertical. The SNES has 16 colors to work with in each 8×8 tile, which means Mario Paint is using the maximum amount of colors the console can support (I’m guessing that one color has to be left unused for transparency, possibly to allow the cursor to hover over the drawing area). Also, the SNES can only display 34 of these tiles per horizontal row, so there’s 31 tiles for the canvas, 2 tiles for the border around the screen, and 1 left over that allows for the cursor.

Which means, as much as I lament the poor color choices, I can’t blame the creators of Mario Paint. They squeezed as much functionality out of Mario Paint as the hardware allowed. The checkerboard colors and blob patterns was the only way to extend the colors available. (By the way, if you’re knowledgeable about how Mario Paint or the SNES hardware works and anything I said is incorrect, let me know and I’ll edit this article with the correct information and give you credit).

The color limitations also played a big part in why I chose the TMNT opening. Mario Paint offers two solid shades of green, which would allow me to add shadows to the Turtles’ skin.

The character design of the Turtles just happened to work really well with Mario Paint’s colors, and I could get a bit more mileage out of light and shadow.

There’s also an undo history of exactly one action, which is offered to you by the dog icon. Saving and loading is limited and slow, the flood fill tool is slow (although it can be cancelled in the middle to partially fill things), and the animation function is limited to 4 drawable frames… I could go on and on about the limitations of Mario Paint, but I think you get the point.

So, as I just mentioned, Mario Paint has a pretty limited animation suite, so I used modern capture technology to simply capture frames when I completed them, and then edit them together later in video editing software. This could have been done in 1992 as well. I have friends who would use their VCR to record Mario Paint onto VHS and string them together to make elaborate animation projects, as well as other Nintendo art tools such as the GameBoy Camera placed into a Super Game Boy. VCRs connected to a camcorder could also be used to do stop motion animation with clay or toys, and even film individual frames of drawings to make animations.

This process was super nerve wracking, because each completed frame had to be discarded from existence entirely once I was done grabbing them. At least data storage is easy nowadays and I didn’t have to worry about someone in the house overwriting my animation in order to record an episode of Roseanne from the TV.

So, we come back to the concessions I talked about at the beginning. The original animated sequence for the TMNT show totals up to about 1200 individual frames of animation. So if I averaged about an hour per frame drawing in Mario Paint, and I worked 8 hours a day, that would mean I would reasonably get 8 frames done per day. Which means it would take 150 days of nonstop work to get the animation done, which would be okay if I didn’t also have a full time job and a social life that needs to be taken care of as well.

My animation ended up with about 420 frames total, and took me 6 months. So doing 1200 frames would have taken a year and a half, and who knows how much I would slow down from fatigue after a project that long. There were a couple times I could get a break, such as some frames just being a single solid color (such as lightning flashes), and I reused the swirling TMNT logo from the beginning for the end.

Hey, the original cartoon reused this animation, why can’t I?

I mentioned earlier that Mario Paint doesn’t offer any layer functionality, so this is a huge problem when animating moving characters over a background. As you can see in the above example, the background is constantly being destroyed by the turtles moving across the screen, and that destroyed information has to be rebulit when the portion of the background comes back into view.

Eagle-eyed readers will probably notice that this scene had to be animated out of sequence and then reassembled, which accounts for the way the background constantly changes shape.

Surprisingly, the shots you would think would be more difficult to do, such as Donatello flying around the city and the background moving around really fast, are about the same difficulty as the shot you see above, because of the lack of background layers. When the background is moving so quickly, redrawing the entire frame isn’t that much worse.

Oh who am I kidding, this was still painful.

Another issue came from the fact that I wasn’t going to use all 1200 frames from the original animation, so I had to pick and choose which frames to use. I was referring to a television off to the side drawing these individual frames, and I tried to pick out individual frames that would convey the most movement. This resulted in a bit of a discontinuity in the framerate, which had to be corrected manually when it came time to edit. This is why you see the framerate fluctuate often during the entire sequence. This is regrettable but… I dunno. Nobody has really complained about it, and if they did I’d just shrug and say Mario Paint isn’t the optimal tool to create animation. I did the best I could, you know?

Recreating an animation sequence in Mario Paint is so ridiculously transformative that it easily meets the requirements for Fair Use, so in order to keep my video from getting taken down, I was going to need a cover version of the music instead of using the original audio. Luckily I was able to get a great one by Epic Game Music that was tailored to match the timing of the video I animated. After that was done, it just needed some editing and it was completed.

So there you have it. How do I feel about this animation more than a year later? I’m glad I did it because it’s something nobody had ever done before. Doing something this elaborate with the drawing section of the game. Sure a lot of people have done a lot with the music portion, and there is a very small limit to what you can do with the in-game animation tool. But to animate something like this with the basic drawing tool, I’d say I did the most elaborate thing anyone ever attempted. If there’s anything else out there even close to as time consuming, I’d love to see it.

I think it was a really good personal exercise for me in diligence and determination. I’m glad that I managed to finish it. Starting a project like this and then abandoning it halfway would have been a gnawing regret I would have had to carry for the rest of my life. The end result wasn’t perfect, but it’s more important to me that I finished it.

“I may lose, but it won’t be because I gave up!”

As for economics… all told, I only made a couple hundred dollars off the video. I’d do the Pat-Math on how much my hourly wage was, but you can guess its low enough to be just about nothing. But hey, that’s the game we play being creatives. You never know what’s going to hit or miss, and you just have to keep consistently applying yourself until something hits. Whenever I get negative feelings about this animation, I have to remind myself that it was more than made up for with a lot of other successes that required far less effort. Not to mention I’m a Let’s Player and a streamer where I record myself playing art that other people made, and standing on the shoulders of giants to do so. I’m grateful for the wonderful life I have, and I hope you guys don’t get the impression that I made this post just to whinge about making cartoons in Mario Paint.

Animation is extraordinarily difficult, but we’re in a strange time where animation is easier to make than ever before, yet independent animators aren’t making the money they probably should. And yet… so many people still animate. There’s so much incredibly good animation being made by individuals on YouTube and all over the internet. Against overwhelming odds and minimal rewards, they still painstakingly download their imaginations into individual frames, one by one. I believe strongly that things will get better for animators in the future.

Just like Lion-o up there, they just need to keep running. Eventually something good will happen.

Source By: https://www.mikematei.com/blog/my-tmnt-mario-paint-animation-a-retrospective-mike-matei-blog/

Update:

Not long after I posted this article, which details my process of creating a full animated sequence in Mario Paint a year and a half ago, my animation was taken down from YouTube due to a copyright complaint.

From the very beginning, I was aware that my video could be taken down, so I purposely designed the video to be as transformative under Fair Use as I possibly could. Everything was manually drawn by hand using a reference offscreen. There’s no way to download images into Mario Paint, nor is there any way to trace anything, and the limitations of Mario Paint actually make it impossible to perfectly recreate the original (the article that follows will explain why in detail). And, a new cover version of the song was recorded specifically for this video. I was under the impression that I was so far ahead of what was required that I would be completely in the clear, and then some.

If the animation I made in Mario Paint doesn’t count as transformative, then I’m not sure what even does. What if I had recreated the intro using claymation? What if I had used actors in costumes? What if I just used a recording of me singing the theme song in the shower? Where is the actual line that got crossed?

I want to know what aspects of my video supposedly don’t qualify as Fair Use. Hopefully I can manage to get that question answered at least. I’m sure other creators could find the information useful as well.

Anyways, the video got reposted by someone already if you didn’t get a chance to watch it. It very well may get deleted again, so save it and if you want and share it on other video players and blogs so half a year of work isn’t tossed out a window forever..

See the video here:

https://www.vidlii.com/watch?v=PlV2cAO9kf1

https://www.bitchute.com/video/bfyvFFHA4Aw5/

Of all the art forms, animation seems to be the one affected by economics the most. Film is another big one for sure, but animation is such an incredibly manual, labor-intensive process that there’s a giant disconnect between creative vision and what can actually be reasonably produced, and what can reasonably make money. Since animators are painstakingly creating moving pictures frame by frame, simple creative decisions can multiply into hours, months or even years of extra work. Concessions always have to be made, and the work doesn’t always pay off.

In 2016, I used the Super Nintendo game Mario Paint to recreate the intro to the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon opening. Here is the original video that was taken down. Use the links above to see the animation.

There were a lot of candidates to choose from (Thundercats, X-Men, Ducktales were also high on my list), but I chose TMNT because it seemed to be the most likely to reach a wide audience. I knew from the outset that this was going to be a big undertaking, and it took me roughly 6 months to complete.

The reasons to animate using Mario Paint are probably what you’d figure. Since I’m known as a commentator on retro video games, it was appropriate to use an art tool from a retro games console. There aren’t really many other choices that fit the bill, and there’s no way I could have used the LJN Video Art console to do it, being the completely useless art tool that it is that’s not even suitable for use by children. Also, there’s the element of the masochistic spectacle of one man going through the grueling process animating a full sequence working within such strange limitations. I thought people would be into it, and thankfully a good amount of people were.

Mario Paint was a wonderful toy for its time, and Nintendo was smart enough to add game elements, humor, and quirky flair to the experience instead of just making it a basic electronic art program. But as an art tool, the limitations are numerous. It’s very strange in that it’s essentially a tool to create pixel art, but offers extremely limited pixel precision (save for the pixel art stamps you can define, which weren’t suitable for my project).

The game came bundled with a mouse, but laser mouse technology didn’t exist in 1992. The Super Nintendo mouse used a rubber ball that rolled along the mousepad to manipulate rollers inside the unit to move the cursor onscreen. Everything grinds to a halt with this mouse if anything gets dirty, and the mouse is in a constant hurry to get as dirty as it possibly can. People reading this who grew up with Mario Paint will remember the cursor snagging over and over and the constant struggle to keep it clean. This was my life for 6 months.

As for other limitations, lines need to be drawn extremely slowly in Mario Paint, because moving the cursor too fast will result in dotted lines streaking across the screen. Not to mention every pen stroke overwrites the color underneath, as there is no layering functionality, so trying to build colored shapes with an outline requires a bit of planning in advance. In Mario Paint, I typically lay down color blobs and then add black outlines around them as the very last step, which is backwards from the way most people draw.

youtube

This is three lines drawn in Mario Paint at different speeds of strokes with the mouse.

There’s a reason why you don’t see actual pixel artists use patterns like this for coloring because the results are usually hideous.

There’s no shortage of eye-melting color patterns to choose from, although these look better using the Spray tool.

This is due to the limitations of the hardware of the SNES. I’m not a programmer and I wasn’t able to find any detailed information on how Mario Paint’s code works, but here’s my best guess of what’s going on: The canvas area of Mario Paint is 248×168 pixels, which means it’s made up of 8×8 tiles, 31 horizontal and 21 vertical. The SNES has 16 colors to work within each 8×8 tile, which means Mario Paint is using the maximum amount of colors the console can support (I’m guessing that one color has to be left unused for transparency, possibly to allow the cursor to hover over the drawing area). Also, the SNES can only display 34 of these tiles per horizontal row, so there are 31 tiles for the canvas, 2 tiles for the border around the screen, and 1 left over that allows for the cursor.

Which means, as much as I lament the poor color choices, I can’t blame the creators of Mario Paint. They squeezed as much functionality out of Mario Paint as the hardware allowed. The checkerboard colors and blob patterns were the only way to extend the colors available. (By the way, if you’re knowledgeable about how Mario Paint or the SNES hardware works and anything I said is incorrect, let me know and I’ll edit this article with the correct information and give you credit).

The color limitations also played a big part in why I chose the TMNT opening. Mario Paint offers two solid shades of green, which would allow me to add shadows to the Turtles’ skin.

The character design of the Turtles just happened to work really well with Mario Paint’s colors, and I could get a bit more mileage out of light and shadow.

There’s also an undo history of exactly one action, which is offered to you by the dog icon. Saving and loading are limited and slow, the flood fill tool is slow (although it can be canceled in the middle to partially fill things), and the animation function is limited to 4 drawable frames… I could go on and on about the limitations of Mario Paint, but I think you get the point.

This process was super nerve-wracking because each completed frame had to be discarded from existence entirely once I was done grabbing them. At least data storage is easy nowadays and I didn’t have to worry about someone in the house overwriting my animation in order to record an episode of Roseanne from the TV.

So, we come back to the concessions I talked about at the beginning. The original animated sequence for the TMNT show totals up to about 1200 individual frames of animation. So if I averaged about an hour per frame drawing in Mario Paint, and I worked 8 hours a day, that would mean I would reasonably get 8 frames done per day. Which means it would take 150 days of nonstop work to get the animation done, which would be okay if I didn’t also have a full-time job and a social life that needs to be taken care of as well.

My animation ended up with about 420 frames total and took me 6 months. So doing 1200 frames would have taken a year and a half, and who knows how much I would slow down from fatigue after a project that long. There were a couple times I could get a break, such as some frames just being a single solid color (such as lightning flashes), and I reused the swirling TMNT logo from the beginning for the end.

Hey, the original cartoon reused this animation, why can’t I?

I mentioned earlier that Mario Paint doesn’t offer any layer functionality, so this is a huge problem when animating moving characters over a background. As you can see in the above example, the background is constantly being destroyed by the turtles moving across the screen, and that destroyed information has to be rebuilt when the portion of the background comes back into view.

Eagle-eyed readers will probably notice that this scene had to be animated out of sequence and then reassembled, which accounts for the way the background constantly changes shape.

Continue Reading: https://www.mikematei.com/blog/my-tmnt-mario-paint-animation-a-retrospective-mike-matei-blog/

#mikemateiheight #mikemateiinstagram #mikemateitwitch #mikemateitwitter #mikemateiwhitenationalist #mikemateiblog #mikemateiyoutube #Cinemassacre #TMNTMarioPaintAnimation #TMNT

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thejustinmarshall · 6 years ago

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Anya Miller On Climbing, Cancer, And Creative Strategy

NOTE: In 2018, I started recording interviews with creatives (writers, filmmakers, podcasters, photographers, editors, etc.) in the adventure world. I’m publishing the highlights of those interviews monthly in 2019.

Everyone finds their way into adventure storytelling in a different way, but Anya Miller’s journey to working on film projects, creative campaigns, and podcasts for Duct Tape Then Beer is definitely one of the less straightforward ones: It started with a career in architecture, then bedbugs, then cancer, then a mid-career internship making the same salary she made as a lifeguard in high school, then a job at a big design and creative firm, then finally going to work with two of her longtime friends, Fitz and Becca Cahall. Oh, and lots of climbing, snowboarding, mountain biking.

You’ve probably seen something Anya had a hand in making, even if you didn’t know it. As the Director of Brand and Creative Strategy at Duct Tape Then Beer, she does a little bit of: creative strategy, art direction, graphic design, film production, story development, photo editing, and whatever else needs to be done as part of a small team that makes two adventure podcasts (The Dirtbag Diaries and Safety Third, and films like Follow Through and Paul’s Boots.

Duct Tape Then Beer’s client list includes a lot of the biggest names in the outdoor industry: REI, Outdoor Research, Patagonia, The North Face, The Access Fund, Protect Our Winters, National Geographic, Black Diamond, Chaco, Arcteryx, Subaru, and others. I’ve been lucky to work with Anya on a short film project and see how she works (and how she draws), and why Fitz and Becca invited her to be part of their creative team.

I asked Anya to sit down for an interview a few weeks ago—here’s our conversation, edited for length:

ON GROWING UP IN CHATTANOOGA I’m the youngest of four kids. I was born in Canada in a small town called Hespler, Ontario. I have two sisters and a brother, and they are the best. My siblings really shaped my ideas of what I thought was cool, what I wanted to do with my life. Be good at school. Be Good at sports. Be able to talk with anyone with curiosity. I always wanted to do everything that they did. My brother says that my super power is absorbing other people’s super powers. I think of it more as just learning from rad people.

My parents were divorced when I was five — it was a really rough relationship and so I was a pretty stressed out kid. When I was twelve, my mom decided to move from Canada back to her home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Moving to the South was probably one of the best things that happened in my life because it put me in a more nature-focused place. In Canada, we lived in a small old town with stone buildings and neighborhoods full of kids. Getting outside meant going to the local school and hitting a tennis ball up against a giant brick wall, cruising on bikes in the street or watching my brother and his friends skateboard in the Taco Bell parking lot. When I moved to Tennessee, we moved in with my grandmother, Gigi, who was like a second mom to me. She lived on a small acreage that had been part of her family farm for three generations. She lived and passed on the same plot of land where she was born — so land was important. There were tomato plants, frogs, lightning bugs, fresh mint and magnolia trees — space to just run around. We were close to a lake, so I would run down there to feed ducks and swim.

There were a lot less kids nearby, so I spent a lot of time with my sister Michaela and Gigi outside — working in the yard, playing checkers and drinking sun tea. Moving to Tennessee really set a different tone for the rest of my growing up and for my life.

My family was not an outdoor adventure family at all. My mom was a single parent with four kids, so she got us into as many organized sports programs as possible to deal with our energy levels and probably just to free up some personal time for her.

I did gymnastics, played soccer and tennis and eventually got into diving. Those sports were great for strength and discipline, but I experienced a lot of injury in high school, specifically in soccer. It seemed like I was working really hard athletically, only to then be at the mercy of some overly aggressive hack on the field.

I broke my leg the summer before senior year of high school and basically was just done with soccer — I hated every bit of it at that point, so I washed my hands of team sports. My sister was a pro cyclist at the time and gave me her old aluminum Trek 1500 and I started riding all the time. It changed my idea of distance and freedom. At this point, I was figuring out where I wanted to go to university. I hadn’t ever even been west of the Mississippi at that point — but somehow I thought that I where I wanted to be.

[photo by Anne Cleary]

ON MOVING OUT WEST There was an image — and this does not sound that deep at all, but it was an image the old rubber-banded Patagonia Capilene packaging. Steph Davis was climbing some crack. I had never rock climbed in my life and I didn’t know who Steph Davis was at the time, but what I saw was just a super-strong female and she had chalk on her face and her hair was whipping in the wind. Didn’t look perfect, looked like she was trying hard in a wild place, and I wondered where she was. I was inspired by her, but I was also inspired by the place and the sea of rock she was moving through. I’d never been to a place so arid or stoic.

None of my family lived out west then. All of my siblings were either still in Canada or in the southeast. I just thought the west seemed amazing. I was the last of four siblings at home, and I made no secret of the fact that I wanted to go far away, not have a support network and just see how it would go.

I remember sending away to University of Colorado and getting this information packet that had a VHS tape in it. I wish I still had it! It was so ridiculous. It had 80s synth music and this dude rollerblade shredding around the campus, giving a sort of tour. It wasn’t a causal rollerblade tour. The guy was getting rad on campus and pointing out different buildings! As I said, I was kind of a stressed out kid in school. I made straight A’s and was valedictorian. From that rollerblading video, I guess it seemed like CU was a good place for a stressed out, sometimes-too-serious kid to go.

So I applied the School of Environmental Design and Architecture, and went.

ON DRAWING I can’t remember not drawing. I was always drawing things. In hindsight, I probably just should’ve gotten an art degree. But I think when I was making the college decision, all of my siblings were sociology majors or history majors, which can be cryptic majors to develop a career from. I think I went into school with a practical driven idea that I would know exactly what I was going to do when I got out of school if it killed me.

Considering the different programs that CU offered, it looked like their environmental design program was good. It focused on sustainable architecture and reuse of old buildings, which I was interested in — my mom collected antiques and love making old things new. Plus, I thought architecture was practical. Theoretically, that major equals a decently clear career path after school. Maybe almost too clear of a path — it can be hard to stray from.

I was always drawing as a kid. I remember getting Calvin and Hobbes cartoon books for holidays. I’d go through the pages and duplicate all of the cartoons, hundreds of them. I didn’t trace them — I just redrew them identically, right down to the word bubbles and writing. I did that with Snoopy, Garfield and Far Side comics, too. I really liked cartoons in general. They were funny, they had a dry sense of humor that reminded me of my brother. He cultivated my sense of humor, for sure. He helped explain some of the more complex cartoons and cultural concepts in them.

I would draw on my own, too. For hours at a time. Sharks and birds. My own hands. I’d look at magazine covers and draw them. Time magazine’s person of the year. National Geographic — that woman with the crazy aqua eyes. There were a bunch of skateboard magazines sitting around the house — my brother was a skateboarder. I’d try to redraw the Thrasher logo, which is a really tricky logo to redraw, by the way! I liked looking at that stuff because it seemed raw and cool, for whatever reason.

ON FINDING CLIMBING My first time climbing was on Flagstaff in Boulder. The granodiorite up there is this weird conglomerate rock — it is pretty grippy until its little embedded pebbles get polished. I remember just thinking how cool it was up there. It was so accessible! And at that point, it was pretty quiet there. I lived close to the trails, so I could jog up Flag. I loved that I could go whenever I wanted to. Even at night. I didn’t have a car in university. I didn’t have a car in high school, either, so I fell in love with things that I could do right out of my door with little equipment or support from anyone.

Climbing wasn’t like skiing or snowboarding — you needed a good chunk of money and a car to do those things. Climbing, and bouldering in particular, was something that I could walk out my door, do on my own and have complete control over my experience. With team sports, I couldn’t control my experience. It felt like other people could injure me. At least I had (kind of) had control over whether I hurt myself.

The transition from bouldering to tying into a rope was pretty quick for me. I ended up stumbling into a really good group of people that were better climbers than I was. Probably within the first few months of climbing, I drove with them out to Wild Iris. I remember not really understanding the concept of grades that much, just deciding what I wanted to try based on aesthetics and the encouragement of my friends. I’d say, “That thing looks good! I’ll try that.” It was really important to me to know that my friends believe in me. They did, and I got better quickly.

It was within the first month of climbing that I wanted to try to lead something. Everything about the sport was exciting — I just wanted something of my own. And it seemed like something I could have, in terms of just being able to develop my skills at whatever pace I wanted. I climbed so much (and probably so badly) when I started that I constantly had injured fingers and weeping skin.

[photo by Anne Cleary]

ON HER FIRST JOB After graduation, the job market was okay. I wanted to stay in Boulder for a little bit. Right out of school, I got a job at a small, residential architecture firm. They were modern and fun and also did a bit of branding and graphic design for the buildings they made. That rollerblade video was full of shit — I worked my ass off in school. I could have gotten a job at a bigger, better-paying firm, but a smaller shop felt more ‘me’. A lot of people in my class were going to giant corporate firms down in Denver or other cities, but I was more interested in smaller scale residential design — and I was more interested in working closely with clients and staying close to the mountains.

That shop was a safe place to escape to after being intense (again) throughout school. I didn’t want to jump into a high-intensity job. There, I got exposed to graphic design, brand design and architecture. They did a lot of the drawing by hand, which I loved. Right then, things were teetering on being all computer-based. Eventually, we did take all drawings into the computer, but all of the concept iteration was hand-drawn. All of the renderings were hand-drawn, which I got to do and loved.

ON LEAVING BOULDER The person I was dating at the time is now my husband, and I think after about a year in Boulder, Charlie and I were pretty ready to take off. We decided to take a trip to South America, go to Chile and Argentina to go snowboarding and skiing down there.

We were at a resort called Las Leñas, which has an amazing zone of lift-access / assisted backcountry. One day, Charlie and I were riding separately. It was really crap conditions and I kind of got off my line and was a bit lost. I saw these people just beyond me on this plateau with sastrugi all over it. It was sunny, but windy, like hard-to-move type wind. And I remember seeing a few people and thinking, “They look like Americans,” I screamed out to them, “Hey, can I ride with you guys?”

So we basically get together on that random plateau in Argentina. Maura Mack, her husband Jason, and Adam DesLauriers. We rode a shitty, icy line together and had a hilarious experience in super bad conditions. We got down and decided to go get beers and hamburgers and meet up with their buds, Lel Tone and Tom Wayes. Charlie joined us at the end of the day, and we all went to a hot spring and had non-stop, hilarious conversations. They felt like our people and they told us we should move to Tahoe. A week after we got back from Argentina, we decided to go to Tahoe and check it out. They set us up with a place to live, I got an architecture job, and Charlie started working at Granite Chief, tuning skis. Plus, it was only a short drive from Bishop. I was sold.

ON MEETING FITZ AND BECCA CAHALL That first year in Tahoe, I spent a lot of time in this really tiny climbing gym, if you could even call it that. The Sports Exchange in Truckee. It was really just a used gear shop that had a room in the back with some holds on a woody. But I spent a ton of time there, looking for friends like those I had left in Boulder.

There weren’t a ton of women climbing in there. I saw Becca Cahall — she was strong and I decided, “That girl’s gonna be my friend.” I like to say that I ‘picked her up in the climbing gym’. We started talking, I met Fitz, and Charlie and I started going over to their place in Kings Beach every week for dinner. Becs makes a mean lasagna. It’s amazing at that point in time in my life how much time I had — or made — to connect and chat with people.

We started climbing with those two. At the time, I think Fitz was in the very early stages of starting The Dirtbag Diaries and he was doing a bunch of writing for print publications. Becca was often gone during the summers, doing field biology work in Oregon. And Fitz and I would climb a good bit together in the summers when she was gone. The friendship really started from there.

They moved to Corvallis, Oregon, for Becca’s graduate program. From there, they moved to Seattle. Charlie and I were still in Tahoe, but we kept in touch with those guys and saw them whenever they came through. We were in Tahoe for just over seven years and I was working at an architecture firm there. I was getting really tired of designing 3,000 square foot “cabins” for people from the Bay Area. Architecture was barely providing a living in a mountain town that’s difficult to make a living in. But it wasn’t really filling me up creatively.

Charlie was tending bar, skiing a bunch and tuning skis — at some point, he wanted more of an intellectual pursuit. He started looking around at programs to get his MBA. He was interested in getting into the creation ski clothing and technical outerwear. We were poking around for schools for him — we chose Seattle because of its creative opportunities and proximity to mountains. He had also grown up in Washington, so family was a draw. It was a huge benefit that Becca and Fitz had already made camp here.

Charlie got into the University of Washington and I found a really great position at a firm called Graham Baba Architects. I basically walked into a dream job in an outrageously bad job market. So it just seemed like everything fell into place. Then I found myself in the city. I never really thought I would live in a city, but all of a sudden, I was.

Pretty soon after we moved to the city, I convinced Charlie to take half of a year of his MBA program and in France. So I took an eight-month sabbatical from the architecture firm, even though I hadn’t really been there that long. I spent the season climbing in Fontainebleau. We lived in the 11th in Paris, and traveled around to Italy and Switzerland to do some climbing and snow sports.

ON CANCER When we got back from Europe, I ended up getting a rash all over my body. I thought I had developed a food allergy, so I went to a doctor and I went to a naturopath to get tested for food allergies.

She said, “No, sweetie, you don’t have an allergy. You have bed bugs.” They were pretty common in France at that time, come to find out. She told me how to get rid of them and offered to do my annual exam while I was there (she was a nurse practitioner, too). She does a breast exam on me and she says she feels something. A lump. I could tell she felt like it was bad. She said, “I think you should go get this checked out.” For whatever reason, I just knew there was something wrong. I hadn’t been feeling well, but I couldn’t really attribute anything. Had I not brought those bed bugs back from Europe, I might not have found the tumor. I fucking love bed bugs.

So the very next day I got in for a biopsy at one of the cancer centers in Seattle, and it came back as Triple Negative Breast Cancer. That’s an invasive form of breast cancer. All at once and very quickly, things slowed down for me and sped up, if that makes any sense. I went through a series of tests to see what the extent of the cancer was — full body scans to see if it the cancer was anywhere else. Waiting for those results was terrifying. I was trying to figure out my course of treatment, and just trying to understand and grapple with everything.

I was whisked into chemotherapy, and that was a crazy, awful chunk of treatment. It stops all fast-growing cells — like cancer — from producing in your body. That’s why your hair falls out — your hair is fast-growing cell. I decided to take some control and shave my head before my hair really fell out. It just seemed like a helpless situation.

Can you believe that I had a wig made of my own hair? I had it made, and then I never wore it. Not once. It just sat on this weird styrofoam head in the corner of the bedroom the entire time. It was like this weird little animal sitting in the corner. I don’t know why I had it made. Like a security blanket, I think. When I put it on it felt like I was lying about what I was going through.

Chemotherapy just makes you feel acid washed from the inside out, but it’s what they said was the best and only treatment for my cancer type. Afterwards, I had surgery to take out the tumor, followed by radiation. You don’t fight cancer, you just weather it.

ON DECIDING TO SWITCH CAREERS Coming out of cancer, I realized that architecture wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I wasn’t happy on a day-to-day basis. At that point, after all the cancer stuff, I realized I could pull the plug on architecture and not feel bad at all. I deeply realized that time is short and that I didn’t want to spend a single day doing something that I didn’t love. So I started looking around for other things.

I sat down with my pen and paper, as I usually do. I drew out my problem. I basically tried to draw an infographic of the things that I liked about architecture and the things that I didn’t. I mapped out all of the tasks that I did in between the beginning and end of an architecture project, starting from the first client meeting and ending with them moving into their new or redone house.

Overlayed on the project timeline, I drew an up-and-down heartbeat line. It trended up when I loved the project tasks, and it would go down when I really didn’t like what I was having to do. This line didn’t correlate to difficulty of task — all jobs have hard parts that need grit to get through. True. But this helped me understand what I didn’t like and why.

When I looked at my infographic of my life, it seemed like such a small portion of every project had a loving heartbeat line. The ratio of I love this to I really don’t was just not enough. This visual helped me communicate with people that I was having coffee chats or meeting with, exploring new careers and positions. I could point to the graphic and say these are the things that I’m doing in every project that A) I really excel at and B) fill me up emotionally and really satisfy me as a professional and a creator. Clear, insightful visuals are so key to having good conversations.

I met with a guy who worked at a brand agency. He said, “You really seem like a creative strategist or a brand strategist.” I said, “Okay cool — what is that?” Basically, a strategist makes creative plans and develops foundational ideas that give meaning and inspiration to projects. Strategy helps teams of understand and fulfill creative goals. I wasn’t sure I understood it at first, but I finally had a job title to search for online. I didn’t even know that job existed.

So I started looking for jobs as a creative strategist. I came across an internship that was being offered. This job was definitely aimed at someone ten years younger than me. It was at brand and design firm here in Seattle called Hornall Anderson. Basically, I took my infographic and my architecture portfolio into the interview. I got the job.

[photo by Ken Etzel]

ON HOW BRAND STRATEGY RELATES TO ARCHITECTURE Essentially, I figured out that creating a house or a space for somebody to use is really similar to creating a brand. In the beginning of an architecture project, you meet the people that you’re going to be working with, the people that will live in that house. You understand how they want to live, the types of spaces they’ll need for their specific lifestyle. You understand the land they have to build on, whether it’s really hilly or flat. You understand the adjacent buildings and you decide how you want your building to respond to those around it. Stand out? Fit in? Be crazy or subdued? Be earthy or modern? You consider budget and you consider the builders that will actually create building. You chart a creative course.

At the end of the day, that planning process that I learned in architecture can be applied to almost any creative project, especially brands. You take a brand. You look at the landscape — where is it going to sit? You understand the brands that sit around it. You consider how your brand is going to respond to, compliment or go against those adjacent brands. You learn about the people that will be ‘living in that brand’ — the people that are running it and the people that will be purchasing its goods. You set a creative intention that helps develop a solid plan for your building or your brand. Or solid plan for making a film. Or an advertising campaign. Or an event. Whatever that is, there can always be a front-end structuring and creative process that helps you launch into ‘making’ in a considered, intentional and (hopefully) unique way.

ON DOING AN INTERNSHIP IN THE MIDDLE OF HER CAREER I got the internship and it was three months long — terrible pay, of course. But I learned a lot. I had also been in the professional world for ten years at that point. I got hired the day my internship ended, and started working as a Brand and Creative Strategist.

The internship was definitely a proxy for going back to school. I’d definitely recommend it. That job gave me amazing experience and mentors. There, I was able to develop my own techniques of working through brand problems with large teams. Strategists shape clear creative ideas so that it is easier for multiple people to express them.

ON JOINING DUCT TAPE THEN BEER I worked at Hornall for several years. It was the type of agency that had ping pong tables and kegs of beer and free cereal for breakfast. All of those things meant that they wanted you to never leave! I worked a ton, my climbing dropped off. I felt pretty unhealthy. Creatively, I was producing a lot of awesome stuff, working with big brands and talented designers — but eventually it felt a bit soulless. You can only use your intelligence and creativity to sell potato chips for so long.

I wanted to be climbing more. Through those first six years in Seattle, I was of course hanging out with Becca and Fitz. We loved talking about professional and creative stuff. I was always tracking on what Duct Tape Then Beer was doing. One night, I went over to their house and held a little facilitated visual Post-It party to chat with them about creative goals, what they were working on and what they wanted to be. At this point, they had positioned themselves pretty squarely as a film production company and of course The Dirtbag Diaries were still going strong.

When I was at that large agency, I saw people making films and content for brands in categories other than the outdoor industry. I saw how campaigns were being created and how solid, unique creative was being monetized. Basically, I wanted to help Duct Tape expand what they offered. People were coming to Duct Tape saying: We want a film. And then Fitz and Becca would ask: What do you need a film about and why? The brands rarely had good or solid answers for these questions. Maybe they didn’t actually need a film — maybe the brand actually needed a perspective.

Essentially, Duct Tape Then Beer had been creating emotional, unique perspectives for brands and expressing them in films. The value though, for the first years, had been being placed on the film outcome rather than the strategy and thinking that needs to be done before a good story is told.

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ON WHAT SHE DOES AT DUCT TAPE THEN BEER Fitz and Becca told me they thought they could hire me. That was a big deal. I was really wary of working with good friends. I had always kept my personal life and work pretty separate. I just didn’t want to ruin our friendship by working together every single day, or having weird professional interactions with folks that I love so much. Eventually, those guys just talked me down from the ledge. They said their first priority was keeping our friendship solid — and they thought we could make some really cool things together. They said we would only work with brands and strengthen and nurture connections to the natural world. They said I could go climbing. That was it. I ended up leaving the big agency and joining Duct Tape to develop a brand strategy offering so that we could answer the brand questions before the topic of the creative output was even addressed.

Before a creative expression (film, messaging, campaign) is ever decided upon, we crystallize emotional ideas that will elicit action. How will we express an emotional idea? Maybe a film. Maybe a podcast. Maybe new headlines or messaging that gets rolled out over a few years. Maybe a social media campaign. Maybe an event. But we always start with clear, emotional ideas.

There aren’t many projects that come through Duct Tape Then Beer that I don’t have some sort of hand in. But you could say that about all of us — we all touch every project. Our skills overlap and are complementary. I make all of the pitch decks. I don’t like to admit that I am a writer — it was always so hard for me — but it has flowed as I’ve gotten older. If it’s a story that Fitz discovered, he’ll write it up and then I design a compelling story deck — sometimes with infographics — to get our ideas across. I do a lot of strategy work for us internally and for our clients. I do the graphic design and edit the photos that come out of our office, functioning as the art director and social media person. But my official title is Director of Brand and Creative Strategy.

Our podcasts need a good bit of overarching creative strategy. We don’t just haphazardly assort stories and guests. We look at culture and we try to understand what’s going on and try to actively seek out stories that express complex, emotional topics in today’s world. I’ll work to help shape this topic mix.

At the helm of Duct Tape, we’ve got five full-time people. We are all seasoned creatives and high-functioning human beings that love to contribute and work hard for each other. I think that’s what makes project good — when several smart people contribute in a considered way.

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ON SNOWBOARDING VS. SKIING I snowboard. I skied when I was tiny in Canada a couple of times. Since being in Colorado, I’ve been a snowboarder. More and more, I stay out of resorts and am loyal to my splitboard and to snow that makes no noise. I’ve had three torn ACLs on one leg. I’ve torn my meniscus three times. So yea, I ride snow that makes no noise. Luckily, soft snow is usually easy to find in Washington.

ADVICE It was scary and hard for me to leave behind a profession that I’d put a lot of time and energy into. But I knew, deep down, that I didn’t enjoy it. My advice? Take some time and be really honest with yourself about what you like doing (and why) and what you don’t like doing (and why). Because every job is going to have something that sucks about it. Really anything worth doing is going to be pretty hard at some point, so the answer, “I don’t like doing this because it’s too hard,” is bullshit.

But I do recommend that process that I went through. Visually mapping out what filled me up emotionally and what depleted me emotionally. Visualizing that was so helpful. And clear. And it helped me realize what I wanted to be spending my time doing. Continually revisiting those two questions: What do I like doing and why? What do I not like doing and why? Continually revisiting those has been the most helpful thing for me over the last ten years.

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olivereliott · 6 years ago

Text

Anya Miller On Climbing, Cancer, And Creative Strategy

I asked Anya to sit down for an interview a few weeks ago—here’s our conversation, edited for length:

[photo by Anne Cleary]

So I applied the School of Environmental Design and Architecture, and went.

[photo by Anne Cleary]

[photo by Ken Etzel]

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