#took me a while to figure out a good color scheme but i think i really like this one

[slightabsol]

New shaymin sona :>

[ohdeerfully]

Hii!! i’ve never requested smth before but i absolutely adore your lil one shots for alastor and was wondering if you could write smth based on someone’s idea?

https://www.tumblr.com/sockmeat/741700944177315840/alastor-in-rut-but-instead-of-him-being-horny-hes

completely fine if not!! i just thought it was a cute idea and would love to see it wrote in an actual scenario!! :3

this is really simple and short but god writing block is killing me quickly... hope u like it anyway!!!!!! mwah mwah

as stated in the request, this is based off of @sockmeat 's post, which you can access by clicking here!

Jealousy Looks Good on You

alastor x reader (fluff) TW: alastor is super possessive, reader is referred to as female but doesn't really effect story at all, thats it i think

join my discord!

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It was that time of year again for Alastor. A few months of absolute physical and mental torture—which, considering he lived in Hell, maybe that was how Heaven finally managed to torment him for eternity. It never took a genius to figure out what put Alastor in such an odd state.

He was a deer.

Deer go into rut.

It was incredibly embarrassing, to say the least, especially for him when the rut was over. However, for his “mate,” who faced the brunt end of his seasonal affections, you didn’t mind in the slightest. In fact, it was probably your favorite three months of the year. 

You were currently lounging in the hotel lobby, chatting with Angel Dust about a bar he was interested in going to. You had one leg thrown up over the other, clad in a dark red outfit that had been “mysteriously” placed on the edge of your bed when you woke up—you knew who the culprit was as soon as you saw Alastor a few minutes later in a suspiciously similar outfit of the same color scheme.

He had been sitting next to you for a while, making small, nearly unnoticeable bids for attention as you tried to focus on Angel’s words. A pressure on your knee with his own, a light graze of his fingers through your hair as he lifted his hand to adjust his monocle… to anybody else, the contact would’ve seemed only coincidental; however, to you, it was obvious considering the great care he always took to mind his personal space.

A brief glance out of the corner of your eye confirmed your suspicions. You couldn’t help but lightly grin at the tense grin on his face and the growing expression of frustration as you continued to keep your attention on Angel.

“–so, that being said, I wanted ta invite’cha out with me! And Cherri’ll be there too,��� Your eyes turned back towards the spider. You could nearly feel the tenseness in Alastor’s shoulders heighten, and that radio frequency of his tuning up ever so slightly, but still noticeable.

“That bar is no place for my lady,” Alastor responded in a snap before you could even open your mouth. You whipped your head in his direction with a frown. 

“She isn’t your anything, Smiles,” Angel shot back, also interrupting your own attempt at defending yourself. 

It was almost comical, the way your head twisted back and forth with each remark the two made at each other. The tension was rising quickly, and you were getting more agitated with how many times you got cut off from saying a single word.

You were distracted from your own mental anguish when Alastor abruptly stood, hand gripping his cane with more force than usual. There was a dangerous look in his red eyes as he grinned down at Angel.

“She is mine,” Alastor stated with finality. “And what’s mine stays with me.” He reached down and gripped your hand, tugging you up with him. As angry as he seemed he was still gentle with you, at least. 

You’d be lying if you didn’t find the possessiveness attractive. Heck, it would probably be impossible to date the Radio Demon if you didn’t want to be obsessed over and practically owned. You were only slightly embarrassed at the heat on your cheeks when you felt the almost desperate grip of his on your hand, to which Angel pointed at with a defeated “what the hell.”

He basically dragged you away from the situation, ears slightly pressed back. He refused to look at you as you caught up to his steps and walked beside him. He didn’t have to look at you, though, because you already knew the turmoil that was going through his head.

“Don’t be so embarrassed,” You tried to comfort as he opened the door to your shared bedroom. “I think it’s very becoming of a gentleman to protect his property.” You enjoyed the way his eyes glittered with pride when you referred to yourself in such a manner. You didn’t truly consider yourself property, of course, but you simply enjoyed seeing that look in his eyes and the way his chest involuntarily puffed up.

What a different being Alastor was during his rut. More expression than ever with the way his affections and frustrations were so visible in his body language. He pulled you closer to him, squeezing you against his body as he let the two of you fall into the bed. You lifted yourself off of his chest with an elbow and looked down at him.

He met your gaze with his own wide, needy eyes and quivering smile. To put it simply, he looked… pitiful. Endearing. You loved it. He hated it. You knew if anybody saw him in this state he would go on the attack immediately without a single thought. You briefly glanced back to make sure the door had been locked. Just in case.

You smiled at him and peppered kisses on his chest and up, finally nuzzling your head into the crook of his neck. He sighed pleasantly at your motions, swooping his arms up to position you on your side in front of him, wrapping himself protectively around your body.

“I crave you, my love,” He stated in an incredibly forward way. His voice lacked the typical radio effect as he spoke, and you realized your skin was also not prickling with the sensation that usually accompanied his presence. You responded by layering your hands over his own, which was resting comfortably against your waist. “I never want you out in such a… dirty place with that overly sexual spider.”

“I know, Al,” You said with a sigh. “Too many ‘hungry eyes’, you’ve told me this.”

He remained quiet, and you could barely feel the way your hair flicked every time he exhaled against the top of your head.

You also remained quiet, opting to just enjoy the moment. These three months went by so, so fast, so you didn’t want to waste time speaking and bickering over meaningless things. You didn’t care to go to bars, anyway; you weren’t much of a drinker. You also hoped to get Alastor’s mind off of his disdain for Angel. While you trusted him to know better to attack one of your friends—more importantly one of Charlie’s friends—you didn’t want to take any chances. He was somehow even more unpredictable during his rut.

You leaned your head back, tilting up slightly to meet Alastor’s gaze. He placed a feather-light kiss against your forehead in response.

He was in for a long three months, but you were going to enjoy every second of it.

[shiny-jr]

Please yap away about your new Empyrean series~! I’ve been watching a bunch of videos and reading about Genshin Impact so I can better understand the world and dynamics you’re planning to write about and absolutely fascinated with everything~

Is there a specific dorm you’re looking forward to writing about or possible side arcs/missions in between the MC meeting the different Archons like the events in Twisted Wonderland? Were some of the dorm leaders easier to place as the different Archons elements than others and if so who did you struggle with?

Oh god, where do I even start? How much is too much to say? I don't want to spoil whole parts. I haven't actually written anything for it, but I do certainly have ideas. Ideas that have been accumulating slowly but surely.

Uh, I think first thing's first, none of the TWST cast are going to be just human. How unfair would it be if, say, Riddle was an archon (god) and Ace was just human? Kinda unfair. Which is why all the characters are going to be something else. I'm still figuring some of this part out.

Keep in mind, my knowledge of Genshin Impact extends as far as Inazuma and no further. Anything I know beyond that was through tiktok, that is it. So I'll be taking heavy inspirations from the first three regions.

Pairing the element to a character wasn't too hard actually. So first I focused on the archons, and I looked at the dorm leaders and what they stand for and what type of magic they use.

We know Riddle uses a lot of fire magic based off his SSR Dorm Uniform card. Additionally, the color scheme just went well with his hair color and the roses and all. At first I thought it seemed uncanny, because how could a green region based off of Britain be symbolic of the pyro element? Well, then I considered that since it borders Savanaclaw, it could make sense.

For Leona, I took into account the volcanoes that act as a natural border between his land and Riddle's. Additionally, his unique magic made it a very easy choice. I mean, turning things to sand? Slapping Geo on it and calling it a day.

On Azul's, I was actually torn. I know it seems like an obvious choice of hydro, but listen, at first I actually considered giving Kalim hydro due to his own unique magic. Then I thought maybe Azul would get cryo, but in my mind, leaving the other elements to the remaining characters just didn't make much sense. So, ultimately, Azul won the hydro element.

Giving Kalim the dendro element just happened to coincidentally align with the Sumeru region's main element. I wanted to give Kalim the next best thing if he couldn't have hydro, which was dendro. As I see it as a very "good" element with positive qualities, which he deserves.

Vil was one of the others that gave me trouble when assigning him an element. For a very brief moment, I considered giving him dendro, but that just didn't fit the sort of aesthetic I had in mind for him. Then I remember what his home region is supposed to look like, if it's similar to Epel's, it's snowy, right? So cryo was the next best option. I think it actually fits him well, if I do say so myself.

Idia was the last character to give me trouble. For a while I really was not sure about giving him the anemo element, as he just seemed like the complete opposite of Venti and his ideals. However, the longer I thought about, the more I came to terms with it. Wind doesn't have to mean just freedom. Wind can be very terrifying too, like what we see in Stormterror's Lair which is the sort of aesthetic I imagined when I finally assigned him anemo.

I mean, duh, of course Malleus was getting electro. What else did you expect? I mean, there was a second where I considered giving electro to Idia, but then giving anemo to Malleus didn't sit right with me. Electro was ultimately the best choice for this archon. It's constantly used in the games around him, he has control over it, it just made sense to give him this element.

Any other characters that are not archons will have their elemental type be based off the region they're from. HINT HINT. For example, Riddle may be pyro as he is the archon, but at least one person in Heartslabyul will not have the pyro element.

[mister-qi]

Mr. Qi Friendship and Romance Mod Devlog 5/9/2024

Previous update

For those curious about the mod progress, read on!

Since the previous update, most of my efforts have been spent on Art and Implementation. While I've made some progress on Writing, that hasn't been my main focus.

Writing

Heart Events: no major progress, besides a bit of writing/blocking for the 4 heart cutscene.

Daily Dialogues: Generic dailies are 64% done. Unique dailies are currently on the back-burner. Marriage dailies are also on the back-burner, but I have quite a few written regardless.

Misc dialogues: A new section! This includes so many little details, which even get as hyper-specific as what happens if you divorce him and then attempt to invite him to a movie. What does he say if you give him a bouquet at low hearts? What does he say if you're married to him and there are slimes in the house? Stuff like that! There are 49 of these written so far, and it's hard to estimate my progress because as I continue looking through both the documentation and existing files I get more and more ideas.

Gift Dialogues: Not a ton of progress since the previous update, though I've written his birthday gift reactions.

Art

Portraits: 2 new portraits finished: blush and shocked.

Sprites: You may have seen me posting about this, but Mr. Qi does not have a walk cycle in the vanilla game, so I had to make custom animations for him. I've also changed his color scheme to better match his sprites.

Besides that, I've also made a walk cycle for the Bouncer, who will show up in at least one cutscene, maybe two.

look at him go!

Maps: I'm really excited to announce that I've recruited someone to help with maps! Their name is wovensong, and they're currently working on the Casino VIP Room, which features in the 10 heart cutscene. They're helping with both the sprites and .tmx files, which is a huge help.

Misc sprites: none yet

Implementation

I have a functional version of Mr. Qi that can be befriended in my files now. He doesn't have a ton of dialogue in game yet, but you can give him stuff, raise his friendship, and trigger some placeholder heart events. But getting to that point has been kind of a hassle, in ways that the average modder doesn't have to deal with!

You see... the vanilla "Mister Qi" has a space in his internal name. If you know anything about coding, this should be setting off alarm bells.

Here's an example of where that's an issue: say you want to trigger a cutscene at two hearts with an NPC. You'd write something like:

f Jodi 500

which the game reads as "trigger this cutscene when you have 500 amount of friendship with the NPC named Jodi"

But if you were to write:

f Mister Qi 500

the game would go "you want me to trigger this cutscene when you have Qi amount of friendship with the NPC named Mister?? WTF?" and then SMAPI throws you a big red error and the cutscene would never trigger. Yippee!

It took me... a while to figure out how to get around this. Luckily the 1.6 update now allows for parsing for quotes in certain scenarios, so what actually works is:

f \"Mister Qi\" 500

So I'm glad that I started this mod now instead of pre-1.6!

However, it's definitely possible that the space in the internal name will cause issues down the line, so I have some (rough) code for what to do in that scenario. This involves hiding the vanilla Mister Qi, and adding a new, identical NPC with an internal name that doesn't have a space. Other mods, such as Morris Redeemed and some NPCs like Marlon and Gunther in SVE, do this as well.

And, if you're thinking that I could just change the internal name itself: maybe?? But probably not. There's some hardcoded stuff surrounding Mister Qi, and I worry about breaking it. Additionally, if any future official Stardew updates added new content revolving around Mister Qi, there's a risk that the mod would break in more serious ways.

Final Notes

Overall, I feel like I'm making pretty good progress! There's still a lot to get done, but I'm proud of the work I've done so far. Thanks for reading!

[hostilemuppet]

All your ocs (trolls, gems, ect) have such cool designs! I especially love what you do with colors and shapes :D Do you have any specific process when you make them or is it like an elaborate vibe-check

aww, ty :) for every oc no matter what i always try to make sure something about their character is communicated in their design, whether its something like "they are a doctor so they wear a doctors coat" or more like "they are lazy so their outfit looks very low effort"

but for TROLLS specifically, i almost always try to make sure theres some sort of theme or motif going on that i keep in mind throughout the whole design process. keep in mind what you want/need (eg, for slush puppy he needed to look like his parents, while for rosé i established from the beginning "pink glitter troll" and that smth i needed to stick to) and plan around that. heres an attempt at explaining my thought process after the fact

sometimes a theme isnt as obvious, for example brad and angelina were designed to resemble raggedy ann and andy toys but that isnt really obvious when theyre any older than children. i think this is okay since their older designs still show their personalities and are still pretty cohesive while complimenting each other

often youll have a theme or look youre going for but still struggle landing on perfection, and thats fine! a couple of my favourites, cupcake and glitz, took agesssss to nail down

(not including my reference photos for obvious reasons, but there is NO shame in assembling a moodboard for a character design! i highly encourage it in fact!)

for cupcake i knew i wanted her to be sweet lolita from the beginning (since. her name is Cupcake.) but settling on something concrete was trickyyyyyyy. everything from "her outfit should seem cutesy enough to fit her vibe without being so complicated that it looks muddy on such a small chibi body (and would be really hard to draw...)" to "i need to give her a hairstyle that looks trolly enough, oh no this doesnt look trolly enough but the hime cut really fits her personality, does the massive hat help her silhouette?" to "i want her colour scheme to look like youre walking into a candy store, is this incohesive? what if i try going for a chocolate and raspberry vibe? doesnt have what im going for... how do i salvage this?" it was a lot of facing a problem, trying to fix it, and then facing a NEW problem. and thats okay! rome wasnt built in a day yknow. sometimes youll need a loooooot of drafts to get a character design youre happy with. in fact its actually way better to have several drafts, especially if its a character youll actually use a lot! believe me, ive made the mistake before of "i designed what i thought looked good but i actually hated drawing it over and over again". if you love the way it looks and you think its effective, but you hate actually using it, its still a bad design! its half the reason i redesigned penny 😭 to be fair to me though im not sure i really expected to love penny as much as i do now...

with glitz i have less notes since i had an actual person (his co-creator) to give me real time feedback rather than reasoning to myself </3 but the same sort of thing happened. he actually took me more than a month to finalise! part of that was we only had one parent for him decided at first (and it was actually through the design process we figured out the other one! if you know who glitz is you can probably see the exact moment we figured it out 😭). but from the beginning i still knew i wanted him to look flashy with glittery accents (but NOT a glitter troll!) you can see i originally wanted him to have glitter freckles but i swapped that out for a glittery star shaped... okay i never actually decided whether that was makeup or a birth mark. audience interpretation! but i ended up giving him a much more recurring star motif since he wants to be a star and sometimes you gotta beat the audience over the head with symbolism

im not sure if any of that actually helped or if it was just rambling, but the tldr is: make sure you have an end goal in mind! whether its communicating something specific about their personality (eg glitz's flashiness representing his ego and lust for fame) or you have a theme you want to stick to (eg pitaya is obviously styled after actual pitayas), having a goal makes everything so much easier since you know what youre actually working towards! if youre just throwing shit at a wall, you probably wont end up anywhere youre fully satisfied with

[shuuenka]

Of first meetings - Fei Bai Bing

ALT text under cut

She put down her cup and looked up at him. Aside from occassional nibble at pastry brought by a waiter she didn’t touch any of the food in front of her. 

‘’Color me curious, how did you find out I switched with my sister?”

‘’You accepted Princess Consort's invitation for the small banquet, while still acting as Fei Bai Ping,” Wu Chun Tian replied, and started his dinner. 

He noted her raised brow. 

He figured he should be as much truthful as he can - if he wants young miss Fei to come over to 9th Prince side. It’s tricky - Fei family is allied to 4th Prince by marriage granted by the Emperor. Fei Xin is by all accounts loyal to Lian Bai Wei. However after his little trip to temple in the mountains, he is quite sure that first and second miss’ of the household do not feel the same way. 

‘’Our Princess Consort enjoys a wide array of pastries,’’ he continued. ‘’Recently she’s been enjoying sweets brought by merchants to our Minli harbour from far off lands and wanted to share them once we’re in the capital.’’

Young woman at the other side of the table frowned, understanding visible in her eyes.

‘’And from what I know you sister does not eat pastries due to wasting-thirst disease, no?” he quipped.

‘’Being friends with my cousin comes in handy,’’ she said. 

‘’Can’t deny. Don't blame me - it's Fei Jing Rui who has loose mouth.”

‘’And then you visited my sister in the mountains and heard the rest of the story.”

“Out of curiosity, yes.”

She took another sip of her tea and gave a small sigh. 

Golden ornaments in her hair jingling as cocked her head, ’’So, what is that you want?”

‘’Xiao Lou Tai - or rather, the information that Xiao Lou Tai can provide me.”

Her lips curled into a smile, first one this spring afternoon. She hummed and refilled her tea and then added a drop of honey into the cup. 

Everything she does, he notes, is unhurried and graceful. As if she had all the time in the world. Makes sense for someone who schemed from the inside of 4th Prince mansion for a year.

‘’Does the 9th Prince not have his informants? If so, then he’s further from the race to the throne than I thought.”

‘’He has his informants, but not a whole network,’’ he admitted. ‘’What I want is much more than a group of runners and your Xiao Lou Tai has it.’’

He leaned on the table.

‘’You have a bloody feud with the 4th Prince. You have Xiao Lou Tai, but you don’t have means to bring him down, young miss Fei.’’

The clutter of the restaurant noise from below the balcony and some people passing by the room was the only indication that time has not slowed down or stopped.

‘’Three conditions,’’ Fei Bai Bing finally spoke. ‘’One - the information that you will be requesting will still cost you. Two - I do not want anyone else knowing about this deal. I do not plan to be anything but a young miss of the Fei family that just came back from the mountain temple.”

He nods. ‘’Reasonable enough. Third?”

‘’I want you to establish, by whatever means, a tea house in Minli.’’

He blinked.

‘’Does Xiao Lou Tai want to expand north?”

''Mine does.’’

He didn’t have to think twice about her conditions. He smiled back at the young woman sitting across from him, ‘’deal.’’

Her lips stretched in a sweet smile and she raised her cup of honey tea, as in toast.

‘’Very well. I don’t have bitter wine, so I’ll raise this cup of sweet tea to toast you. I fall down to hell, you will go down with me.”

‘’Miss, what kind of toast is this?”

He huffed out a laugh, but raised his own cup. That's fun.

Good, he thought.

Lian Bai Wei had his web of influence stretching across the whole capital and even further. He even reached for Xiao Lao Tai with this marriage.

Always a few steps ahead of him and his prince.

‘’Color me curious,’’ he said. There was one thing he didn't figure out in all ofthis mess. ‘’You made 4th Prince eat quite a loss when minister Li stepped down, thus breaking their unspoken alliance. How?”

‘’Oh, this is something for me to know,’’ she said standing up. And then with half of her face obscured by an embroidered fan, she turned to look at him and continued,’’ and if you’re as smart as people claim you are and curious - for you to find out.”

[bells-n-wisps]

Hey Straying World AU fans I have stuff

notes for each design (if I have any) below cut

Five Pebbles - I don’t have many notes! Other than the fact of me giving into TRIANGLE PEBBLES, he’s mostly the same.

LTTM - OH MY LORD HER DESIGN TOOK SOOO LONG TO FIGURE OUT. Very much worth it though, because I’m very proud of her design! I wanted to lean into more of a sunset motif, especially considering her downfall, so that’s fun. Definitely made me appreciate Moon more

NSH - Eyyyy, it’s the design I’m most excited to share!! I came up with the idea of NSH’s face just being a S C R E E N while making little doodles during lunch. Not only does it hide him from Sentinels more, but I think it’s also a pretty cool design! NSH’s very silly free gremlin personality deserves a free-range screen. Idk if this face design will carry over to my normal Rain World design or not.

Suns: Nothing changed. Sorry. Nothing changed.

UI: FINALLY I FOUND A GOOD DESIGN FOR THIS SILLY AUGHHHHH… I wanted to play into a bunch of different representations of innocence, including a rabbit-ish color scheme (or just cute fuzzy things in general), the little angel wings, and a child’s nightgown. I feel like the designers went all-out for them.

SOS: I wanted to give her desert vibes!! In the future, I might give her more Egyptian motifs to relate to their whole afterlife stuff. Overall, kind of an “I’m tired and she dies super early let’s just slap colors on her” design.

[tornrose24]

So a fews days ago, @chinirom05 asked me some questions regarding my art and writing, and I told them the question was too good to be just on a DM, because my response might help other creatives/writers.

So to answer the questions...

When it comes to fashion, it really depends on a few factors. Since I’ve mainly done fan art on here, it boils down to ‘What’s the event/time period’ and ‘who is the character I’m dressing up.’ As a bonus, sometimes I try to factor in if I want to pay homage to the character’s ethnicity/heritage (I did this for those TGAMM Aladdin AU drawings for the princess attire).

So I’m going to go WAY back in the past for one example that the CU fandom might recall–remember the CU Tangled AU drawings and fics I collaborated with @princeasimdiya12 ?

While there was inspiration from the movie its based on, I also had to research the time period the movie supposedly takes place in (I think it was around the 1790s if I remember correctly). Edith was the best challenge for this one because there were a lot of dresses to put her in, but I also needed to design them in a way that reflected her character as well as would look good for her body type since she has a plus sized figure. The apron from the first fic was meant to show off her creative side, Her castle dress had polka dots as a nod to her canon outfit, and the ballgown used colors I thought would be good on her–but blue was a necessary element due to her iconic blue eyes. (damn, that was YEARS ago and when I had my old tablet!) Also I loved getting an excuse to research period outfits and creating dresses. George and Harold’s outfits outfits took inspiration from the characters they were based on, but I kept their color schemes and looked up clothes boys might have worn back then.

A more recent example was from the TGAMM fic Her First Forever Friend, and I did do drawings for it, including the example I’m about to talk about. It comes late in the fic (chapter 13, to be specific), but for the moment in question, I wanted to give Molly a new outfit that was meant to be symbolic/reflective of her nature and growth in the story (especially given how limited her wardrobe is in the show). I researched sundresses (or just dresses) for a girl her age, until I found a design I could work with that also looked like something Molly would wear. I also used yellow daisies in her appearance as a theme and for the symbolism behind it (I wanted to use pink lotus flowers at first, but their meaning didn’t exactly fit what I was after). If you’ve read the fic or seen my drawings for the fic (which includes her in that dress), then you’d understand the meaning behind it as well as what the outfit is meant to be parallel to. (Also, if anyone is reading this, do NOT click the link if you haven't seen the series finale of The Ghost and Molly McGee, or read up to ch 13 of my fic.)

If you mean inspiration for fashion… I get it from almost anywhere. For art in general? Well, I started taking inspiration from anime, and then gradually cartoons.

For the writing question… well, it’s not easy. When I have a story, I focus on the ideas and plan things out in my head. However, I might not have the things in between right away, so I might have scenes that take a bit more work to figure out compared to others. There are also some times where I realize an idea might not work so I’ll have to plan it out differently, or I want the story to go in another direction (or I just can’t use an idea).

One good example of this is–again–Her First Forever Friend. I thought I’d be doing a one shot, but it had the potential to be more, so I gave it a go. Here were some challenges:

-Since Molly came to Brighton earlier than usual, how would certain events change as a result? If she’s meant to defeat The Chairman just like in canon, how do I get to that? What’s going to be the big moment where ‘everything changes?’

-Chapter 4. Everyone who read this fic knows this chapter for lots for reasons. As I wrote in my notes, I had a huge decision in ‘who will stay and who will go’ by the end of it. I knew I had a much more interesting story on my hands if I made the choice that I ultimately went with, as well as a really good character arc for someone who needed it… and my readers really enjoyed how that character arc developed. (There’s one line in chapter 6 that best reflects this arc and my readers quoted it in their comments on archive.) In the chapter that came after this, I wanted to put the fortune teller oc in the dream sequence, but I opted not too as it would have made the scene too messy and I needed to keep attention on the three characters already in it.

–When I got to chapter 8, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but then I realized ‘wait a minute, I’m seeing a problem/plot hole in the future if I just continue forward.’ So I had to give the duo a new problem as well as a way to find the solution–it extended the story to about 2/3 chapters but it was worth it, and I got some good moments to write out.

So yeah, just some examples of my writing process. Sometimes I have things planned, and sometimes I don’t. Especially if I don’t have the entire story arc in my head.

Also, I’ve learned that I need to try to simplify some sentences to make them flow–especially if there’s action in it (a reader commented that my fighting scenes needed shorter sentences to make them easier to read many years back). However, I like going all out on the more emotional moments–if there’s a heartwarming moment in any of my fics, chances are that’s something I loved working on the most and went all out. Also, I’m sorry if you ever need to look up words–I guess that’s the academic side of me wanting to include things that hopefully the readers will look into.

Now if you are collaborating with someone, like I did with princeasimdiya12? There’s a bit of compromise, but I’ve tried to include all of our ideas and put them together. It’s been a long time since I wrote the Tangled CU AU fics and I can’t recall which exact story elements were his at the moment but I made sure to make a note as to which story elements were his. (Also, I’ve seen some collaboration fics where it looks like there’s a scene going on, but everything looks painfully out of order as if the two are writing responses at different or later times, and I can’t handle it.)

Anyway, I hope that advice helps somewhat.

[mikestengl]

Everyday

I always seem to find petty things to do before I finally go out the door to my studio. I look for something, anything else to do: I had better check my email again? What was that purchase I’ve been thinking about making that was so important? There was a person, an event I was curious about. Let's take the time now and research that. It's because working in the studio is challenging and difficult. It's hard. It's work. Another painter at a life drawing group said one day:

Drawing's hard! If it was easy everybody would be do it.

Out there in the studio it is just me trying to do something and criticizing it all the way. Trying to make something with the presence and interest value to take up wall space. To hang in other people's lives. And it’s financial too: can I save this canvas? 

Yesterday in the studio, just before the end of the day, just before I took a towel and wiped 3 days of work from the surface of the canvas, I adjusted a few anatomical parts and I did so boldly as I recall. So today I’m looking forward to heading out there and assessing the situation. When I open the door (if it’s not raining) I’ll stand at the entrance a distance from my easel and squint my eyes to try and get that sense of overall balance of composition. See if the figure is standing her ground. With gravity.

Creating shapes, choosing arrangements, deciding upon a color scheme and mixing pigments. Working to do justice to the original reference material. I heard a very good painter say once, and as soon as he said it, it reverberated through my soul like lightening or whiskey: 

You are not trying to paint the subject matter. You are trying to paint how you feel about the subject matter.

While elsewhere in the cities of the world, the ones not being tormented by war, well dressed individuals and couples walk the floors of tall shiny art galleries and look at works hanging heavy on the walls. Paintings by the living and paintings by the dead. But here I will be clipping my toenails and feeding the cat.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

The Confectioner’s Tale | Chapter Ten

happy birthday peter 💚

I would see Pete the very next day on my day off.

I had still been thinking about my date the night before with Alex, and I wondered if we could possibly do it again should he and his band venture their way through the southland again. We had wonderful chemistry, and I knew for a fact that I would enjoy expanding things a bit more with him. So many things I wanted to bake for him, and yet I could feel the grains of the hourglass slipping away even when I relaxed on my back porch.

At that point, I was living in a little flat near the quiet, green hills of Camarillo: the one part of Los Angeles that carried the kiss of the ocean and the rain, and more so with my little vegetable garden suspended right before the railing right outside of the sliding doors of my bedroom. I could sit out there with the sun at my feet and look at my peas, my beans, my carrots, my radishes, and my chili peppers while I let my mind wander forth.

It was a hazy, gray morning, as per usual most days in Southern California, and I spotted that long streaky mane of jet-black hair down the block. I still wore my pink and gray pajama pants and my black velvet camisole under my black and gray sweater with Monterey and the California bear embroidered over my heart when he came over to me. Those green eyes looked on at me like a pair of neon lights against the cold fog.

“Hey, there’s the baking girl,” he greeted me, and he hooded his eyes and showed me a little smile.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I told him as I picked up my black and white marbled cup of coffee for a sip.

“There are multiple places of the City of Angels that we have yet to explore,” he replied as he entered earshot. “I was also told there was a lovely library around here.”

“And you would be correct,” I assured him. “In fact, it’s the next block over.” I crossed my left leg over the other, but he stopped in his tracks, and he examined my legs as well as my hips.

“You look like a villain sitting there,” he told me.

I would never forget the time Ben said that to me. The one difference was Pete was being cute.

It happened the day after the dinner party, and Anne-Marie and I had the day off. I took a shower when I got up that morning as the humidity gave me enough sweat for an entire summer.

After a good hearty breakfast of steak, scrambled eggs mixed with onions and red bell peppers as a play on the Denver omelette, and sourdough toast, I sat outside on the front porch relishing the remainder of my coffee, and I did it mainly because it wasn’t as hot out that day. The overcast sky allowed me to be out there with the view of Mount Rainier and nothing more than my thoughts at the helm. We were right across the street from a bank and another apartment complex, so when the sun rose again, we had the right amount of shade for most of the morning.

The porch of the loft had been painted a bright pink with a black trimming to complement the blood red color scheme of our bakery. When Anne-Marie and I stayed there, we hung up things like beaded curtains in the doorway and whirligigs and elaborate woodworks right over the railing. We both had spindly wooden rocking chairs straight out of the Deep South on that porch. I kept a little bonsai and a little accompanying rock garden on the table next to me.

We may as well make it our own, as we figured.

Naturally, Ben had come over that morning to see Anne-Marie for something. I didn’t want to think about it, but rather, I wanted to enjoy my coffee as well as the cooler weather that morning. The continual blanket of clouds overhead also seemed to better accentuate the immense summit of Mount Rainier as well.

But it wasn’t enough to better accentuate the mop of dark hair upon Ben’s head, even as he towered tall enough to look over the railing at my bare feet. I rocked in the chair a bit with either hand suspended around the rim of my mug. The gray Northwestern sunshine shone down on the building across the street from me to give me some faint light as well as the blanket of shadow. Ben swallowed as he looked on at me; the sun made his eyes stand out to me like a couple of turquoise stones.

I could feel it with him. He wanted the round hole to be square as much as I did. He didn’t even have to open his mouth for me to read his body and his face.

“You… look like a villain sitting there,” he had said to me, and when the words left his lips, I could see the nervous look upon his face.

But Pete wanted to play with me.

“So, I saw you having dinner with that Skolnick boy last night,” he started.

“I thought that was you outside the restaurant,” I recalled with a nod. “Yeah, he and I went out to dinner last night. It was really nice. He was really sweet and gentlemanly to me.”

“The gentleman with the little gray sliver of a torpedo on his head,” he remarked with a nod and a little chuckle.

“Torpedo, is that what you called it?” I couldn’t help but laugh, either.

“Yeah, it’s like a little lightning bolt on his head. A little weapon of mass destruction. It’s like if he loses that streak, he loses his prowess.”

I chuckled, and then I took a sip from my coffee again.

“What’d you do with each other?” Pete continued, and he stood before the railing with his hands pressed to his hips.

“We talked,” I recalled. “Just… stuff. I talked to him about baking stuff, and he relayed some of his knowledge of jazz music and alternative rock. His mind is like a labyrinth: it’s easy to get lost in his thoughts.”

“That’s beautiful,” Pete said, and his green eyes twinkled in the hazy morning light. “Really, I’m gonna write that down when I get back to the hotel room, that was a beautiful line you just said.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Eh, that was nothin’,” I promised him. “He was especially fascinated by my likening baking to different forms of chemistry, especially when I called confectionery to mad science.”

“Mad science, you say?” He raised an eyebrow at that.

“Just like mad science,” I echoed my words from before. “Even making caramel is akin to working with napalm, and it’s just hot melted sugar with cream mixed in once it turns amber.”

“Something about… getting burned with that shit,” Pete followed along with a shake of his head.

“There’s a part of me that wants to make a dozen cookies in the shape of that,” I suggested. “Cookies in the shape of the burns from hot molten sugar syrup. It’d go along with the ghost pepper chocolate cake.”

“Sounds… grisly,” he stammered, and he showed me a little nervous smile. “Ghost peppers, you said?”

“Yeah.” I nodded my head, and I gestured to the planter before me. I had a pair of jalapeño plants, as well as a plant for bell peppers and a plant for those little red and green chiles from New Mexico. But there was a small one at the very end, right next to the planter with the carrots and the green beans, one that was beginning to flower again even after my last harvest, and one that was about to give me some more fruit in a couple of weeks’ time. Peter’s eyes widened at the sight of the plant before me.

“You actually grow them?”

“No, that’s actually a Serrano bush,” I clarified. “Ghost peppers grow primarily in India. I really only call them ‘ghost peppers’ for Halloween reasons.”

“Kinky,” Pete said with a sly smirk. He padded up to the railing for a better look at my plants, in particular the chili peppers. My jalapeños were nearly ready as the fruits were beginning to come forth from the plant itself, while the chiles were utterly blanketed in flowers.

“I also scrape out the seeds and the pulp from the Serranos and the jalapeños,” I continued. “Take the seeds out and then either sauté them or do a quick pickle of either one. There’s still a little heat in there, but they turn mostly sweet so they pair really well with dark and white chocolate.”

“Even kinkier,” he built upon it, but I shrugged my shoulders at that.

“The dark chocolate one is a play on Mexican hot chocolate. A dance of my Latin roots with my Belgian ones, too. I call the white chocolate fusion the ‘502’ fusion.”

“502?”

“After Room 502 from Waverly Hills over in Louisville, the most haunted place on the eastern wing of the country. I take the liquid white chocolate and pour it into little molds in the shape of bandages and also ghosts. The bandages, I put on little dark chocolate cookies in the shape of heads or skulls.” I sipped on my coffee again, and I could see he was more than intrigued by that.

“Surprised you don’t have any Peter peppers,” he joked.

“Now, if your last name was Piper and I was growing a whole peck of them and earmarked a few of them for pickling,” I followed along with a wag of my finger at him, and that coaxed a laugh out of him. Right as the laughter escaped his sensual lips, the fog broke, and the morning sun caressed his face.

It reminded me of the sun hitting Ben’s head, in that his eyes seemed to glow so bright. Bright and hypnotic, such that I would completely forget their reputations. I would often wonder if someone else felt that with me whenever the sun hit me in the right way.

“I’ve been told that one shouldn’t be knocking on your door panel,” I pointed out to him.

“And you would be correct,” Ben answered.

When I threw that out to Pete, he chuckled and nudged a lock of black hair away from the side of his face.

“That’s just to keep the bastards away,” he assured me.

Thing is, back then, Ben’s words only tempted me more, especially when I could feel the temptation with him. There was a chemistry there, albeit an odd one, one that made me think of the confectioner’s napalm, both at the time and when Pete and I were talking to one another. I polished off the rest of my coffee and I leaned forward in my chair.

“Would you like me to get dressed and show you where the library is?” I offered him. “I’ve been wanting to go over there, anyway. Find some art history books and more books on the culinary world.”

“I would love that very much, my cinnamon girl,” he replied, and he flashed me a wink.

“Okay. Hang tight. I’m gonna clean out my mug here and then change my clothes. I’ll be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

[victorluvsalice]

Sims 4 Wednesday -- Potential Tiny Town Challenge

Hi all! As we're between Chill Valicer Save updates this week, I wanted to talk to you about something I discovered relatively recently and have been thinking about off and on -- The Tiny Town Challenge! I first learned about this challenge through seeing a thumbnail for James Turner's version on YouTube, and, curious, tracked down the original challenge and rules to see what it was all about. You can get the full rule set and take a look at the original lot and Sims Deligracy created at the link above, but the basic gist is that you spend the challenge setting up a tiny town on a large lot (preferably 64x64) for seven Sims. Each Sim has a specific money-making skill that they must use to earn the funds to build their house on their specific sub-lot, and a favorite decor style and color that must inform what their house looks like. Each Sim is moved in individually, once the previous Sim has finished their house, and the challenge ends when all seven houses and any communal area is fully built.

I took one look at that and I was like "yeah, I'm into it." XD Both because it sounds like a fun challenge, and because it's a challenge with minimal set-up (which is the problem with the challenges I personally have come up with previously -- I think they'd be fun, but they require a loooot of prep!). Having thought about it for a bit, I have some ideas about how I'd like to do the challenge myself -- and some problems that I'm going to have to figure out before I can set this up as a potential alternate save file to the Chill Valicer Save:

-->Location: I decided relatively quickly that I'd like to do the challenge in Windenburg, setting up a little community on The Crumbling Isle (something like how Plumbob Paragon set theirs up). I almost never play in Windenburg, so I figured that setting the challenge there would be a good way to encourage me to wander around that world and see the sights. And I already have some ideas about using the other lots to make a true town out of the island -- like turning one lot into a Community Space to get a community garden going, or another lot into a retail store that a couple of the citizens run. Might be fun!

-->Citizenry: Well, you guys know me -- of course the first three residents of the tiny town would be Victor, Alice, and Smiler. However, I'm having trouble deciding on who the other residents of the town could be. The way I see it, I have two options for the rest of the group:

Option One: Add Victoria Everglot and Emily Merrimack and do a "Four Victorians Riding A Roller Coaster" polycule thing on the tiny town lot! This would be fun as it would allow for amusing and adorable polycule shenanigans...but the problem here is the color schemes. Specifically, while Smiler is fine with their primary color being Yellow, Victor, Alice, and Emily ALL suit Blue being their primary color (Victor has his blue butterfly and blue tie -- plus I've always headcanoned it as his favorite color; Alice has her iconic blue dress; and Emily has her blue -- everything), and Alice and Victoria would both suit Red (Alice has that iconic red blood splatter on her apron; Victoria has her red dress). Now, I know how I could fix this for Alice -- make her primary color Green, to match her eyes -- but I'm not sure what to do about Victor and Emily. I mean, when it comes down to it, Emily would have to get Blue, look at her, but the only other alternate colors I can think of for Victor would be Black or Grey, and that would result in a depressing-looking house. :( So yeah, bit of an issue there!

Option Two: Add my young Emmett "Doc" Brown Sim (patterned off his appearance in BTTF: The Game), a fem!Malkavian Fledgling Sim I downloaded off the Gallery (which I'm already planning on calling Mal Kavian), a Preston Garvey Sim, and my take on a Wheatley Sim to the gang and just represent pretty much all my favorite fandoms and games in one go. The bonus here is that I've got the full roster of seven Sims; as stated, I'm representing a bunch of things I enjoy, not just the primary three; and I get a tiny bit of diversity by including a black character as a primary. However, there are also a couple of issues here:

I'm not entirely sure I want to do the challenge with the full compliment of seven Sims, as I have trouble wrangling a mere three sometimes in my Chill Valicer Save. And before you ask, no, I don't have For Rent, so I couldn't turn the lot into a Residental Rental and just play one family at a time. I'd have to really fight with my own micromanaging tendencies to get this to work!

We again have color overlap issues because Victor, Preston, and Wheatley ALSO all suit the color Blue (Victor for the reasons listed above; Preston because the Minutemen have blue as their primary color scheme; and Wheatley because his eye is blue in the game). Now, admittedly, this one is a bit easier to solve -- make Preston's color Light Brown to match his iconic duster (yes, Sims 4 actually distinguishes between Light Brown and Dark Brown -- the only color that gets that distinction in the sort!), and Wheatley's White to match his core's outer shell -- but still. I am apparently obsessed with Blue characters!

Now, I can think of an interesting way to solve this dilemma -- set up two tiny towns on the Crumbling Isle on the two biggest lots, and divide the Sims so there's like five or so on each lot. (Suppose it could be like Victor, Alice, Smiler, Doc, Mal Kavian on one, and Victoria, Emily, Preston, Wheatley on another?) That does mean having to do the challenge twice, and wrangling a lot more Sims, but... *shrug* We'll see how I feel!

-->Skills, Colors, and Decors: As previously stated, all Sims have to have a specific skill that they use to fund the creation of their home, and a favorite color and decor style that should inform the look of said home. Now, the decor thing is kind of a mystery to me (I mix-and-match styles all the time when building, and I don't have Dream Home Decorator to make Sims Like specific types -- though it does occur to me that I could just fudge it by having each house just reflect their canon in some way), but I do have skills and colors almost entirely locked down for almost all of my potential citizens --

Victor: His color would be Blue (probably darker shades of such), and his money-making skill would be either Painting or Piano (though I'm leaning toward Painting because I've always headcanoned him as being more private with his music)

Alice: Her color would be Green, and her money-making skill either Painting or Writing (leaning toward Writing because I like the idea of her writing her own books)

Victoria: Her color would be Red, and her money-making skill would be either Knitting or Cross-Stitch (since we know she likes to sew from seeing her working on her blanket in the movie when Victor climbs onto her balcony)

Emily: Her color would be Blue (brighter shades), and her money-making skill would be either Flower Arranging (for her bouquet) or Gemology (for the wedding ring that starts the whole Corpse Bride mess -- it just amuses me)

Doc: His color would be Orange (as part of the BTTF logo), and his money-making skill would probably be Robotics (since it's the most sciencey-one), though I wouldn't say no to Fabrication

Mal: Her color would be Red (because, you know, vampire), and her money-making skill would be Wellness (because it deeply amuses me to have a vampire from that clan doing yoga and spa stuff)

Preston: His color would be either Blue or Light Brown (as previously stated), and his money-making skill would be either Fabrication (because he's the settlement guy, and Fabrication is a lot like how the workshops work in Fallout 4), Woodworking (the more low-tech version of that), or Archaeology (because he clearly enjoys the past, given you find him hiding in a museum and his coat is apparently looted from another one -- probably have to use a mod to make it available outside Selvadorada, though!)

Wheatley: His color would either be Blue or White (again, as previously stated), and his money-making skill would be Programming (again, because of the hilarity factor -- I mean, Wheatley CAN hack in the game, but we all know just how "good" he is at it XD)

Smiler: Their color would be Yellow, and their money-making skill --

And this is where I run into a problem, because I'm not entirely sure what to do for Smiler. Because my version of Smiler's primary thing is chemistry (or alchemy, depending on the setting), and I'm not entirely sure how to best represent that with the skills on offer. Should I do Mixology, on the basis that I heacanon they are also awesome at mixing drinks? Herbalism because that's kind of close (I have a mod that puts Granite Falls bugs in other worlds, so that's not an issue)? Do I rely on Simsonian Library's Apothecary mod and related skill because that is arguably closer that Herbalism? Or do I just fudge things by choosing Mixology or something before turning them into a spellcaster and having them focus on the Alchemy section of the spellbook? Decisions, decisions...

But yeah -- that's what I currently have in mind for any future Tiny Town-related save files I may make! Not gonna guarantee that this is gonna happen, but it's a distinct possibility. :) And if you guys have any suggestions regarding how I should do the tiny town (and what the fuck Smiler's money-making skill should be), please let me know!

[inklver]

just because i feel like it:

some random thoughts about the art i made for ironstrange week + the very rough thumbnails for each piece (putting this under the read more so this doesn't take up too much space bc this is a Very long post)

day 1 - red/wrath

first fanart for this fandom! there are a few things i don't like about this piece (questionable anatomy, use of values could be improved, + stephen's hair makes him look like a wet cat /hj) but i do like the lighting and the theme of red spider lilies. i've always wanted to draw them and i love their symbolism of death and final goodbyes—feels very fitting for these goofs :b

i started working on this a good amount of time in advance, and i'm glad i did—this was one of the only pieces i used a painterly style for despite it being my preferred style; it takes me a lot longer than lineart + color, so i didn't get the chance to use it again throughout the event (with the exception of day 6)

day 2 - nervous/orange

i struggled with the anatomy on this one—i don't draw back views often (or, at all really) so the first panel was pure pain. the second panel wasn't much better; it took several attempts to pose the hand in a way that looked somewhat natural. pretty pleased with how this turned out all things considered, though! my only qualm with this is the rushed shading, but that's what happens when you're a slow artist on a time constraint :,)

day 3 - yellow/cheerful

i think this may be one of my favorites from this event. i'm very very happy with the lighting and overall atmosphere of the piece :)

i realize now that i used flowers as a theme for every color prompt—anyways, like i said in the tags of the original post for this, i very loosely referenced yellow primrose (symbol of happiness, warmth, & love, conventionally given to those in long-term relationships or someone who has always been there for you through thick and thin)

day 4 - intrigued/green

i ended up liking this better than i expected to! i had to play around a lot with the lighting/color scheme before i was satisfied with it, though that's on me for not having much of a plan for it beforehand (with most pieces, i already have an idea of the color scheme when i start working on them). not much else to say about this one except surgeon stephen my beloved <3

day 5 - blue/serene

this was the first time i've properly drawn a kiss and holy hell how do ship artists do it. that shit is so difficult. i struggled a lot with the anatomy and ended up changing the poses a bit; i also flipped the composition because 1. it looked slightly better that way and 2. i could include tony's ring <3

and yes stephen's mug says 'cunt' (with the handle being painted in black to form the 'c'—very much inspired by jacksepticeye's mug); for tony's i had to search for funny mug designs lmfao

i was going for a very domestic/warm atmosphere, which i think was more or less accomplished, so i'm pretty happy with this overall :)

also, not really pertinent but i was listening to sweater weather on loop while drawing this so. make of that what you will.

day 6 - grief/indigo

ah, this piece. definitely my favorite of the 7, love how this turned out despite ripping my own heart out a bit while making it :,) listening to hyacinthus on repeat didn't help

my initial idea for this—the thumbnail in the top left—was going to be one of them bleeding out in the other's arms, but i had another idea that i felt more drawn to so i chose that instead (this was a very last minute change so the thumbnail is pretty much just a couple of stick figures pfft).

i decided to go back to the painterly style since it felt more fitting for this & i'm glad i did, although it was a little rushed towards the end when i was adding in the final details (the butterflies are pretty much just lasso tool + glow layer). this was also my first time drawing stephen's robes and. man that was a pain to figure out. get a simpler outfit stephen.

day 7 - purple/disdain

had to end the event on a happy note! this was very rushed but i still like how it looks, though the bg petals are a bit janky.

the prompt 'purple' immediately made me think of violets, which were used as gifts for newlyweds so. here we are (they also happen to be symbolic of faith, mystical awareness, and spiritual passion—pretty fitting for our favorite wizard)

i didn't dedicate as much time i should've to actually making the violets look like violets instead of some generic flower but again, slow artist under time constraint. i did spend a lot of time with the expressions in this one though! i really wanted to convey a sense of pure joy and love, and i'm very happy with the result in that regard :)

something that i noticed was that it had become a lot easier for me to draw these two by this point. suppose it makes sense considering i'd literally been drawing them nonstop for 2 weeks lmao, but it was still pretty cool to see how quickly i managed to finish a sketch i was happy with, compared to when i was working on the first few days (good lord was it difficult drawing stephen in the first piece, especially at that angle)

anyway, prepare to see more of them in the near future because the brainrot is far from over. if i am this attached to them without having seen the majority of marvel movies featuring them (i'd literally only watched ds1 until yesterday when i watched im1—yes i started shipping them without knowing who tony was, i don't know how either), i think i'd be a puddle by the time i catch up on everything :D

whoo that was a lot—if you've read this far, thank you and have a cookie 🍪

[jobrrr]

Hobbies and interests are weird sometimes.

Like sometimes you see something and you just know that’s what you want to do, and there is no looking back from that point. I remember seeing Magic the Gathering for the first time, and it was like 4th grade, I knew. And lo and behold, I'm 35, still playing magic. But like sometimes it just kinda happens by accident, like you don't mean to get into the thing at all.

I think it was mid 2021 and I just stumbled on the Blackwargreymon gunpla kit online. Digimon was a big deal for me as a kid, I was pretty young when it started, like 10?, and I have always had a soft spot for it. So this thing looked really cool, I didn’t really have anything on my shelf for digimon even though it was a big deal for me as a kid, and it wasn't that horrendously expensive, even marked up on amazon. I don’t think I had ever done a plastic model kit before, so I started poking around to see what it would need, and I found a pretty decent entry level set of tools, clippers, some tweezers, some sanding tools and so on. So I went, what the hell, I did something nice for the kid in me. I think it’s important to do a lot of nice things for the kid in you, just good life advice. So I took the plunge. The closest thing to compare to I guess was lego, it’s kinda the same process, you just gotta cut out your pieces and clean them up, but after that you just put it together. Lego was another thing I really liked as a kid.

This kit was so much fun, I went into it with the just expectation that it will look good, and it does, very good. Ok I have to stress this, I don’t think there is anything on the market that looks even a fraction as good as these kits do, and at such a better price, it’s ridiculous. But the Kit was so much fun to put together, it's just meditative, and very personal. You slowly work your way through it, learning how the plastic feels and reacts to the cuts, shaves and sanding you do, and you make mistakes, but you work through it and learn. It’s imperfect in a very personal way. And then I finished it. And sometimes you just finish something and then you are like, ‘this can’t be the only time I do this’. I knew I was kinda hooked on it.

Thankfully there was a bit of backlog on the kits available. I think at the time the upcoming one was Machindramon, and I ended up picking the other kits in the meantime, Omegamon/Omnimon & MetalGarurumon. And so over that year of the pandemic it was a treat for myself, as I slowly built up this shelf of great looking digimon figures that I put together myself. When I got the Gallantmon/Dukemon kit, I took an extra chance on it, and decided to re-paint it with my minis paint, giving it a more classic color scheme. It’s probably the most time I spent on one model, and I haven’t tried painting one again since them, but I’m still immensely proud of it, there was a lot of little mistake I made, and a spoke on his shoulder broke that I had to drill a metal rod to reinforce as well as putting some extra epoxy putty in, but it was more lessons learned. As a prep I spent a bunch of time looking up videos of people painting gunpla, and as a side note, some folks do amazing jobs with that, like absolutely fantastic.

I wanted more though, and I was waiting for new digimon kits to come out but you are waiting. I think it was around the time the pandemic restrictions were loosening, and I was starting to maybe just explore places a bit again. I went into a Game Stop for the first time in a while, and was surprised to see a gunpla kit there. It was the master grade Barbatos kit, and it was a very reasonable price, like I want to say 60ish CAD. I was paying more for the digimon kits cause I was mostly getting that stuff through amazon and often it was imported from japan and extra shipping fees etc. So I went what the hell? I never really was that interested in Gundam before, I had a friend who made me watch an Iron Blooded Orphans OVA, and I honestly could not tell you anything about it, I was so checked out. But it looked cool, so I took another chance. I figured it wouldn’t look bad on a shelf.

That kit is a killer kit. I remember being so impressed with it, when you are building it you start with a skeleton and then you put the armor on top of that. It was so novel, and so cool. It’s a master grade, which is kinda the 2nd highest tier of kits available. 

I guess as a little aside, the entry level is High Grade, HG, this is 1:144 scale, and is a great entry level, kits can be very cheap, as low as 15ish up to 30ish (CAD prices, your can figure out your conversion, USD is going to be less). Next up you have Master Grade, MG, these kits are 1:100 scale, sometimes they are different names but 1:100 is size. These guys are pricier, but a big jump in quality, not to say the HG are bad, HG are pretty impressive, but the jump is very noticeable. MGs are very nice, and the prices I noticed are usually 60 to 90. The next typical grade up is Perfect Grade, these are 1:60 scale, and very big, and very complex. I have only done one so far, the Exia. It was 280ish I think. For these kits I think the floor is around 200ish, and can go up quite a bit from there, I think some push 500+.

Back from that tangent, this kit felt like the perfect entry for a more experienced kit. I had already done quite a few digimon kits, and it's the same stuff, just different franchise. Like literally the same, Bandia makes both of these kits. So this was easy to get into. And it really was cool, to say it again. I was like damn, this is neat. So I let that stew, and for a while that was the only gundam I had and I was pretty content for that to be the case.

Then a new boon arrived, I found a local gunpla store. I had actually been there a few times before, but before It was more focused on anime, but I guess in my absence over many years it shifted, and grew its gunpla selection a lot, the wall of bluray and dvds became a wall of boxes of gunpla. And They had digimon kits too. And the prices were very good. I made the switch, as it became a lot more accessible, just even the ability to browse and not do shipping, chief’s kiss. So I picked a few kits I didn’t have, and continued to get new ones there. But I started to see the rest of the gunpla, and I knew the Barbatos was cool, and they had such a big selection, even a lot of older stuff. 

So I started picking up a few. It was kinda neat, just jumping into this franchise that I really only knew on a visual level. Like I know it’s been around for a long time, and there are a lot of series, like OG, Wing, Seed, ect. But after that, I know nothing about the Gundam, they fight in big robots, that’s it. So I was in the odd position where I was free to just pick them up blindly if that makes sense, I wasn’t beholden to any lore or preference outside of ‘it looks cool’ and wow I kinda realized I don't have something like that. Like how often do you enter a fandom in a backwards kind of way. Like typically you get into something because you are a fan of it, you like the story, setting, characters and then that kinda informs how you follow up everything after. Like you get the figure of the character you like. I’m sure I’m not the only person who just gets (outside of WFM lol) the kits as kits with no real attachment to the source, and I imagine it's not even that small of a portion. Like people don’t need lore to do train kits or w/e. Anyways it was just a neat perspective, and like I said, freeing. I was allowed to pick stuff from w/e series, and mix and match cause I didn’t care.

So yah, i just went on picking up more kits, the prices of HG were such a great thing too. Like on average 20 bucks a pop for a kit, easy sell for me. So I started having a gunpla shelf, and that was cool.

I guess the next phase kinda happened. I had heard of Witch from Mercury (WFM), way back when it first announced, and the only take away at that time I had was it was going to feature a female lead, I remember going, I guess that’s cool, but you guys have been doing this for how long, and this is your first? I had another thought but I will come back to that later. So I just kinda filed that away as whatever, I wasn’t really that interested in it as a show, Gundam as a series just didn’t really feel my thing, I am still quite ignorant outside of WFM, but I guess I have more of a sense of it now. Anyways it comes to the point years later, and WFM starts airing, I think I even had a CR sub cause I wanted to watch spy family. I slept on the first 2 episodes. I had just met with a friend again that moved back, and he mentioned it’s queer, that Suletta gets herself engaged to in the first episode.

What. This was not what I expected. The point I mentioned before? So I'm a sucker for W/W ships, always have been. I very much had a thought when I first heard WFM years before, ‘it's not going to be sapphic though, it’s going to be some hetero stuff’, and it was a pessimistic take at the time, but I just felt burned out from everything being like that. Everything is fucking straight all the time. Like I just want more queer stuff, I hope everything ends up being queer, but realistically it’s not. And it’s Gundam, this is a big franchise, It’s not going to push further than female protag, so I just stopped my expectations there. But is it? And well fuck, I have to give it chance now. And it was, like not even in the subtext kind of way. Suletta was Miorine’s groom. The show had Utena in its DNA. I was very cautious though, feeling like this isn’t going to happen. I felt like I was going to get the rug pulled out, there certainly were a lot of guys vying for either of the two girls at the beginning. But I stuck with the show, a bit of pessimism and caution, but wanting it to happen. 

And the little things started happening. After the third episode I think there is a shot of Miorine’s room, and it's a mess. I told myself, then, in a very gut feel way, If Suletta cleans her room, it’s real. I carried that thought going forward. Unpacking it later, I realized how true to the characters it was, Miorine didn’t want to be there, her room was a prison to her and she didn’t let anyone into her life. And then she asks Suletta to clean her room in ep11, and god that episode. I threw out caution, I was ready to sink on this ship if it would after that. And shit, 12 was a hell of an episode to finish on, and then the wait for the second cour. Ooof. Like it was real now, very real, feelings were vocalized and it wasn't just reading into characters. It was firmly the TEXT, no room negotiation. This show was very intentional about everything, I could start to see how everything was now feeding into the rest of itself. God this show.

The wait for the second cour took a while. I was talking about gunpla before, wow. Sure, let's get back there for a bit. I was pretty moderate with picking up kits, I got just Aerial, and Suletta and Miorine. I honestly felt a little embarrassed at the time, like it was an admission that, yah, I’m getting the feels hard now. But that was it, I got some more unconnected gunpla but I was mostly just stewing on my feelings till the second cour hit.

And wow, did those feelings come in hard once the show came back. Not to sound old here, i’m only 35, but it’s easy to forget what watching a show weekly is like with how much bingin it like with the netlix model of shows was the norm for so long. But letting a show really sit with you, to digest it, let it stew and think about before moving to the next episode. For some shows that can be magic, or at least that’s been my experience. I don’t think this would have been a good show to binge, and if anyone is going to watch it, I don’t recommend just burning through it really quickly. This is a show that really lets you take it apart and analyze the moments. It felt like everything could be read into for more meaning. Tomatoes, The move forward, gain one, the growth of characters, how Suletta and Miorine treat each other. It’s a gold mine for essay lol.

Or this whole ending credits to Red:birthmark. This is is basically the whole character arc of Suletta.

I guess that sorta leads to onwards. I had dipped out of tumblr way back when things went south and everyone dipped. Like myself maybe not right away, but like it felt like 90% of folks were gone and I was soon too. I would sometimes check back in, but never stayed. Then things started to just get real bad with twitter. Like i never liked it as a social site, or reddit. It just feels bad. I had only really started to use it and reddit cause tumblr died, and they did not serve the same way. Like there are few decent subreddits. But they never really did what I wanted. So I started to maybe check in here again, more frequently. Then I remember the day it really stuck.

Bees happened, Yang and Blake kissed. I was not super invested in RBWY, I bounced pretty quickly way back. I like the fandom though, it has always been strong and I'm sure people will have different feelings, but w/e. I always found them charming, and I think it was what made me try watching the show way back in the first place. So anyways Bees happened, that was a big surprise, and it kinda hit hard. Like it was beautifully awkward in a real way, it felt genuine. And I saw it here on tumblr. And good fucking win for the fandom, I tried watching some of the more recent episodes, and I am not going back to watch old stuff but boy does Ruby have some trauma to unpack. Whoof, even missing context that hit hard. The fanfiction is great. Dug around in there and there are some really good ones. Bless the fandom. I started with Bees stuff since obv, but I also dug around into Ice Rose too. Maybe it’s too much to hope, but that show will be cooking if it also does that.

Anyways I guess I was back on tumblr. There were a bunch of oldies still here, and I could dive into the tags. And It really made me realize how much twitter was kinda just making me miserable. Like there is just so much more positive here, and over there it’s just miserable. And WFM was starting up again soon. Perfect storm. I wish I had been here for the first cour. But I was here for the second cour.

I had originally joined tumblr way back after Korra ended. I was not ready to let the show go when it finished, and this was a good place to celebrate the show. It was so fundamental to my early days here, I followed so many people because of it. Fan art, people talking about the show, even years later, fan fiction. Like I said, it was a celebration of the show. I still treasure a lot of those old moments, and followed a lot of those artists onto twitter and pateron. Hopefully I will start seeing them here more as twitter implodes.

It’s been very nostalgic here again, as we finish WFM. It’s like being back to that moment with Korra. I loved seeing all the art here again. I loved seeing all the talks, musing and speculation as the second cour went on. I started to follow people again that I kept seeing popping in the tags and It reminded me what it’s like to slowly learn a bit of someone on this site. I missed that old bleeding of interests you get. The cross contamination of fandoms. I got to see someone younger share their experience with Sailor Moon in real time through this site. I love it, I was a kid when that show first aired, it is so cool to get these new perspectives. 

And now WFM is finished. I said this before, I knew at the start of the second cour that this show is going to stick with me for a long time. Remember the gunpla, well I have perspective now, I have been picking up more of those because I now have feelings to contend with, lol. Not a bad problem to have. It hit hard, the show, episode 16 left me heartbroken, god. And now we are here, they have rings, they had the wedding. Eri is the sister in law. God it happened and it feels like this was plucked from a better timeline. This show is such a fucking win, I’m not letting it go any time soon.

I never really did much of this before, sharing that is. This is a lot, hell I’m even considering if I will post this as I draft this. I mostly just reblogged things and avoided putting my own words on top of them. And that’s fine, but idk, it’s never too late to try new things right, and you can always do things at your own pace, so maybe I can share a bit and it resonates with someone, and maybe it ends up being no different than existing in the void and never being posted. I spent too much time being self conscious of the things I like. I want to spend more time just making the kid in me happy you know.

Being around this all again has been nice, I feel motivated to be creative, more so then I was before. I have always had ideas for fics just floating in my head, and I think I might actually post a Persona 5 fic at some point, it's in the works. I recently played through it again with the female protag mod, and bless that mod, but now I feel compelled to write something about Makoto. Hell, maybe even some WFM stuff later. There is a really obscure doujin that I want to write something for as it felt criminal that it only got one entry. If you made it this far, thanks. Let yourself enjoy stuff.

John

[marcignotis]

Virtual Sketchbook section 3

Virtual Sketchbook 3

Moonlight Landscape

By Joseph Wright of Derby

For my art piece, I chose Joseph Wright of Derby’s Moonlight Landscape. This piece was done in 1785 with oil on a canvas. It was painted at the time of the industrial revolution and is the painting of a landscape. . Joseph Wright was born in 1734 in England and was born into a prominent family. He was educated and studied for two years under Thomas Hudson in London in order to become a painter. Wright often paints portraits as well as landscapes and often works with natural and artificial light. This piece of Wright primarily focuses on the lighting of the scene and how the light illuminates the surrounding landscape. The moon is obscured by a stone bridge that is raised above a waterway. The rays from the moon form circles around the moon as the shade of color slowly begins to fade and blend in with the dark blue night-time sky the farther the circles of light go on. The moon also illuminates a traveler and his donkey walking along the bridge as well as what appears to be a fisherman attempting to catch fish on the river. The beams of moonlight radiate across the river and go far into the distance. As your eyes follow the water up you see a small castle in the distance that is surrounded by hills. There is also a light post at the beginning of the bridge which contrasts the natural light with manmade light. Wright does a good job at slowly blending the light into the background. It really does seem as if it is getting darker and darker as the moonlight gets farther and farther away from the surrounding objects. The vegetation along the side of the piece can barely be made out, certain limbs of a tree hang out into the moonlight while the rest hides in the shadows of the painting. The color scheme is much darker than most paintings and including the white and yellow rays of the moon feels like the light shining down is real. The lighting especially sets the mood for a seemingly quiet night that is filled with mystery. These figures are lurking about at night even if the activities they are performing are not spooky or eerie in themselves, the fact that it is happening in the dead of night adds to a mystic feeling. This would be a quiet night since you can’t see anything, but the moon is able to reveal the secrets going on in this world. I think this art piece tells that Wright pays attention to more simple concepts such as the way a moonbeam would pounce off a small ripple in the water. You can tell the artist is trying to show the importance of light and its illuminating factor. It reveals a whole world that was previously unknown. If the moon was not portrayed like this you could never see the shadowy outlined tree or man down by the side of the water, or even a mysterious castle off in the distance. Darby is trying to show that it doesn’t take much to see the world around us. I picked this piece because it made me think that just a little light can illuminate the world around us. It doesn’t take much, just a few moonbeams to show this majestic and wonderful world we live in. For me, this even goes beyond paintings, in my life I often get very narrow-minded and tunnel-visioned, but I think sometimes it just takes someone else to go out of their way and bring me out of that to enjoy the life that I live. Looking at this painting it makes me want to start becoming that person who goes out of their way and tries to help others to also realize the majestic beauties that may lay just beyond their view.

Proof of attendance ( the top picture I took of the art piece but I did forget to take a picture right next to it. These are photos of me at Ringling on that day though. I haven't been to Ringling since around 1st grade so I really enjoyed going back there and even got to bring my brother along with me :).

P.S. sorry for the last awkward photo there were like a bunch of people trying to leave and I was sorta blocking them trying to take that picture.

[jarfulloftears]

just the good parts [4/4]

back at it, one mo' gin for the finale!

here's the latest part, for those that missed it.

the following part includes: vulgar language and mild smut.

word count: ~3k

featured song:

We were home. Her home. But with a spirit that already felt familiar and a color scheme that spoke to her spunky nature, the home felt like it was somehow mine too. Maybe it was her warmth crowding the space that made it feel that way. Maybe I was just trippin’. 

I didn’t mind either way as our hands spilled into each other and our fingertips skated over lifelines. 

Alcohol was flowing, only a singular glass for us both but enough to continue unwinding in the space. 

All the while, the space between us shrunk while her flirting shifted from coy admissions of my attractiveness to unapologetic suggestions of carnality. 

But yearnings of the flesh would have to wait. There was something more pressing: a chill of concern that would come and go more than the wind. 

And it wouldn’t be until this concern was soothed that I would lay myself down alongside her desires.

“What’s the real reason you were crying earlier?”

She smiled timidly, “How long has that been swirling around in your head?”

I shrugged, “Since you showed me that little bit of depth.”

“I’m trying to show you a different kind of depth, but you’re so concerned with hosting a therapy session that you’re missing all my alley-oops,” she was deflecting again, giggling into her cup before taking another sip. 

“You must be scared,” I cracked a smile, leaning back into the plush cushioning of her sofa. 

“What do I have to be scared of?”

“Scared that I’ll figure out that we’re more alike than you led me to believe.”

“More alike in what way?”

“More alike in that you don’t do the superficial shit either.”

She watched me watch her, switching which leg would dangle over the other. 

“You think all of this is just a façade?”

“Most of it, yeah,” I affirmed with a nod. 

“And why would I feel the need to pretend with you, doppelgänger?”

“I really don’t think that’s how that works,” I scoffed, feeling as though I finally had to say it. 

She kissed her teeth in irritation, “You‘re my name doppelgänger. Not my body one, smart ass.”

A smirk slid onto my face just before I sipped from my own glass of alcohol. 

“Like I was saying— what I gotta pretend for?” she redirected the conversation. 

“You tell me… I could guess all day, but I’m trusting you to be real with me.”

“Trust,” she gave a bitter “ha!”

“Respectfully, Dy, I’ve been trusting you all night. The least you could do is lay my only concern to rest.”

She knew I’d made a point, pausing to dig up some truth before acquiescing to my request, “Fine.”

She took the rest of her drink to the head before beginning. “We were talking about… parents, right?”

My nod was enough of an answer. 

She continued, “And you said that thinking that they’re doing what’s best for me probably makes them happy, and… I just… that sounds like hell!”

“What’chu mean?” my brow furrowed.

“Suffering through something so unworthy of your energy in the name of ‘doing what’s best.’ I don’t want that for them. I don’t want to be the root of that,” she shook her head.

“Who’s to say you are? No one knows why parents do what they do. Something in their parent brain just clicks, and even the things that make no sense work for them. That’s not for you to try to figure out,” I shrugged.

She sighed while uncrossing her legs. “i just want everyone in my life to be happy— the real kind— whatever that looks like.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Dy. Really,” I assured her before placing my glass next to her empty one, on the coffee table.

I glanced at her while leaning back in my seat once again. I was met with an unconvinced expression. “Really!” I repeated with a slight smile.

“But…” she awaited a contrary statement.

I obliged. “But, they have to want to be happy too. They gotta choose that for themselves, ya know? Whatever that looks like.”

“I guess you’re right,” she mumbled with her head lolling against the back of the couch.

It was quiet for only a few moments. I mirrored her position, craning my neck backward as I slid comfortably in my seat.

“You ever think about whether or not you’ll be like your parents?” she prompted.

“I try not to,” I chuckled weakly as her head rolled to look at me.

I copied her actions yet again, spotting the tiniest smile coloring her lips.

Her voice, soft and sultry, carried a confession, “I think about it all the time.”

“So, do you think you’ll be like your parents?” i inquired.

“Just the good parts,” she turned her body toward me this time, bringing her legs up to sit side-saddle.

“I don’t think we can help which parts we get,” I said. 

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean… my dad is a guy that’s full of pride, and that pride’ll keep him from asking for help, when he needs it. Part of that is because of the whole ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ thing, but sometimes I feel like… his unwillingness to show the vulnerability needed to reach out… is part of the reason my folks aren’t together now.”

whoa, that got real deep, real quick.

“What does that have to do with you?” she scoffed, probably feeling like I was getting us off-topic. 

Her slight annoyance made me laugh a little. “I’m the same way sometimes.”

“If you wanna change that, you can,” she said.

“Yeah, but it takes a lot of work and awareness… and time,” I noted.

“Awareness, that’s the key. Of course, the work and the time are important too, duh, but just pointing out something that you no longer want to partake in is the first step,” she nodded.

I watched her sit up, her arm resting against the back of the couch now with her hand against her head.

“We keep the parts that we don’t have a problem with… and the parts we don’t want… we cut, we change. That’s the beauty of awareness and mindfulness— you pinpoint the ugly parts so you know what to change.”

“But, when you do somethin’ like that, wouldn’t you tend to, like, hyperfixate on it?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like… whenever you catch yourself doing something ‘ugly,’ you would immediately go into a place of shame instead of allowing yourself to feel what’chu feel.”

She gestured me to continue. 

“And with that shame could come guilt. That guilt could snowball into hate, and suddenly, everything you see in yourself is ugly… and you could either become someone that isn’t you at all or find yourself in a really dark place.”

“That’s an extreme case,” she answered.

“Yeah, but not impossible.”

“Well, of course, even too much of a good thing is bad. Everything should be done in moderation, especially since change isn’t an overnight thing.”

“But why change at all? I mean— don’t you want someone who loves you as you are, even the ugly parts?”

She pointed out my contradiction, “What do you mean ‘why change’? Didn’t you just imply that an unwillingness to change was why your folks aren’t together?”

“Just go with me here,” I disregarded her valid point to pursue this new pocket of our conversation. “You don’t want someone to love even your ugly parts?”

The smile that put a natural curl to her lips became more astounding as she reached for me. “You’re so cute,” it was with a brief giggle that she caressed my face.

I lifted my head, turning my body toward her a bit more as I searched her features for what was so funny.

“I don't yearn for the love of another— to be accepted and understood and all that other fairytale shit… I don't want to change or not change for anyone but me… Change is my gateway to happiness... It’s how I'll be happy with myself.”

“But if you’re always looking for things to change, you’ll end up changing even the things you never found a problem with. It’ll just be a cycle.”

“Isn’t this all a cycle? This life... this search for self, for love, for whatever?”

“But if satisfaction is the end goal, you’ll never meet it. That could very well be a roadblock on your highway to happiness,” I countered.

“ ‘That’ being what?” 

I clarified, “You never being satisfied, nothing ever being good enough.”

She stared at me for only a moment before glancing away with a scoff. “Never satisfied,” she whispered, almost as if she were in disbelief.

“Oh my god… I’m just like my mother,” her eyes grew wide before darting back at me.

She blinked as if I’d missed my cue to react. 

“Is that a bad thing?” my face owned a smile although I was supposed to be fighting off a laugh.

“Uh, yes!” she shrieked.

The laugh I kept at bay suddenly rumbled out of me. 

“I’m serious. She’s a lot,” she nodded with a chuckle. 

“If you’re just like her, she can’t be too bad,” I insisted.

“To be fair, you don’t know me that well yet,” although she contrasted my sentiments, she’d started to blush.

I laughed. “I’m trying to get to know you, but you so busy adapting your parents’ greatest hits as your personality—”

She playfully shoved me, triggering more of my laughter.

“You think you’re funny, huh?” She grabbed a throw pillow from the opposite end of the couch and weaponized it against me. 

I cackled while throwing up the only defenses I had, using my arms as some sort of shield. Her laughter mixed with mine as I finally gripped the fluffed material.

“Let it go!” she giggled. 

“I’m not the one using decorative cushions as weapons!” I retorted, using her loss of momentum to close the space between us. 

Her giggles prospered even as my abrupt jerk of a pull brought her body against mine. The pillow was the only thing keeping us apart as we continued tittering and grinning in each other’s faces like idiots. 

She sat up, her hand propping up against my shoulder as we inhaled each other’s essence. 

My palm found her face, and before I could even think of battling her gravitational lure, I finally acted upon the desire that pervaded my thoughts throughout the night. 

Without restraint, I kissed her. And she helped in unfurling a spontaneously formed ball of euphoria. 

Lust was a quickly built tower, waiting to be bulldozed by pleasure that would swoop in on the chain of a wrecking ball. 

Right on her couch, we became a unit and worked together to bring some semblance of overnight change. Nothing that would make us better people though. 

With the skirt of her dress pushed up, she mounted my peaks while I kissed her valleys. 

Hunger ravished our intentions, an insatiable fervor burning hotter with every moment I was enveloped in her depth. 

There are very few sensations that could top this, and I was drawing a blank on all of them as she hypnotized me. 

The lakes in her eyes had proven to be as bottomless as the ocean while her ocean was as welcoming as a hug. 

I beckoned that she join her lips with mine, but I was halted by a hand against my throat and a simple command, “Let me look at you for a little longer.”

And that’s exactly what she did, with her palm threatening to crush my Adam’s apple. 

An action never came from the gentle hold she had on my ability to breathe, but the idea of my fate being in her hands kinda’ turned me on ?

Shit, in a way, she’d been dictating my fate all night. So technically, does all of that count as foreplay?

“Come here,” it was time for me to give my own commands. Who put her in charge anyway?

Without contest, she leaned into me. Our kiss was ravenous, and our biting and tongue-tying charged up my increased pace. 

With a strong hold against her smooth, umber skin, it was me who now controlled our united destiny. 

She panted against me as I thrusted my hips upward. My calculated speed was hauling her closer to the brink, and it was evident in her shaky hands and jumpy spasms. 

My eyes rolled closed. She wasn’t the only one losing what little grip on reality we had. 

“Please,” she whispered desperately. 

“Please what?” was my absentminded response. 

Incoherent pleas fled her mouth. I chuckled, diving even deeper into her abyss. 

“Use your words,” I teased with a smirk. 

She took a hold on my face, staring into my eyes as she mustered up a comeback. “Fuck you.”

I laughed, continuing to lose myself in her for as long as she wanted. 

It was in no time, with locked eyes and shallow breaths, that our pleasure took on a glorious reign. 

We basked in the starlight of a predawn morning, our ongoing highs becoming topped with the only other outer body sensation that compared. 

The haze of our time together was slow to lift as our collective adrenaline dwindled. 

My head remained pressed against her heart as she pushed for a steady paced breath. She caressed the nape of my neck, panting while relaxing in my arms.

It was a struggle finding inner peace when everything was still so physically chaotic. A heart doing jumping jacks, blood rushing every which way, a mind that was still too scattered to think of my next action. 

With the caution of a predator creeping up on its prey, her hand snaked my neck and peeled me off of her chest. With shining eyes, she gave me my next set of instructions. 

“Ruin me.”

Exhaustion held us in a chokehold, becoming so unrelenting that we had no choice but to surrender to it.

She was maxed out, so tired that she almost forgot to break our union before falling into her slumber. I followed her lead, only wrapping her in my arms before I was knocked out too.

I was awakened by a trail of soft kisses. My eyelids creaked open to find lips becoming peppered against my chest. And the eyes of my best night staring right back at me. 

I chortled, my hand flying up to knock the sleep from my eyes. Her kisses halted as I sighed deeply. 

Our gazes found each other again, a different wonder stirring in her eyes now that daylight was peering into the room. 

“Hey,” her voice of seduction had a bit of grit to it as she offered a coy smile. 

“Hey,” I replied while reflecting her smile.

“How are you feelin’?”

I hadn’t even assessed things yet, but there was an element of surrealism that was still placing a filter on my reality. 

“Unreal,” I answered as she slowly sat up. 

She gave a breath of a laugh, propping herself up with her hands on my shoulders. “You may be in some form of a weed coma or somethin’.”

“Nah, it’s a love hangover.”

“Okay, Diana Ross reference,” she chuckled while my hands danced along her skin. 

“I know some classics.”

“I couldn’t tell last night. You ain’t even know the song we danced to at the Stacks,” she teased as I briefly gripped her thighs. 

“I know it now. That’s what matters,” my hands settled on her hips.

“I guess you’re right,” she single-handedly caressed my face. 

There was a brief moment, our eyes just tracing one another while the sounds of a day starting anew echoed outside. 

“I was gonna call you an uber, but I might just keep you for breakfast,” a flirtatious smirk rented itself onto her lips. 

“Oh, so you were gonna get me the fuck outta here?” I feigned offense, causing laughter to spring out of her. 

“Mm-hmm,” she bit back a grin while nodding. 

“And what made you change your mind?”

“Well, I figured… after last night, the least I owed you was a meal.”

“I like the way you think,” I affirmed. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” my hand wrapped itself in the material of her dress. I wanted to be closer, so close that my warmth and hers could no longer be deciphered. 

My neediness wasn’t peerless, made evident as she laid down once again with her face nestled in the curve of my neck. 

“I like having you here,” she whispered. 

“One night, and you’re already carving a space out for me, huh?” I was only teasing to hide how much I liked being had.

She stripped herself of another layer, “One night where I could be my complete self… messy and silly and too-forward, all of the above… and I don’t feel stupid afterwards.”

My palms flattened against her back, yearning to feel her bare texture rather than the paillettes of her dress. 

She sighed softly, “Even if we never see each other again, I hope you were able to feel like you, the you that no one gets to see.”

I held her closer, as if there was any room left to be diminished. 

“I like being here,” I finally admitted plainly, no jokes and no charm attached. Just the truth and only the truth. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then stay here, for as long as you’d like.”

My inner-contrarian snuck up, protecting me from getting lost in this fantasy.

It was a new day. The twilight hours no longer veiled our ugliest bits, and the weed nor the liquor could provide compensation.

The contrarian spoke, “And then what? Bond over how fucked up we are? Break each other’s hearts?”

“You don’t have to let fear or pride sully this moment, Dylan.”

She made a point that brought me right back to the traits of my father. My eyes widened at the realization. 

“Just take this moment for what it is, and enjoy it… for however long.”

Such uncertainty only made me more anxious. How long would “however” be? 

Why did it matter so much? What good would knowing that do? 

Who says this has to be serious? Who says I’m ready for anything of that caliber?

“Don’t overthink it. Just hold me, and when you’re ready to eat, we can make breakfast. If you wanna leave after that, you can. If you wanna stay, you can. It’s that simple.”

With the ease of a breeze and the peace of a pond, she swaddled my flailing anxieties. 

“Okay,” a breath I didn’t know I was holding escaped me while the sudden knots tightening my body were loosened. Her gentle kisses that followed helped too. 

So, we laid there until my heart was content. We made breakfast and laughed and talked. 

And as I stood in the doorway of her home, accepting a farewell hug, I felt myself missing her already.

Her arms lingered around me even as she leaned back to say her last goodbye, but when her eyes found mine, I knew that there was no way I could leave feeling whole after giving her so many pieces of myself. 

I knew there was no way she could let me leave when she probably felt the same way. 

So, I stayed… until her glass would fill mine and mine hers, and parts of us would become so intermingled that we didn’t know where one Dilan started and the other Dylan ended. 

I stayed for as long as she’d have me, and I never left.

[jessiemeows]

New OC's :) Well not really but kind of!

Rae (Storm) Nightshade & Amaya (The end) Aníara Othzál

Both are redeemed durges

Rae is for Ascended Astarion & Amaya is for Spawn Astarion

I've written a little bit of their back stories below as well just an FYI Amaya has a full story to her already while Rae is brand new so I need to cook with her a little bit.

Rae is going to be sort of power hungry and will most definitely influence all of her companions to take whatever they can and never give. Unfortunately this will lead to very bad paths :( (I will not be raiding the grove that is too much for me lmfao only one tied will die, IM SO SORRY KARLACH ITS FOR WYLL). I am also going to try to figure out how to save Last Light Inn without murdering everyone when I have Shadowheart kill Dame Aylin, I'm sure I can figure it out, I watched a YouTube vid about it the other day. Therefore I'm once again playing as a chaotic good person?? I think? I'm not sure what it is called if you are power hungry low-key do evil things but are so chaotic you end up doing the right thing. What I've come up for her backstory well what little I thought of is her as a siren, that's how she brought back her victims in sacrifice for Bhaal (similar to Amaya but I've cooked longer with Amaya so she has much more trauma). I don't think she ever liked being under Bhaal's influence similar to Amaya, I believe it is cannon that all Dark Urges have left the cult at some point (I could be wrong but I read somewhere that they have) but she did leave the cult before. I haven't cooked long enough for me think of why she rejects Bhaal's power since she is power hungry but I feel like maybe its because she's so bitter, her dad didn't save her, no one saved her from Orin and all the fucked up shit that happened in the mind flayer colony but I'll get back to y'all on that soon lol. I may give her bluish skin but I might not because tieflings can have human color skin tones, I like Rae's color scheme too it's going to be dark royal blue which reminds me of electricity. I'm not sure if I should keep her as a storm sorcerer it just fits her I suppose, I originally wanted to be a monk. If anyone knows how to use a sorcerer let me know, I've tried to play as one before but didn't understand the mechanics lmfao.I only created her in customization, I'm waiting to get to the grove with Amaya and then I'll create her for real.

Amaya is my go to playthrough that I adore so much and already thought of so much lore for her (her former name use to be Eris but I changed it lol. She's my funny little cry baby chaotic good girl, different from Rae is she always wants to do the right thing but ends up doing it in the most chaotic way lmfao. She's a cleric/paladin of Selune mainly because her mother was a cleric of Selune and her dad also worshiped her but was a ranger, after her adoptive parents died when she was 12 (she did not kill them the Zhentarim did) she was kept as a slave for them, did unimaginable things that a teen should do :( this was mainly because one of the zhents took a gross liking to her, she was also forced to thieve, her main schemes back then were using her cleric abilities to scam someone out of money and then pickpocketing the rest. She had her first Bhaal urges happen to her just before her parents died but vowed she would never act on them after their deaths. This wasn't until she couldn't take it anymore at age 16 and killed her main abuser (there's more to this but I want to write it out eventually in story form.) After a few more years of being on her own other bad shit happened which was when she finally found the cult of Bhaal at the young age of 19. After this, Bhaal of course demanded kills from his lovely daughter and she became a siren but hated every second of it and tried to run away more than once but never couId and would be punished for it which then eventually leads to her wound on her wrist which will occur she will bleed bleed and have a lot of pain, she will also have one of the worst headaches that can even make her physically ill every time she rejects one of her worse urges (this was a joy with Lae'zel thinking she's transforming every day lmfao). I think of this as similar to Shadowhearts wound but more graphic, basically a conditioning to make her do bad things. Again there's more to it that I written about already and will eventually release in future. I changed her color scheme from purple to red bc I hated all the purple eyes lol and I prefer to keep a theme going tbh lol. With Rae her physical appearance will not change when she rejects Bhaal (I may change her appearance when Astarion makes her a spawn though but only a little) but Amaya's appearance does! Her natural eye color is dark brown which is why I chose the eyes that looks like a red haze is over natural color. Her hair will also no longer have dark red streaks and will be just normal black and the glowy horns I think will change from red to white :)

I know there will be another dark urge OC soon it will be for Wyll though but that OC is literally just gonna be me lololol. I'm waiting for Larian to fix Wyll before I start that though. Hopefully SOON!