#this was also just a general test/attempt at these particular clothes in the form of a... *gestures hand vaguely* vibe check. I like them!

[red-moon-at-night]

Today I present: my attempts at trying to understand Paris' phrygian cap from greek pottery, for science.

[pseudonymousposting]

The left is chock full of people who transpose evangelical Christian ideas onto a political ideal, and it's been forming a strange quasi-cult mannerism. I look at it like a young evangelical Christian youth discovering reddit atheism at 15 and decided they can supplant their Bible with leftist writings, replace their preacher with whatever red flag weirdo they can find on the internet with a large enough Twitter following, and replace the holy rapture with the glorious revolution.

Since they just vacated from a death cult, they usually seem to also follow that route, they're far, FAR more prone to the purity testing because, again, evangelical values dictate that behavior, having the same masturbatory vision of valiantly sacrificing themselves in a revolution as evangelicals have with the idea that Christians instill in children by prompting them to proclaim that in the event Christians are so oppressed that they will have to choose between renouncing the faith or being shot, they will choose being shot. A rather abusive tactic used by far right Christians for decades to enforce a militaristic fervor as early as possible, but this translates to a sense of what appears to be a revolutionary suicidality.

My biggest problem with that is if they wish so badly to die and make their way to commie Valhalla, fine, whatever, maybe consider not taking your 'comrades' with you through careless political operation. However, this type of person is, of course, more interested in the aesthetics of politics rather than practicum. Hence the obsession with the sacred texts, donning clothing and merchandise which signals an ostensibly leftist bent such as red flags, ushankas, memes using ostensibly leftist imagery and short quotes and quips without the full context of the text similarly to evangelical Christians Cherry picking the Bible to justify their views, they're often the person who will act like they're "discoursing" but the moment you actually challenge them, they will do the weird white guy in an online argument thing where their vocabulary goes from a normal vernacular to suddenly bringing out the big words and start talking like they're drafting a letter two centuries ago, but they do it with a lefty aesthetic, so they'll start saying shit like "dialectic" and "material conditions" when two seconds ago they were talking like a somewhat normal person.

I believe this jargon-spew to be alienating to the individual, ensuring the only people who would attempt to relate to them, much like right wing circles effectively alienate prospective recruits by inundating them with alternate speech patterns, memes, behaviors and such creating an alter-culture which is incomprehensible to your average person who doesn't know what any of it means, but overall highly damaging to a broader left, as they consistently are trained to present themselves as THE left in the same manner more fervent Christian sects present themselves as the *true* followers of the faith, considering any deviation from the following of their particular denomination as a deviation, an aberration, a heresy.

Worst part is given this usually starts happening online, for one it's obvious a lot of the online "leftist" figures know that in generating an audience, that type of person has several toxic incentives to cultivate that type of audience and encourage that behavior, including social clout, financial gain and, if played correctly, a very closed-off community that self-polices. What they don't understand about the downside of that is that all you need do is commit one minor 'heresy,' even if that heresy appears fabricated or a stretch in the interpretation of what you say, to immediately be deemed a false prophet and their version of justice has evolved into a form of permanent harassment.

Moreover, I've been adequately convinced a lot of online accounts which present these behaviors may be right wingers who have engaged in a very long form version of an infiltration tactic using sock accounts which seem to usually have some kind of non-identifying profile images and such, engage in similar tactics to right wing hate mobs but carefully wrapped in language crafted to appeal to left leaning people. For example, if you look at damn near any leftist content creator from before, like, 2019, those who have had some kind of 'cancel' situation come up, magically a whole database of anything (usually only if misenterpreted) slightly potentially offensive thing they've said or done suddenly appears out of the woodwork and spreads like wildfire.

I can think of three specific left leaning, though not entirely hammer-and-sickle communist content creators, all women, two of whom were Trans, who experienced such a campaign and magically when they pointed either directly or indirectly at a place where right wing weirdos gather to log everything someone has said or done to use in harassment campaigns, the harassment *magically* intensified to a fever pitch. Almost as if in addressing it, they poked the hornet's nest.

In the place they were gesturing towards, if not directly naming, many users directly spoke of how they've created fake accounts to do exactly that. I believe this infiltration no longer really needs such gathering places, as those who engage in such behaviors have kind of embedded themselves in left leaning online circles so deeply, either by lurking quietly or being consistent actors in those communities building trust, or in some cases I fully believe actually being the admin/host/content creator themselves, and have figured out they can actually keep themselves in those communities, their contributions useful in directing the rest of the community to positions, behaviors and viewpoints that are detrimental to the left but crafted specifically to appeal to someone who leans left of center.

Infiltrate, distract, disrupt, disappear, repeat, if you're embedded as a community member. Curate an audience that is aesthetically left but susceptible to the BITE cult model and direct their behaviors and views accordingly while taking as long as possible to drop any given mask. When you point at the likelihood of such infiltration, you sometimes get the same hornets nest reaction. It's like COINTEL but for terminally online right wingers.

These types of infiltrators, I believe, will appeal heavily to the type of person who adopts leftist aesthetics with evangelical disposition. That kind of person is highly reactive and very useful so long as you keep them constantly pointed at some general 'enemy' who isn't a direct boon to the right, and as such would be persuaded in spaces where this influence is heavy to only briefly speak ill of right wing figures and actors, sometimes even downplaying the danger they pose, almost to make sure there is still some plausible deniability while minimizing the impact such attention can have, while ensuring they attack literally anyone else and overemphasize if not manufacture the potential harm the preferred target could have, usually ensuring there is no act considered "too far" against that intended target.

This is, in my opinion, a severe danger to the capacity and sustainability of a left movement. It should have been addressed years ago. If it is not addressed soon, I fear it will render any budding left movement having a strong presence in modern mass discourse essentially impotent. Moreover, I believe it will also ensure people will spend decades of their lives believing that this behavior is how to BE an effective leftist.

I fear those who consider such tendencies an image of what an effective left should be, and those who would happily cultivate those tendencies in the left specifically to render the left ineffective, are in prime position to condition young or new left leaning people to believing that is what a left movement should look like, which could be long-term damage.

In the event these toxic, cult-like circles are dealt with by shining a light upon them and revealing them for what they are, the bad actors will be rendered less effective temporarily (though, they can always create new accounts and the trick is knowing their modus operandi and pointing to that instead of the individual actors and engaging in active educational efforts which counter the tendency,) and the aesthetic leftists will either cult-hop to the right without some kind of space to exist which somewhat resembles a kind of stochastic exit counseling.

I don't know. This is just a thought that's been turning around in my head for a few years now. I don't know where else to put them down in writing. I'm sure voicing them anywhere your identity can be tracked is a surefire way to be targeted by people who specifically benefit from such tendencies or would prefer to retain such tendencies rather than reassess them. I'm sure someone smarter than me can probably see where I'm getting at, and may have the capacity to form this into a more complete thought, but it isn't something I can leave entirely unsaid.

[flowerologists]

Hello, sibling here again now that I’m on my laptop. As a disclaimer, I had few direct interactions with J so much of what I know now is stuff I’ve learned after the events actually transpired. 

First, here are some more details about J finding out he Still Couldn’t Swim™. Mom wants it to be known that she just didn’t leave let a group of 8 and 9 year old boys swim unsupervised, she was actually inside the pool fence to keep an eye on everyone. (In part to prevent them from drowning, but also because as a mother of four, she is intimately aware of the shenanigans that kids can and will get into if given the chance). This means that she saw when J jumped into the pool and when he proceeded to sink to the bottom. After about 45 seconds, she could see him trying to swim up and realized that something had happened. That's when she jumped in, clothes and all, to haul him up. Admittedly, while she had known something that was wrong, she didn’t expect the answer to be that J had jumped into the deep end of a pool despite knowing that he had never learned to swim. 

Another J story that I know involves a pipe and a nerf football. Growing up, there was a pipe that poked up from the ground like 6 inches in the backyard that was topped with a bit of concrete. It was a gas pipe that was going to lead into a build-in grill that never got built, but also couldn't be cut down because it would leak gas. People who regularly spent time in our backyard all learned to look out for it, and we could generally remember to avoid it. The times we forgot resulted in wickedly stubbed toes, which, while far from fun, did no lasting damage. Several solutions were attempted leading up to this, but none passed the test of time. This particular attempt involved our dad taking a nerf football and cored out a hole in the center to fit around the pipe. The end result had two benefits. One: it's hard to stub your toes on a nerf football the way you can on a mental pipe. Two: it's easier to see and then avoid said pipe when it is covered in a brightly colored kids toy. Now, most people, even the ones who were not familiar with our backyard and the pipe, could tell that this football was not just a toy. You know, since it was standing straight up on its point with nothing to support it. J, however, was J. And that meant that despite the time he had spent in our backyard leading up to this, he did not make these connections when he saw this foam football in what he thought was the perfect position to be kicked. So he did just that. He took a running start, and then kicked the football (and the metal pipe) with all of his might. Yeah, he broke, like, 2 toes. Our dad taped them up before he went home that day. I don’t know what his parents were told, but I doubt they were surprised. Apparently, they were treating his debilitating ADHD with a combination of caffeinated soda and soccer so I can only assume he had decent form for his toe-breaking kick.

by tradition, the first day of the camp was spent pranking the group next to us. our prank was ziptying the zippers on their sleeping bags together. we figured one of them would sleep with a knife, because we all slept with knives, because we were dangerous maniacs and half the danger of a dangerous maniac is that they tend to think that they are Actually Normal. so. obviously that didn't pan out, and instead they got stuck in their sleeping bags for like half an hour and because their scoutmaster slept in their car and couldn't hear them yelling, they actually only got out when one of them went full caged animal and chewed through the plastic. which meant they had time to make it to the axe throwing station, but they did miss breakfast.

the scale of our victory was impossible to understate. it was an epic prank. unrivaled. the best in years. we knew they were going to retaliate, and we both feared and craved it. maybe i'm still a maniac, but that feels like a common thing, right? do well adjusted people that are not maniacs crave Judgement?

(serious answers only please, from people who would never spoon a knife.)

anyway, the next day we got back to our camp, and the neighors had skipped dinner to just come back and fill all our tents with pinecones. which was like, a decent prank, i guess, but it probably took them an hour to fill all the tents up, and it took us like 15 minutes to tip the tents out, and as a return volley to the ziptie prank it was incredibly underwhelming. we felt a little cheated.

so our scouting group held a council, and we agreed, unanimously, that our prank was 100% better and theirs sucked and that there would be no escalating tensions because we were the clear victors. they'd had their chance to retaliate, and they failed, and so the war was over. that was it.

we agreed on this. we swore. but madness is a relative thing, and in our group of maniacs, we still had J. i have many, many J stories. too many. i biked up to school with him from 4th grade to 8th, and i saw him get hit by cars thrice. he'd just swerve into the road sometimes. one time on a rainy day in 4th grade, a car splashed me, and before i could even consider my response J yelled I GOT THIS and then he blitzed off after the car. i didn't see him the rest of the day. i was so anxious i barely slept that night. i saw him the next morning and he told me that he'd chased the car until it got to a gated community and then he'd climbed over the fence and looked in peoples garages until he found the one with the car, and then he'd ripped the hood ornament off and broke their window. then he gave me a hood ornament to a different brand of car from the one that splashed me and i didnt tell him because i didnt want him missing more school. i want you to mentally adjust your mental model of the things a 9 year old is capable of doing to include chasing a car for five miles, hopping a fence, breaking into a garage, and vandalizing a randos car.

and that's just the tip of my J stories iceberg.

the point of all this is just to say that J was so crazy that he made us knife spooners look like accountanting enthusiasts.

so we agreed the war was done, and we shook on it, and then J, in the name of friendship, in the name of honor, in the name of avenging our pinecone filled tents, snuck over to their camp that evening and fornicated with a watermelon that they'd been saving in their cooler.

i want to emphasize, again, that this was not the consensus of the group. that is not a prank. like i know it seems like we dont know what pranks are because of the whole ziptie thing, but even we knew that fucking someones food is not a prank, it is a crime, and a sin, the kind of weapon that had only been ethically used once in history by Horus in his battle against Set and none of us dumb assholes had owl heads.

so.

the next day went pretty well. we threw some more axes again, which is a valuable and important skill for children to learn i guess, and we learned how to tie knots, which is a skill that turned out to be far sexier than i ever expected, and i learned how to light fires with a magnifying glass, which was great. i'm looking back at this, and i am actually just now beginning to realize that the clear and obvious point of scouting is turning child sociopaths into apex predators.

and then the day ended, and we went back to our camps, except for our leaders, who had a sort of Scout Leader Meeting they were going to have for a few hours at least. it was built into the camp, that day was supposed to be our day to chill as a group, and make peach cobbler, and just be buddies.

except, as it turned out, our neighboring group's alternative to making peach cobbler was eating their watermelon. so at some point they opened their watermelon, and woo boy. oh man. you think catholics hated seedless watermelons? you should see how much mormons hate seeded ones.

so we were chilling by the fire, and then we heard screaming from the camp over, but we didn't pay much mind to that because there are many reasonable explanations for a group of 10ish children to scream simulanteoulsy, such as wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then the screaming got closer, which did not bother us because there were many reasons for a group 10ish children to scream and run towards us, for example, wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then we noticed they had large sticks on them, which we figured were perhaps being used to drive away the wasps, which are abundant in arizona, and then they arrived and they started beating the shit out of us, abundantly, in arizona.

so we ran into the woods.

now, at this point, we had no idea what was up. we knew that the camp next to us was out for blood, which was crazy, because we'd actually locked them in fartproof bags for 30 minutes and they'd barely done anything back, and were trying to figure out what could possibly have happened that could drive them to Terrible Violence when we realized that J was cackling like a witch that had learned how to order children off of ebay.

so we politely asked J what the hell he had done, and he politely explained that had "done" their watermelon, and we politely beat him with large sticks because life is nothing but endless cycles of violence.

we were still being chased by the other camp btw. so it was them, chasing us, chasing J, and then they got tired and went back to their camp, and we chased J a little longer because we were mad we'd all been walloped with sticks, and J did not care because he was a supernatural entity whose only weaknesses were Needles and Fire, and then we got tired and went back and J kept running, and we just kind of figured he would come back eventually.

he did not.

we went back to our tents, and we waited, and J did not come back. we stayed up all night, peering into the forest, worrying. our leader came back, and we did our best to hide our battlewounds, and he either genuinely did not notice or simply accepted this as part of Boyhood. then he went to bed, and we waited, and waited, and waited. And Waited. and did not sleep.

eventually, we convened again, and we agreed that if J was not back by after breakfast, we would have to tell the scoutleader about what exactly had transpired. and we really did not want to do that, because it would have meant that everyone would have gotten in a very large amount of trouble.

morning came around, and J still was not back. we went to breakfast, and we ate very, very slowly. we were afraid the other camp was going to continue their war with us, but they actually looked fairly frightened. one of them actually came to us and asked for a truce, and we agreed because we truly felt bad for them. like, yes, they did beat us with sticks, but J fucked their watermelon. we werent complicit in the watermelonfuckening but they didnt know that, and it was definitely the kind of crime that left one outside the bounds of the social contract.

and then when we could eat no more bits, when breakfast was almost done, right when i was getting pushed to go and tell the scoutleader that we needed to find J, he arrived. he was sleep deprived, and noticeably scraped and bloody, and tied to his belt was a blood squirrel tail.

and i asked him, J, where did you get that? and he said, don't worry man, it was already dead, which did not answer by question and gave me several more.

the camp ended that day, and the other groups avoided us like the plague, and it was not until some weeks later that we were able to piece together what happened.

J, in his sojourn through the forest, managed to find (or, possibly, make) a dead squirrel. he then cut off the tail to keep on his belt, because he was a weird little freak like that. he also took the dead squirrel, and he skinned it, then he tied it to a little crucifix made of wood, and he left it in the other scouting group's camp. which is why they were so scared of us.

it was such an unhinged thing to do it actually sobered us up for a while. scouting became a scary thing for us. we'd found something dark and primal there, in the place where no adult could see, and our appreciation of J as a wild ride kind of changed into seeing him as something truly dangerous. we had a sense wherever he went, something terrible would follow, and the only way to escape it was to not be there when it arrived. and so piece by piece, the scout group dissolved. it wasnt until he moved out of that ward that the rest of us started daring to go back to scouts.

and for the final epilogue of the tale:

i have a little brother who was friends with a younger cousin of J's, and the two would go to parties together in highschool. and sometimes J, who was in his early 20's at that point, would show up at the parties, and it was unsettling in such a way that it just became a known risk at parties with the cousin. and at one party, they were playing truth or dare, and J wasn't even in the room, but someone asked him the Truth of how he always knew how to find the cousin, and J said the cousin's mom had mentioned she was worried about him and the parties so he'd put a tracker in his car. and when he saw that the cousin was out of the house on weekends, he'd made a visit by, just to make sure he was safe.

then he left. and every single person at that party went over that poor kid's car. they searched the wheel-wells, checked underneath it, the works, until they found the tracker. then because they were clever, they didnt break it, or throw it away, or anything that would've given away what they'd done. they just gave the tracker to the cousin, who put it in his glovebox. and on schooldays, he'd take it with him, so J could see him in the parking lot. and on weekends, he could leave it in the garage, so he could go to parties with out Hell coming with him. because everyone that met J - every single person - knew that the only way to be safe from him was to be far, far away.

[boop-le-snoot]

@buckyownsmylife hey babe! Remember that one time you threw that cool challenge? Here's my entry. Prepare to get absolutely ruined because daddy!Bruce is exactly that sort of man.

main masterlist ☀️ taglist

emotional support nerd

Your best friend's dad, Dr. Bruce Banner, is hotter than you thought he would be. 6k words, NSFW. Kind of Alt!Reader - she refers to herself as 'goth' in one instance. Tony Stark makes an appearance because God forbid I write a fanfic without him in it.

This is filthy pron, ft. age difference (reader is college aged) daddy kink, throat fucking, dirty talk, praise kink, cream pie, possessiveness, belly bulge and ending with a hint at a threesome. I really crammed all I could from Eyre's wheel in here, didn't I. Oh well.

"How much longer, dad?" Lyra's annoyed voice struck a chord within me. I tried to hide my snickering - unsuccessfully might I add - causing my best friend to shoot me a hurt look, equally fed up with me as she was fed up with her forgetful adopted father. "You know what, we'll take the subway."

Lyra's father's voice, both agitated and apologetic, reached my ears in bitten-off phrases as the traffic noises around us grew in volume, NYC rush hour rapidly approaching its peak.

With a sound huff, Lyra removed the phone from her ear, staring me down with the most amount of petulance I've ever seen on her usually reserved, placid face. "It's twenty more minutes. Apparently he's driving Tony's car," she offered in the way of explanation, like it actually did anything to better the cold, wet situation we found ourselves in. "Please, and I can't stress this enough, please don't be weird."

I felt a flood of amusement at Lyra's pleading tone. "Darling, if you wanted a normal friend, you should have looked elsewhere," I gestured to my outfit. I looked like a goth boy's wet dream: chunky platformed boots, fishnets, heavy eyeliner. Of course, all in black.

"You know what I mean," she whined, waving off my pointing hand and fixing me with a hard stare. "The least my dad needs is someone that is terrified of him just because sometimes he turns into a big green monkey. It's not as exciting as internet thinks, anyway," the last part of the sentence was mumbled but I heard it nonetheless as Lyra stared out into the traffic, clever eyes looking for a particular car model.

What Lyra didn't know was that I was not at all considering to be terrified by the man who dosed himself with radiation and developed an advanced version of split personality disorder. I could be intimidated by him, sure, because he was incredibly intelligent, a world class scientist with more PhDs than I had zeroes in my bank account, but even despite his green problem, Dr. Bruce Banner was about as far away from 'scary' as a man could be.

The few scarce pictures of him on the internet showed a short, stocky man with kind eyes and salt-and-pepper curls, always dressed in un-ironed, crumpled button-ups with dorky patterns. Looking at him, I mused that there was a high chance he spoke with a stutter and that fact amused me to no end. Jekyll and Hyde, alright.

Lyra was much the same way. Shy and reclusive, with curly brown hair and doe eyes, she spent a good chunk of her first semester in college being avoided by everybody because of her last name; I, on the other hand, avoided everyone out of habit, I'd never been a social butterfly, but the way people subtly made sure to exclude Lyra from all the activities filled me with quiet, seething rage, and I stepped over my general distaste of people and removed my bag from the seat next to me so Lyra could at least study in relative peace.

Yeah, yeah, you've heard it all, I'm sure. Weird goth chick adopts a socially awkward, shunned nerd and they become best friends forever. I had to admit that under the shy exterior, Lyra was smart, witty and even funny sometimes. She was willing to entertain my crude jokes without moaning, at least, and I was perfectly okay with listening to her rant about science every now and then.

Rain banged on the slanted roof of the café we were hiding in, the autumn wind howled, making both of us shiver at the prospect of having to go outside, even if it was for a short moment to run to Lyra's dad's car. The day had started out warm and sunny, but much like a badly calculated chemical formula, it all went downhill a split second after we had set out to leave campus.

"There he is," the grouch in Lyra's expression had me once again unsuccessfully attempting to conceal my snorting.

Nonetheless, I followed her out into the rain, struggling to keep up with the brisk running in my platformed shoes, unceremoniously crawling into the car behind her without sparing a glance at the driver in my eagerness to get out of the freezing downpour.

"Hi, dad," Lyra's tired voice spoke up at the same time as I angrily shook out my hair.

"I've just about McFuckin' had it with New York," I was afraid the dye in my hair would bleed out into my clothes, or even worse, the nice, cream-colored car seats.

"Hello, ladies," the voice that greeted us was low, gravelly and apologetic to boot.

My eyes shot up, meeting an expression full of surprise and amusement. I stared at the shockingly handsome face of Dr. Bruce Banner like a deer in the headlights.

The fine mimic wrinkles had stretched into a resemblance of a smile, soft, plush lips revealing a set of straight, white teeth. The five o'clock shadow framed his jaw, giving it a sharp, defined edge, his clever brown eyes slid down my form, faltering on the pentagram on my belt and my fishnet-covered legs, settling on my chunky boots before hastily snapping back up to my face.

"Dad, this is..." Lyra's voice was full of suspicious bewilderment as she attempted to dissipate the sudden awkwardness.

"Oh, yeah, I'm Dr. Bruce Banner, but you can call me Doc or Bruce," he cleared his throat, turning himself towards the windshield and starting up the car.

"Nice to meet you," I busied myself with putting away any stray hair just to occupy myself with something during the time I needed to recuperate from being just... Looked at by Lyra's dad.

It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I was so taken aback by his handsomeness and his aura of a gentle but powerful man that the ride to Stark tower, however swift, went on in slightly awkward silence. The streets outside were, thankfully, noisy, and the lack of an attempt to have a conversation could easily be attributed to Bruce's need to focus on the road, but Lyra's increasingly concerned looks did very little to settle the sudden racing of my heart.

"C'mon, I'll give you some sweats so you can let your..." Lyra's vague gesture towards my upper body disappeared behind her side of the door. "Hey, Tony," she suddenly interrupted her sentence, very obviously addressing another person who I managed to miss as Bruce parked in the spacious garage.

"I've been told you're finally bringing your friend, Green Pea," a voice I'd heard a thousand times on the TV poked fun at Lyra.

She bent down to retrieve her bag, shooting big eyes at me and mouthing an exaggerated "Sorry!"

Tony Stark looked about a week in debt on sleep, a contrast to the way he usually appeared in public. The exaggerated eyebrow raise made me shuffle awkwardly in my spot; the Led Zep tee caught my eyes as I lingered on it, aware of my own Mötorhead top on display. He noticed it too, causing his face leave the snide territory.

"Wow, I didn't expect kids these days to have any resemblance of taste in music but you've surprised me, Corpse Bride," he gave me a quiet wolf-whistle, watching me through lidded eyes.

I felt my eyebrow crawl upwards at his attitude but Bruce spoke up before I could say anything: "Tony, no," so firmly, I had to raise both of my eyebrows. I felt a smile tug at my lips, the situation strikingly familiar in it's essence. Like father, like daughter...

"No," Lyra's identical expression, fond and annoyed, topped up with an accusing finger pointed in my direction had everyone snorting a giggle at the situation.

"Lyra," I whined, just so I could coax her grin that she was very obviously trying to conceal. "See, I told you, every crazy genius needs their emotional support nerd," I fixed her with a pointed look.

She promptly grabbed me by the arm, leading all of us to the elevator as the two men behind us shared a hearty laugh at my well-timed joke. It was either that or I would have completely embarrassed myself by gaping and drooling over both THE Tony Stark and Lyra's father.

The rush didn't stop there. I was promptly and generously offered not only a spare pair of pants but also a whole room to stay in after an invitation to dinner I simply could not refuse. Dr. Banner firmly coaxed me into staying overnight with his pleading eyes and a hearty seasoning of guilt tripping, softly crooning how he simply could not let a young woman to wander the cold, rainy night in NYC alone.

Tony added something too, in a tone way too surefire and patronising. I guessed he noticed my eyes lingering on Dr. Banner, being a genius and all.

In a short amount of time, I found myself seated at a dinner table next to a happy, giggling Lyra who'd downed a glass of wine and was well into her second. I found it adorable how much of a lightweight she was; not hesitating in the slightest to point out that fact when she made hands for a pitcher of water.

Tony was the first one to snark back something vague about his college days and all the wild parties he used to throw, booing Bruce upon discovery that he, in fact, actually studied in college in favour of partaking in various illicit activities. That had both me and Tony giggling with Lyra promptly joining in, both of us losing it over the running joke or her being either a test tube baby or the result of immaculate conception.

Bruce's face blushed scarlet. He sputtered, a few stray drops of his lemonade landing on the (ironed!) collar of his purple shirt, cough disappearing in the wake of Tony's truly amused cackling. Dr. Banner was well on his way to either choke on his Lo Mein or turn green; thinking quickly, I decided to defuse a situation by sharing a harmless, funny story that happened to me as a freshman.

"I went on a date with this guy who said that music was the most important thing in his life, and I thought, wow, that's so beautiful!" I began my story over Lyra's incessant snickering. "So we had dinner and went back to his place because I'm a whore," the whole table erupted in laughter at my deadpan remark, Tony reaching over to give me a high five.

"And as we got there, he put on one of his demos which was just a bunch of sampled and remixed Guns'n'Roses songs, and I thought wow, that's gotta be one of the worst things I've ever heard," I pointedly looked away as Lyra's cackling grew in volume, having heard the same story several times by now and the outrage I expressed at the situation first hand.

"But instead of that I said, wow, that's so cool! Then we did the thing and his whole bedroom was covered in Axl Rose posters and I'm sure at some point Mr. Rose stared right up my asshole," there were tears streaming down Lyra's face as Tony flopped his upper body onto the table and Bruce convulsed helplessly in a silent fit of giggles. "And then I thought to myself: wow, I would have to pretend to like his music if I dated this guy and I just couldn't do that..." I breathed out, succumbing to the mirth at the dinner table. "It was good but not November Rain good, y'kno?"

Bruce snorted loudly, sliding down his chair with a hand over his face. The table shook with the force of Tony's cackling; I didn't see his expression but the howling, rasping noises sent me into another fit of laughter, right on par with Lyra.

"Is this..." Tony rapidly inhaled the much-needed oxygen. "Is this why you keep wincing whenever I play the 'Roses in the lab?" Tony wheezed and Lyra nodded.

"I just... I can picture it, and I-" she made a vague, encompassing gesture and a face.

"Please, don't," I urged with a snort. "There are better ways to get disappointed."

Dinner went on by smoothly after that, everybody happily making remarks on my dating fail, the topic of Lyra's birth and Tony's college shenanigans dismissed.

I caught Dr. Banner's pointed look as we finished our dessert - he was studying me, eyes searching for something that he very obviously wished was there. From the damp roots of my hair to the soft, cotton top clinging to my chest, I wasn't left unscrutinzed and unexamined. Like one of the many specimens he studied on a daily basis, Bruce lingered on the many characteristics that made me stand out in the grey crowd.

"Would you like to see the labs?" He asked, appearing behind me without a single sound.

The freshly cleaned dishes clattered in my arms. I'd almost dropped them, startled, but Bruce's hand landed on the top of the stack right before the top plate would have slipped off and shattered into pieces on the cold tile of his kitchen.

Blood rushed to my ears. "I'd love to," my brain had briefly returned to reality, the rush of meeting both Stark and Banner succumbing to logic and reason. My and his fields of study briefly overlapped, the question he posed was more than reasonable. In fact, many people would cheat, lie and steal to be in my position.

Bruce smiled, opening a cabinet and taking half of the dishes I was holding to stack them up in their proper place. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, exposing wide, muscular forearms littered with dark, coarse hair.

I was sure my face was flaming. After waving off Lyra's attempts to put shoes on me and leaving her to watch her TV show, a wide, warm palm rested on the back of my waist, gently steering me towards the elevator.

I tried to keep my eyes off Bruce in the large mirror on the walls of the car as it swiftly moved down, scrutinizing my appearance instead. My throat bobbed, the elevator car suddenly too small and too hot.

His eyes left marks on me - invisible ones, the kind that I knew were there just from the scorching heat sizzling on my skin.

There was a certain je ne sais quoi about him. Perhaps, it was in the way he was acting - a polar opposite of what I'd had expected, Dr. Bruce Banner possessed a quiet confidence and his patience appeared to be endless, heartily doused with an appreciation for his closest ones. The way his eyes lit up in response to people smiling around the dinner table was hard to miss.

When Bruce spoke about his research - whatever wasn't classified, anyway - the spark expanded into a mischievous fire. I could hardly understand the nuances in his work, scratch that- I could not understand a single word he was saying, at all. The individual syllables registered as they should, but my traitorous brain could only focus on the way he licked his lips in between quickly inhaled breaths.

"You're not... Following, are you?" The corner of his mouth lifted upwards, clever brown eyes fixed on my face.

God, I hoped I wasn't drooling. But to deny the obvious would have been a stretch. "No, not really," I swallowed, willing my eyes to lift from the large veins on the hand that was pointing at a set of equations. Reasonably good at math any day, they looked like the scribbles of a madman to me at the time.

Dr. Banner sighed, letting silence creep among the whirring machinery in the lab for a brief moment. "I don't scare you?" He removed his glasses, cleaning them with the corner of his shirt.

The question reeked of self-doubt and, perhaps, insecurity. "No," I answered simply, not giving him the slightest chance to find doubt in my words. I was barely holding my voice from shaking, afraid he'd misunderstand my reaction to the sudden change in atmosphere.

He was closer to me than I recalled. My hip was almost brushing his, the bulk of his shoulder millimeters from touching against my bare skin, the smell of something herbal, like tea, and sharp chemicals clouding my senses. It was such a contrasting experience.

Bruce turned to me, an expression between hunger and regret forcing me to shiver and look him straight in the eye. A hand landed on my waist, holding me in place with gentle firmness. "I'm a monster, I could hurt you," he whispered, leaning into me like a touch starved kitten. The man screamed contradiction. "We shouldn't."

Vivid images of the Hulk and the rampages years prior flashed through my mind; the rubble, the collateral damage in the form of many lives. I barely remembered it, having been too little to really understand what was going on. One thing, though, I knew for sure: ever since the world became aware of Lyra's existence, there had been no incidents. Sure, the Hulk still appeared when there was a threat, but there were no documented incidents of the green creature running amok, accidentally.

"You won't hurt me," I spoke with conviction. Perhaps, I was bluffing just slightly but I wouldn't lie like that to myself. The variable, the... Twelve or so percent chance of things going... Awry, it made a small, malicious worm inside of me rejoice and fill my limbs with familiar adrenalised yearning. "You're not a monster. Far from it, actually," I used the hand that was not supporting me against the desk to gently cradle the side of his face, letting my fingertips brush over the rough five o'clock shadow on his cheek.

Bruce emitted a sound somewhere between an agitated grown and a pleading whine, sagging with the sound exhale, pressing himself flush with my chest. His face slipped from my palm, the warm tip of his nose running a steady line up my neck, sending goosebumps running wildly down my back as his hot breath tickled the arch of my throat.

"Baby," the nickname punched a stuttered gasp out of me with the intensity contained in just that one word. "I've been hearing all these amazing things about you," his voice dropped, low baritone rumbling straight into my ear. "I won't be able to hold back. I'll want you all to myself," his bicep flexed under my hand.

My knees would have bucked if I wasn't grasping onto Bruce for dear life after those words. I had some sense of personal pride in me, so while my body was an easy, traitorous thing, my mind was more than eager to participate in this game, to ping pong a little bit before... "Yeah? What things?" I breathed.

Teeth briefly closed around my tender skin, nipping for just a second. "You're kind, beautiful," his hand took a steadfast hold on the back of my neck, exposing my throat to his mouth. More skin to mark, more time to whisper. "Intelligent, bright and clever," the more he spoke, the fiercer he became. Bruce's grasp tightened until I was pliant in it, willingly following his silent commands. "A bit of a pain in the ass," a healthy dose of humour was added into the mix as my ass was roughly grabbed, our fronts pressed together at his insistence.

"That sounds about right," I didn't resist the sudden urge to snark, thoughts lazily floating in my head, like clouds on a bright sunny day, fleeting and sparse. None of them caught on. I was focused on feeling the need, on my need to feel.

A sharp smack landed on the plump of my ass, the sound resonating in the eerily quiet lab. The sounds of machinery had dulled at some point, leaving just the two of us panting our lust into each other's space. "I know you can be a good girl. Will you, princess?" His fingertips dug into my flesh, surpassing the soft sweatpants as if they weren't even there.

I could only nod, dumbly, overcome by the sudden rush of blood to my body. The life coarsing through me sang, demanding a release of the pent-up tension.

"What's that?" Bruce removed himself from my neck, catching my unfocused eyes with a crooked smirk on his lips.

"Yes," I swallowed, breathing through my mouth.

"Mmm," he hummed, running both hands over my sides, over the frayed edges of my Mötorhead top. He admired it, briefly, setting his eyes on the band logo that was right over my breasts. Having decided something to himself, Bruce promptly removed it, lifting it over my head with ease and leaving it right on the science lab table.

Taking hold of my hand, he walked over to a hidden set of sliding doors that revealed a rather large, frequently used bed, shutting them just as I walked in, wearing only my bra and borrowed sweats. My back was pressed to the door in mere seconds, hot palms chasing away the chill of the lab as Bruce slotted his lips over mine.

He tasted like something I've never had before. His lips - so plush and supple, took hold of the kiss with practiced gusto, sucking me in without a chance or the desire to escape. I drank from him, sucked on the bottom lip as his tongue explored my mouth, danced with mine.

The room was spinning, the ringing in my ears growing in volume. I was only partly aware of the sensation of sliding down the wall; our knees thudded on the carpeted floor simultaneously, heavy breathing the only noise I could distinguish.

"Breathe, baby, that's it," Bruce coaxed, gently stroking my nape. The soft cotton of his shirt crumpled under my fingers where I held onto him, desperately searching something to ground myself with.

The buckle of his belt clattered and then clinked again as he wrapped the worn leather around my wrists, bringing them together in front of my chest. I exhaled sharply at the intimate gesture, a whine bubbling up from my chest when Bruce used a single fingertip to raise my chin.

My eyes met his; a brown iris tinged with the faintest of green around the outer edge. "This okay, princess?" He sought my face for confirmation, for agreement, for anything.

I nodded, stuttering mid-gesture, remembering our previous interaction. My mouth did not want to cooperate but I forced it to, even if it came out as little more than a pitiful mewl. "Yes, daddy," the word, sweet and sticky like fruit syrup, poured from my lips.

My eyes slid shut as my conscience - or was it common sense? - took hold of the situation. I was on my knees in front of my best friends dad, a virtual stranger, and I'd just-

Bruce's soft chuckle stopped the negative spiral of my thoughts. "That's my girl," he sounded a tad more breathless now, a hairliner in his perfect façade of self-control. As if he'd sensed my indecisiveness, he tugged on the makeshift restraints, pulling me closer, closer and into his lap.

A warm, solid chest with a healthy amount of fluff greeted me. Bruce let my lax, pliant body fall into his arms, catching me effortlessly and bringing my face to his lips. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, you're my good girl," he peppered soft kisses all over my flaming cheeks, my twitching nose, my fluttering lashes.

"Please," I begged, shame giving way to the flood of arousal that seemingly hit me all at once. I was aware of the dampness collecting in my panties, the stiffness of my limbs from holding back the ravenous desire to paw at Bruce like a wild animal. "Please, daddy..."

"I know, I know, baby girl," he soothed, not stopping his tender assault on my face. "Daddy will make it all better. I know just what you need," Bruce finally pulled away. I heard the sound of him undoing his zipper and then the awkward shuffle of him shucking off his pants.

Somewhere in between of all that, he'd ended up sitting down on the bed, wearing only his boxers, his shirt hanging open. The red crawled down his chest, partially masked by the coarse salt and pepper hair; his lips were cherry red and his hair was sticking out in odd directions. Bruce looked sinful.

My eyes inadvertently landed on the impressive bulge in his boxers; in response to my widened eyes, he reached out for it, stroking the outline of his thick cock through his boxers. "Like what you see, baby?"

"Yeah," My mouth watered.

"Baby wants a fat cock?" He teased, sounding like he knew exactly what he was doing, testing my self-control like that. With a flick of his wrist, it sprang free, slapping against his tummy, coating the fine hairs with drops of clear, musky fluid.

I swallowed, feeling the taste of him from afar and yearning for more where I was parked between his spread legs.

In a gesture almost loving, he tugged on the belt still wrapped around my wrists, bringing my face to his leaking shaft and my hands to the base of it, letting me feel the weight of his balls in them. The cock throbbed, neglected, weighed down by the heaviness of his full balls.

"Go ahead, baby, suck my cock," the encouragement came with a gentle push to my head.

I obediently followed, wrapping my lips around the pink, moist crown of it, a hum beginning in the back of my throat. My God, Bruce tasted heavenly... I whirled and slipped my tongue a around his head, I dipped into the slit to drink the nectar right from the tap, idly coming to awareness of the broken, choked moans coming from the man above me.

Raising my head got me a view of his chin; head thrown back, the lax O of his mouth glistened in the meager light. My eyes slid lower, to the flex of his abs. Bruce fought hard to stay still. The desire consumed me, a sudden rush of power at having Dr. Bruce Banner's cock in my mouth and the man at my mercy; I inhaled, sliding my mouth further and further down his throbbing length.

"Fuck," I heard him mutter before his hands gripped the sides of my face. "Hungry, baby, are you?" His eyes glowed a faint green; I shuddered at the power he held within himself. Held back for me. "Tap my thigh twice," he spoke and I had no choice but to obey. "Okay. Do that if it gets too much, alright?" I nodded. He gave me a wide, beaming smile. "Good girl," he praised, experimentally bucking his hips into my mouth a few times.

In and out. I focused on my breathing, sharp, little inhales: his girth took up all the free space in my mouth, the tip of it barely fit into my throat. The burn, the stretch; I felt every tenth of an inch, every bulging attempt of my body to accommodate Bruce's huge cock. It was delicious, I couldn't help but crave the same stretch in my neglected, sopping wet pussy.

"Fuck, you're taking it so well," Bruce moaned wetly. "Your mouth... S'like heaven... Could fuck it all day, that's my good girl," the rambling increased in it's intensity as the pace of his hips hastened. Drool and tears flowed like a river; my chin was dropping with it, spit connected my face to his pelvis. "Oh," there was a brief pause to his movements; suddenly, he pulled out, fisting the base of his cock, staring me down with a ferocious gleem in his eye.

I must've looked a straight mess; my face like a crime scene, my clothes disheveled, covered in fluids and most of all - I was desperately grinding against my own feet, too focused on the glorious cock in front of me to notice the weakness of my own flesh. "Daddy?" I questioned, wincing at the grating of my own voice.

Without a word, the belt was tugged once more; in a set of movements just slightly north of acrobatic, I found myself laying on my back in the middle of the bed, my sweatpants suffering a haste demise in the corner of the room.

Bruce crawled atop me, leaving a trail of sloppy kisses on every inch of my skin he could reach, mouthing something inaudible into every pore of my body. As he drew closer, I discerned bitten-off phrases, stringing my desire into sticky, tangy mess at the apex of my thighs.

"My perfect baby girl," the words reached me; all tongue, he kissed me once more, arching into me as much as I arched into his hot grasp. A brief inspection of my face - he was satisfied with what he saw - and Bruce crawled back, settling in between my spread legs, breathing hot air on the lips of my sex still covered by a sopping wet piece of fabric.

"Oh fuck," I yelped, feeling him smooch it soundly, the hot wetness of his tongue penetrating the meagre lace barrier with ease.

He moved it aside anyway, with a single finger, giving my pussy a broad lick, moaning into my cunt like a man gone mad. It took a few more licks for him to feel sated enough to surface, all the while holding my hips down. I was so sensitive, I felt even the tiniest flicks to my clit, I was sure if I didn't cum then and there, I would explode.

"Such a pretty pussy, princess," his heavy breathing paused briefly. He nipped my thigh. "So wet, is that all for me?"

"Yes, yes, daddy," I rasped, pushing my cunt into his face, losing all shame and trepidation.

"So tasty," he continued the torture, outlining my lower lips before taking another nosedive right into it, swirling his tongue around every fold, sucking onto my clit.

Bruce ate my pussy until my thighs shook, until my core quivered and I could no longer hold back the choked, ragged screams starting somewhere in the low of my belly and coming out as unholy, all-consuming yowls filled with unadulterated lust.

"Louder for me, baby," he inhaled rapidly, and then, he sucked on my clit.

The world stopped, halted on it's axis, every muscle going rigid in my body and every nerve ending simultaneously coming alive. Faintly, I heard a chant, repeating two syllables over and over, it sounded like my voice - but I had no control over myself. All I could do was weakly grind my hips against Bruce's mouth, faltering when the crashing waves of my orgasm began to recede.

The infuriating overstimulation stopped; blinking hazily, I saw Bruce's eyes glimmer brown and green in front of my face. His nose and his chin was glistening with a thin coat of sticky fluid; disheveled and red, he looked a man on the verge of a revelation.

Something hot and blunt nosed at my cunt, bringing back the moment to me - I realized, with a great deal of impatience - how empty I felt. The decision was minute. "Daddy, fuck me, please, I want your cock," the words came easily.

"That's my girl," his eyes fluttered shut as the first inches squeezed through the snug of my cunt. I was sopping wet and as relaxed as I'd be, but even then, it was a stretch. "Good girl, good baby," the mumbled praise made me whine and my pussy clamp on his cock. "Relax, let daddy fill you up." Breathing through it, I consciously unwound myself around him, letting my palms rest freely on his shoulders. "Let daddy take care of you."

Like melted sugar, his husked words stuck to me inside and out. Short, sharp thrusts; Bruce was patiently burrowing himself inside of me, making his way to reach the deepest parts of me I didn't even know existed. His cock head pressed against something hard and spongy inside of me; stars burst behind my eyes I'd clamped shut on reflex.

I moaned weakly, tugging on his arm, pressing myself closer. It felt so, so good. Like a raw nerve had been exposed and he was stroking it, pushing that little switch with every stroke of his hips.

"I'm not gonna last," he muttered as once again, my cunt squeezed him snugly in place, just as greedy as I was to feel that tiny explosion spark up within me again.

"I want..." I panted. Bruce set in a punishing pace after that, a palm under my ass, squeezing it so hard there would definitely be bruising. I craved it, I needed to see the evidence this was not some elaborate fever dream. "I want... Daddy to fill me up," words came out garbled; it sounded like gibberish to my ears but Bruce - they spurred him on.

"Oh yeah?" That breathless, boyish cockiness was back in his voice again; despite how fucked out he sounded, I prepared myself for something truly out of this world. I just knew.

He sat back on his shins, dragging me by the hips with him, making me shiver and moan and twitch and clamp onto him again as his throbbing cock hit that special spot again. And again. And again.

"Look at me, baby," a hand on my belly and his eyes burning right through me. As they slid down, towards the apex of my thighs where he was still moving within me almost lazily, I saw it.

"Oh fuck," I couldn't utter much more than a two-syllabled profanity. There was a bulge in my belly, just above my pelvis, moving in rhythm with Bruce's hips. And then he pressed on it and I-

Something, someone, somewhere was screaming. The noise was loud and pitched, but even then, I could barely hear it though the neverending waves of bliss that enveloped my whole being. Gold and silver at the edges of my rapidly darkening vision; I was drowning in something that smelled and felt like Bruce. The safety of his arms, the warmth of his heated body, the rapid snapping of his hips-

Oh.

"I'm gonna, fuck," the last word was but a ghost of a human speech. Growling low and filthy, Bruce leaned into my ear, his breath hot and moist. "Mine," his hips stuttered, his cock nestled deep, the sensation bordering on painful, forcefully extracted pleasure. It throbbed with every spurt of his seed; each one felt like a solid punch in the gut to my abused pussy.

"Daddy," I mewled, my body jerking away from him but my mind and my soul yearning for more. His rapidly softening flesh made the idea of being separated unbearable.

"S'good, s'my good girl, m'so proud," he mumbled, looking slightly disoriented as he removed himself from me, immediately pressing me to his side and interwining any free, flailing limbs.

We laid in silence, each of us slowly coming back to Earth after the completely unreal experience we just had. I didn't know what to think, didn't know what to do as the realization set in, the post-orgasmic haze giving way to a sudden rush of clarity.

"I can hear you overthinking," Bruce's voice was fond.

Before I could muster up the courage to snark back, the divided doors opened, one very concerned Tony Stark standing there, armed with a tranquilizer gun in one hand and a pack of cookies in the other. His mouth, previously open to (probably) yell at us, remained as open when his eyes had registered the scene in front of him.

I stared at Bruce. Bruce stared at Tony.

"The noise," he offered in the way of explanation, dangling the pack of cookies, looking, for once - speechless. He recovered quickly, however, even if the remark was a thin ghost of his usual sass: "You pick the nerd over me? I'm hurt," he scoffed in mock irritation, although I was pretty sure I saw some satisfaction in there, too.

Bruce looked at me. I looked at Bruce.

A mischievous grin slowly crept up his face, an identical one beginning to appear on my own face seconds after.

"Hey, two nerds is better than one, right?" My response is what did it; or, rather, it was the evidence of my previous throat-fucking clearly audible in my voice... Tony dropped the cookies and then, the tranq gun.

Bruce Banner taglist: @pilloclock @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @persephonehemingway @mostly-marvel-musings @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @sapphicnoodle69 @couldntbedamned @xoxabs88xox @marvelsbanner @tripleyeeet @tatestripedsweater @stuckybarton

[aliennopossumm]

Like Real People Do

Happy 11 months, @andromedaspace ! I love you more than words can describe

Pairing: currently platonic Analogical, future romantic Analogical

Warnings: some cursing, cult joke, one line mentions bullying, “nerd” used affectionately, some of Vee’s teasing makes Logan upset but xe comforts them, brief blood mention, anxiety

Characters: Logan Sanders, Virgil Berry

Character notes: autistic nonbinary Logan [they/them], autistic trans Virgil [xe/xem]

Fic summary: As they usually do, Logan adventure’s into the forest. But when they explore somewhere they haven’t been before, they meet somebody new

1,795 words 10,235 characters

Logan, despite how well they behaved academically, was never one for following orders. Whether it was pirating a video game, or staying up until 2am on a school night, they didn't mind bending a few rules. More often than not, as well, they weren't caught. Their rule breaking wasn't confined to their own apartment either, occasionally exploring the forest by their highschool, staying out ten minutes to several hours too late. No matter what weather or time, they loved to walk through the trees that towered over their, now seemingly small, self. Nature was so fascinating to them. Books about plants and animals were scattered in their room, as well as writing in a journal about their favourite parts of the world.

They brought along the book on this particular day, tucked away safely in their messenger bag, along with pens, coloured pencils and other essentials. Wind barreled through the trees and their hair, making Logan subconsciously pull their hoodie closer to their skin. It was surprisingly cold for an average windy day, possibly too cold. Logan mentally pinned it down on being close to water, taking a seat next to a large, moss-covered rock. Whilst humming along to the sound of the birds, they started to remove their journal and stationary from their bag to comment on the plants around them. They opened the book to about three-quarters through, jotting the date down on a clean page. It was starting to become difficult to find new information, laying the book open on the dirt in front of them. A small, but happy, sigh escaped their mouth, turning to the rock behind them and starting to inspect the moss, their pen balanced in their mouth.

Hardly any sound surrounded them now, only quiet chirps and now softer wind being heard. Logan looked back behind them, where-

"Oh..?" Logan breathed, now slightly concerned at the lack of their book. It wasn't as if the wind blew it away, the pencils were much lighter than the journal, and yet they were in the exact same place. Attempting to not panic, they looked to the lake first, then to the tree's, before finally looking up.

"Looking for this?" Logan gasped shakily, finding their book in the hands of a stranger.

"Give- give it back!" It became embarrassingly obvious Logan had never been in a situation even slightly similar to this one.

The stranger, dressed in dark, just laughed softly, "what even is this-" they shut the book, the only thing on the cover being a name and a small yellow, white, purple and black flag, "Logan?"

"It's a journal, now give it back!" Despite their tone attempting to be intimidating, Logan still sat on their knees, seemingly shaking. "Who... who even are you!?"

"Well, I know your name, so it's only fair if you know mine," they jumped down from where they perched on a tree branch, starting to walk over, "it's Virgil. Don't laugh."

"Why would I... I laugh?" Logan's voice was now unmasking their anxiety, watching as Virgil moved closer. Along with their dark black clothes, the way they walked only made them look more bat-like.

Virgil shrugged, crouching in front of them, "people can be rude. You're alone in a forest, you probably know that well enough." They squinted their eyes slightly at the anxious person, "but you don't look like an outcast."

"Look closer at the cover," they mumbled, biting their lip slightly. Logan turned their head away, but kept their eyes focussed on the odd stranger. Virgil did as prompted.

"It just says Logan Sanders? That isn't a weird name," it slightly surprised Logan that a nice comment escaped their lips.

They took the journal from Virgil, poking at the flag, "Nonbinary."

"Ah."

"Yeah," they started to pack away their stuff, "just call me a name. I'm leaving. This is obviously your turf."

Virgil gently grabbed their wrist, "no. I didn't mean it like that, I'm just dumb and-" they sighed, unzipping the black and purple patched hoodie with their free hand and pulling one side back to reveal a trans patch on their chest. "Xe/xem. My dumbass just didn't process the flag."

What felt like a boulder of anxiousness was lifted off their chest - this was somebody in their community. Of course, that doesn't make xem an inherently good person, but it helped Logan feel safer.

"That's valid. They/them," Logan anxiously held out their hand. Is this how people introduce each other?

Xe looked at the awkward hand, "are you sure you're not a part of a forest cult and this is a blood pact?"

As if Logan was literally invited to said imagery cult, they let out an almost anxious gasp. Virgil's teasing smirk started to fade, "I'm kidding, L. You just don't know how to socialise." Xe gently shook their hand.

"That's- well-" Logan tried to gather words to defend themselves before just sighing, "yeah, you're correct. I don't."

Yet again, the forest fell silent, bar the sound of the wind. By this point, Virgil let go of their arm and hand, moving back by a foot or two. Logan took this as a sign to silently unpack their bag yet again, gently laying their beloved possessions back onto the dirt. Xe glanced at the bag. "Got anything else in there?"

Logan couldn't help but interpret this as a taunt, lowering their head to focus on finding today's page in their journal, "just general stuff." They didn't look back up, still sorting through the papers, until they felt a gentle hand on their shoulder. Even a gesture as simple as that made their soul melt in the best way possible, making them crack the first smile Virgil saw of them.

"Hey, L, I was being genuine. What do you have in there?" Xe smiled back, showing sharp teeth.

Trying to not focus on how attractive that was, they nodded and pulled the bag between the two of them. Virgil let go of them, sitting opposite Logan.

"You probably now think whatever's in here would be amazing, but it's really not," Logan frowned a little at the thought of letting their new possible friend down, opening the bag wider so they could both gaze in. "It's really just essentials other than what's already out - food, water, cellphone, nature books. There's some small scissors in one of the closed pockets in case I need a sample for something. I rarely test on plants, and never on animals, but sometimes it can be pleasant to just own a part of nature." They froze up slightly once the ramble escaped their mouth, "Oh- I'm sorry for speaking so much, Virgil."

The taller one just smiled, "no, no, don't apologise. I like hearing about all your nerd ramblings, it's sorta... sweet, how much you care."

They nodded, a small smile cracking onto their face again. "Thank you. Do you uh- do you have anything in your..."

"I don't have a bag, if that is what you're asking," xe chuckled a little, inspecting the book labeled 'Common Berries and Mushrooms', "most of my stuff is kept in the jacket. Same stuff as you, mostly. Just replace books with crystals and your journal with headphones."

Logan didn't know whether to question xem about the crystals or what kind of mystical jacket could contain all those things, resulting in them blurting out the gibberish of "how crystal fit."

Xe chuckled at them, "you're adorable, L. The jacket was modified to fit more shit, deeper pockets and that. And I work with crystals, if that's what you were trying to ask." They nodded in understanding, breathing out what sounded like 'fascinating'. "So, what brings you to the forest?"

Trying to gather themselves again, Logan cleared their throat and starting to flick through one of their several books, "I find nature amazing. How a single bug could run the entire forest... it truly is beautiful. I like coming down to the forest, usually after school or dinner, and just walk around, commenting on everything I see - new or known. I love learning. I hadn't been to this part of the forest before, I tend to turn right when entering, but this time I chose the left path."

Nodding along, Virgil listened intently to another one of their infodumps, which ended in xem learning new information about the forest as well. Xe couldn't even blame Logan for finding the forest interesting once xe heard it from their perspective. In all honesty, it made xem want to learn more so they can have genuine conversations about it, as right now it was similar to Logan literally talking to a plant. The ramble continued for almost twenty more minutes, Virgil warming up to asking questions and even making a few notes in xyr phone about this all. It slowly started to form into a proper conversation, eventually leading Logan to politely question the crystals xe carried, which in turn led them to dedicating an entire page to the rocks.

By the time both had worn themselves out with talking, Virgil smiled at the orange and purple sky, "I think it's getting quite late... do you need help packing your things up?" In the time they were infodumping, they also shared a picnic of sorts, leaving a lot more mess than Logan usually had at the end of their forest sessions.

"No, I'm alright..." They smiled, starting to gently stack the large informative books at the bottom of the bag, so they would not crush anything else. "Thank you for this, Virgil, it was nice to talk to somebody."

"Virge."

"Mh?" Logan looked up, Virgil appearing half-blurred as their glasses had slightly fallen down.

Xe chuckled, pushing the glasses up for them with what seemed like a fountain pen, "call me Virge, it's what my friends call me."

Blushing at the gesture, Logan went back to packing their bag, "we're friends?"

"Of course, I don't sit in the forest for hours with strangers," Virgil smiled warmly, the sound of pen scratching being heard as the rest of the forest seemingly fell into quiet. The sound stopped, "well, I better get going back to my dads. I'll see you around, nerd."

As Logan looked back up, xe was already in the tree's. They chuckled softly, "bye Virgil- Virge." After a few more minutes of rearranging their items, the bag was now almost fully packed. Logan took their journal from the ground, about to close it but noticing some new writing. It was in bright purple pen and scruffy handwriting, standing out amongst the neat, black text on the rest of the page.

"Call me - +1-541-555-0130"

They smiled gently, shutting the book and placing it at the top of their bag. Maybe they should.

[lavalampelfchild]

Lava’s Art Masterpost

Hey, all!  Welcome to my art masterpost!  I have no idea if this is a thing that is done typically for art, but oh well, I like organizing things, so here we are!  What you’ll find here is mostly Dragon Age, with a few non-DA pieces in there, and there’s a range of styles I like to use, depending on my mood.  But a lot of what you’ll see will most likely combine lineart with some other form of coloring/shading.

Feel free to browse at your leisure, and I hope anyone who stumbles upon this enjoys what they find! :D And thank you to anyone who sees this and likes, or reblogs, or even just stops by to peruse a bit!  

All that said, away we go!

Digital Portraits:

1. Portrait of Nameless Woman, 2020 - This one is just an experiment with a watercolor brush that I did.  It’s not anatomically perfect, but I enjoyed playing around with shading.

2. Sketch of Aja Amell, 2020 - This one is basically sketch practice with my Amell~  Not really the most expressive pictures, but it’s a start toward drawing her more expressively.  Full disclosure: Aja is one of those OCs of mine that I have had trouble with deciding on a definitive appearance for several pictures, and I really want to work on upping my level of consistency when drawing her.

3. Long-Haired Fenris, 2020 - Exactly what it sounds like; this was for practice drawing Fenris’s features (I love how distinct they are), but with long hair because I am weak for it.  This one was a fun piece to shade, and mixing the stylized lineart that I normally use with a greyscale shading spectrum was really enjoyable.

4. Portrait of Ilorin Lavellan, 2016 - This is an oldie.  Basically practicing expressions, and it is technically a WIP, but I’m still very happy with how the shading turned out, especially because this is actually (aside from the unfinished hair) one of the more minimal pieces I’ve done in terms of lineart  It’s still there, and it still shapes the flow of the picture in some ways, but it also ends up flowing with the shading instead of standing out next to it, which I like.  (Both styles are good, though, and I love seeing other artists try both too.)

5. Old Portrait of Aja Amell, 2016 - Much older picture I did of Aja; she... honestly looks very little like the newer one, I think, and that consistency is something I’m still working on, but this one was the first picture of Aja with that particular hairstyle I drew.  What I like about this picture is how young she looks; it fits with her image as a fresh and sheltered Circle mage who’s only about 20 years old at the time of DAO.

6. Old Portrait of Trilyn, 2016 - They very first piece of art I posted to tumblr~ It’s not exactly how I envision Trilyn anymore, but it was still very fun to draw, and helped me get a feel for drawing him in the future. 

Dynamic Movement Pictures/”Moment’s in Time”:

1. Tabris in Arl’s Estate, 2020 - TW: blood.  I am super proud of this one.  My ultimate goal is to draw all of my Warden DAO OCs, and I could not believe I’ve never drawn my Tabris, and so here she is.  This was, in large part, practicing expressions because I absolutely love art that depicts characters in motion, or capturing some kind of expression.

2. Velyn in the Rain, 2017 - This one was actually based on some art that I saw in a Teen Wolf fic!  It was an experiment with a more expressive style (and one of the first pieces I did without lineart left in the finished version) and it was a huge step out of my comfort zone.  But overall, I am extremely happy with how it turned out.

3. Jem Nocking an Arrow, 2016 - And here is the lineart version.  This was entirely an excuse to draw my DAI baby, Jem, and to do a cool archer pose because archers are my fav, and I love characters in motion.

4. Solas Teaching Trilyn Fade Magic, 2016 - This one was a painterly picture that was also (like the Velyn picture) something which I tried to keep lineart out of.  Overall, I am proud of a lot of parts of the pic, but I think I would definitely go back over it and change a few things now if I had the patience.

5. Trilyn Closeup WIP, 2016 - TW: injury, blood, mention of abuse in the author’s note.  A lot of early pictures I have are of my OC, Trilyn, and this is one of my absolute favorites.  His entire upper body is technically in the picture, but I hadn’t finished rendering it yet, so this was what I posted.  And it was an experiment with a cross-hatching style with the pencil tool for some texture, with air brush shading and a blurring tool.  It’s a style I had fun playing around with!

6. Trilyn Blood Ritual, 2016 - TW: blood, injury (the slight cut used to supply the ritual with blood).  This one was definitely a sort of “captured moment” from a backstory I gave Trilyn, and I think what I was really going for was an atmospheric piece that could fit with any potential fic I wanted to write for Trilyn.  And then it ended up being practice for extreme lighting/shading techniques, and drawing the blood and the gross mass of demon ichor (or whatever the heck that is) turned out to be highlights of making the piece for me.

Art + Text:

1. Freedom and Control, 2020 - TW: scars, but very difficult to see.  This one was ambitious for me!  It started originally just as Solas and my Tal-Vashoth OC, Saara, facing each other, because I love the dynamic I’ve built for them in my head, but then it turned into an attempt at a tarot-esque background, and just sorta grew from there... Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out, especially with how Solas and Saara themselves turned out.  The version you can actually see a larger view is here.  

2. Marianna and Delia Codex and Art, Pt. 1, 2020 - I love writing my own codex entries, first off, and I love combining art with text to create a (hopefully) seamless work.  This work was an attempt to flesh out these OCs of mine with both art (because unique facial structures are hard for me to get down, but so important regardless) and text (because writing~).  I think it turned out well overall, but there are elements of the portraits that I might at some point touch up a bit.

3. Marianna and Delia Codex and Art, Pt. 2, 2020 - Part 2, with what I refer to as a “DAI Outfit Change” because I have always loved seeing fans show their own OCs as they look in DAO, DA2, and then finally DAI.  So I absolutely wanted to jump on that bandwagon myself.  The skin tones are a little off (and I’m sorry about that!) because I was playing with the watercolor brush at that point, and it dilutes the colors I use.  Still working to figure that out, but I was very happy with the overall lineart and structures of the faces.

4. Alistair/Aja Amell Picture with a Blurb, 2017 - Ooooold, old, old, old, OLD!  I still love the art, and I’m soooo happy with how the interaction between Alistair and Aja turned out (drawing kisses is extremely difficult for me; I always end up creating a distorted weird lip-creature, instead of realistically puckered lips...).  I’m not as happy with the blurb that went with it?  At that point, I was still very much figuring out my own DAO worldstate, and the characterization for everyone, so, eh.  Take it with a grain of salt!

Unfinished Costume Designs:

1. Ancient Elvhen Armor with Dwarven Influence, 2018 - People who do costume design work are amazing and mystical beings, and I wish I could do what they do.  This was an attempt at merging the Keeper robes from DAI with a more dwarven armor aesthetic, solely because I created an ancient elvhen character, Ceda, who was taken in by the Cad’halash dwarves mentioned in the Witch Hunt dlc, and I wanted this character to have a mix of the elven style of armor and the dwarven style.  I’m overall decently happy with it, but there’s still that persistent level of self-criticism present.

2. Herald of Andraste Outfit WIP, 2016 - This was a very old picture, not one I showed around a lot, but the idea for this was entirely born of my intense interest in how fashion and outfit designs could be used to create a symbolic image for the Herald of Andraste.  In general, I love the combination of ceremonial armor with long and flowing cloth, so that was what I went for here.  I’m still actually very proud of how this came out, and headcanon something similar for my Herald in my canon DAI worldstate.

Pencil Sketches:

1. Quick Saara Sketch, 2019 - TW: saarebas mouth scars.  Exactly what it says; very quick sketch of Saara I did in a small notebook I carry around with me.  This was basically a test for myself to see if I could manage to draw Saara with the features and facial structure I envisioned for her without needing to use a lot of references.

2. Mass Effect Character Sketch; Jesse, 2018 - Similar reason for drawing this one as the above Saara sketch!  With these characters, I love sometimes the way they can turn out with the specific character creator used for them, and when I draw them, I enjoy trying to create a definitive look for them using what I get from the CC, and my own knowledge of Hooman Faces.

3. Saara Sketch, 2017 - TW: saarebas mouth scars.  A more detailed sketch of Saara than the one above, and one I definitely put more time into overall.  It’s currently the profile picture I’m using for ao3, and is the definitive go-to reference picture I use whenever imagining Saara in a fic, or for other Saara pics I make.  I am extremely proud of this picture, and feel like I should work in graphite more often.  It’s such fun, and the texture is so nice to look at.

4. Sketch of Nameless Alamarri Woman, 2017 - This was a sketch I did of what I envisioned some Alamarri tribes to look like; I used artistic depictions of Gaul tribes and hairstyles for inspiration, and have used this as a go-to reference for my version of Alamarri tribes.  Nothing super notable about this one, but I really liked the way the shape of her face turned out.

Events and Gifts:

1. Another Scar, 2020 - TW: blood, injuries, gore.  The most recent piece of art on the list, and a gift for @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold; featuring sisterly love between Rica and fem!Brosca, which was her requested prompt.  This was a tough piece for me because of the difficulty with the lighting I dealt with.  For some reason, that one particular element of it gave me so much trouble.  Overall, I’m very happy with how it turned out, though, especially the skin tones of the sisters; Brosca I always sort of like as having this greyish, more gaunt look to her, while Rica I like seeing with a darker, richer, and warmer tone to her.  

2. A Very Cousland Christmas!, 2019 - This was for a holiday exchange for a server, and I drew a friend’s Cousland (Elissa, the girl on the left) with my Cousland (Gazza, the girl on the right).  I love kid-fic, and I love kid-art, and so I decided... baby Cousland art!  Drawing kid proportions was the toughest part, I recall, and I thiiiink it turned out well, and I’m still quite proud of it overall.  Elissa’s design came entirely from my friend, but I added the holly~

3. Exchange Gift with Dis Brosca and Mabari, 2018 - This was an exchange gift for @fanfoolishness, using her lovely Dis Brosca, and was my first real attempt at backgrounds... I struggled with the coherence of the foreground and background a bit, but I’m still very proud of how it turned out, especially with the colors I had to work with.  What I also really enjoyed working with was the lighting and the expression on Dis’s face.  Backlit subjects are always fun to play around with!

4. Inktober Picture, “Deep”, 2017 - TW: scars, injury, mentions of abuse in the author’s note/attached dialogue snippets.  This was for an Inktober prompt (the only one I’ve ever done, sadly... because I am bad with deadlines...), and again features Trilyn.  Trilyn’s backstory has him a former slave in Tevinter, and a lot of the early works I do for him are sort of deep-dives into his life there.  It’s all meant to be an exploration of the things he endures, and then those moments when he overcomes it all and takes back his own autonomy and self.  This art is definitely provocative, and I can understand if not everyone likes it, but to me, I just wanted to show just what he faces (without glorifying it) before showing the moment of his own triumph.

5. Christmas Holiday Picture with my Brosca and a Friend’s Amell, 2017 - This was a piece of art drawn first by a friend of mine, @nanahuatli~  She drew the Amell, the background, the mistletoe, etc.  All I did was add my Brosca to the mix to finish the image.  It was a lot of fun to do, 1) because it was fun trying to match her style so that the picture looked cohesive, 2) because I love doing collabs with friends, and 3) because it was just such a fun thing to imagine my surly short Brosca, looking at this weird plant/fungus/thing dangling over some puckering human!  It was an absolute joy to do this collab with her!  

6. OC Kiss Week Pic of Jem and Saara, 2017 - TW: saarebas mouth scars.  A spur-of-the-moment thing meant to demonstrate just what kind of dynamic my OC, Jem, has with my other OC, Saara (both of whom are members of Leliana’s network in DAI).  This was a very quick picture (deadlines...) and was mostly just to have fun drawing these two characters interacting, and to see if I could make them look like themselves.  I think I did a decent job with it overall, especially with Jem’s kissy-face!  (Again... drawing kisses are the bane of my existence, although hands and feet take a close second.)

[cashmerescarf]

Scarves Cashmere For Girls

To the holders you may apply to exercise your rights envisioned by artwork. 7 of the Italian Law "D.Lgs. 196/03", talked about in part 6 of this letter. I declare that I even have read the data on private knowledge protection and I conform to the processing of my personal information. We’re delighted to supply an Order, Collection & Delivery Service to shop our whole Food Market range. From delicious recipes to in-store occasions, and unique promotions to fabulous present inspiration, there's lots occurring within the great world of Avoca. Each country has a different worth threshold, if the entire order value is over the miniumn threshold, charges could apply discover more information here.

The Women’s Foundation Nepal was based in 1988 by 45 college students as a non-revenue, non-governmental group to help girls who've been violated or persecuted. From it emerged the cooperative “Samajik Sip Bikash Udhyog” .

Sign up for e mail updates on the newest Burberry collections, campaigns and movies. Our customer service is on the market on workdays between 9AM and 5PM to reply any questions you might have. Sign up for the REPEAT e-newsletter and receive 2 times per week an email to remain up to date with the newest cashmere scarf appears, new collections and particular offers and promotions. Sign up and obtain free US transport on your first order. Made in Scotland where the cashmere commerce dates again to the early 1800s. Our Grade A Cashmere is a long fiber that has a light-weight but warm feel.

Maheela supports this cooperative to which eighty two woman and 4 males belong. As an entrepreneur who helps women discovering meaningful employment in Nepal and who makes the WFN extra financially independent. When purchasing a shawl, please note that it's a certainly one of a form. Deviations within the measurement, colour and thread dimension are at all times possible and due to this fact no reason for grievance.

Handmade Natural Plain Orange Cashmere Scarf Pashmina Scarf Shawl Wrap Tremendous Soft Heat Unisex Nepalese Best For Presents

Avoca.com makes use of cookies to reinforce your browsing experience and to create a secure and effective web site for our prospects. By using this website you agree that we could retailer and entry cookies on your units, until you have disabled cookies. The final fall-winter companion, regardless of personal style. Our generously sized scarf is woven from the best Cashmere-Merino wool mix. With the luxurious heat from the Merino and incomparable softness from the Cashmere, you'll be begging summer to stay away. Irresistibly delicate cashmere scarves woven with our Thomas Burberry Monogram and check. Sophisticated scarves in superbly delicate cashmere by REPEAT caress your neck, hold you heat and pep up any outfit.

Wrap your self in pure luxurious cashmere scarves this season. Dreamily gentle to the touch and ideal for teaming with cashmere jumpers for those chilly days out. Featuring our most liked cashmere wraps & snoods, our cashmere scarves are certain to turn into your wardrobe favorite. See our cashmere cardigans assortment for more ways to put on your scarf. Embrace the soft and light-weight touch of pure fibers and uncover the number of scarves for ladies in cashmere, wool, silk and the other precious fibers from the collection. Our luxurious collection of women’s cashmere scarves, snoods and shawls effortlessly mix warmth, comfort and class.

If you do not need to just accept all cookies or want to study more about how we use cookies, click "Customise cookies". With the purchase of our Maheela scarves you assist the Women’s Foundation Nepal , which permits the weavers a residing wage. Maheela is a piece of development cooperation, promotes good working circumstances and proves that exclusive products and truthful working situations are straightforward to reconcile. By creating an account with our store, you will be able to move by way of the checkout process quicker, retailer multiple delivery addresses, view and track your orders in your account and extra. Personalise our cashmere scarves in an array of colours with as much as three initials. All orders are despatched within 1-2 working days from our warehouse in Denmark. Due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19, transport carriers worldwide are experiencing delays.

Softly flowing viscose scarves create thrilling notes. Discover classically lengthy scarves and trendy shawls, both with or without fringes. A stunning scarf is best set off towards a determine-hugging pullover or prime. Bundling up in a soft scarf is considered one of life’s best pleasures, and we’ve got it lined with cashmere, lightweight organic cotton and brilliant prints. We use cookies and related tools to reinforce your buying expertise, to supply our companies, perceive how prospects use our services so we are able to make improvements, and display ads, including curiosity-based mostly ads. Approved third parties also use these instruments in reference to our show of advertisements.

If you can't return it or return the acquired items to us in a deteriorated condition, you should compensate us for the worth. This solely applies if the deterioration is because of dealing with the item, which matches beyond testing and making an attempt out the respective goods, as is possible and customary in a store. The identical means of payment that you used in the authentic transaction will be used for this refund, except expressly agreed otherwise with you; on no account will you be charged any fees for this refund. If the cooperative generates revenue, it flows into the WFN applications and makes it financially extra unbiased. The WFN can provide authorized advice and legal assistance in addition to a safe home for girls and youngsters and supplies help in emergency conditions by granting small loans and emergency help. From the shopping for of the yarn to the top product, the entire process takes about 5 to 7 days! The finished scarf may have gone via 15 individual operations.

From premium cashmere scarves and temperature-regulating HEATTECH, to vibrant checked prints and muted tones, we’ve got every little thing you’ll need when the temperature drops. Opt for a fringe-trimmed stole layered over your knitwear.

<h2>Pure Luxuries London Pink Cambridge Cashmere Scarf</h2>

All of our workers are following authorities tips and working safely, and we thank you for your endurance and understanding that your order might take a little longer than traditional to be despatched. Subscribe and be the first to hear about new clothing, exclusive cashmere offers, and more. More detailsOpens a pop-upClick to search out out the transport and returns options for the chosen item.

Disable, erase cookies in addition to request to evaluation, amend or delete your knowledge via our privateness policy. a) The product images might differ from the looks of the delivered merchandise, especially with regard to paint and measurement. In particular, modifications within the look of the merchandise can happen after the producer's vary has been renewed. Claims for defects don't exist insofar because the modifications are cheap for the customer. It is made individually and woven by hand on traditional looms in Kathmandu, Nepal. Maheela scarves are produced in an environmentally pleasant method and comply with well being, social, social and ethical standards.

Made in our Scottish mills with the world’s finest cashmere fibres, it is incredibly soft, warm, and lustrous. We imagine in great quality, lengthy-lasting clothes which you will like to wear for years to come. With over 30 years of experience, we only provide 100% pure cashmere.

Fantastic Cashmere Merino Scarf

We are at present working on the website to give you the best expertise. Be the primary to receive news and new product data, and get entry to our private events. You can then select the pictures to revisit the gadgets. After the cookie banner has been displayed you'll be accepting Zerogrey's Cookie Policy, their settings and use by clicking on any a part of the display or scrolling the page to see further content. You may select to take away these cookies at any second by way of the websites referred to in the “Cookie management” paragraph or by using the tools for disabling them shown above. Most internet browsers allow some person management of most cookies via the browser settings.

Personalisation choices can be found on all our cashmere scarves. Whether you’re shopping for a present or a deal with for yourself, why not match the headscarf with our cashmere hats and glovesfor luxurious safety from cold weather. Whether you’re simply wrapping up heat or looking for a ending flourish on your outfit, our assortment of stoles and scarves for ladies is bound to tick your bins.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser. For information on changing these settings, please look for a “assist” operate within the browser or visit However, you might expertise some inconvenience in your use of our website if cookies are disabled. For example, we may not be capable of recognise your computer or cell system and you might have to log in every time you visit our website.

Scarf Kind

Select the iconWish List buttonnext to our products to save lots of them to your Wish List. I comply with obtain promotional emails about merchandise, services and events as described within the Privacy Policy. I understand that Johnstons of Elgin will monitor once I open and interact with these emails and that I might unsubscribe at any time. I wish to obtain communications about Johnstons of Elgin merchandise, services, shops, events and issues of cultural interest. Our greatest-selling Cashmere Scarf is the perfect method to complete any outfit.

No mixing of fibres, simply a hundred% in every little thing we do. For more information, consult the Eric Bompard private knowledge safety policy. Created in several textures, Eric Bompard scarves could be worn all year long. Opt for woven or knitted cashmere to protect you from the chilly and winter winds, then lightweight and ethereal cashmere voile for these mid-season chills. Send me unique offers, unique present ideas, and personalised tips for buying and selling on Etsy. Be the first to know about new collections, promotions and our new favorite things.

Our scarf is densely woven from an opulent Merino-Cashmere mix, combining the heat and adaptability of Merino wool with the delicate softness of Cashmere wool. It's the product of seventy years of expertise, woven, minimize and packed completely in Prato, Italy, in a factory that is been run by father and son since 1959. Whether it’s a women’ or men’s cashmere scarf you’re after, our expertly crafted accessories add an effortlessly stylish touch to any wardrobe. From traditional shades of navy, black, grey, and red to daring pinks and yellows as well as tartans and striking ombre designs, every bit in our assortment matches type with sustainability. Add a touch of luxurious and comfort to your wardrobe this season with our vary of cashmere scarves. From beautiful patterns to basic stripes and bold monochromatic colours, discover the proper rigorously selected range of cashmere scarves for ladies, utilizing the best fabric to melt your look when you have to layer up.

We are pleased to let our customers know that we are offering an Order, Collection & Delivery Service to shop our entire Food Market vary. Looking for the proper reward to point out someone you care? All orders dispatched outside the EU are despatched free of any Irish taxes. Products delivered to locations outdoors the EU may be subject to taxes, fees, levies or different charges, which are imposed by the international locations local legislation.

The social media platform will document that you've got accomplished this. Analytics and Performance Cookies These cookies are used to collect information about visitors to our site and the way customers use our web site. We use this data to assist operate our website extra effectively, to gather broad demographic information, monitor the level of activity on our site and improve the site.

We remind you that the assortment, providers and prices could change based on the chosen nation. For extra information on our Confidentiality Policy click right here. The control of the information processing, the means of exercising the rights granted by the Italian Legislative Decree 196/2013 and the contact info for imposing those rights are all indicated in the privateness coverage. For more data, please see our Privacy Policy.

For instance, if you are delivery to the USA the value is $800, Canada is $20, and AU is $a thousand. N. Peal use cookies to raise person experience and the standard of this web site. By utilizing this web site, you consent to the usage of cookies. This web site uses cookies so that we can give you the most effective consumer experience attainable. Cookie information is saved in your browser and performs features corresponding to recognising you when you return to our website and serving to our group to understand which sections of the web site you find most interesting and helpful. We are utilizing cookies to provide the finest expertise on our web site. You must return the products to us unused and in their authentic situation and unique packaging.

These expenses vary depending on the product kind and the country the goods are shipped into. After viewing product element pages, look here to seek out a straightforward method to navigate back to pages you have an interest in. You’re seeing this ad based mostly on the product’s relevance to your search query. Our pricing is designed to raised mirror the craftsmanship and resources that go into the product. With a permanent assortment, selling directly to you, we're able to cut wholesale and keep away from sales, pricing our essentials proper - all year spherical. To fulfill our promise of delivering distinctive service we use Cookies, pixel tracking and anonymized web site tracking.

By getting into your e-mail tackle, you agree to obtain Brunello Cucinelli communications regarding the brand’s collections, information, and particular content. Enjoy a personalised experience and uncover all of the unique companies.

You can find out more details about Google Analytics cookies here and about how Google protects your knowledge right here . You can prevent the use of Google Analytics relating to your use of our web site by downloading and installing the browser plugin out there right here . Functionality Cookies These cookies permit our site to remember selections you make if you use our web site. The objective of these cookies is to give you a more personal experience and to avoid you having to re-choose your preferences every time you visit our website. Cookies are small text recordsdata that contain information that's transferred to the onerous drive of your pc or mobile device. We could use each session cookies and protracted cookies to provide you with a more private and interactive expertise on our site.

Sign up to obtain the latest news from Liberty by way of email, together with product launches, occasions and special provides. By signing up you conform to Liberty's Privacy Policy. Enter the e-mail address related with your account, and we’ll send you an e mail to reset your password. We are at present accepting and transport online orders.

[litterpuffin2]

Does Fat Freezing Work?

Fat Freezing & Coolsculpting In Cambridge & Suffolk.

Content

Every Little Thing You Require To Find Out About Cryolipolysis (fat Freezing) Treatment Of The Chin.

What Takes Place If I Put On Weight After Coolsculpting?

Cryotherapy (cryolipolysis) Training.

" I was very nervous before my therapy yet I need not have actually been. Emma was fantastic at placing me secure as well as the process was pain free. " Emma was able to help me eliminate my podge on my belly that I had not been able to change with years of diet programs or workout. It's not just the news as well as celebrity evaluations that back up the advantages of cryolipolysis. The scientific principles behind cryolipo were uncovered by Dermatologists Dieter Manstein, MD, PhD and R. Rox Anderson, MD, of the Wellman Facility for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Healthcare Facility in Boston, a training associate of Harvard Medical Institution. The High Cliff Residence Clinic is a completely independent facility and not associated with any rival Laser Lipo Clinics or service providers.

The chance for rejuvenation - Western Advocate

The chance for rejuvenation.

Posted: Wed, 10 Jun 2020 07:00:00 GMT [source]

" Through fitness center job and also dieting, it is exceptionally difficult to target particular locations to reduce weight, like, as an example, attempting to make your internal upper legs a little smaller sized. " Promptly after treatment, the location will obviously really feel colder however it seldom ices up solid," Alice says.

Whatever You Require To Find Out About Cryolipolysis (fat Freezing) Treatment Of The Chin.

CoolSculpting innovation utilizes regulated cooling down to target as well as kill only these fat cells. In addition to being FDA removed, CoolSculpting ® has as reputable safety and security and efficacy account, which is sustained by over 60 peer-reviewed papers on the CoolSculpting ® product.

The skin is safeguarded by a specifically designed cloth/ pad which has anti-freeze residential properties to ensure that the surface of the skin is securely protected. She described every little thing that was happening with my treatment prior to, during and also after. Various other services consist of inch-loss cavitation, laser lipolysis, skin tag/milia elimination as well as radio frequency skin tightening up. " We had a 74-year-old gentlemen from Yorkshire for treatment on his belly - he also travelled back once again to have actually even more treatment done," Alice tells. " Fat cells are impacted yet the skin isn't. Skin is very flexible, as well as is able to fit adjustments similar to this, so it does not leave a saggy pocket. The charm of this treatment, according to Alice, is that negative effects are really minimal as well as just include pinkness that lasts as much as an hour after the therapy.

What Occurs If I Gain Weight After Coolsculpting?

In other circumstances skin removal may be necessary to accomplish the most effective results. Cryolipolysis results Witney may entail tummy tuck where coolsculpting is unsuitable. In areas such as the internal arms and also upper legs, lipo with or without skin removal might be more suitable such as an arm lift or thigh lift. Paradoxical Adipose Hyperplasia-- a very rare negative effects which can cause a boost in fat in the cured location. Initially the therapist will certainly locate the location, paste the antifreeze membrane and also start with treatment for one hour, After the treatment you'll be able to leave as well as continue with your normal life. There are likewise possible fatal problems and negative adverse effects related to having liposuction.

We guarantee that all our new clients get the very same welcome as well as caring interest, whatever their individual demands. As the only additional component of our specialist solutions, we are also pleased to supply expert suggestions on nutrition as well as practical exercise routines. Your skin can feel numb for numerous days (a bit like if you have actually got a dead arm when you have actually been pushing it for too lengthy) yet the feeling will certainly return.

Cryotherapy (cryolipolysis) Training.

Cryolipolysis is a clinically tried and tested therapy with many clinical researches to verify its efficiency. Because we are relying on the body to remove the cells, customers can take anywhere between 6-12 weeks to start seeing the distinction. Adhering to the aftercare as well as way of life advice offered to you by your practitioner, customers obtain a typical outcome of 20% -45% reduction in the cured area. Patients frequently return to deal with the very same day after a CoolSculpting therapy is finished. Our skilled clinical team, led by specialist Paul Reddy, has supplied greater than 2 million treatments, a quantity that has actually enabled us to offer our solutions at obtainable as well as economical rates.

Our treatments are executed by trained professionals in over 100 facilities across the UK and numerous thousands extra worldwide. I ultimately plumped to have my top and also lower abdominal areas treated, where the fat that rests there giggles in the face of planks, crunches, as well as the TV-watching I do rather than either of those points. exhausted your other choices for diet and workout as well as still can't change specific pockets of fat, CoolSculpting can aid do the remainder of the work for you. Treatment time takes mins where you will certainly continue to be on the treatment bed. A clean and sterile gel pad is positioned over the treated area to protect the skin. The areas being dealt with are marked up and after that you will pick the treatment bed.

At Essex Laser Lipo our consultants are knowledgeable at using cutting-edge innovation to attain the body forms which our customers desire. Outcomes will certainly start to be noticeable after 2 or 3 weeks with the outcome in between 6-10 weeks. most popular LA Lipo Cryolipolysis Northamptonshire established customers is drawn from both sexes and across the board old, histories, and needs. Whilst we certainly give a particular niche solution, our clients themselves come from the broadest array.

Can you freeze your fat off at home?

CoolSculpting is known for “freezing” fat cells, but there's much more to the process. DIY CoolSculpting often involves ice cubes or other frozen materials. It's done in an effort to freeze fat cells. However, applying ice at home only freezes your skin and doesn't get rid of any fat cells.

Fat freezes at a higher temperature level than water, so there's no hiding from the fact that whichever area you're targeting with the treatment, it's going to feel a little cool. " You wont actually see or really feel fat in the toilet bowl. Although it's irreversible there is no damages to the surrounding cells". " Although it's long-term there is no damages to the bordering skin, it's simply a way of speeding up what is an all-natural procedure. You can also ask for an examination by means of video or face to face utilizing the Request an Examination switch below. An individualised costing will be supplied at the first consultation. You can consume as generally before, throughout as well as following the treatment. At first throughout the vacuum process people will certainly experience a sharp yank as well as stress.

https://wallingford.la-lipo.co.uk/before-after-cryolipolysis include swelling excruciating bruising, pain feeling numb minimal mobility as well as allergic reaction. The greatest results show up on clients with a BMI of 30 or below. To find out more on the advantages of CoolSculpting ® or to book a consultation, call.

New Harvard study fights fat with salty, icy injections - New Atlas

New Harvard study fights fat with salty, icy injections.

Posted: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]

[iturbide]

One of the things that upsets me about 3h’s writing is the existence of Edelgard’s siblings is actually dubious. She said she only became heir because all her other siblings were dead or insane. She wasn’t the heir or the spare yet no one else talks about her siblings. When an heir disappears, people talk. And it’s not like all the kids were the same age, there would’ve been several pregnancies. The only proof the kids exist is because Edelgard said it and she’s not above lying to others.

Okay, I have seen that theory before, and for as much as I take issue with Edelgard, I personally think that theory is complete bullshit.

[[MORE]]

Edelgard is a woman of remarkable composure.  Even before the timeskip, she is very cool, very guarded, showing minimal emotion (most of which seems to be for show, providing the expected response for the benefit of those around her).  There are only a handful of occasions where we see her slip, see her truly and deeply shaken -- and one of those times is associated with her speaking about her family.  I’m not going to deny that Edelgard is a very capable liar, but she was very obviously disturbed by the dream that brought on the conversation, and I don’t think even she could cobble together a lie that fast under those circumstances.

Also, let’s talk for a moment about just how Edelgard lies.  Her lies are primarily comprised of minor changes to information (”The Church used forbidden magic to destroy Arianrhod” only replaces the perpetrator, not the details), denials of knowledge (she says she has no knowledge of where Flayn is when she does), or omission of information (not telling Byleth that she’s the Flame Emperor despite having several opportunities to do so).  She’s not stupid: lies fabricated whole-cloth require careful construction, often require the same amount of repetition and practice a trained actor would require for a stage role, and in general are really hard to maintain.  Tailoring a lie from truth is much easier and caries significantly less risk.  Under the circumstances, I don’t think Edelgard could have concocted such a lie, and especially not such a powerful one.

It’s also worth mentioning that Lysithea describes an almost identical series of events taking place in Ordelia territory after House Hrym’s revolt:

Eighteen years ago, House Ordelia was involved in a civil conflict within the Empire. All we did was respond to a call for aid. We weren't involved politically. But once the rebellion was crushed, my family was held responsible for the aid we gave, and the Empire gained some sway over us as a result. At the time, the noble houses of the Alliance took a passive stance. No one lent aid to my family. As a result, some key officials within the family were killed, and people from the Empire were sent to replace them. Among those people were some mysterious mages. They were...unsettling, in a word. Skin pale as death. One after another, they captured and imprisoned the children of our household. They began performing terrible rituals on the children... Though it's probably more accurate to call them experiments.

With the Empire monitoring our every move, my parents could do nothing but watch in horror as all of this unfolded. One after another, the children died, until the only one left...was me. You know, my hair wasn't always this color. During their experiments, they'd been doing things with my blood. One morning, I awoke like this — a shock of white hair, all trace of pigment, gone.  Upon seeing me, the mages were delighted. They realized that their experiments had finally succeeded. Sure enough, they ran a test and saw that two Crests coexisted within me. Losing pigment from my hair wasn't the only loss. The mages informed me that my lifespan was now greatly shortened. Five more years at most. Perhaps less.

Shortly thereafter, the mages lost interest in me, and we never saw them in the Ordelia household again.

This is pretty much exactly what happened to Edelgard: young members of the household taken captive and experimented on by a mysterious group of masked mages, no aid from outside, parents forced to bear witness as their children died en masse.  Nobody calls bullshit on Lysithea’s story -- so why are people trying to call Edelgard a liar?  Lysithea and Edelgard’s B support doesn’t unlock until after Byleth makes the choice to side with Edelgard, and their C support makes no mention at all of the experiments, so Edelgard couldn’t have learned it from Lysithea and used it for herself.  The experiments on House Ordelia were the precursor to the experiments in Adrestia, and their loss of interest very likely ties in with them moving on to bigger things -- namely the Imperial lineage and their attempts to imbue the Crest of Flames within a Hresvelg heir.

And this ties into the next point: why nobody talks about it.  And that boils down to propaganda.

Propaganda relies very heavily on control of information.  And empires in general have an ongoing propaganda campaign related to their ruling families: that these are immensely powerful people blessed by gods, goddesses, saints, what have you, and ruling by divine right.  This is especially true in the Empire, where their imperial lineage traces its roots back to Wilhelm von Hresvelg, who forged a pact with Seiros.  Now, in the Empire, an absolute premium is placed on the presence of a Crest -- to the detriment of all else, including human life.  Hanneman’s sister lost her life and Mercedes’ family was ripped apart all because of the extreme Crest bias present in the Imperial territories.  But with Ionius, there was an even bigger issue: his ‘Divine Right to Rule’ is intrinsically linked to the Crest of Seiros, the physical proof of his bloodline’s pact with the Saint. 

And that bloodline is fading fast.

In Edelgard’s B+ support with Byleth, she says this:

My siblings and I were...we were imprisoned underground, beneath the palace.  The objective was to endow our bodies with the power of a Major Crest.  I have always possessed the Crest of Seiros, inherited through the Hresvelg bloodline.  But it was only a Minor Crest, and most of my siblings bore no Crest at all.  In order to create a peerless emperor to rule Fódlan, they violated our bodies by cutting open our very flesh.  Now here I stand, the fruit of that endeavor: Edelgard von Hresvelg! But that came at too high a price...the others were sacrificed.  Ours weren’t the only lives devastated by that terrible process.  Innocents died as well, without even knowing what they were dying for.  And there you have it, the truth of the Hresvelg’s Empire. 

Out of eleven children Ionius IX sired, only a few bore any kind of Crest (and we don’t know if they were even the Crest of Seiros).  The fact that Edelgard’s Crest was a Minor one rather than a Major one also seems to have been a point of contention.  Which makes sense: in a territory that relies so heavily on Crests as signs of legitimacy, having a Crest appear so infrequently in the Emperor’s progeny would be a frankly alarming sign of weakness.  So I would not be at all surprised if Ionius had been carefully controlling the information moving from the Imperial household to the wider Empire...such that they didn’t know how many kids he really had. 

Unlike the Kingdom, where Lambert only had one wife at any given time and whose pregnancies would therefore be talk of the Kingdom since she’s a public figure, the Empire allows (and perhaps even encourages) the use of consorts.  And immediately after being crowned, Ionius started seeking out suitable ones -- but their identities were not required to be public knowledge.  Sure, the wider Imperial household would have been aware, and it’s likely that the heads of some major noble houses with a presence in the palace knew, as well -- though even they may have been tight-lipped about it with their families to control the spread of information (and this has in-game precedence, given that Ferdinand von Aegir has no idea what happened with Hrym or why people hate his dad so much).  But the only Empire-wide announcements came with the birth of children who actually possessed Crests.  And even then, it’s entirely likely that Edelgard’s place in the line of succession might have been superseded had one of her younger siblings borne a Major Crest of Seiros.

(If this seems far-fetched, I think Alexei Romanov makes a striking point of comparison here: the youngest child and only son of the Romanov Dynasty, he was set to become the next Tsar of Russia -- because his hemophilia was a closely guarded state secret.  It might be common knowledge now, but the Russian public had no idea what was really wrong with him.)

Now, we don’t know a lot of details for this particular time period.  We know Edelgard had ten siblings, but we don’t know if Ionius kept trying to sire heirs and had no success (issues with impotency, miscarriages, etc) or stopped trying and took a different tack.  What we do know is that he instigated a series of reforms meant to concentrate the Emperor’s power.  We don’t know why he did it, but it’s entirely possible that he was trying to look out for his kids and pave the way for more radical reforms that would do away with the Crest bias as a form of choosing ‘legitimate’ heirs to the throne.  But whatever his plan might have been, it backfired terribly on him and led to the Insurrection of the Seven, where the Emperor was stripped of all power and his kids were subjected to Twisted experiments, likely initiated when they replaced Lord Arundel and had him float the idea to Duke Aegir -- and once again, that control of information even within families is out in force, because the nobles now controlling the empire probably don’t want it to be common knowledge that they’re committing atrocities for the sake of making a perfect figurehead.

In the end, every one of Edelgard’s siblings died.  And because the people of the Empire didn’t know about them?  She can’t even mourn them publicly.  The Empire has no inkling of the great tragedy that occurred within House Hresvelg, and that only further fuels the lone survivor’s desire to make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again.

[galmaborn]

okay so here’s that promised post about 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐔𝐀𝐍 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏/𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 but it’s under a cut because it got crazy long & no one wants all that on their dash.    not all of these traditions are still around, but some are & others are slightly altered.

𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐘𝐋𝐄𝐒 & 𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐃𝐒.    some of the traditions about hairstyles are a bit outdated & not really popular anymore, but there are still some (who have long enough hair) who follow them.    in the past, those who weren’t interested or open about being courted by another would always wear their hair in some form of updo that may or may not have included braids.    anyone who kept their hair in sort of half-down, half-up styles were potentially interested in a romantic relationship, & anyone who kept their hair loose was fully open to being courted.    once one was being courted by a potential suitor, they would always wear their hair up in public, but typically down in private with their partner.    this also worked out because generally those with longer hair wore it up when they were working, & so they weren’t interrupted in their work by those looking to court them.    those who were married wore marriage braids, which consisted of two small braids at the back of the head & a larger braid between them.    often not all of the hair is braided to leave a sort of backdrop for the marriage braids or they’re all twisted together into an updo.    these braids represent the uniting of two people, & two families, into one cohesive unit.    during weddings, one parent from each family would braid one of the smaller braids & then their partner would braid the center one.    in cases where parents could not be present, generally someone close to each of the wedding party would participate in the braiding.    out of all of the different hairstyles, the marriage braids are the ones that are still rather common on batuu.    mostly, they’re only worn during wedding ceremonies or anniversaries & some still feature the braiding as part of those ceremonies.

𝐊𝐄𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆.    to show interest in courting someone, generally men (but anyone of any gender could), would gift them a very uniquely hand-carved key to symbolize their possession of the only key to their heart.    mostly, the key was carved from wood but some got more creative & carved it from chunks of spire, shaped metal, or even knitted or wove the key.    typically, it would include some symbol related to both parties such as part of a family crest, some object important to them, or something to do with their occupation & would also have the person receiving the key’s name engraved somewhere on it (usually in their native language).    accepting the key would begin the start of their courtship & denying it would result in the key being burned & usually the one who carved it attempting a more elaborate key design.    the key was a way of showing off their skills, & even those interested in the courtship were free to decline accepting the key as a way of truly testing how dedicated their potential partner is.    often, the key would be incorporated into a necklace that the receiver would wear in public as another way of signifying that they are currently being courted.    this isn’t still super popular, but a lot of those in the more artistic industries do participate in it.

𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐒.    so like i’ve said before, weaving is a highly respected art on batuu, so it makes sense that it both plays a part in the courting process & wedding ceremonies.    at some point during courtship, as a symbol of love & also how seriously one is taking the relationship, couples will often gift each other a woven scarf.    in the past, it was expected that each half of the couple would weave their own scarf, but nowadays most just buy them from the market or have them custom made.    the scarves would generally be in the favorite color of the receiving person, & included a lot of elaborate designs that usually symbolize events that have occurred during their courtship or anything they feel has progressed their relationship or holds a lot of importance in it.    a lot of the time, the couple would be the only ones able to truly interpret the scarf’s design.    sometimes the scarf would even include a romantic poem stitched into the inner side for only the wearer to read.    these scarves would somehow be incorporated into the couple’s wedding attire.    some wear them as intended, some cut them up & gift pieces to their families, & some weave them into socks or headdresses.    most scarves gifted these days are far less elaborate, but it is still a really common tradition, especially in relationships where one party is a native batuuan & the other is an off-worlder.

𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐒.    it was expected that one would pick up their date from their home regardless of where they lived or where you were going on your outing.    you going to the cantina at black spire but you live in galma & she lives in peka?    too bad, you’re taking your speeder all the way there & back; there’s no meeting halfway.    you were also expected to always bring a small gift, usually flowers or something sweet from the local market.    this got lost as batuu became more criminally oriented & practicality overtook what was previously seen as just good manners.    there are a good many, mostly those from families who have lived on batuu for many generations, who still adhere to this, particularly the part about bringing gifts.

𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐈.    yeah you saw that right, batuuan weddings take place over three days.    the first day is a big welcome party for anyone coming from other planets & just to help the guests of both parties get to know each other before the big day.    typically the party takes place in the evening & after the wedding rehearsal (if there is one).    the family/friends of one half of the couple will typically make all of the food & serve, but this isn’t necessarily part of modern batuuan weddings.    there’s also usually a lot of drinking involved.    a tradition that hasn’t stood the test of time as well is that of the friends & family of typically the bride will have a series of tests for their potential partner to undertake to prove their worth.    this used to be full on braga bear hunts & feats of strength & such, but became modernized to just embarrassing acts like singing love songs in front of everyone or having their clothes stolen & hidden from them.    obviously, this isn’t limited to being only between brides & grooms.    anyone is welcome to test either partner regardless of gender.    there’s not really anything particularly formal about the first day, it’s mostly about partying & having a fun, lighthearted time with each other.

𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐈𝐈.    the actual wedding ceremony & reception takes place on this day & not much else.    some ceremony traditions include the couple not seeing each other until the ceremony, their vows including poems that they’ve personally written for each other, tying a single ribbon to the trilon wishing tree together, & asking the black spire for good blessings & safe travels in their future.    often, there will also be a very young, potted trilon tree that guests are free to tie their own ribbons onto as good wishes for the couple.    the plant will usually be placed in the couple’s home & eventually planted outside of it.    the reception afterwards is either catered by both families of the couple or by an outside party.    the ceremony & reception are also timed in order to have fireworks at the conclusion or, for those who cannot afford fireworks, a chance to do a bit of stargazing.    the stargazing in particular is meant to evoke an appreciation that in a galaxy this expansive, the couple managed to find each other.

𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐈𝐈𝐈.    a last chance to give gifts, say goodbyes, & such before the couple leaves on their honeymoon.    this usually consists of a brunch provided by the family/friends of the other half of the couple.    it’s a chance for the couple to spend more time with their guests as a married couple than they likely had time to during the reception.    sometimes, the food is themed to the planet the couple will honeymoon on.    just before they leave, the couple will release a pair of pipa birds as a blessing for safe travels & a sign that they will always return to the place they were married: batuu.    in the past, it was expected that each would capture their own bird but in modern times the birds are often raised domestically.    it’s considered to be a sign of a marriage that won’t last if the birds fly in different directions.

𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐒.    they are always bright, bold colors & typically on the warmer side of the spectrum but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to have a cooler themed wedding.    red wedding attire is considered to be symbolic of a passionate relationship & good luck.    orange symbolizes vitality & a long-lasting marriage.    yellow is for a happy & adventurous marriage.    blue is life-long loyalty & stability in the marriage.    traditionally, the warmer colors were popular because they symbolized the inevitable rising of batuu’s suns & the hope of a new day & fresh start they bring with them.

𝐖𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄.    typically, dresses & suits aren’t overly elaborate.    this has changed a bit with time & the introduction of more marriages between batuuans & off-worlders, but batuuans are just more practical people than anything.    the usual colors are listed above & i also mentioned the inclusion of scarves gifted during courtship, but the couple will also wear bracelets or necklaces with beads amounting to the number of months they’ve been courting.    the beads are typically a light blue with other colors symbolizing different events such as the proposal, first kiss, first date, etc.    each couple chooses the other colors for their beads together so they could literally mean anything & only each other would know.    

[traincat]

Can you share why you like the 2015 Fantastic Four movie?

Must a superhero movie be “good”? Is it not enough for a superhero movie to criticize the US military, large?

Okay, seriously, a little bit of background in three points: 1) I followed this movie from the beginning. Through the casting, through the reshoots, through the cryptic articles about how the movie would feature an unexpected romance that turned out to be right but not how we all thought -- I’m pretty sure a Ben/Sue cut of this movie exists somewhere, but it’s hard to argue that the only romantic subplot that exists in the finished film is... Ben/Reed, so. I got excited over stuff in the trailers that was cut from the finished movie entirely. I analyzed the hell out of previews. I almost stole a theater stand but it wouldn’t have fit in my friend’s trunk. I, no joke, bought the Fantastic Four peanut butter. And I had friends who were also excited for the movie, so we were having fun together. So the anticipation definitely has a part in my enjoyment of the movie. “Even though it came like that?” Oh, 100%. 2) I really like Ultimate Fantastic Four, a bad comic, so in a way I was primed to already be like “must a movie be “good?” Must it not simply give me the Mole Man?” (It did not give me the Mole Man.) Fant4stic is much more heavily influenced by Ultimate Fantastic Four than it is by 616 Fantastic Four, especially in its Reed and his relationships with Ben and with Franklin Storm and the think tank. Finally, 3) I really, really dislike the 2005/2007 movies. I think they’re flashy, sexist, shallow hot garbage pieces of filmmaking and I hold Chris Evans’ Johnny from all angles -- writing, styling, performance -- largely responsible for a wide fandom perception of Johnny Storm as a hotheaded playboy. I like Reed and Alicia but that’s basically it. 

And I can -- and have already -- gone over Fant4stic’s faults. It’s very clear that the movie largely falls apart after the time skip, but especially during the final battle, which is messy to the extreme. The extensive reshoots messed with the overall product to the point where you can pinpoint while watching what comes from which shoot, though that’s in part to the horrendous wig they put on Sue to cover up that Kate Mara had cut her hair for a different movie in-between. Josh Trank’s dogs did $100,000 worth of property damage, somehow, during filming. So I’m going to talk about what I like about Fant4stic, and here’s a really big thing: as superhero movies go, it’s different.

There’s something I hear a lot in discussions about Spider-Man films, when someone goes, “No, it wasn’t a good Spider-Man movie, but it was a good superhero movie.” Which is something I take issue with because how are we defining what makes a superhero movie good? And what people seem to think makes a superhero good is the MCU’s general formula -- not necessarily the content of their movies, but formula with which they’re devised, which does, it’s fair to say, make for a big office winner, too. And what the MCU does is it makes superhero action movies. It plays around a little with genre -- Captain America: The First Avenger is a war movie, but it’s an action war movie. Guardians of the Galaxy is a space action movie. Ant-Man is a heist action movie. It’s spun its Spider-Man movies as coming of age stories, but they’re action movies. This becomes a problem for a viewer (me, I’m the viewer) if you don’t really love action movies all that much.

In no way, shape, or form can anyone make the claim that Fant4stic is an action movie. Its one big superhero fight scene is a complete and utter failure and probably the worst scene -- probably because it was never meant to be in there. Fant4stic was meant to be a horror movie with a superhero angle, which isn’t all that surprising considering it was directed by Josh “Chronicle” Trank. And I’m really into using big superhero properties to explore other genres -- Logan’s dystopian western, TASM/2′s romance. Fant4stic’s horror. Some of the best parts of the movie are the ramping up to the accident. You know it’s coming. You know it’s going to go horribly wrong. You know Ben, in particular, played with a quiet but longing stoicness by Jamie Bell pre-transformation (and the only film Ben to be acknowledged on-screen as Jewish), is about to be, pardon the pun, doomed. And then there’s the utter horror of the aftermath: Johnny, apparently a burnt out shell, lying in the wreckage as Ben screams for Reed for to help him. Reed crawling through the smoldering chaos only to look back and see that his legs are still pinned under the wreckage. That’s good. A version of the film was apparently screened before the reshoots and the test audience found it “too dark” and I desperately want to see that cut.

In addition to Fant4stic’s horror angle, there’s the villain of the piece: the US military. Doom, despite showing back up last minute looking like lovechild of Annihilus and a melted toy soldier -- Annihilus was supposed to be an initial villain in the film, so the resemblance likely isn’t accidental -- isn’t the true villain of the piece. If anything, young ecoterrorist Victor who just wants to rule his own planet is kind of a charming concept. But the villain of the piece is the military, who wants to use the gate for their own purposes. The military imprisons Ben, Johnny, and Sue after their transformation and explicitly uses Ben as a killing machine. When Harvey Allen approaches Ben, he convinces him Reed’s abandoned him, and that he has to “play ball” with the government. Johnny’s youthful enthusiasm and longing to belong places him in similar danger -- Sue and Franklin explicitly talk about how, if they don’t do something, Johnny’s going to be used as a weapon. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Reed is brought back to the compound to see his reworked invention: “You made it ugly.” The film backs off on this at the very end -- it doesn’t stick the landing like TASM/2 does, where the ultimate villain that spawns the actual superpowered villains is consistently Oscorp’s abuses -- but it does better highlighting this than a vast swathe of other superhero films: the bad guy isn’t Doom. Doom isn’t the one who tortures Ben. Doom isn’t the one who remakes the gate with the express purpose of breeding super soldiers. It’s the military.

I also really like the characters within the film. I don’t think this is going to be hugely surprising to my followers, but really all you need to do to make me like a Fantastic Four adaptation is nail Johnny Storm, and Fant4stic nailed Johnny Storm. I think Michael B Jordan was really terrific casting, and I’m sad we didn’t get to see more of him in the roll, because he was great at portraying Johnny’s insecurities and his vulnerability, making his occasional moments of swagger charming instead of oily, like when he blows a kiss to a rival racer. Introducing Johnny with a drag race -- and with Standing in the Shadows of Love, which is a great Johnny song, and I love how music is a big thing for both Storm siblings -- established his ability with cars and his talent for building things, letting the audience know that Johnny is smart and capable, it’s just that he doesn’t feel like he is. I love this Sue, too, serious and blunt and a little awkward, incredibly smart and far more inclined to hold a grudge than her brother. I love how she’s styled -- her clothes are normal and her makeup is realistically minimal, not movie-minimal. There’s no scene where Fant4stic’s Sue has to strip off her clothes to use her powers, or where a sexy nurse exists so Johnny can hit on her and the audience can get their recommended fifteen minutes of female objectification.

Ben is, as he often is in Fantastic Four pieces, a standout, of course, and Jamie Bell gives a great performance, both anguished and full of rage and resentment and at the same time love for Reed, but it’s his design I love the best. The 2005/2007 Thing design is cartoonish -- the 2015 is monstrous. I love the first few Thing scenes where Ben seems to have trouble moving, dragging himself across the floor, because you get a sense of how incredibly heavy his new form is and how difficult it is to exist in it beyond just looking like a rock creature. The horror of the superhero transformation is built into Ben Grimm at his core, but here it doesn’t manifest in a lost fiance or children screaming on the street but in the difficulty with which he moves, the new grinding note of his voice, vocal chords landsliding together. It’s some really terrific work. And while I think Ioan Gruffudd’s Reed was actually a pretty perfect 616 Reed (more’s the shame about the rest of the films), the Reed of Fant4stic is Ultimate Reed in the beginning through and through. The precocious genius of his childhood, misunderstood by everyone but Ben until Franklin Storm sees him, the scene where he takes the kid’s model airplane and awkwardly apologizes afterwards (the “you’re a dick” line IS funny), his awkward attempts to connect with Sue, his attempts to connect with Victor. Like Sue, he’s straightforward and blunt. The way he isolates himself in his attempt to fix things. How gross his powers are in motion. The aforementioned “you made it ugly” line. I really do like him as a Reed. And Victor... Victor is hilarious. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I was on board back when they were like “he’s a blogger, he’s a gamer” like I was 100% down to see Doom’s tortured neon green on black LiveJournal screeds, and opening on Victor unwashed in the dark playing video games? Hilarious. Victor seeing glowing green energy and immediately going “I’m gonna f*ck it”? Superb. Is this a good Doom interpretation? Maybe not, but it was entertaining. I think they could’ve gone full Ultimate and put little metal hooves on him post-transformation, granted. It’s not the Doom I want for any upcoming Doom projects -- I want my science wizard monarch -- but I can’t say I don’t like the character that Fant4stic gave me.

Fant4stic is an imperfect film, but I’d rather have an imperfect film with characters and themes that I like and one that did something different than a perfect film made with the same old formula and the same jokes on the same beats.

Also, if anyone’s curious, since Fant4stic has no DVD commentary (a crying shame on so many levels), @johnnystormcast recorded our own in our Giant Size Annual and you can download it to watch along with our thoughts, which are very deep and not at all mostly about how Ben and Reed are in love in the film.

[ziggyzackaryzigzagoon]

Personal World Building - Dynamax and Gigantamax

The Large Power Behind Dynamax

Dynamax is a phenomenon as a result of a strange power found in Galar. With this power, it’s possible for pokemon to grow to enormous size and use their newfound strength to turn the tide of battle. Dynamax is a bit different from most other energies such as Mega Evolution or Z-Crystals in that the area itself is the catalyst for the power. These areas where pokemon can undergo Dynamax are called “Power Spots”, which contain strong sources of the energy needed to properly Dynamax. Many Gyms found in Galar are built with these Power Spots in mind to incorporate them into gym battles. As these battles are viewed in front of a live audience, it helps to bring in a show that everyone will be eager to see.

When a Pokemon undergoes Dynamax, their moves are replaced with “Max Moves” which are powerful enough to change the field around them. The Max Moves available for a pokemon often depend on their current learned moves, allowing some pokemon to have access to move types that aren’t normally available for that pokemon. All status moves also become Max Moves, but they will mostly only turn into Max Guard which will ignore all attacks even from other Dynamax pokemon. It is not normally possible to use regular moves while Dynamaxed as all the power goes into max moves, but it is possible if the pokemon were to Dynamax naturally.

Most of those studying Dynamax often speculate that its power distorts the space around certain objects or creatures. This explains why anything with Dynamax energy may grow large in size and affect the world around them, often noted by the storm clouds surrounding above a Dynamax pokemon. Other objects are also affected if they can absorb the Dynamax energy, though not many objects have been tested with this power. While a few have theorized if Dynamax was an illusion similar to Zoroark’s, it was later debunked when seeing pokemon with too much Dynamax energy go berserk. As Dynamax distorts the space around a creature, it likely distorts their mind as seen by pokemon rampaging uncontrollably when they have too much Dynamax energy.

Gigantamax Factor

There have been studies of pokemon who undergo a unique form of Dynamax under the right conditions, often as a result of being around Dynamax energy longer than necessary. This form of Dynamax has been dubbed “Gigantamax” as the pokemon often grows to enormous size, far larger than a regular Dynamax pokemon. A pokemon who has the potential to Gigantamax are known to have “Gigantamax Factor” which can only be found in select individuals of a species. However, it is possible for a pokemon to earn their Gigantamax Factor naturally through any method that can allow their body to accept large amounts of Dynamax. The proper method to achieve this is still unknown, but many seem to believe the Pokemon Dens have something to do with it alongside Dynamax Candies.

Gigantamax Pokemon also have access to specialized max moves unique to them called “G-Max Moves”. These moves are directly similar to the Max Moves of the move’s type, but their properties and how they affect the world around are vastly different. Every Gigantamax pokemon will only have one of their move types turn into this G-Max Move so it’s important to have a move type that correlates with the Max Move. Max Starfall will cause Misty Terrain to surround the field which can prevent status conditions, but G-Max Finale from Alcremie will heal the user and allies. Due to this change in how the moves work, you may see pokemon plan their teams around G-Max moves for singles or double battles. Some G-Max Moves may not be as strong as their regular Max Move counterparts, but other allies can often help fill in the missing Max Move when needed.

Wishing Stars and the Dynamax Band

In order to gather enough energy to undergo Dynamax, specialized bands are often fitted with stones called “Wishing Stars”. These stones slowly gather Dynamax energy while inside spots where the power is present and can be used to transfer Dynamax energy into objects or pokemon. While it is possible for a pokemon to force themselves to Dynamax with merely the band alone, this can be very difficult to pull off. It’s also extremely dangerous as the pokemon’s body would be growing in size naturally, causing items and clothes to likely break before the pokemon reaches their temporary size. While this final concern is extremely rare, a pokemon with too much Dynamax energy may lose control of themselves and go berserk, particularly why pokeballs are used alongside Dynamax Bands.

By transferring Dynamax energy into a Pokeball while a pokemon is inside, the pokemon will be released from the Pokeball while in their Dynamax state. Doing this method doesn’t offer as much Dynamax energy as through natural means, but does allow the items and clothes a pokemon is carrying to grow large alongside the pokemon. Though just in case a pokemon does attempt to Dynamax without a Pokeball, most of the outfits worn by gym challengers are laced with small amounts of Wishing Stars. Due to some pokemon undergoing Gigantamax at times, it helps to prepare clothing that can properly adapt to the pokemon’s body.

As the amount of Dynamax Bands are often very small in number for every team to use one, those partaking in the gym challenge can be lent a Dynamax Band for the duration of that particular gym. While it may be possible to turn these bands down for the first 2 gyms, every gym afterward will require the team to have a Dynamax Band present or be lent one. This band will have to be returned once the gym battle is over, but can be purchased for a hefty fee or if the pokemon brings in their own wishing star. Wishing Stars do sometimes fall out of the sky, so it may be one’s lucky day if one falls nearby.

The Dark Beginnings of Dynamax

20,000 years ago, in the early days of the Galar region, a meteor crashed down from outer space containing a creature never before seen. This creature would be later known as Eternatus, the pokemon responsible for the Dynamax phenomenon we know today. Eternatus lived most of its life on the planet regularly and caused very little trouble. It wouldn’t be another 17,000 years before Eternatus attempted to absorb the energy found inside the Galar region in order to stay alive. This resulted in the pokemon being overloaded with Dynamax energy and ultimately caused it to go berserk before transforming into its Eternamax form. Black clouds stormed across the land, causing pokemon to grow to enormous size and lose control of themselves while in their overloaded state. There was little anyone could do to stop the towering pokemon, often being heavily injured as a result of their attempts to fight back. This day in history would be forever known as the “Darkest Day” as it seemed all hope was lost to the storms. However, everything changed when 2 pokemon decided to fight back against the rampaging Dynamax pokemon.

The two legendary pokemon, Zacian and Zamazenta, used their weapons and strength to defeat the rampaging pokemon and help revert them to their regular size. With the duo’s combined efforts, they were able to vanquish Eternatus in its overloaded state and stop the destruction of Galar. As a final precaution to ensure the pokemon would be put to rest, its body was later sealed deep within the Galar region by the duo. The region cheered for the pokemon, but Zacian and Zamazenta were fatally wounded from their battle which forced a retreat to the slumbering weald. There the two turned themselves into statues and entered a deep sleep, waiting for the day Galar might be at risk of calamity from Eternatus. Most pokemon have almost forgotten of their existence, being most of the history having been hidden by the recent descendants of Galar.

As Eternatus was wounded from its battle 3,000 years ago, its power leaked over the Galar region while it was sealed which results in the power spots we know today. This led to some pokemon undergoing Dynamax by accident, but not in the same way as from the darkest day. As these pokemon had full control of themselves, this turned Dynamax and Gigantamax into a useful tool in situations such as helping pokemon during a harsh cold wave or stopping a flood. However, the limitations of Dynamax being to certain areas that contained this power didn’t allow for many opportunities for pokemon to use it. Through the years, scientists began to find and study parts of Eternatus that fell off during the great battle many years ago. This resulted in the discovery of Wishing Stars found today which can absorb Dynamax energy, allowing for Dynamax to work as a source of energy. Alongside this, Wishing Stars allow Dynamax to be utilized in actual pokemon battles similar to Mega Evolution or Z-Crystals.

Competitive Dynamax

While Dynamaxing is used competitively, a lot of pokemon are sometimes ill-informed on the best ways of using it effectively. Generally when deciding a strategy around Dynamax, move choice is extremely important. The moves a Dynamax pokemon knows may affect properties of the Max Move, such as damage or whether it may be physical or special. Each Max Move also has qualities that affect the surrounding area which can have an impact on how pokemon plan their moves. This point is important in team battles as trapping teammates in a storm they have no way to combat often can ruin certain strategies. Though in other situations, Max Moves can boost the stats of pokemon and allies such as Speed or Attack which makes every move while Dynamaxed important.

The biggest change when a pokemon Dynamaxes is the immunity to certain moves that are normally meant to affect a pokemon. Any move that causes flinching, involves either pokemon’s weight to be factored, forces the target to swap, forces certain moves to be used, or are known to instantly knock out a pokemon will fail. It’s still possible for pokemon to remove a pokemon’s held item while Dynamaxed, but only through Knock off or Trick. A pokemon’s HP will also double once they’ve Dynamaxed which can allow a pokemon that is normally defeated in one hit to survive almost 2, which can help when fighting against a really strong opponent. Barriers such as protect will only reduce the damage a pokemon takes from a Max Move, which makes Dynamax pokemon sometimes difficult to avoid.

Dynamax still has many weaknesses that can be exploited to a very strong degree. A pokemon won’t heal from simply undergoing Dynamax which can put the team in a bad spot if they happen to Dynamax a pokemon who is in little condition to fight. If the pokemon who undergoes Dynamax faints, all the energy will leave their body and that team without Dynamax energy for the remainder of the battle. Pokemon who are able to hide underground or fly can wait out the Dynamax until it runs out, but are likely to risk either being hurt while doing so or have that team member considered out of bounds. The biggest weakness most often forget with Dynamax is the factor of type matchups, which can really ruin a team’s plan of using Dynamax when the pokemon is hit with one super-effective attack.

Gym Battles Using Dynamax

In normal gym battle fashion, most of the challenges that a trainer may partake in result in battling gym trainers and testing their skills before the big battle with the gym leader. However, in the Galar region, there is a very strong reason for doing these gym challenges before battling the gym leader. If a team intends to use Dynamax during the battle, the challenges will allow enough time for the band to gather enough energy before the battle starts. It does take a while for Dynamax energy to gather around a Dynamax Band, which is often why most battles only make use of one Dynamax use per battle. This single-use is often why gym leaders will save their Dynamax pokemon for last to ensure they have a final defense before the battle ends.

If a team doesn’t have a Dynamax Band present, the Gym leader will not use Dynamax themselves to make things fair. However, as Dynamax Band ands are required after the 2nd gym, this won’t exactly be the case for every Gym. Most who try to avoid going through the gym challenge without a Dynamax Band are likely to be given a temporary one during the gym’s duration. Should a team try and avoid using Dynamax, they’ll likely be at a heavy disadvantage unless they have a plan to avoid being hit. Though some teams are looking to make their mark without using Dynamax at all which is mostly for bragging rights.

Pokemon Dens and Max Den Battles

In the Galar region, there exists a large open area containing dens that hold power spots deep inside them. This area is often referred to as the Wild Area as it’s one of the best spots for pokemon to train and battle without many restrictions. However, these dens are particularly special for sparring purposes as they allow the use of Dynamax without potentially destroying the surrounding area. This is thanks to the area inside a den being extremely large, allowing a Dynamax pokemon to almost live in it. Even if a number of dens are occupied, there is a large overabundance of these dens across the wild area which allows for almost every pokemon to easily find an empty one for their own use. You can often tell if a den contains a Dynamax pokemon by the pillar of light that shoots out of the den, growing stronger depending on the Dynamax pokemon’s strength.

Due to the Dynamax energy being much stronger than other power spots, pokemon who Dynamax through natural means while inside a den are able to use tactics that aren’t normally available. These Dynamax pokemon can use both regular and max moves quite easily, Max Guard creates a lasting barrier that protects from certain moves until it breaks and hurts the pokemon, and the Dynamax pokemon can release a shockwave of Dynamax energy that disables abilities and stat changes. All of these advantages, alongside the seemingly endless time limit of the Dynamaxed pokemon, have caused battles such as these to be named “Max Den Battles” for being so tough. 4 pokemon are needed in order to take down one of these Max Den Pokemon for this reason as there is little one pokemon alone can do against a towering one.

Even if a pokemon were to attempt to Dynamax to even the playing field, the fastest method of Dynamaxing will not yield the same results as that of the Max Den Pokemon. In order to actually Dynamax naturally while inside a den, a pokemon would have to stay inside for roughly an hour depending on the pokemon’s Dynamax Level. Dynamax Level controls the power a pokemon has while in its Dynamax state, often increasing strength against attacks. Though while Dynamaxing naturally can be easy, reverting is difficult without some way of having Dynamax energy leave the pokemon’s body such as through a Pokeball. This can take up to a few hours at most as attempting to exit a den won’t be easy while in this large state thanks to the small opening of the den.

Food and Dynamax together?

One of the popular uses of Dynamax outside of pokemon battles has been found in food, particularly Curry. Those who collect Dynamax Candies often grind them down to be used in a spice called “Gigantamix” which can be added to food. While the food is being cooked, sprinkling the Gigantamix will cause energy to surround the food and make it grow in size. Because of the new size the food takes, it can be used to feed pokemon who have quite the appetite or would like to share with others. Even if a pokemon doesn’t wish to eat the food while in its Gigantamax state, it will revert after some time and can be enjoyed normally or saved as leftovers for another day.

Curry is a very popular dish in Galar and often leads to many pokemon competing on who can make and log the most curry dishes. Having the ability to make a dish that tastes good and is large enough to feed many pokemon is hard to pass on. It’s also not too hard to make Gigantamix as the main ingredient can be found in almost every pokemon den around the wild area. Dynamax Candies are packed with energy that will increase a pokemon’s Dynamax level when eaten, making them exceptionally stronger when they Dynamax. When these candies are ground into a powder, they can instead be combined with spices in order to make food Gigantamax. This was discovered when a pokemon wanted to find an alternative method to eating Dynamax Candies, but instead created Gigantamix.

The amount of Gigantamix used in the dish is what ultimately decides how long it will stay giant. Using the whole bottle will often cause the food to stay Gigantamaxed for half an hour, long enough for it to feed the intended pokemon(s). If a pokemon were to use very little of the Gigantamix, the food may revert before the pokemon has a chance to enjoy it. If too much Gigantamix is used, the taste is at risk of being ruined due to the overabundance of spice. This is why some restaurants have started experimenting with Gigantamix as a potential menu item for challenges as the pokemon would be encouraged to eat it before it reverts to its regular size. Considering the food doesn’t require any extra ingredients to make it Gigantamax, it’s very cheap to make many dishes giant for an extra fee.

[angstytieflingbard]

Hero’s Journey - Chapter One

Summary: Today was Link’s first day at U.A, the most prestigious Hero Academy in Japan. He’d spent his entire life hoping and training to get into this school. He was more than ready for the challenges ahead. But are the trials that this school will throw at him the only ones he needs to be wary of? 

Warnings: None this chapter! 

A/N: It’s finally here! I figure I’ve beaten myself up over this enough. I spent a good bit thinking about changing Aizawa’s dialogue, because it felt kinda stilted, but also it’s word for word what he says in the Sub, so I ended up just leaving it alone. Also, as a side note, I’m considering dropping Mineta after probably the USJ arc, since that’s the only time he’s actually important to the story. I just really don’t like him as a character. I’d want to replace him with Shinsou, probably. Well, tell me what you think! Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and please don’t hesitate to send me your thoughts/ideas/etc!

~

Link stared up at the intimidatingly tall door in front of him. Bright red and grey, with the label “1-A” stamped on it. It was his first day at U.A, something he’d been excited for right up until he’d stopped in front of the classroom door, listening to what sounded like shouting on the other side. 

Well, it would be wrong to say he wasn’t still excited. But a bit of apprehension had worked its way into his head. What if hero school wasn’t how he imagined? He’d spent his whole life working and praying to get into U.A, he had absolutely no contingency plan if he failed. He sighed, somewhat irritated at himself and his sudden, baseless worries, and pushed the classroom door open, carefully schooling his face into a blank mask as he slipped inside. 

The classroom already looked like a warzone, despite it only being about 7:45 in the morning, before the first day of class even officially started. One kid seemed to be the instigator, a spiky blonde with clear anger issues looking about ready to square up with everyone in the room. Also standing somewhat near the door were three students, all giving wildly different impressions at first glance. There was a tall, blue haired boy with glasses only partially obscuring a stern, severe expression, a timid looking green-haired boy who looked to be only centimeters taller than Link himself, and a cheery girl with pink cheeks and bobbed brown hair. The green-haired boy noticed his entry first, and gave Link a curious look as he approached.

“Uh, hi, are you in 1-A too? Sorry, that’s… that’s a silly question, um-” He cut himself off, looking increasingly discomforted by Link’s lack of response. The brunette interjected, sensing the boy’s discomfort. 

“Hey, I’m Uraraka Ochaco! This is Midoriya, and the boy with the glasses is Iida. Nice to meet you!” She introduced herself, stepping forward and enthusiastically shaking his hand. Link blinked, a bit surprised at the warm welcome from her compared to the absolute murderous glare being directed in the general direction of the group by the spiky blonde across the room. An awkward silence settled over the group again, and Link realized they were waiting for his name. He took a deep breath, and brought his hands up, signing somewhat slowly for them. 

‘Hi, my name’s Link.’ 

As expected, the only reaction he got were confused looks on their faces, and he sighed for the second time in the past five minutes, pulling out a set of index cards from his blazer pocket. The cards all held phrases and words he found useful day to day, written with thick-lined sharpie in the neatest handwriting he could manage. He quickly shuffled through the set, finding his introduction card and turning it so the three of them could read it. 

‘Hi, my name’s Link. I don’t talk, but I’m fluent in sign language. Nice to meet you!’ The card read, and all three of them frowned thoughtfully as Link returned the card along with the rest of the set to his pocket. 

“Well, we can figure something out! I’m sure we’ll all be great friends regardless!” Ochaco said cheerfully, but before any of the other three in the group could respond, someone spoke up from behind Link.

“Go somewhere else if you’re just here to play at being friends. This is the hero course.” Link spun, narrowing his eyes at the man before him. He was clearly an adult, likely their teacher, though you wouldn’t be able to tell from the exhausted, gaunt face, or the fact that he was laying on the ground in a bright yellow sleeping bag and sipping on a juice packet. Link dimly registered the shocked and near fearful reactions of his classmates behind him, and he frowned slightly. 

“Okay, it took you eight seconds to stop talking. Time is limited. You kids aren’t rational enough.” The man said, tone exhausted and annoyed. He stood, slipping out of the sleeping bag as he did, and surveyed the class with an appraising glower. 

“I’m your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta. Nice to meet you.” He said, and then reached into the sleeping bag and pulled out what looked to be a dark blue track uniform with red and white accents. Link’s eyebrows raised, bemused. 

“Anyway, it’s kind of sudden, but put these on and head out to the field. We don’t have all day.” He sighed, and began pulling more gym uniforms out of the sleeping bag. 

‘Weird.’ Link found himself thinking. Their teacher was certainly an odd one, though he supposed he didn’t have a lot of room to judge. He took a uniform from the man regardless, and shuffled off to the changing rooms with his classmates. 

The changing rooms were split into boys and girls, and he frowned at the signs for a moment, eventually just shrugging and making his way into the boys’ locker room. It was strangely chaotic for only being in there to change into gym clothes, and by the time Link is dressed and out the door, he’s sighing irritably at the antics of his classmates. 

Eventually the whole class finds their way out to the field, where Aizawa begins to explain what they were doing for the day. 

‘A quirk assessment…?’ Link hums thoughtfully to himself. He knew he could be… reckless, at the best of times, and he knew that certainly wouldn’t go over well, not in this situation. He listened to the conversation of the class, expression settling into a look of determination as Bakugo’s (the murderous, spiky blonde from earlier, Link realized) demonstration set a clear standard for the test. He’d have to push himself past his normal limits, he knew, his quirk not exactly helpful for physical tests like this. 

‘Well…’ Link thought, stifling the almost wolf-like smile that attempted to form on his face as Aizawa upped the stakes for the assessment. ‘A little competition wouldn’t hurt.’ 

It’s with that thought that Link sets to the tests with a nearly singular attention, his competitive streak impressive, if a little disconcerting. Bakugo, of course, took it as a personal offense, and even though he had a much greater advantage due to his quirk, he still gloated each time he surpassed Link’s own score. Link decided he didn’t like Bakugo much. 

By the end of the test, he was nearly shaking from the exertion, though he took some comfort in the familiar burn of his muscles, knowing that the effort wouldn’t go to waste regardless. Aizawa brought the assessment results up on a holopad and Link squinted up at the list, trying to find his name. He’d ended up only a bit above average, and he huffed, catching the smug look on Bakugo’s face out of the corner of his eye. Out of curiosity, he glanced at the end of the list, and frowned as he saw the name there. 

‘Midoriya… ‘ Link thought solemnly, glancing over at the green haired boy. He offered him a gentle hand on his shoulder, not wanting to overwhelm him when he was clearly already about to break down. 

“Oh, by the way, what I said about expelling last place was a lie.” Aizawa suddenly added, tone aloof. Midoriya gasped next to him, seeming to melt from the relief. Link just narrowed his eyes at the teacher, jaw set and lips pursed into an expression of extreme disapproval. Aizawa didn’t notice. 

‘He seems kind of cruel. Between this and how he talked to him during the soft ball throw, I get the feeling he doesn’t like Midoriya much.’ Link ignored his classmates’ outburst about the deception in favor of continuing to reassuringly pat his back as the greenette recovers from the near panic attack he’d had. Ochaco and Iida have worked their way over by this point, and the girl helped Midoriya to his feet. 

“You good? That must have been terrifying, huh?” She asked him, and he nodded, running a hand down his face tiredly. 

“I thought I was done for…” He admitted, and Iida hummed in agreement. 

“I’m sure Aizawa had his reasons for his… ‘Rational deception,’ I believe he called it.” Iida offered with some uncertainty. Midoriya only sighed, not agreeing or refuting the boy’s comment. Link patted his back again, and he offered a small, grateful smile in return. 

“Well, anyway, Aizawa said we could go home! We can meet out front once we change and grab our stuff, if you guys want? It might be fun to ride the train in a group for once!” Ochaco suggested, and all four agreed quickly, dispersing to do what they needed to do. 

~

Later that night, Link found himself unable to sleep, thinking over the day’s events happily. He’d made three friends in only a day, a surprise to him considering his usually somewhat antisocial personality. Of course, he’d also found a rival of sorts in Bakugo, though he knew he had a ways to go before he’d be able to really compare himself to the boy in strength. He was determined to surpass the spiky blond though, regardless of how difficult he knew it would be to get there. Finally, he remembered his teacher and the mans’ increasingly strange behavior towards his classmates. He couldn’t help but wonder why he’d targeted Midoriya in particular. 

Less than a half hour later, his thoughts started to blur together as his eyes slid shut on their own, and he turned to lay sprawled on his back. As he finally slipped into sleep, his thoughts turned hopefully to the future.

[whiskeyworen]

Miriya’s Pad

(Art commissioned from CheruSake) Author’s Note: This was my first attempt at a Guild Wars 2 fic, just as an experiment. I was very satisfied with the outcome, but chronologically it predates ALL the other GW2 stories I’ve put out here. In fact, if you read any of my Danae sister fics, there’s references to THIS one. If it sounds kind of clunky in terms of dialogue and descriptions, I apologize; I was still getting my feet back under me in terms of writing. It’s a bit cliche, and pretty corny, but I felt it was a cute fic. I’m actually really nervous about sharing it here, cuz I don’t know if people will like it at all. In terms of in-game chronology, this would be Pre-Scarlet by only a few months. Lion’s Arch was still the ramshackle version we all miss. That said, please enjoy. ***** "...And our final stop on our tour of Rata Sum is my personal quarters!" Miriya announced brightly, as the magitek cubes that formed the doorway slid in the cardinal directions. The internal barrier field dropped immediately once the cubes had slid into the ceiling, walls and floor. She stepped proudly inside, hands on her hips and smiled. "It's...Wow! Surprisingly spacious!" Kaleb blinked as he stepped inside. The barrier popped back up behind him and the door-cubes shifted shut once more, cutting out the natural noise of the Maguuma Jungle outside. He looked around in amazement at the personal dwelling of his teammate. "From outside it looks so...small." Miriya smirked and crossed her arms. "That's because I had it carved into the side of the mountain and disguised that way." She scuffed her sharp nails on her coat, smugly admiring them. "That and a little bit of fifth dimensional pocket-space manipulation make it nice and big." The home was open-concept in the Asuran style, a cube turned on its corner and hollowed out, easily thirty meters on a side, which gave it an amazingly high ceiling and a strangely deep and terraced floor. Looking up, Kaleb could see a Mystic Stone the size of his entire body hovering just below the top corner of the ceiling, providing a soft, diffuse blue light.  There were hard-light paths starting around the perimeter of the room, leading up to solid stone platforms held in place by mechanisms Kaleb could barely wrap his mind around. Each one had some kind of device or piece of furniture on it, though the purpose of some of them eluded him. To be honest, it looked less like a home and more like yet another Asuran laboratory. Turning his gaze from the ceiling to the floor,  he counted fourteen terrace steps down to what appeared to be a pool of water in the centre of the room, occupying the 'bottom-most' corner of the building's turned cube design.  Around the circumference of the room ran continuous Asura-design windows; high density force fields with a distortion added so those looking in or out can not see precisely what is there.

"It's um... very nice." He finally replied a bit hesitantly, stepping carefully in the room; each terrace was Asura-step scale, not human standard. If he tripped he'd no doubt fall all the way down into that pool of water in the bottom of the room. "So-o... this is where you keep your stuff? Kinda looks like another lab." "Well it IS a lab, silly." Miriya chuckled, crossing the room to a particular section of wall. A portion of the panels making up the wall and floor rotated at her approach, recombining to form a table and sink. Beside that, a cupboard slid into place from where the gaps were left by the panels, as well as a larger cube-shaped artifact half again as large as the diminutive Asura. "But it's also my home. I paid top-gold to get the constructor golem krewes to come out this far from Rata Sum and build it for me. All to my very demanding specifications." Kaleb nodded, exploring the room. He stepped up to one of the hardlight paths and experimentally tested it with an armoured toe. When it didn't give under his weight or the weight of his armour, he shook his head. Fancy Asuran gizmos. This was one of the reasons he was a soldier and not an engineer or inventor. "I see. So, why are we here now?" Miriya washed her hands in the sink, drying them in a device that clicked out of the side of the sink unit, and turned to face him. "We're here to relax and have a drink, and to be refreshed. Naturally." "Uh-huh?..." He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow at her, a disbelieving look on his unshaven face. "If that's so then why's the rest of the group not here? Doesn't seem rightly fair to enjoy..luxury...without our friends." She made an exasperated sound, running her fingers back through her slicked back, molten lava-colored dreadlocks. With a flick of a wrist she sent the sink back into the wall, as well as the cupboard, but the larger artifact remained present in the room. Counting off on her little fingers, she explained. "One: Dhangalor is more interested in learning how to make his turrets and flame-thrower more efficient and effective. I wouldn't be surprised if we found him in three days, down in one of the weapons labs.  Hopefully he won't learn how to make mass-conversion generation devices; The idea that he could make a device that spawns grenades for him or unlimited turrets scares me more than your god Grenth." Tick: "Second. The moment we walked into the city, Slane disappearred. I wouldn't know where him or his...ugh.... partner... are even if I put a tracker on him. Which I don't have, incidentally." She stepped over to the large artifact, touching a blue power gem on it. The panels on the artifact slid open to either side, revealling a chilly, frosty interior, from which she drew a large, dark green bottle. "Third. Corvus is Priory. He's all about knowledge and technology. If he's not aiding Dhangalor, he's buried up to his nose -- a feat at that! -- in computer files and parchments and datapads." The little Asuran necromancer spun on her heel, presenting her treasure to the still suspicious human. The bottle looked old, and had a label that bore a very particular seal on it. The label was torn slightly near the base, and very, VERY worn... but there was enough to recognize the maker. ---SCALO- V-NERY. est. ---- "...and finally Fourth: I've been saving this bottle to drink with a human some day, and I feel it's the right time now. I trust you enough to enjoy this bottle and not squander it, nor to act inappropriately with it. I know how rare it is, and I think you know how rare it is." His jaw dropped, as did his arms. "Ascalon Vinery?! Did that come from the ruins of Ascalon??" He laughed nervously, facepalming. "Second most rare wine in all of Tyria, and it's just sitting in her...her...whatever. That cold thing..." "It's called a ReFridgerator. Prototype design." She looked at the device with a bit of concern. "Most of the time it keeps things chilled. Though there was one time I left a panel open and....well.. I had to defrost the place. Like, 'Claw of Jormag' kinda defrost." Still shaking his head, Kaleb smiled, and ran a hand through his close-cropped red-black hair. "Alright. You got my attention. Ascalonian wine, and a relaxing evening with a friend. I can do that, easily." Miriya grinned, and put the bottle on the top of the fridge before walking across the room to a green square on one of the terraces. "Do you mind if I get comfortable? This armor is nice, but compared to my own clothes, I always find it confining and itchy." She stepped on the square and a series of panels slid up around her, covering her to the neckline. She continued talking as she changed, the sound of shifting cloth coming from behind the barriers. "It's such a relief to get off the road too. Sometimes I just want to come home, relax for a while, before my next project." "I understand the sentiment completely." Kaleb nodded, turning his back to her changing; even though she was completely hidden, he was still a gentleman. Even to Asura. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the muscles and bones creak a bit with tension. "Been a while since I've been home too. Or out of this gear." He stretched and shrugged. "Ah well. What can ya do?" The panels around her sliding down, Miriya stepped out of the 'booth' and straightened her tunic. "Well, what I CAN do is offer you the use of one of my guest booths to change. I'm sure I can cobble some basic clothing together from the info-net if you give me a few minutes." "You can do that?" He blinked, raising an eyebrow. Kaleb had no idea what an info-net was, but if he could just take his armour off for a few hours... "What do I need to do?" She pointed at the green square, tapping a nearby toe-button with her toe. The green square turned blue, and resumed flashing. "Just step on the square. I just turned the dimensions to 'human', so it'll cover more of you than it would have a moment ago." Kaleb stepped onto the square and waited for a second. The panels slid up again, this time up to HIS neck. There was just enough space inside for him to flex a bit. "Hey, this is neat, but... uh... can't exactly take my gear off in a space this small." "Don't worry about that. The booth does the dressing and undressing." She replied, a hard-light display open in front of her on the front of the booth. She flicked through diagrams and designs until she found a suitable one. "Ah here we go. Aaaannnndd..... ordered. Seven seconds delivery? What is this, the stone age??" "What?" "Oh, nothing. System seems slow, that's all." She shrugged and moved a new screen up in front of her. "Just one last thing; full body scan for fit accuracy. Otherwise when it goes to remove your gear, it might...uh...remove body parts instead. Not exactly a smart system." "WHAT?!" Kaleb started to fidget, staring around at the panels in horror. "Take it easy! I only have one scar from a mis-scan! I don't want you to lose anything important!" That was enough to get him to freeze solid, staring straight ahead. His adam's apple bobbed in fear as he swallowed heavily. Inside the booth, a panel flipped open on all four walls, revealling a golem-eye. Flat green light played out from these eyes, scanning Kaleb up to his neck, and down to the soles of his boots. There was a quiet 'ding' and the eyes flipped shut. Next, a set of waldo arms rose out of the floor, sliding along a series of control crystals built into the seams of the chamber, and unfolding when they reached certain predefined points. Magitechnical fingers and drivers unfolded from these waldoes, and set about removing his armour, piece by piece, carefully drawing each piece back into the floor. "Miriya.... This is weird..." Kaleb muttered uneasily as his armour appeared to be disintegrating around him. "Am I going to get my stuff back in one piece? This...thing won't like, mash it into a scrap cube or something will it?" "Oh don't be a big baby." She replied, watching the readouts. Everything was going as planned. The monitors indicated a rapidly increasing percentage of armour removal, leaving a rather bare looking Kaleb underneath. A smile quirked her mouth, and without saying a word, she flicked a toggle switch visibly with her right hand, while her left hand hooked under the display and pressed a small red button. For....posterity. Yeah, that's it. For study. She told herself, as a flash blinded Kaleb in the booth from all sides. "What was that?!" He asked worriedly, down to his boxer shorts within the booth. "Hmm? Oh nothing. Sensor glitch." She replied almost distractedly, as she copied the scan file into another section of her database, under heaviest quantum encoding that she could get, and then proceeded to delete the original. "Nothing to worry about. It should be done now. If you reach out in front of you, you'll find some clothes on a little shelf. They were just transported from Rata Sum via micro-gate, so...uh...they might feel a little fuzzy. Residual dimensional static and all that." Kaleb indeed did find the clothing, folded neatly on a small shelf. As he picked it up, the walls of the booth slid back on all sides, extending planes as they did so to keep his privacy intact. Clearly the machine somehow intuited his need for movement space. A moment later and he had slid on the Asuran-designed human-size clothing. "Hmm...very nice material. This isn't wool, is it? I've not felt anything this soft before." "It's Jungle silk. We harvest it from the spiders and wurms. They might be dangerous monsters, but they can be quite useful for natural materials." She smiled, as the walls of the booth finally slid back into the floor. Seeing him fully dressed again, she tipped her head to the side, crossing her arms, and considered him. "Hmmm....Well, they don't look too bad on you. Perhaps I should have gotten the shorts too, so you could replace those human ones you have on." "Huh?" Kaleb was checking out his new duds in a reflection, when he realized what she'd just said. "You didn't see me in my shorts, did you?" "What? Oh no...no no!" Miriya flushed, shaking her head rapidly and holding up her hands in denial. "No no... That's not what I meant! I just meant I should have completed the set! That's all! Really!" His raised eyebrow made her flush even pinker, and she quickly turned away, running up one of the hard-light paths to her cupboard for glasses. Once she was certain he couldn't see her, she let herself exhale heavily. All that work, and she nearly flubbed it up! Returning with the glasses, she called up a table and hovering chairs out of another wall, placing the glasses on the table and pouring them a glass of wine each. "Now that you are... comfortable...Hehe, about that wine I mentioned?" **** "...And that's when I told him, I told him 'How could I have possibly have punched out your son, when he was already unconscious from the booze?'” Kaleb pointed out, and mimed an unconscious man, slumping on his chair and lolling his tongue out of his mouth. Miriya was doubled over laughing, slapping the table top in mock surrender and nearly knocking her wineglass off it. “Oh, by the Alchemy! How in Tyria did you ever get out of that situation?” She asked when she gained enough composure back, tears of laughter still streaming from her large green eyes. She continued to laugh and snicker as she tried to control it. The last two hours after they started to drink had been a blur. The lovely Ascalonian Wine had gone from a full bottle... to the dregs, which were swiftly being drained by a half-toasted Kaleb. He slammed the bottle onto the tabletop, and grinned. “Well you see, this big ol’ Norn, he thinks he’s defending his son’s honor or something, so he’s all puffed up and about to go Bear on me or somethin’... and then he looks over at his son, sees him facedown in his own drool, a shiner on his face that I claim came from the table as he fell... and he just deflates like a balloon. He shakes that big top-knotted head of his and hauls his son up by his backstraps, and just says ‘Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see that. Boy hasn’t learned to hold his lager yet. Sorry if he bothered you.’ “ “No... No WAY.” Miriya’s jaw dropped. “You got to be kidding me.” Kaleb shook his head, sitting back and looking smug. “Nope. That’s what he said. He actually apologized for his son’s behaviour. Didn’t realize I had slugged that freakin’ twerp for his talk about how wussy--” He slurred it wuzzy “--humans are, and laid that kid out. I’m just glad it turns out he was drinkin’ age. Couldn’t use that bluff if he wasn’t.” “Cog’s gears, Kaleb, you definitely got guts. Standing up to a Norn in his hometown bar like that.” Miriya shook her head, and rubbed her eyes a bit. “I’d have had to call in my minions if that’d happened to me.” “And you woulda been squished for it.” Kaleb replied somberly, staring at her. “The moment they see your eyes and hands do that glow-thing, they would have flattened you with a damned boot. Not many like Necros these days.” “True, true...” Miriya nodded, levity completely gone. She traced the rim of her glass with a dark green-painted nail. “What about you? Do you like Necros?” He pondered for a moment. “Well, I don’t mind them... I don’t mind most anyone. But if they’re undead, I kinda mind them. Orrian and all that crap. But I don’t mind Necros that use Grenth’s gift for good.” She nodded, still circling the glass, an odd expression on her face. “That’s good, that’s good. Um,” She paused, flicking her eyes up to him for a moment to read his face before looking aside. “So....what about me? Do you like me? I mean, uh, I’m a Necromancer, after all.” He nodded, and thought about it for a second. “Well, duh, of course I like you. We’re teammates! I might not know how the Whispers operate, but if the Pact teamed us together, they must see something there, in our dossiers! And we work really well in combat together, as well as in info-gathering. Yeah, I like you. Of course I do, Miriya!” Miriya forced a smile at him, laughing along with him for a moment, before whispering off to the side, almost to herself. “That’s not what I meant...” "I hate to ask, but, do you have anything more like this wine?" Kaleb asked, tipping the dregs into his glass. He made a face, somewhere between concerned and goofy. "I mean, if we're going to keep drinking that is. I'm finally buzzed enough that I feel comfortable without my armour!" She laughed in spite of herself, in spite of the disappointment of his previous answer, but she steeled herself, hopping off her floating seat and heading for the refrigerator unit again. Looking inside she hemmed and hawed, listing things off. "Let's see, we've got that vile concoction that Colacokaia, that Hylek potionmaster forced upon me, we have indigo formula, and Sunny D....AH, here we go." With a triumphant, if a little unbalanced swing, she held the bottle up for his view. "It's... uh... says something about champagne. I forget where I got this from." He took the bottle from her, raising an eyebrow appreciatively as he considered it. "Not bad, but we can't just go chugging a bottle of champagne. That's more of a sipping kind of thing, in a relaxed situation. It's why nobles drink it at their 'parties' or whatever." He made a little, foppish, flippant gesture with his fingers and stuck out his tongue that made her grin. "You mean we should relax more? I thought we were pretty relaxed already!" Miriya laughed, hands on her short hips. "Any more relaxed and I'd probably be asleep!" Kaleb laughed and shook his head, putting the bottle on the table. "Nah, nah. I mean it wouldn't be good for sitting here at this table, trading dirty stories and reliving old fights. It's more...civilized a drink, I guess." The diminutive Asura pondered for a moment, before an idea struck her. "I got it! Come over here." She led him down the terraced interior of her home to the square shaped pool of water occupying the 'bottom' corner of the cube, and with a flourish indicated the gently lapping blue water. "Ta-da!" "What?... it's a pool of water." He replied, nonplussed. He crossed his arms and looked at her, confused. "Is there supposed to be something in it?" "Yes!" Miriya grinned, tugging at his pantleg. "Us!" She caught herself, and released his pantleg, coughing a bit. "I mean, it's not just a pool of water. I configured this corner to be either a hot spring or a cool bath, depending on what I felt like." "Really? You can do that?" He blinked, and considered the square of water. It was roughly his height on all sides, and he couldn't tell how deep it was based on the terracing and false-depth illusion of the shifting waters. "So....what, we should sit in it while we drink the champagne?" "Well, yeah?" Miriya shrugged and smiled, before running around the square to a panel on the edge of one of the stairs. After fiddling around with the controls, she pushed a red blinking square, and, much to her delight, the pool suddenly erupted into gentle bubbles. "Ah ha! There we go. Jaccuzzi." "Ja-whatzee?" "Nothing." She tested the water with a toe, smiling at the temperature, before turning and hopping up a few steps on the terrace. "Just one problem though; Our clothes. Shouldn't get them wet. Those'd get very itchy and kinda ruin my pool to boot." "So...what?" Kaleb knelt down and dipped his fingers into the water. "We'll strip down to our skivvies? This is as warm as that Norn hot spring...you know the one, in Lornar's Pass?" "You mean Wayfarer Foothills. Zelechor Hot Springs." Miriya frowned, shaking her head. "You are always so bad with locations. I'm surprised you get anywhere." "Hey, my hammer takes me wherever I need to go." He smiled, standing up. "Now, is there another booth, or where should I put this stuff?" "Oh! Anywhere!" She grinned, waving a hand at the terraces around them. "Just leave it high enough to not get wet." He nodded, and started shedding clothes, tossing them onto a higher step. Miriya stared for a moment, feeling the blood rush to her face, before she realized she WAS staring, and quickly looked aside. "Uh, I suppose I better...um...get ready too!" It took her almost no time to get rid of her simple tunic top and light pants, leaving her bathing suit-like bodysuit as the only remaining piece of clothing. It was hot pink and white; not her usual colors, and for a moment, she was horrified and embarrassed by the dichotomy between her normal dress and her bodysuit. Please don't let him say anything about the bodysuit. Please don't let him say anything about... "Nice bodysuit you got there. Didn't figure you for the color pink." He smirked, settling into the warmed water. SCRAP! Miriya swore internally, flushing almost as pink as her suit. She immediately leapt into the pool, covering herself to her neck in water while keeping her arms wrapped around herself. "I-I..er... I forgot about the color...You wear a body suit most of your life as an Asura, and you kinda forget about it!" He shrugged, taking the champagne bottle and looking around. "Uh, do you have any wine glasses or champagne glasses down here? The others we left up on your table up there." "Oh! Yeah... Um... Hang on, I'll go get them." She hopped out of the water, moving as fast as her little legs could carry her; the faster she moved, the less he'd see the pink suit. A few moments later, she slid into the water beside him, and placed the glasses on the exposed step behind them. "Here." "Thank you muchly." Kaleb smiled, and poured them each a generous portion of champagne. That done, he handed one of the champagne flutes to her, and saluted her with it. "To good friends, good drinks, and faking it like high society fops!" Miriya giggled, and tipped her glass so it dinged against his lightly, the pure crystal note a pleasant sound. "To one of the best teammates I've ever had, and possibly my best friend in all of Tyria." They both sipped. "Aw, that was sweet, Miriya." Kaleb smiled, scratching the back of his head after he finished his sip. "I knew we were friends, but I didn't know you thought of me as a best friend." "Well, I do, you big lug." She smirked and gave his arm a playful punch. She put her glass behind her, one step up on the shelf, and rubbed an ear in thought. "You never judge me based on my size, even when we first were introduced, never thought of me as weak or cowardly for being a magic user...never turned away when you learned what kind of magic I used, or what it sometimes does to me..." She shivered a bit, wrapping her arms around herself. "Using the Death Shroud is so intoxicating but... There are times I worry that I'll lose myself to it. And that I might end up no better than an Orrian." Miriya rubbed a tear away from her eye with a finger. Damn the alchohol... it was making her resolve fall away. Already she could feel the depression sinking in again. Soon she'd have to retreat to her room and spend the rest of the night getting herself under contro-- Her thoughts were interrupted by Kaleb wrapping an arm around her and drawing her up into his lap into a hug. It wasn't a comradely hug, like he might have done outside in the cities, or a brotherly hug as he'd done to her before in celebration of things. It was just a hug, but it was much more than just a hug, in a way she couldn't define. It took her a moment of stunned shock to respond, but she finally relaxed, wrapping her smaller arms as best she could around him and hiding her face in his chest. After a few moments, Kaleb spoke. "Miriya, don't ever doubt yourself. Don't ever doubt your skills; I know I don't. You mastered a fantastically powerful magic few dare to. I read the story about how you came to the attention of the Whispers: You made those Inquest pay for what they did. I think you might be one of the most powerful people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing." Miriya listened, and smiled sadly, closing her eyes as she realized he was only seeing her skills and abilities, and not her. So close...so very close... she lamented, still fighting the urge to cry. He just doesn't see... "I've never been scared of you or your skills, Miriya. Not even when you used the Death Shroud. Because I know you'd never harm anyone you cared about." He gently stroked her braids and ears with one hand, not letting her draw away with the other. "You're an amazing person, Miriya, and I think that no matter what, you'll accomplish anything you set your mind to." Miriya's eyes snapped open at that compliment. She quickly mulled it over in her head, and slowly withdrew her arms from the embrace. "Miriya?...are you okay?" Kaleb asked, concerned at her silence and her retreat from the hug. She had her head turned down, so he couldn't see the expression on her face at all. "....I can accomplish anything eh?" She whispered, half to him, half to herself, staring at her hands where they braced against his bare chest. To Kaleb's ear, he could hear the quiet wavering in those few words. "There's just one thing I can't seem...to do..." "What would that be?" He asked softly, wondering about his friend. He could see her shaking quietly, as if she were cold, though the water was quite warm. Her small digits reflexively twitched where she had them on his chest. "Is it something I can help with?" She half-laughed, half-sobbed, shoulders rocking with the effort to resist. Would she take the chance? Would it do anything, mean anything? What do I even have to lose? "Yeah....it's...something you could help me with." She whispered in a shaky voice. "What is it? You can tell me." NOW. "This." She replied, and quickly tilted her head up to catch him in a kiss. Her arms flew around his neck, half to support herself, half to keep him from snapping his head back in surprise as her lips found his. Miriya kept her eyes tightly shut to avoid looking him in the face, seeing the shocked, perhaps betrayed expression on his face as she broke through the friend-barrier to get what she wanted. At contact, she felt that electric charge that she always felt directed at him. In other situations, it had been when he'd touched her shoulder, or playfully flicked her ear with a finger. Or when he hauled her up to sit on his shoulder while they travelled. Little moments of contact, each with an electric pulse, at least to her. They were all friendly gestures, so she put off how they felt, guilty for feeling more. This moment though...the electric shock was so many magnitudes greater...but so was the accompanying guilt. I just tricked my best friend...she cried inside as she kissed him. I just tricked him, got him drunk, and now I'm stealing a kiss that wasn't mine to have...he's going to stay so far away now... her thoughts then fell apart into unrequited sorrow. Slowly, Miriya broke the kiss, letting her hands slip from his neck, and settling down into the warm water of the pool. She never looked him in the eyes; she just turned to the side and curled up on herself, arms around her knees, looking away. Looking ashamed. "I-I'm sorry." She whispered, sniffling. "I-I'm sorry I did that...I just... I wanted t-to..." "Hey. Hey Miriya." Kaleb's soft voice made her ear twitch. With her eyes clenched closed, she almost jumped when she felt his finger under her chin, turning her face up to look at him. Her green, almond-shaped eyes opened in terrified surprise, and she stared at him, pleadingly, but so badly scared of what the question might be. "...For how long, Miriya?" He asked. Her eyes searched his for any sign of anger or betrayal...or disgust. It wasn't long ago historically that humans thought they were the center of all things and that all were below them. Nothing like that was in his eyes. Only warmth and concern. "For how long have you been holding yourself back like that?" There was a moment of silence as she processed his question. Her face alternately lit up with happiness, but seemed so ready to break into full on tears at the very same moment. Her mouth almost stretched into a smile, though it was a shaky one, and a tear escaped her eye, sliding down her smooth cheek. She let out a half-chuckle, half-cry, before shaking her head. "....since...almost since the first time we met." "You entered the room, smiled, and introduced yourself...you and that big dumb iron hammer of yours. " She laughed a little, staring up at him. "I didn't know what to think. I was told there'd be a human on the team, but I expected some dour soldier...instead, you walked in and made me laugh." Miriya reached up and gently touched his hand where it cupped her cheek. "You didn't bat an eye at my Necromancy...you joked with me and made me feel welcome when we camped out on missions...I'm not sure, but I think you even snapped me out of the Death Shroud that one time, by...just being there." She turned her head in towards the palm of his hand and gave it a soft kiss. "I never thought I'd be attracted to a non-Asura. Never even entered my mind...till you. Once I realized that, I had to get your attention some how. Even if for a moment." A sigh escaped her. "When I learned we had business in Rata Sum, I contrived a way for us to be alone. I introduced Dhangalor to a weaponsmith friend, and I lent Corvus my card to the datablocks in the archives." "And Slane?" Kaleb asked. "Didn't have to do a thing. He just disappeared." She chuckled ruefully. "For all I know he's in this room and cloaked, watching my humiliation." The Asura turned her head to look him in the face. "I tricked you, to get you to come here. To get you alone... to get you drunk..." Another tear fell. "I-I'll understand if you want to leave, or if you never want to talk to me again...I just, I just..." Miriya was interrupted once again by Kaleb. This time however, he cut her off by giving her mouth something else to do. Eyes wide in surprise, it took her a moment to realize he was kissing her this time, and when that registered, she all but melted into his arms. "My poor Miriya..." Kaleb sighed after the kiss was broken. He stroked her cheek, rubbing a tear away. "I didn't see the signs...didn't know how you felt. I honestly thought you thought I was a... what's the term?" "...Bookah?" She chuckled feebly. He smiled. "A Bookah. That's it. I know, and I knew, that I could never match you mentally in damned near anything. But I didn't see all the times, all the little things you said and did...till now." "....and now?" "I'm not going to send you away, or ignore you, for starters." He smirked, raising an eyebrow. "And I'm not going to stop being your best friend either. So you don't need to worry your pretty little head about that." Miriya couldn't repress the giggle, which earned a broad grin from Kaleb. "That being said, I gotta admire your little plan. You did catch me off guard with that kiss...but...honestly it wasn't that bad." Her jaw dropped, and she stared at him as he winked. "It was actually pretty good. I had no idea you were that good a kisser." "I...I-ya...wha..." "You know, I think in the back of my head, I always wondered what it'd be like to kiss you. You had those lovely lips, and that black lipstick..." He grinned. "I never would have thought you'd have had a crush on a simple human." That earned him a smack to the shoulder. "You! I... I ARGH!..." She reached up and grabbed his cheeks so that he was looking her straight in the eyes. "Simple human?! Says the guy who goes and rips the scrappin' ARM off a Destroyer troll and beats it to death with it?! And then has the club at the end of that arm turned into a new hammer head?" She glared at him, teeth grinding, a low growl in her throat, before kissing him again. "You're just damned lucky I think you're cute, big Bookah." She purred, stroking his cheek, feeling the stubble under her nail. "Oh, now we're name-calling?" Kaleb chuckled, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Or is that supposed to be my pet name now?" "Mm, no...not a pet name." She frowned a bit, before smirking. "How about a code name for in public? Others might think I'm insulting your intelligence, but you'd know I'm not?" "Works for me...Bookah never really insulted me anyway." He shrugged. "Always made me think 'Book-reader' or something. So coming from an Asura, it doesn't actually sound like an insult." "Good...Then that's what I'll nickname you in public; Big Bookah. MY Big Bookah." She licked her lips playfully, her emerald eyes examining him so close up. "Mm... That does sound good."

[diveronarpg]

In fair Verona, our tale begins with KATARINA DU PONT, who is TWENTY-NINE years old. She is often called KATHERINE by the CAPULETS and works as their SOLDIER. She uses SHE/HER pronouns.

What is DOOMED to look on forever, admired and sparkling and forbidden from participating in the fancies and follies of man? Stars, strict-upright roses in a crystalline vase, girls in pearls, and a painting hung over the fireplace. What is Katarina Du Pont? Not a star, a bouquet, or a godforsaken fucking PORTRAIT. From the time she was born, the girl was a pearl in reverse: instead of coming from a thing tightly bound and rough to the hands of man with the beautiful thing beneath, she was the unbreakable, opalescent gem with something sharp and coarse melted inside. Every child is meant to be a story, and with each day that Katerina aged, she took her plotline further away from the synopsis her parents had intended: in the beginning it did not matter much that she was a precocious, serious child, nor that the fits she threw - unlike the average spoiled, silver spoon-poisoned youth - were not only a matter of unreasonable want, but indisputable ARGUMENT. All that mattered in her beginning years was that she was a pretty representative of her last name, willing (albeit contemptuous) enough to put on the frilled dresses that were asked of her when the monthly dinner parties rolled around. When years later, her younger sister – the princesse – would stamp her ball-jointed ballerina ankle for a new toy and dew her eyes until the product was achieved, Katarina had made a habit of presenting undeniable reason as to why this thing was owed to her with aggressive FERVOR and a sophistication well beyond her years.

Katarina was a girl that had forsaken METAPHORS by the time her high school English teacher leaned over her pretty porcelain shoulder and whispered an allegory about the colour of her eyes during an exam on Wuthering Heights. She had him fired for improper conduct 36 hours later, and received a 98% on the test. Following a brief interlude after class with the substitute, she had argued her mark up to 101%. In place of metaphors, the soft-silk innuendos and allegorical whispers of other blue-blooded girls her age, Katarina was all skin, bone, and vein. She felt things VISCERALLY, did things with her body, and made no apologies or excuses by pretending what had been done - usually something awful, usually something with teeth - was because of an iridescent shimmer inside her forged by the mating of wealth, intelligence, and beauty. The simpering faux-ignorance of socialites and the general stupidity of men enraged her to an unnatural degree, and her seeming inability (read: unwillingness) to clear her face of evidence when these feelings of disdain crossed her was a blaring LIABILITYfor the Du Ponts. As she aged from girl to young woman to tempest, her parents were faced increasingly often with the embarrassment of finding their eldest daughter had insulted a potential business partner and their second-largest shareholder within the time it took her to finish her first cocktail. There was a bitterness inside her whose origins she could never quite place; it seemed that for as long as she had existed, there had been some mean black stone inside her named resentment, called RAGE.

Just as if she had been a man, Katarina had been indulged in the finest education and the highest expectation - to inherit the family business and continue its greatness - and perhaps that was the fatal FLAW in her raising. Even if the woman had been left unattended and locked away as a child, her mind would have forged itself into the glass-edge it was now on its own – after all, all it takes to make a sharp piece of glass is to break a mirror. But instead that intellect had been honed into something even larger than her heart and more dangerous than her face, and shatter the looking glass Katarina did, along with glass ceilings alike: upon finding out that the ascent to company CEO was meant to be hailed as little more than a poster-girl and placeholder, leaving the decisions of the Du Pont bank to the board of aging and bigoted white men, Katarina’s path changed VICIOUSLY. While this was not the axis upon which her entire life upturned itself, it was the last push that the pendulum needed in order to swing. And so like all aspects of her life, Katarina did what would unnerve the greatest amount of people, and subsequently give her the most pleasure: she took the most literal blue-collar job possible.

She joined the police force.

Men in particular - whether they be criminals, affluent businessmen, or both (the two are not mutually exclusively) - have had a fondness over the years of questioning how a BEAUTIFUL daughter of money had found herself in such a pedestrian aggressive job. And Katarina always answers the same manner; in the most CUTTING way possible, decrying the individual for their attempt to pinhole her and chopping down their own frivolous career in the process. Despite the shock factor of her vocation choice, there is a swelling, even dangerous pride that Katarina fosters from knowing she is a source of dynamite and justice in such a damning city – and in the knowledge that she’s potentially the best shot in all of Verona. True to her teenage self, Katarina is still no metaphor, nor is she a trope, an archetype, or one slim edge of a preset dichotomy: she is a WHIRLWIND, everything at once, and a danger from every angle. She makes no concessions and cuts no corners of herself, donning her uniformly pressed work slacks at daybreak and Harry Winston diamonds by night — and Verona can be sure she that Beretta Model 92FS strapped to her hip shoots with as much ACCURACY as the wicked pink slip of her tongue.

BERNADETTE DU PONT: Sister. In the rule of righteousness, it is the younger sister that should spend her life in her elder’s shadow – and yet Bunny has seemingly been born backwards, casting her shadow in front of her rather than behind. Though the primary emotions slanted towards her sister are annoyance, distaste, and regret for all the things her kin could have been but never will be, there is also a mean sliver of resentment under the nails of Kat’s soul. While the attention of her parents - or anyone at all - has never quite been a driving force for Katarina, that her intelligence and ambition should have favour lost to the falsely doe-eyed ministrations of her sister sets her alight. Katarina’s bitterness has always been her defining factor, and no more so is it present than when conversing with darling Bunny dearest.

MIKAEL FALCO: Achilles Heel. Kindness does not come easily to her, whether it be by word or action. But no one can say that she isn’t a generous soul. When she sees a bird with a broken wing, she can’t help but give a small cluck of exasperation and do what any other might – which is to say, nurse the fallen dear back to health. Perhaps there is something within her that calls out to the Falco man, something just as broken as he. But when the two talk, it is as if that hum of pain is drowned out, momentarily, briefly, fleetingly, but drowned out all the same. Her logic tells her that a wounded creature is a creature meant for slaughter. Her heart tells her that their stories are the same, somehow, some way. Verona isn’t kind to those who show weaknesses. When it comes to the Falco man, she can’t help but guard both his and hers.

LILLIAN WEN: Best Friend. They had grown up on opposite ends of Verona, yet found their way to each other as if tied by red string. In their younger years, when her fire was especially potent and without control, here were times that Kat had felt as if Lillian was the only existence in all of Italy that she could tolerate. The pair has been an unconquerable and known duo since childhood, and together they form a diamond: Lillian the glisten and shine, Katarina the sharp-cut edges unbreakable content. More recently tension had arisen between them due to their discrepancies with each other’s career choices, and while Kat will never quite understand (or like), Lillian’s status as a living clothes hanger, it’s better than the shadow-clad second job Katarina has turned a blind eye to for as long as possible – her best friend’s status as a Capulet consort. Perhaps there had always been an expectant part of her longing for her best friend to be the only consort she would ever know…

LAWRENCE VERNON: Old Friend. He abandoned her, left her for desolate at a time where she would such abandonment most keenly. Since then, she has forcibly forgotten what secrets were passed between them, what tender moments were shared. It would be nice to say that she can rise above and forgive, wipe away, repair. But, alas, not even she, with all her righteousness, can do such a thing. Friendships that have been abandoned by one side, are often to be resented by the other. She cannot help that it rises in her, nor can she stem the flood of old aches that quickly follows.  A Capulet and a Montague, what bitterness always follows – and they? They are simply another chapter to add to the book that holds so many tales.

Katarina is portrayed by SARAH GADON  and was written by TARYN. She is currently TAKEN  by VICTORIA.

[mysticsparklewings]

Covered in All the Colored Lights‪

Well, this looks wild and different coming from me, doesn't it? If you've been a Sparkler long enough, you may remember this character of mine from ages ago when I made This Is Where You Wanna Be, which featured her. Her name is Windith, and she's a performer who likes mixing old-time circus elements with more contemporary stuff.   (She was originally just a circus performer but that felt too limiting for me, and I'm thinking it might be a little too passive for her personality. I don't have a set story for her, so her character will perpetually be in development ) This drawing was also me testing out some new paper and the new Skin Tone marker set from Ohuhu. Which I simply had to get because it meant more colors of their brush tip markers that I've tested out in the past. (Ohuhu Brush Marker Review and Sweet Ohuhu Snail) I'll cut to the chase for those that aren't interested in the longer version: I kinda hate this paper and it, unfortunately, was not the best choice for what was supposed to be a mostly-marker illustration. But I like the markers! The markers themselves are nice as always, and I like the addition of the new colors, but the one thing I have to point out is that Ohuhu is still lacking in good colors for super pale skin that doesn't have a strong pink or gray undertone. They're doing really good with peachy tones, mid-tone, warm browns, and the new colors add some really nice darker/cooler browns, though. In fact, the new marker colors are what primarily inspired me to bring Winidth back into the fold in the first place; some of the colors looked like they would work really well for her skin tone in particular, and I've avoided drawing her traditionally in the past because I wasn't sure I could capture it accurately with the supplies I had. And...that's really all I have to say about the markers, actually. As brush markers, virtually nothing has changed from the last two rounds of testing I did with the Ohuhus, and thus the only thing I can really comment on is the colors. I really appreciate having more to pick from, especially because some of the colors in the set really do stand apart from the rest of my alcohol marker collection, but a lot of the "light skin tone" options are either too orange/pink or too yellow or just generally too dark for a light/pale skin tone. So, my final commentary is the same as always: More colors, please! Now, as for that paper... I picked up a new sketchbook from my local Ross, which I've known for a while now as having a surprisingly good (maybe not the best, but surprisingly good) art supply section. This paper is by a brand called Craft Smith, which as far as I can tell seems to be very into making scrapbook/craft paper and doesn't appear to be actively selling/promoting sketchbooks currently. (At least not anywhere I could find online.) It also claims to be "Mixed Media Paper 120 lb (180 gsm)." I actually have some 120 lb mixed media paper that I use semi-frequently in the form of a sketchbook by Denik. And funnily enough, that's the same paper I used on my other two Ohuhu marker pieces. So we have both a baseline for comparison in terms of performance and in terms of feel. Now, I'm not an idiot. I did inspect the paper before I actually bought the sketchbook, and it's alarming how deceptive this paper is. It definitely has the right weight/thickness to it, even compared to the 120 lb. paper I already had once I got it home. The only truly notable differences are 1. This paper is a brighter white (the Denik paper is almost on the blue/purple side) and 2. This paper feels smoother. And the second point was actually one of the reasons I bought it, as I thought it was make for a really nice marker paper. (Smoother paper tends to be a better option for brush markers so you don't wear out the nibs as quickly)   Oh boy, how wrong would I be! So, let me explain just by going through my process for the art, since that and discovering the atrocities of this paper go pretty hand-in-hand. Trying desperately to get used to my current tablet situation, I started by doing the lines for the illustration digitally, having been inspired for a pose/facial expression by some Ball Jointed Dolls over on Instagram. The lines didn't turn out perfectly, but they were good enough that I felt comfortable printing them out and re-inking them traditionally as I did for Fairy Enchanting, the artwork featured on my Commission Sheet. In that process, I would end up with a 1/2 of the drawing that didn't print correctly, the proper print out I used to do the inking, and also similarly to Fairy Enchanting, a first attempt at tracing my lines that was not turning out how I wanted that got scrapped. So, essentially, I had 1.5 test pages just for colors/color placement (as they were on regular printer paper), and 1 to see how this paper would actually handle my supplies. And while normally I'd be scolding myself for wasting paper and ink, in this case, it's actually a very good thing that happened. My second attempt at inking on this paper went a lot smoother (I think I just needed to loosen up the inking part of my brain), and I was actually pretty happy with how the lines turned out. So much so that once I discovered major problems with the paper, I actually scanned the inked version in to preserve it, just in case. And I even inked it a third time on to the Denik paper I mentioned earlier, extra-just in case so I could even do a side-by-side comparison of the two papers to show "this paper is crap, this other paper is not." (Fortunately, I don't think I'll be needing that third inking despite the tale I'm about to tell.) I started out by using the different test pages to make sure I had the right tones/colors I wanted for the skin. The swatches looked okay, so I went ahead and tried coloring the skin to test some blush and shading. Right away I noticed that 1. The ink feathers/bleeds across the page (outside of lines) way more than it should for a paper this thick, and 2. once the ink settles into the paper, it's kind of patchy/spotty. And 3. If you trying layering a light color over a darker color with alcohol markers, it makes the patchy/spotty-ness more apparent. Obviously, these things combined make layering and blending tricky without the end result looking strange and uncomfortable. Just in case there was something this paper didn't like about the Ohuhu markers, in particular (and also because I wasn't super happy with my color choices for Ohuhu for this particular hair color), I did try a test blend for the hair with some Copic markers. Nope, still feathering badly and doing the weird spotty thing. Still not layering very well without re-working the entire area. Briefly, I panicked. The whole idea for this paper was to be for markers, and I had largely intended for this illustration to be pretty markers-only. But this paper, quite apparently, hates markers. Okay, okay. I tried one more blending/coloring test, this time just seeing if I could do the skin and get it to look decent on this paper inside my lines, and while not super ideal, I did manage to get something I was mostly happy with. Likewise, my next step was to do that again on the final piece. At least then I'd have the most important part--the skin--for this piece done and then I could proceed with whatever seemed like the best option for the rest of it. So the skin actually turned out okay in the end because I was being exceptionally careful to work with the issues I'd already discovered. By nature, it's not the best (as in it would look better on better paper), but it works. I still had at least a small problem on my hands though. To be fair, even before I printed the lines off I was thinking I might try washi tape for her clothes/shawl/whatever, so the paper not liking markers really just re-enforced that idea. The problem was I still had the hair to do. I tried a couple more blending/coloring tests, trying desperately to make the markers work for that, but it just wasn't happening. The way I blend hair just requires too many layers for this paper. So my next solution was to try some tests with colored pencils. For smooth, flat color, this paper is actually pretty nice for colored pencils. For layering and blending, however, (just as I suspected before I even tried it) it's too smooth. Blending works pretty okay if you're just doing 1-2 layers, but anything beyond that is just slippery and unsatisfying, to say the least. That was my two main mediums thrown out the window. Now what do I do? Because I was largely at my wit's end, I got a little crazy and tried some tests using some Faber Castell gelatos to see what they would do. And I have to say, putting the gelatos to this paper does feel exceptionally good, as the smoothness of the paper suits the creamy texture of the gelatos. Although the gelatos don't blend out super well when you add water to them on this paper, so that limits what you can do with them by a fair amount. Not really knowing what else to do, I broke out some actual watercolors and tried those. Fortunately, while the paper does warp fairly easily (that's to be expected with any paper less than 140 lb.), the paint lays down and blends fairly smoothly and nicely. And so I finally had something to work with. There's a reason when I work with watercolors I usually don't go for a hard illustration like this, but I think I managed fairly well to get the paint to do what I wanted. I knew going in it wouldn't have the same look or dimension as my markers or pencils, so I made my peace with that ahead of time. The main thing I wanted was at least the suggestion of shading and relatively smooth coverage. There are some small areas where the paint just did what it wanted anyway, but it's little enough I don't think it ruins the whole thing. I'm sure I could've worked with the hair more to get arguably better results, but by this point, I was so relieved the paint was working that I decided not to push my luck. (I did end up having to digitally tweak it because it shows up as a little more blue on the scan than it actual is, but that's not really the paper's fault.) Since I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to do with the face/makeup at this point, I moved on to dealing with the washi tape. Fortunately, this ended up working out fairly easily. I actually put the tape down on my inking-gone-wrong (as the areas where I needed to cut it turned out well enough it would work for this) and used an Exacto knife to carefully cut the top of tape away to make the neckline and keep the tape from covering up the little bit of hair that reaches down that far, the hair being the tricker part to cut. Even so, I had a less challenging time than I thought and I only minimally dented/cut into the very top layer of the paper underneath. (Which was why I wanted to cut the tape on not-the-final-piece in the first place; I knew indentions were going to be made from the knife no matter what I did, but it's hard to predict how bad it'll be until it's usually too late.) Once that was done, I could simply peel the pre-cut tape off of my test page and re-apply it to the final one. Naturally, the cut wasn't 100% accurate, but it was close enough that the little bit that wasn't quite right was easily disguised but going back over my lines again and filling any gaps. I went back to the face once that was taken care of, and I ended up relying on the heavy feathering this paper does to get Windith's eyes right. Originally when I drew her, I tried to give her "oil slick" eyes. As in, her eyes are black but have a rainbow sheen to them, like how if you ever see oil in a parking lot, it's black but has that really pretty rainbow shine to it. I never had to consider before how this might translate into a traditional drawing though since that drawing was done digitally and at a time where I thought digital art was going to be my primary medium going forward.  (My oh my, how the tables have turned indeed...) After a couple of failed tests (failed due to personal preference and actually not the paper this time) I ended up going with a dark selection of alcohol markers in very teeny tiny dots to make a pseudo-rainbow. It's not a perfect translation of what her eyes are supposed to look like, but it's close enough to suit me. Then came the makeup. Originally, I was going to just make her lips a more natural color and largely call it done, but I didn't want them to blend in too much with her skin and even when I tried a less natural berry color I just couldn't get the blending right in such a small space on this paper. And I was also thinking it would be nice to give her eye shadow and bring the colors from her shawl-thing up into the face area a little bit. But I'd already discovered colored pencils weren't the way to go and I had a feeling I wasn't going to like how this paper handled pastels either, so I just skipped testing that altogether. After some thought, since I originally thought of Windith as a circus performer, I deiced to do some testing with gel pens (which I figured would handle just fine on this paper, given the nature of gel pens in general) and this simple kind of clown makeup. (I'm sure there's a more proper name for it out there somewhere but I haven't the foggiest idea what that said name is.) I ended up really liking that, especially with how the bright colors pop against her dark skin tone, and in that, I thought a bright color would work well for her lips, too. I tested my orange gel pen, but it was a little too bright and just a little too imprecise for my taste, so I opted for a little fluorescent orange watercolor instead. I know the makeup probably looks kind of silly to most, but I really like it and how it ties the colors together better. And besides, I think it says a lot of about Windith's character that she can wear makeup like that but still looks as confident and determined as she does here.   But I wasn't done quite yet. I wanted to do something to fill the empty space in the background, but as I mentioned earlier I really was not keen on finding out how this paper would handle pastels after the struggles I'd already been through. And also I didn't really think any of my pastel colors would work all that well with the other colors going on here. It's not too much, but I ended up defaulting to some of my dollar-store stencils to add some florals and a little butterfly back there. I figured that would tie in nicely with the floral washi tape, add a bit of color, yet not totally overpower everything. I also ended up with some artsy white dots because I somehow got some random ink dots/smudges around a few edges and once I covered those up I added some more dots so it would look like an intentional part of the look. Unfortunately, said white dots did not show up on the scan.   The final piece is definitely far from perfect and this paper is not good for a lot of things I was hoping it would be (I can report it seems to work pretty good for regular sketching, though, so it won't go to waste!). However, I still managed to get something pretty decent out of the equation, I think. Small victories? I may not be looking forward to making more finished pieces with this paper, but I am looking forward to playing with the Ohuhu Skin tone markers more, that's for sure. I've got a few sketches that I'm thinking about turned into a mini-series illustrating a few different skin tones with them, but I haven't decided 100% on that just yet. I do have a couple of other projects definitely coming down the pipeline though, so stayed tuned. P.S. The title is a reference to The Greatest Show, the opening them from "The Greatest Showman," the same song that largely inspired the first time I drew Windith. It's just kinda her thing now.   ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram