#i actually was doing a very complicated detailed drawing for like 2 hours

[quibbs126]

So I tried to do some practice of TF One Optimus and Megatron, starting yesterday

It was because I was thinking about Lux and how I really should have tried to draw these two more beforehand, since I haven’t drawn them properly in a good while (not counting my more simple drawings of them), and I figured my old colors for them probably weren’t accurate anymore

First I just lined and colored the head sketches I had made on that initial Lux idea thing, and I ended up quite liking them in all honesty

But then I realized I probably need to do more so I can figure out all their colors (like for example, Optimus’ red is nowhere on his head). But I didn’t have premade sketches to draw and color over, so I had to draw new ones

I’m gone be honest, while I think yesterday’s Optimus turned out pretty well, Megatron on the other hand, not so much. His head’s fine, but the rest of his body, eh

I think it’s because while I have drawn Optimus before, and with actual screenshots from the movie, I’ve drawn Megatron far less, and I’m usually using this concept art that while generally accurate, has a bunch of details off from the final version. It’s probably also why I constantly forget his cannon, because it’s not here

Also my perspective generally isn’t the best, and it keeps changing from the initial rough shapes to the final. I was able to tweak for Optimus, but Megatron I couldn’t save much

Also my god, these designs are so complicated, they take so long to draw, it’s a whole ordeal. I’m probably spoiled by my own incredibly simple AU designs, but still. Doesn’t help I’m not very good/experienced at 3D. Apparently these two alone took a collective 3 and a half hours, while my normal drawings probably won’t be longer than 2

I’ve half a mind to simplify them more, maybe resemble the Animated style more, but I’m not sure. I’m trying to adhere to the movie’s style more at least in the eyes, and I don’t know if I want to change everything else while keeping that. Or maybe I should, especially since I already don’t make the plates look 3D enough, like they’re sheets rather than plates

I don’t know how people do this, it’s so difficult. But again, I’m probably just inexperienced and spoiled on oversimplification

My anatomy’s also off I think, I still need to figure out how the arms are supposed to work

But yeah, take these I suppose. They aren’t terrible, but they’re nowhere near the quality of someone who’s good at drawing these bots, particularly from TF One

[starheavenly]

hiii!!! loving your locket comics!!!!!! just wanted to ask a few questions about your process, if you dont mind :D

whats your general process like?

do you do thumbnails, how do they look like?

roughly how long does it take you to complete a comic panel or page?

how detailed are your sketches? do you do multiple?

do you have any specific techniques for lineart?

do you typically use references for your comics?

generally, how much effort and focus do you put into your comics?

do you have any advice for drawing comics?

sorry for for the absolute bombardment of questions, lmao. just really enjoy your art and comics and very interested in the behind the scenes!! feel free to skip any questions (or this whole ask) well wishes and salutations!!! :D

Hello! I'm so glad you enjoy my comics, and I totally don't mind breaking down the process!

For a normal comic page, I would likely actually write a script since it's much easier to keep track of dialogue and actions. But since these are short, I just write it into my thumbnails.

Step 1: Thumbnails. Easily one of my favorite parts, since I get to throw all my ideas down. I do these comics on a 2-panel grid, so I don't have to worry about actual paneling, and it allows me to focus more on the setup of each shot. Think of it like storyboarding!

Step 2: Add cleaner thumbs if needed. I actually made 3D models of Deadlock and Ratchet's chest in Blockbench, so I often trace them to save myself some time! (It might look insane, but I promise, for me, it's not.)

Step 3: Lettering! I actually like to get the lettering out of the way right away since it can take a while. Ever since I started treating lettering as its own form of art, my skills have gotten better, but it also takes much longer.

Step 4: Clean sketch! I'm just now finding out that people think I’m doing lineart for these? I am not… these are all just clean sketches. Maybe doing the blackwork gives the illusion of lineart?

Step 5: Color! Most of these comics are in black and white to save time, but it also lets me focus on values and shot framing again. I add my glow overlay to the eyes, and boom, done!

Roughly how long does it take you to complete a comic panel or page?

It really depends on how complicated the panels are. I like to step out of my comfort zone. I know the Grimlock and Misfire one took longer because of how many panels there were and the fact that I was drawing characters I’d never drawn before, but I’d say it usually takes around 5-8 hours for a whole page.

Do you typically use references for your comics?

I'm literally the reference GOD- we all know this. But yes, I love using references and doing character studies. I have yet to do a study on LL Drift, but I have a few references of him that I’ve made.

Generally, how much effort and focus do you put into your comics?

I mean, I wouldn't say I don't put in a lot of effort? I put in enough. I don't know… there's a point in the clean sketch process where you can kind of just turn off your brain. I'm passionate about comics, but we can all agree there's a point in a drawing where you just zone out.

Do you have any advice for drawing comics?

I think being able to balance dialogue and visuals is super important. I don't know if you guys have picked up a graphic novel from Barnes & Noble recently, but if you open a page, you'll see a character sitting with the biggest bubble you've ever seen, filled with paragraphs of text. While I get it—being a novel as much as it's graphic—I personally like to visualize emotions more. If it means adding two more panels to make an interesting dialogue setup, I don't mind doing it. Another thing to remember is that not all panels need to have details or 100% effort. Sometimes you need to simplify and move on, and that's okay! Those two extra panels that are giving you a better stage setup might be the ones that need fewer details and less time. I would consider my comic page work and my 4-panel work very different. One is about paneling, setup, and visuals, while the other is very much like storyboarding. Both are skills you learn with practice and study.

[nrdmssgs]

How to not motivate your favorite author to write

So recently this happened to a very dear friend of mine. And then this happened. I'm not tagging her deliberately, to not drag her name into any shitshow. I love her dearly and will fight with tooth and claw for this person.

I will be referring to my personal experience not because I want to make this 'a story about precious me', but because I can guarantee, that overall pattern of creative process will go along with these examples, and I don't want to torture others with interviews on their particular creative process examples.

I want to address that anon and talk a bit about how creative processes work. I am not a writer, but I have two art degrees, so I just happen to know a thing or two about creativity and its ways in human brains.

How creative process differs from creative outcome

Imagine a situation: you roam around your favorite network and find this one cool author, that seems to create something especially for you. I like their characters, their storyline, their ways with the language and overall scenery. You and them seems like a match made in heavens. There is only one 'but': you crave more.

You find your perfect fic, you read every chapter and end on a painful cliffhanger, poor you? But what if I tell you, that to complete this chapter, your favorite author had to process a ton of information, their own suggestions, 'what ifs', questions around every single detail, different dialogue and action options? What you see is a perfectly cut ice cube, but it took a freaking iceberg to make it. By the way, the same goes for illustrations. Remember this short comix?

Well, it took a day to create it, and actually drawing it took only 4 hours. Another 8 hours were spent on concept. Here are just 2 pages of my ideas, and I have like 8 pages of this.

And sometimes authors don't even write down their draft thoughts, but it doesn't mean, these thoughts doesn't exist. We are thinking about our stories while going for groceries, driving a car, doing laundry, taking shower and so on.

So if you read something, that is one-page long - it doesn't mean, that your favorite author spent an average 'fill one page with text' time interval to create it. You are reading an outcome, while the author went through the entire creative process!

How creating one thing may help you to create another thing

Sometimes you need to practice, just to get to know a new character/situation.

I had such difficulties, writing Nikto, that I wrote this and this just to bring this marvelous character to the latest part of my ongoing series. Yes, it took me a month to figure out this character, but it was worth it. So please, bear with an author, that makes little attempts, before going back to their magnum opus. Sketches and renders can and will help them evaluate the story, that you`ve fallen in love with in the first place!

Sometimes you need a break.

If you thought, reading some angst was not easy - just know, that writing it was also not easy. Sometimes authors speak on deeply personal topics, sometimes they express their negative emotions through hard and draining scenes and stories.

And before you say 'oh, but the author knew in advance what is yet to happen' - let me remind you, that the author relieves everything, their characters go through.

Creating something completely knew helps author to gain powers, to take a step further, to breathe and calm down.

Sometimes you just feel like shit.

You wake up, revisit, what you wrote yesterday, and you hate it. And you hate yourself for setting the bar so low. And a very right thing to do at this moment is to get yourself distracted by something completely new. Or even to force yourself to not go back to creating for a bit, so that your 'creativity muscles' get some rest.

So please don't be disappointed by your favorite creator for paying attention to other media/fandom/story/character. It may be their way (long and complicated) to go back to that very work, you liked so much.

What doesn't motivate authors

Punching them with 'hey, stop whatever you're doing and go back to that thing, I LIKED'. This will only make your fave creator freeze in a cycle of self-hate, diffidence, art blocks.

Comparison of their works. "Your Ghost fics are top, so stop writing about Gaz and turn into a full time Ghost praiser". Again, this won't motivate your fave to change their writing habits or preferences, this will make them fill guilty every single time they create something against your preferences. That 10-30-50 sketches with Gaz will eventually help them go back and write something for Ghost!

[kitsu-katsu]

I'm gonna make this post as condenaed and abridged brainrot to explain why Victor Frankenstein is my boy from 200 yr old media prompted by a tag question from @samathekittycat in a post I reblogged because that highjacking would've been too much

So. Basically every adaptation ever is way off, Victor in the og novel is a guy from a rich family, yes, but one that has it's own fucked up occurrences that shape him even though he says his life is the peak of idyllic and that can lead to really good character analysis

He becomes an alchemy fanatic at 13, completely obsesses over it, even harder when his father claims the whole subject to be trash and he's in general somewhat fascinated by natural occurrences as well, so he gets it into his head that he wants to change the world by attaining the alchemist dream of basically defeating death, and this is all exacerbated when he's about to be sent away to study in Ingolstadt at 17 and just days before his mother dies of an illness his cousin-sister-future wife (it's complicated, it's a whole mess with hiw mother's involvement too) contracted first, so his trip is delayed a bit, but he never really processes his grief and is not that interested in actual science at first until a professor he meets there validates the alchemists ambition and he starts to hyperfixate on science so bad he's surpassed his professors in 2 years, and with all this baggage, at 19, he decides he's going to decode the secrets of death basically, because as he sees it at this point, if applied enough in the right direction with a scientific method any mediocre man could change society

So he builds his creatire after 2 years of isolating himself completely to do it, so he finishes it at like 21, and the thing is, the guy basically did all of this in a hyperfocused state he started at 19 and influenced by All That Baggage and grief he has Not Processed, so he wasn't really thinking about the consequences of anything. So his creature opens its eyes and suddenly the weight and terror of everything falls upon him along with a good mix of uncanny valley, and he just. Collapses. He sleeps a bit, his creature's still there, and he's so scared he runs away from his dorm room and by chance meets with his bff who was back in Geneva with the rest of his family he hasn't talked to in 2 whole years, his creature sneaks out while this is happening, and when going back, Victor is so mentally collapsed and strained and also scared he mighr be called crazy that he's just glad that the creature's gone and enters a fragile state where he's just completely physically sick and done for for a Big While, he can't take care of himself anymore and can't even look at anything relatingnto science anymore

When he's getting better, he has to go back to Geneva because his brother died. Whoah-oh, it was the Creature. He confronts it eventually and it asks for a bride and promises to go away with her, this is a Whole Conflict, because Victor can't reveal what he knows or he'll be labelled insane, he also doesn't wanna finish the bride because she'll also be her own person and what if she doesn't wanna run away with og Creature as his bride? While all of this is happening, one family servant is being accused of the murder and trialed, Victor is squealing in a corner

Basically, he's very autistic, he's seen a hysteric, his creation of the Creature can be analyzed from so many different angles, from teenage pregnancy and postpartum depression, trans experiences (both transmasc and transfemme! I've seen excellent analysis from both perspectives, though I have a personal bias towards the transmasc reading), the process of artist in general (like, that point when you start drawing something and you start zooming into every detail for hours and once you zoom out again you realize you don't like how it came out at all even though you put so much time into it), his illnesses and disabilities both mental and physical are really interestingly depicted as well, overall, he's a very meaty character who was FAR from making everything right, in fact, he did a lot wrong, but he's also a victim of his circumstances, a teen/young adult in the whole duration of the thing, and is suffering tons of pressure from everywhere while losing his purpose and selse of self to his opposition to his own creation. They are the definition of "they can make eachother worse" and Victor loses everything. He's a tragedy. A tragedy that a lot of people wanna ignore and just say he's plain evil because the Creature must be plain good and they feel smart if they say the typical "Small brain: Frankenstein was the monster vs Big brain: Frankenstein was the scientist, not the monster vs Galaxy brain: Frankenstein was the monster all along" and they completely skip out on all the depth this character has

I went super aurface level in a lot of parts here, but I hope it's somewhat understandable

I recommend reading the novel though! It's Good

[celestialmazer]

J is for Jousting

C is for Castle

S is for Ships

Chesterway Coloring Cards

Designed by Jane Walmsley © J Bartholomew

Made in the United Kingdom. The back of each letter describes what the drawing represents ie A is for Angel, U is for Unicorn, T is for tournament.

Designs are based on the illuminated initials of medieval manuscripts and display related medieval detail in the subject and background depictions.

Image source 1, source 2, source 3

Article with the designer Jane Walmsley below

https://booksforkeeps.co.uk/article/to-books-for-keeps-from-jane-walmsley/

This article is featured in BfK 11 November 1981

To Books for Keeps From Jane Walmsley

Author: Jane Walmsley

A talented young designer and illustrator invites you to share her pleasure in making miniature books.

In 1973 Jane Walmsley was in the final year of a course in textile and theatre design at the Central School. At a party, thrown by her Polish tutor, she met Jan Pienkowski who by one of those lucky accidents happened to be looking for people to work with him. Six months later Jane, thinking she was going to be one of several, found she was the only assistant.

Being assistant to Pienkowski is, Jane says, something of a wide brief. The job entails most things from providing cups of tea and smoothing the appointments path, to coping with crises and being thoroughly involved in the whole creative process which a man like Pienkowski generates through, it seems, most of the waking hours. She started by being allowed to fill in the black bits in some of the early Meg and Mog books and slowly over two years became Jan Pienkowski’s right-hand lady.

One of the things that Jane has become especially noted for in the book world is the superb hand-lettering which is so often a feature of Pienkowski-designed books. She doesn’t know quite how it came about, but somehow Pienkowski had got it firmly fixed in his head that hand ­lettering was one of Jane’s specialities – ‘Actually I did lettering very badly, but managed to disguise this by lots of decoration.’ The first project she was asked to do was a ‘fearfully complicated’ Festival poster and for six weeks with Pienkowski standing over her she grappled to imitate many different kinds of type-faces. At the end of this, even she admits, she’d become a fair copier. From this Jane went on to do lots of ‘illuminated stuff – Gallery Five Christmas cards, carol cards and so on. The next big project was the lettering of The Fairy Tale Library (Heinemann) which occupied the whole of 1976. Each of these little books is about 2,000 words long and by the time Jane had finished she’d hand-lettered in beautiful script well over 12,000 individual words. She agreed that by then she’d become very good at it. She went on to work with Pienkowski on a variety of Meg and Mogs. friezes, the concept books and the Joan Aiken Tales of a One Way Street.

One of the books she’s most proud to be associated with is Ghosts and Bogies, (a collection of stories by Dinah Starkey). If you haven’t come across this book it’s a must next time you go to your local bookshop. Jane said that when it was published everybody complained that it had been printed on toilet paper (the kind of thing you get on Italian camp sites) when in fact she and Jan had gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain the thick recycled, creamy coloured paper, which they felt was just right for this excitingly designed and illustrated book.

For Haunted House Jane did a ‘bit of everything’ – helping to work out some of the concepts, doing some of the drawings, colouring in and taking part in the creative arguments which inevitably are part and parcel of that kind of enterprise. The book was started in 1978 and was twelve months in the making. No-one who worked on it had any idea that pop-ups were going to be such big business or that Pienkowski’s book would lead the field.

In 1980 Pienkowski, with Jane’s help. started Robot. Nearly two years later it has just reached the shops with its shiny metallic cover and its even more staggeringly inventive mechanics.

Since Robot Jane has been freelance and works with Jan only one or two days a week. One of the first books she tackled on her own was Ghosts and Shadows by Dorothy Edwards (Lutterworth). She was quietly delighted to see it selected for Children’s Books of the Year. Her most original and individual venture so far is to become her own publisher of miniature books.

She began playing around with miniatures about four years ago, making blank books for dolls’ houses, which she sold to toy shops. It was a natural development from this to go on to illustrating and lettering these exquisite little books.

She draws each page twice-up (twice the size of the finished book). These pages are printed on to sheets and then reduced. All the colour work is hand-done with felt tip pens. The pages are cut out by Jane with a scalpel, collated and then stapled together. The covers, which are just like those on hardback books, on a tiny scale, are made separately.

Jane is fascinated by miniature things and finds hand-colouring the tiny illustrations very relaxing. She has sold her books to about a dozen shops, mostly in London, but she is wary of going into large-scale production. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it if I didn’t enjoy it, and having to make books would rob it of the pleasure.’

To give you a taste of that pleasure Jane has designed a Happy Christmas book for you to make. It is a Books for Keeps original. Another way to share the pleasure is to take advantage of our special offer and get some of Jane’s hand-made originals for your family and friends. But take our tip. If you are buying them for presents, make sure you get one for yourself. You won’t be able to bear to give them all away.

To make your `Happy Christmas’ book

1. Cutout the letters across the top of these pages and join tab ‘A’ to ‘B’ to make a continuous strip.

2. Colour the letters if you wish.

3. Fold the pages concertina-style and stick them together as shown here.

_ GIue back to back as arrowed cut???

4. Staple the pages into book form.

5. You can make a cover from two pieces f card covered in scraps f wrapping paper. Stick it to the ‘To’ and ‘From’ endpapers with double-sided sellotape or glue,

Jane Walmsley has given permission for readers of Books for Keeps to reproduce her original design if they wish to make more copies of the books with children.

Books for Keeps Special Offer

Jane Walmsley’s Miniature Books

As you can see from our photograph, these really are tiny books which make superb little gifts for everyone: wives, husbands, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends – even children!

There are four titles to choose from, either in black and white or hand-coloured:

1. An Alphabet of Creatures From Alligator to Zebra

2. Nursery Rhymes All the favourites

3. A Birthday Book The book spells `Happy Birthday’. Each letter beautifully illuminated.

4. Wild Flowers Snowdrops, daisies, buttercups, violets, etc.

Black and white – 80p each (inc. p & p)

Hand-coloured – £1.50 each (inc. p & p)

Because these exquisite miniature books are hand-made, our supply is obviously limited. Place your order now by completing the order form below or simply telephone your order to us direct (01-852 4953).

[fallisl1fe]

AAAA Sorry for disappearing (again) I'm kind of struggling- *AHEM* I just open tumblr and my face brightened with golden shine of beautiful animations and arts!!! ✨(Imagine you achieve something in game and game shows that something with cool lights Yes like that XD)

I finished the fic that one you mentioned and my favorite moment is festival as well!! WHY THESE TWO HAVE TO BE THIS CUTE *heart melts* I only could find and read 2 Wing lives AU before but unfortunately both of them unfinished, if you want to check one "Brink Of by kagebros" and there is a oneshot about Wing having nightmare and lots of cuddling "Here With Me" by Kuukkeli if you are interested!

Ofc I would like see your TFP art!! Tfp somehow harder to draw than IDW I think their armor panels lol but only one in tfp I can draw from memory is Megatron XD You can do Soundwave or Predaking if Chef Fall wanna cooking some Tfp recipe! (^w^)

YES YES! I love these concept designs so much!!!! Did you see Wheeljack one? I think he is very cool also I love War for cybertron Rodimus design so much too and his altmode, he looks different in a good way! OH did you post pics of your figure and car toys before?? I would like to see them! I wanted to buy Wing and Rodimus figures but my country customs are stupid (I start rambling too XD)

OKAY NOW TIME TO PRAISE YOU FOR YOUR BEAUTIFUL ARTS WEEEEE🤍🤍🤍

And while I was writing this ask (hello im slow writer lol) you post new one! AAAA I love your animations You did that in 2 hours?? Drift's face and finials moving with emotions Muahh so so good!!! and Prowl's walking cycle with his bouncy door wings I think he is going to see Jazz thats why he's excited >:D

Sorry if any english issues bc my sleepy brain, Have a good day/night and take careee💞🍫

EEEEEE HIII! *waves excitedly* Welcome back to my little internet corner! No need to apologize, we all have our irl lives to attend to. Can't constantly be up to date on the good ol' interwebs. it's completely okay to take breaks, especially if it's health related :3

Oooo those fics sound interesting! I'm adding them to my reading list hehehehe. Can't wait to read them when I get the chance (school has got me in a chokehold rn lmao)! o(｀ω´ )o

HEHEHEHEH I'm so glad you would like to see some TFP art! I just finished my Optimus doodle sheet last night. OMG OMG I would love to do TFP soundwave!! In fact, I was actually planning on drawing him after OP, but I waited so I could see what you wanted. Just so happens we both wanted the same thing XD

Ohoho, Predaking is a difficult one. I can definitely give it a try though! Love that guy's angular face, big horns go brrrrrrr o(^▽^)o

Hmmm, I assume the difference between IDW and TFP is that IDW was made to be drawn in 2D. They are designed specifically for being "easier" to draw, otherwise IDW's artists would've died from exhuastion. TFP only requires one or two models that each animator shares. This means they can be incredibly complicated and no one has to worry about redrawing each detail every time. They also have a lot less cubes, leaning slightly more on the robot side of mecha rather than the more cartoonish, human-like mecha that transformers is known for

OH OH ALSO I just looked up the TFP concept art for Wheeljack and I LOVE IT AAAAAAA. He's just so cool heheheheh! And I have posted some pictures of my figures, but that was about two months ago. I haven't posted any pics of my car toys though. Only recently did I retrieve them from the dismal abyss known as the toy bin. Hold on, lemme take some pictures of them together! >:3

(Dont mind my desk being super short, mini Fall draws here) I chose each car to represent a different TF character that I like :)

And thank you so much!! I'm super glad you like the animations!! I haven't finished one in a long long time so it feels good to finally try it again. If I'm being honest, the main reason I finished in 2 hours was because I've been super busy with school so I have a pretty narrow time window for creative projects. Was hit hard with inspiration while studying and my brain nearly combusted, so I pracitcally ran home to slap the idea down. Even I'm surprised, I don't usually work that fast lol

Anyway, I just finished my homework so Imma go lay down or something now. Thank you again and I hope life treats you well!🤍🤍

[timpac-capstone]

Spring Update 2: Revised Animatic and Animation has Started.

After showing the initial animatic at a critique and to a couple of friends and professors, the common consensus was that it dragged on too long. This is the third version of the animatic, the second version had the montage scene replaced with a 3-hours-later card, and the golden tape scene was removed. From the critique a lot of people didn't get the golden tape scene, what I intended with it was that people would project their own worst memory into it instead of me trying to make it my worst memory, which is the marco polo game in the script. They also thought I should get rid of the montage scene which I personally liked but I tried it out just to see how things worked out. It still seemed a bit choppy and dragged on until I emailed the first draft to last semester's capstone professor and she had a lot of critiques about the basketball scene. That's when a lightbulb went off in my mind, "What if instead of trying to fix it I just remove it". And oh my god the animatic worked so much better and thank god because that scene had a lot of moving parts and complicated backgrounds that I didn't even know if it would be possible to animate at my skill level. Don't get me wrong it did hurt a little to delete a week's worth of work but that's how it is when producing an animation.

Highly recommend reading this book for your observational research during the fall semester. I was an idiot and started reading it in the spring so I barely got halfway through it before I had to start the actual animation process but what I did read was very useful. The main reason why I didn't read it beforehand was because I hate reading books, I feel that video tutorials are way more efficient and easy to understand than reading 400 pages but this book has a lot of pictures and the author's personality really shines through which makes it fun to read. However, you should be highlighting and writing notes on the side of the pages rather than just reading the pages. The more active you are in your research the more you will retain.

Also as the page from the book suggests you should record/time actions you want to animate by performing them yourself. I was really struggling with the last scene where Dillon goes back to bed. By recording myself I was able to see so many small details of my arm and leg placement as I changed positions. I tried this a couple of times with my first attempt being very slow and in this version, I did it a lot faster.

Similar to how my first animation test for the animatic was the walk cycle for Brain Cell 2, so was my Toon Boom Harmony test. I thought this would be the perfect thing to work on first cause this walk cycle requires a lot of different aspects of digital and traditional animation to make it happen and then once I know where everything is I can try and master it by working on the simpler cuts.

First, and probably simplest, is how do I even draw on this thing. I was having a lot of problems with Toon Boom in the beginning because it didn't like the size of my laptop's monitor so I checked out one of the monitors from the Fablab. I then set up my own animation station in the back of the bunker. This was a bit of an annoying aspect working with Toon Boom because if I had some downtime throughout the day, especially at the Fablab, I couldn't work on it because my screen wasn't acceptable and I needed space for the tablet. At the very least what this setup did for me, psychologically, I had a place where I could associate my stress with instead of keeping everything in my room. Until my other roommate let me borrow a monitor he wasn't using, then most of the animating I did at home cause I like having a place with sunlight.

From animating this one walk cycle I learned how to draw, color, make new frames for a layer, create symbols for the eyes and mouth which is useful for when characters are talking, how to insert spines/rigs into certain body parts or drawn pieces such as the legs so that I don't have to draw them frame by frame, how to rotate, resize, and move a drawing using pegs, and how to parent objects. Sometimes I would also get happy accidents such as the legs moving a bit before the body, this goes to a classic principle in animation which is anticipation. I was also really happy with how I was closely able to match the timing of the animation to the animatic, the bag still feels like it has a heavy weight to it.

I would also keep a notebook next to me and write down anything new I would learn so that I was more actively researching when clicking through Toon Boom tutorials on YouTube.

Once the walk cycle was finished and I was happy with how it looked I split up the animatic into 9 different scenes and then tried fully animating Scene 2 since that and Scene 6 is where that specific walk appears. However, that proved to be quite difficult because of how many different camera angles are in Scene 2, such as close-up shots of Bran Cell 1 on the couch, wide shots of Bran Cell 1 & 2, and then that one still with the door. There were simply too many moving parts to animate this on one file so then I thought "What if I split them even further to the cuts that make up each scene".

Now it's difficult to constitute what is considered the ending of a scene but I personally considered a scene done whenever there was a huge change in setting/background or if it felt like there was a new topic being discussed. So scene 1 is Dillon going to bed so we are in and rotating about his bedroom but once we enter inside his brain I call that scene 2 because the backgrounds are completely different for a good length of time. Then when Brain Cell 2 inserts the tape into the VHS player I called that scene 3 since they are not trying to figure out what the VHS tapes might be or how they work anymore but instead the focus is shifted toward the presentation memory even though they are still in the brain room and 2 cuts are in Dillon's bedroom. Some scenes like scene 5 flip back and forth between the brain room and the bedroom and quite honestly scene 6, which is the one where they drag in the new bag and ends when Cell 2 reaches in for another tape, could be argued to be a part of scene 5, especially since scene 3 has both the Brain room and Dillon's bedroom, but you really have to go off your personal feelings as to what will help you best in breaking down your animatic to simple parts.

Unlike scenes, cuts are very easy to define. A cut is whenever the camera angle of the scene is moved. If you think of it in a live-action sense if I wanted to get a different camera angle of my actors I would yell "CUT" and they would take a break while I set up my camera in a new position. Some scenes, like scenes 1 and 6, had only 2 cuts while scene 2 had 20 cuts, in total Bedtime had 80 cuts which includes stills and repeat shots. This made it a lot easier to work out the math as to how much time I had left to make the animation and which scenes and cuts required more priority if I wanted to make a good finished product. Scene 4, which is the montage scene, could be cut out completely if I really was stressed for time while scene 2, the dragging of the first VHS tapes bag, was not easily avoidable since that created the whole setup of the plot.

This can take up a lot of space on your hard drive and it can get annoying to transfer the assets/layers from one Toon Boom file to another so I would combine the cuts that had the exact same camera angles to make life a bit easier for me. I'm not 100% sure this is how people in the industry organize their files but to some degree, they definitely have to do it this way. Remember that you have several teams of people working on an animated project and the way people get paid, at least in Japan, is by the amount of cuts you do per episode.

Now that everything was nicely organized and I knew that my goal was to reach 80 cuts before the beginning of April I had a feasible plan of action. From February 28th to April 8th, I had to do at the very least 2 cuts a day in order to have the animation part done before the day of the exhibition. Obviously, I wasn't just going to do 2 cuts a day because I would be working up to the wire and that's not factoring in the time it takes to make the backgrounds and sounds for the animation so I definitely hoped that during spring break I could do at least 4 a day or get the harder cuts out of the way. If I wasn't able to complete 2 cuts then at the very least I had to start working on 2 cuts and then hopefully the next day I could do 3 or 4 to make up for lost time. Also, it's best to break this up into smaller pieces as well, so instead of "I need to finish 80 cuts as fast as possible" I would say to myself "I need to finish 14 cuts this week as fast as possible" which is why there is a number on the side with how many cuts I still had left to do. This way I can give myself some leisure time or work on other aspects of the capstone or school work and not stress myself out because I still have 43 cuts left. And if I got ahead of schedule by finishing my 14 cuts I felt more motivated to keep working at a steady pace.

Originally I was going to hire somebody to do the backgrounds for me but I ended up doing them myself in Toon Boom because I couldn't really find anybody cheap and even if I did I wouldn't know how to describe what type of backgrounds I wanted cause I needed to do some on my own regardless. I needed 27 backgrounds maximum, some were reusable so it was probably close to 20 but even then that would be way too expensive to make somebody else do for me so might as well do them all myself. That way they are all the same quality and I can save some money that can be allocated somewhere else such as voice actors. If you know some people who are good at digital painting and you have a good idea of what you want I would definitely suggest hiring someone to do the backgrounds. In the industry, everybody is a specialist in only one field, so one person does all the backgrounds while a different person makes the character designs and then a third person is the actual animator. But because Stevens' budget is so limiting for a project like this you have to really pick your battles.

Also highly recommend exporting your cuts as TIF Image Sequences and compositing them in After Effects, the one on the left is a TIF Sequence. When I export into a video format through Toon Boom the colors get a little bit whitewashed. This will however eat up a lot of your hard drive space especially since some cuts will need every layer to be its own separate image sequence. If it's just a still or a single stationary layer then just export it as one image and then extend it. If you're gonna go crazy with compositing in After Effects then you should definitely invest in an external hard drive to make life easier for yourself and it's just a good way to keep your capstone stuff out of harm's way, you never know what may happen to your laptop.

What I want you to take away from this specific post is that ORGANIZATION IS KEY TO A FINISHED ANIMATION. You cannot work on it every day for every second of the spring semester cause you'll get burned out like I did in April. If you can mathematically prove to yourself that you're in a good spot and can afford to give yourself breaks once in a while then your project will come out amazing. If you constantly keep yourself under stress then you'll start taking shortcuts where they don't need to be taken and your animation will suffer because of it.

[obsidionwingsofmidnight]

simplified version of lami’s (or law’s you know whatever it’s complicated lol) wedding dress in ch.9

[azaisya]

late submission for qijiu week day 2 (curses/blessings)! have roughly 3k of lighthearted fic feat. outsider pov and getting together. rating: t

When Qi Qingqi returned from a mission with Yue Qingyuan’s unconscious body slung over one shoulder, the entirety of Cang Qiong Mountain imploded. Disciples ran everywhere like chickens with their heads cut off, and half of the Peak Lords followed suit. 

Mu Qingfang didn’t know—or care—about any of that. He was the one that Qi Qingqi dumped Yue Qingyuan’s unconscious body on, and so it was up to him to try to find a cure. 

For a sleeping curse, of all the absurd things. 

The demon had supposedly been putting entire villages to sleep so she could feast on their dreams. The stories had been alarming enough to warrant sending two Peak Lords to deal with the problem, but everybody had agreed it was probably overkill. 

Well. Apparently not.

At least Qi Qingqi had managed to behead the thing after it’d cursed Yue Qingyuan.

Demons rarely used sleeping curses. It was an impractically complicated method to get something that could be achieved with simple knockout powder or any blunt object. 

Unlike knockout powder or a blunt object, Mu Qingfang didn’t have the cure sitting readily on his shelf. 

He was just starting to sift through what he did have when the distant crash of his door slamming open interrupted his concentration. He grimaced. One of these days, Shang Qinghua was finally going to snap and go after Liu Qingge for destroying so many doors. 

“Where is he?” a voice demanded, as low and snarling and dangerous as any demon. 

Mu Qingfang hastily put down his things and made for the entrance room as the danger level ratcheted up from Liu Qingge to Shen Qingqiu. 

Sure enough, Shen Qingqiu was standing in the doorway, glaring one of Mu Qingfang’s disciples into a nervous wreck. “Tell me where he is, you sniveling brat.”

The poor boy looked like he was about to faint. Mu Qingfang came into the room and smiled pleasantly. “I would appreciate it if you could refrain from insulting my disciples, Shen-shixiong.”

Shen Qingqiu whirled on him, and the little disciple let out a squeak and ran for it. Mu Qingfang would have to scold him later, but he wouldn’t be too stern. All his disciples were terrified of Shen Qingqiu, and  for good reason. The man looked absolutely livid, his usual affected loftiness abandoned for a raw fury that even Liu Qingge couldn’t draw from him. At his hip, Xiu Ya rattled in its sheath. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

Mu Qingfang’s smile didn’t slip. “Zhangmen-shixiong is currently resting in a private room.”

“Resting,” Shen Qingqiu repeated, the word dripping with derision. He opened his fan with a sharp snap of his wrist, and his dark eyes glinted over its edge. “Let me see him.”

“Ah.” Introducing an element as volatile as Shen Qingqiu to a sick room was invariably a terrible idea. Explicitly telling him so was an even worse one. “Shen-shixiong, I’m afraid that Zhangmeng-shixiong’s state is currently very delicate. It would be best if he didn’t receive visitors right now.”

If looks could kill, Mu Qingfang would be a smear on the floor right now. “Was I asking?”

As mildly as ever, Mu Qingfang said, “I wasn’t aware that Shen-shixiong and Zhangmen-shixiong were close? If Shen-shixiong is truly so worried, then I suppose a brief visit would not be remiss.”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes widened over his fan. “I’m not worried,” he snapped, “I am merely doing my duty, as the lord of Cang Qiong Mountain’s second peak.”

Got him. Mu Qingfang smiled, not at all smugly because he still had common sense and Shen Qingqiu still had Xiu Ya. “Shen-shixiong is truly admirable. Zhangmen-shixiong is still sleeping, and this one was just about to create a cure.”

Shen Qingqiu floundered as gracefully and loftily as he did anything else. After a beat, he closed his fan with a snap and whirled around. “Fine. Do it quickly.”

“Of course.”

Shen Qingqiu drew Xiu Ya in a dramatic sweep and leapt into the air. Mu Qingfang squinted after him. He was heading in the direction of Xian Shu Peak, which was not where he should be going if he was truly “doing his duty as the lord of Cang Qiong Mountain’s second peak.”

Which— interesting. Mu Qingfang hadn’t been aware that Yue Qingyuan’s frankly painfully obvious affections were returned with anything other than reluctant tolerance. 

He could think of no other reason for Shen Qingqiu to go haring off to Xian Shu Peak if it wasn’t to harass Qi Qingqi for more information about the demon that had cursed Yue Qingyuan. 

Well. At least that was a better use for his energy than pestering healers who had work to do. 

Mu Qingfang gave it an hour before either Shen Qingqiu or Qi Qingqi got fed up enough with each other to draw a blade, which should give him at least an hour and a half before anybody came running to him for emergency healing. 

With a sigh, he got to work. 

---

It took them forty minutes. Mu Qingfang barely resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose as a hysterical Xian Shu disciple babbled about how Shen Qingqiu had attacked Qi Qingqi—

“Like a beast! For no reason at all!” the girl cried, “He’s going to kill her!” 

Mu Qingfang considered his options. He didn’t like Shen Qingqiu, but he would never deny the man the respect he deserved. He was acerbic and impossible to work with, but he would never just attack Qi Qingqi for no reason. It was far more likely that she’d snapped at him and he—in his state of heightened stress—had overreacted and then she had overreacted too. 

Mu Qingfang smiled his most dangerous smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you properly. Would shizhi mind repeating herself?”

The girl made a vague choking sound and hastily dropped into a bow. “This humble disciple apologizes for her disrespect! She—humbly—requests that Mu-shishu sends medical aid to Xian Shu Peak!”

Mu Qingfang kept smiling, because otherwise he was going to make a very unattractive expression. “What exactly did Shen-shixiong and Qi-shijie get themselves into?”

The girl wavered, still refusing to meet his gaze. “This disciple is unsure. Guo-shijie sent this one here as a— as a precautionary measure before anything terrible happened.” 

Mu Qingfang did not have time for this. He sent her away along with a handful of his best disciples to assuage her wide-eyed look of terror and irritably returned to his work. If Shen Qingqiu or Qi Qingqi got themselves hurt badly enough to need his help, then they’d need to wait their turn.

---

Thirty minutes later, there was another knock on his door. With a heavy sigh, Mu Qingfang gathered himself and went to open it. To his surprise, Shen Qingqiu was standing outside. He had his fan raised to cover the lower half of his face, and his hair and robes were only mildly ruffled by his flight here and whatever brawl he’d gotten into with Qi Qingqi.

Mu Qingfang just smiled and waited. It would do Shen Qingqiu some good to have to actually ask for what he wanted. 

Those dark eyes narrowed over his fan. “Have you made any progress in your research?”

Mu Qingfang kept smiling, because otherwise he’d probably bang his head into the door. Did Shen Qingqiu think that constant interruptions were the ideal environment for productive work? Is that what was happening here? 

It didn’t seem like he really wanted an answer, because Shen Qingqiu continued, “Qi-shimei shared the details of the incident with me. I would like to inspect our Zhangmen-shixiong’s condition myself.” He lowered his fan to reveal a smile that suggested it wasn’t a question.

Mu Qingfang did sigh this time, because apparently Shen Qingqiu cared about Yue Qingyuan! Who knew! Definitely not somebody who’d been forced to sit through their sniping at meetings, that was for sure. “Shen-shixiong may come in,” he allowed, “so long as he maintains the peace of the chambers.”

There was no point keeping him out, after all. He was practically vibrating with stress as it was, and there was no way he wouldn’t cause some other disaster if Mu Qingfang turned him away now. 

“Of course.” Shen Qingqiu closed his fan with a snap. “No need for Mu-shidi to chaperone. I’m sure he has much to do.” Without waiting for a response, he strode past Mu Qingfang and through the door to Yue Qingyuan’s sick room. 

Which. Great. Excellent. 

Mu Qingfang spent exactly three seconds valiantly staring at his work before giving up and following after Shen Qingqiu, fully prepared to do some kind of damage control. To his surprise, the other man was standing motionless in Yue Qingyuan’s doorway, toes barely over the threshold. The hand holding his fan was white with tension. 

Cautiously, Mu Qingfang said, “Shen-shixiong is free to enter.”

Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders tensed. He turned, unfolding his fan with a smooth, languid motion and bringing it up to cover the lower half of his face as he peered at Mu Qingfang. “Mu-shidi should get back to work. Cang Qiong Mountain needs our sect leader, after all.”

Mu Qingfang stared at him. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes were the color of lakewater at its murkiest. They were a deep grey-green, and they were filled with something terrible and unreadable, something that was somehow even more frightening than his usual hissing, spitting fury.

Ah, he thought, suddenly. 

“I’ll find a cure,” he promised.

Shen Qingqiu’s fingers tightened around his fan. His eyes narrowed, as if he were about to scoff, but in the end he just looked back through the door at Yue Qingyuan’s unconscious form, arms tucked neatly at his sides and blanket drawn up to his chest. Without another word, he turned and stalked out.

---

Mu Qingfang read many, many scrolls. He looked through all his notes, attempted all his usual solutions, but the demon’s sleeping curse was tenacious. It clung stubbornly to Yue Qingyuan, locking him in dreams no matter what Mu Qingfang tried. 

In the end, there was only one solution left. 

. . . Shen Qingqiu was going to eviscerate him.

---

“Are you telling me,” Shen Qingqiu hissed, all but vibrating with poorly-disguised fury, “that the only solution is to sleep with him?!” 

“Dual cultivation with a suitably powerful partner, yes,” Mu Qingfang replied evenly, smiling as if he wasn’t sweating bullets. The other Peak Lords, summoned for an update on their sect leaders’ condition and now attempting to melt into their chairs to avoid Shen Qingqiu’s rapidly building wrath, happily avoided eye contact. Liu Qingge had probably zoned out two sentences into the meeting. 

Shen Qingqiu tilted his chin up, both dismissive and derisive all at once. “You have access to resources of the most powerful sect in the cultivation world, and the best you can give me is dual cultivation.” 

Mu Qingfang did not flinch. It would’ve been a near miss, but Shen Qingqiu’s now obvious affection and concern for Yue Qingyuan had diminished his wrath to the hissing of an overprotective kitten and also Mu Qingfang was probably running on a few too many days without sleep. So he said, “Unfortunately, yes, that is accurate.”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes locked onto him. Several tense moments passed. Shang Qinghua, several chairs away and not at all involved in the action, was nearly purple with stress. Finally, Shen Qingqiu stepped back, drawing his anger into some secret part of himself until nothing was left but a cold, cruel elegance. “Well! How far the majesty of Cang Qiong Mountain has fallen.” His lip curled into a sardonic sneer. “If I am ever cursed and the only solution is to sleep with my unconscious corpse, then just slit my throat and put us all out of our mistry.”

Somewhere in the back of the room, somebody mumbled, “Please.”

Shen Qinggqiu’s teeth clicked together. “Mu-shidi,” he said, in the same voice that made Mu Qingfang’s disciples piss themselves, “Surely there are some books on my Qing Jing Peak that you haven’t yet looked over. How can you make a diagnosis when you haven't done all the research yet?”

Mu Qingfang considered slamming his head onto the table. Unfortunately, he doubted that Shen Qingqiu’s mood was permissive enough to allow such dramatics. 

. . . it was never permissive enough to allow such dramatics. 

With the pleasant smile of a man who had definitely already read every single relevant book on Cang Qiong Mountain, he said, “I suppose I may have been remiss in my responsibilities. Zhangmen-shixiong’s condition is in no danger of worsening, and so there is no harm in further examining what information we have.”

Shen Qingqiu’s smile might as well have been fanged. “Good. I will drop them off as soon as possible.” With one last glare at the rest of the Peak Lords, he turned sharply on his heel and strode from the room in a flurry of green silks and danger.

Shang Qinghua sagged into the table. Qi Qingqi snorted and patted Mu Qingfang on the shoulder. “Good luck with that one, Mu-shidi.”

Mu Qingfang carefully did not stop smiling.

---

He waited until he was safely alone in his workshop before slamming his head on the table. It didn’t solve anything, but it did technically give him several seconds of shut-eye and that was better than nothing.

He was interrupted—once again—by the sound of his door violently slamming open.

“Shen-shixiong,” he said, peeling his face off his desk.

“Mu-shidi.” Shen Qingqiu sat down next to him and folded his hands neatly in his lap, deceptively demure. “Is dual cultivation really the only way to cure Zhangmen-shixiong of his curse?”

Mu Qingfang peered at Shen Qingqiu’s sleeves. They didn’t look very full, but there was no telling how many books the man had shoved into them. “There may perhaps—” Theoretically, possibly, somewhere. “—be other alternatives.”

Shen Qingqiu tilted his head down in acknowledgement, but his eyes never left Mu Qingfang’s. “But this is the best solution.” He didn’t wait for a response before adding, words crisp and only mildly colored by the revulsion he’d displayed in the meeting room earlier, “Dual cultivation with a suitably powerful partner is the best solution.”

“Yes,” Mu Qingfang said, not even bothering to summon his usual smile. It was what he’d already said in the meeting, after all, and Shen Qingqiu wasn’t looking for his smile anyways. 

Shen Qingqiu’s lips turned white as he pressed them together. He didn’t speak, but the glint in his eyes made it clear that he was waiting for something. 

Mu Qingfang had absolutely no idea what. If anything, all he’d learned from this entire affair—beyond the surprising effectiveness of sleeping curses—was that he could not read Shen Qingqiu whatsoever. Here he was, pale and tense and snappish for a man that the whole sect was convinced that he hated. 

“Would—” Shen Qingqiu began, before stopping and scowling at the wall. “Would. My cultivation level. Work.”

“Oh.” Mu Qingfang wondered if he should even bother being surprised anymore. At least this was one thing he’d already known about his Shen-shixiong: he was an absolutely abysmal communicator. “Um.”

Shen Qingqiu’s cheeks colored, and he quickly said, “Not that I want to do this. But Zhangmen-shixiong deserves better than some brute like Liu Qingge, and there’s hardly a wealth of cultivators powerful enough to match him. So excuse this lowly one for his flawed foundation, but—”

Ah, what?! Mu Qingfang had not asked for any of this??? Hastily, before Shen Qingqiu could ramble himself into changing his mind, Mu Qingfang said, “Shen-shixiong, you are one of the most powerful cultivators in the world.” There was a reason that he’d been able to last as long as he had in duels with Liu Qingge in their youths. “You would absolutely, ah, work.”

Shen Qingqiu’s fan opened with a snap. It did little to hide the redness of his face. “Ah. Well. Good.”

“Right,” Mu Qingfang said. 

They stared at each other. 

Shen Qingqiu bristled, shoulders tilting upwards again, and Mu Qingfang realized abruptly that he was about to get eviscerated if he didn’t leave very, very soon. Quickly, Mu Qingfang exclaimed, “Well! Good. I’ll take my leave first, to allow you and Zhangmen-shixiong your privacy. You know how this works?”

“Of course I know how this works!” Shen Qingqiu yelped, too indignant to maintain an even tone. 

Mu Qingfang smiled. It was perhaps his first genuine smile since Qi Qingqi had absconded after dumping Yue Qingyuan’s body in his arms. “Good. I’ll leave Shen-shixiong to it, then.”

Before Shen Qingqiu could figure out how to stop spluttering, Mu Qingfang gathered his things and quickly vacated the premises.

---

Well. He supposed that was one way to do things.

---

Yue Qingyuan was up and about by the next day. Any assumptions Mu Qingfang had had about Shen Qingqiu wanting to be private about his affairs were quickly dashed. Yue Qingyuan walked into the next Peak Lord meeting with, ah, marks visible high enough on his neck that his collar couldn’t cover them, and he seemed utterly incapable of keeping his eyes off of Shen Qingqiu. 

Shen Qingqiu ignored him as usual, but Mu Qingfang was sitting close enough to see that they were holding hands under the table.

Which. Great. Excellent. Exactly what Mu Qingfang wanted to see at every sect meeting for the rest of his life.

“It’s all your fault, you know,” Liu Qingge said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mu Qingfang protested. 

“No, it absolutely is,” Qi Qingqi said glumly, “I can’t believe we have to watch Zhangmen-shixiong making bedroom eyes at Shen Qingqiu every single month.” 

Mu Qingfang put his head on the table. Maybe if he just ignored everything, it would all go away. 

“Did you see them yesterday?” Qi Qingqi continued, “They were wearing matching outfits.”

Shang Qinghua, inexplicably, shot Mu Qingfang a strange gesture with both thumbs sticking up. “Nice.”

“No,” Liu Qingge said.

“Absolutely not,” Qi Qingqi agreed.

[ao3 link]

[not-xpr-art]

Art Advice #7 - How to draw a face (the basics)

Hi all! 

This week, as part of my Art Advice Tag, I’ll be giving some advice on how to draw faces!

A note is that this is not going to be a tutorial, but instead a guide on how to learn how to draw a face! I personally find that tutorials aren’t super useful, not to mention that there are thousands of tutorials on drawing already out there. So whether you want to be able to design your own characters, ... or just want to give your stick figures faces, I’m hoping this blog post can help you get on your way to drawing faces!

How to draw a face (the basics) ~

Part 1 - Dreaded Proportions 

I think most artists will tell you that proportions are the banes of their existence.

And although I don’t think you necessarily need to stick to them religiously (and it’s important to note that real faces rarely stick to proportions religiously either), I think it is important to have an understanding of them if you want to start drawing faces! 

(this is a very basic sketch I did by the way, a quick google will give you versions of this diagram that are a lot more detailed & accurate lol!)

This image shows the general places on a face where features normally sit. So, eyes halfway down the head, corners of the mouth match up with the pupils when staring straight ahead, five eyes can fit between each side of the head, bottom of the nose lies halfway between the eyes and chin, etc. 

Top tip! Try not to confuse the top of the head to the hairline, as this can often make a face look too long! 

Of course, this becomes more complicated when you want to draw a face from another angle (which I won’t go into for this post). 

Face shape, eye size, nose size, etc, can also affect how you approach these rules. So use these proportions more as a guide than anything to follow religiously!

Part 2 - Face Shape

A lot of artists, myself included, gets caught in the ‘same face’ syndrome. Which is basically when all your characters and people you draw end up looking suspiciously alike. (Don’t feel too bad about this, by the way, since even big companies like Disney suffer from this lol!)

A way to prevent this is to diversify your face shapes. 

These are a few quick examples, and my biggest piece of advice for this is to practise drawing as wide a range of faces as you can! Pick people of various races, sizes, genders, etc! 

This can be as simple as drawing people around you too, friends, family, colleagues, even yourself! 

Part 3 - Eyes

Similar to the last point, practising drawing a wide variety of eyes (differing in shape, colour, size, etc) will help you get a better grasp on how to draw them. 

Some more specific advise for this would be to map out where the actual eyeball is. This way, you’ll be able to figure out more effectively where to put things like the tear duct! 

Another thing to remember is the position of the pupil and iris, which can greatly impact the expression you’re going for. So, exposing more of the whites of the eye will make someone look scared/shocked, whereas less of the iris & pupil visible will look suspicious/shifty.

The image above is a few examples of how to sketch eyes & what to look out for when you’re doing your own drawings!

A final few things I want to comment on here is the position of eyelids, which can also greatly change the overall expression of a character. Eyelids differ from person to person, and can range from double, mono, hooded, deepset, etc. And as with all I’m talking about here, how the eyelid crease looks will change depending on the angle of the face. 

Part 4 - Nose

Noses are pretty confusing, if I’m being honest. 

One thing I remember learning from school was to use three circles to make up a forward facing nose. A bigger circle for the tip of the nose, and the a smaller one either side for the nostrils. This can help you to get an idea of how big you want your nose to be (and to check it fits with the proportions of the rest of the face). 

This method can also help to figure out the specific shape of the nose you want to draw. Placing the central circle lower than the other 2 will give the illusion of a bigger nose, whereas if it’s higher then it would look more like an upturned nose. Just have fun and play around with giving your noses interesting bridges and various sized nostrils, etc!

These are a few examples, but there are honestly endless combinations of noses you can experiment with!

Part 5 - Mouth

The first piece of advice I’d give you for drawing mouths, is to draw them in conjunction with the nose. Use the bit between the nose and mouth (which I just found out is called the philtrum lol) as a guide on how big or what shape to do the cupids bow as. 

I’d also recommend starting with the corners of the mouth, and then connecting them to for the middle of the mouth. This can help you get an understanding of what kind of expression you want (it often only takes a slight curl of the corner of the mouth in order to create some subtle change in feeling of the character). 

And something that I often do, is creating a subtle almost M shape for the centre of the mouth (think almost of a turtles mouth, but less extreme). This can give the lips more of a sense of 3 dimensionality than a simple line. 

These are just some examples of how I draw lips with no references as a guide. Another point I would suggest is to include the shadow of the lips on the chin, which can also help you to map out the size and shape of the chin itself. 

I feel it’s important to note that I’ve only including hints for closed, mostly neutral, expressions. So if you want me to do another blog post talking about expressions (like how to draw smiles, or other open-mouthed expressions) then let me know!

Part 6 - Ears 

I’ll admit that ears are not my strong suit, so there isn’t a tonne of advice I can offer here. (I once had an hour long breakdown over how bad my paintings and drawings of ears are lol... I wish I was kidding but I’m not pfft)...

This is a very... unhelpful image lol...

My main advice is to just... look at ears lol... Hopefully you’ll have better luck with them then me!

~

These were all very basic tips for drawing faces, and there were a lot of things that I wasn’t able to go into here, so if anyone wants me to do a more in-depth look into certain aspects (for example, specific features) then just let me know! 

As always, I really appreciate everyone who reblogs/likes these posts! <3

[high-functioning-lokipath]

Unusual Way - Loki x Reader - Words: 3,294 (including song lyrics)

A/N: Reader is Silver Shadow. However, this doesn't follow the same 'first meeting/falling in love' sequence as "Hurting Each Other".

Loki and you were best friends and had been for about 2 years now since he moved into the tower. It all started the day he'd moved in while you were out on a mission and no one had the brilliant idea to tell you that you were now sharing your floor with someone.

~ 2 Years Ago~

So there you were, exhausted and dirty from the fight, looking forward to a nice hot shower. You'd already taken off your cape in the elevator and as you got off and walked down the hallway to your bedroom, you started to pull at the zipper of your jacket.

"I must say, I wasn't expecting you to be so forward."

"Who's there?" You yelled, not recognizing the voice that spoke to you. You whipped around, trying to see who it was that was speaking.

"Hello," A man suddenly said, appearing directly in front of you. You throw a quick punch but your hand goes right through him and he disappears. "Over here!" He exclaims, waving to you from a few steps away. You quickly draw one of your knives and throw it at him. Again it goes right through him.

"I said, who are you?" You demand, not having had a chance to get a good look at his face yet.

"Tsk tsk," He says, appearing once more, a few feet now away from you. "So impatient." As he talks you focus on the vase setting on the hallway table behind him and start drawing it towards you. If you time it just right, you can either hit him or, if he's not there again, stop it in time before it hits you. "I am Loki, of Asgard! And I am burdened wi-OW!" He yells as the vase hits his head. "Will anyone ever let me finish that thought?"

“Loki?” You screeched. “What are you doing here? Do the others know?” You asked, rushing up to the admittedly handsome man. Even during his attack on New York you couldn’t help but go a little starry-eyed at his presence.

“I am here to help. I,” He sighed, rubbing the back of his head again. “I’m here to work with you and your little team.” Your eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Oh! Well, I, uh, sorry about that," You stuttered, gesturing to his head. "Here, let me fix that." You reached up and touched the back of his head gently.

"Thank you," He replied with a small smile.

"Let's start over," You grinned. "Hi, I'm Y/N. I guess I'm your new floormate." He grinned back, still surprised by your kindness.

"Yeah, I guess you are."

~ 6 Months Later ~

"C'mon, Y/N!" Loki yelled down the hallway. "The pairs' free dance is about to begin!" You ran out of the bathroom, socks sliding on the hardwoods.

"Woah!" You exclaimed, sliding, or rather bodyslamming, into him. He of course caught you easily, being used to this occurrence, and laughed. A few minutes later you were both sitting on the couch with a rather large bowl of popcorn between you. "Those twizzles were completely out of sync. That's going to ruin their score."

"Perhaps," he commented, tossing another buttery snack in his mouth. "But their lifts have been perfect unlike the other couples." You shrugged and continued watching. You found yourself shivering, however, as you continued watching the programs.

"Has the thermostat gone down?" You asked. Loki got up and checked.

"No, are you cold?" He, of course, didn't notice any difference since he was, not only a Frost Giant, but also wearing a lovely sweater, you thought.

"Yeah, must be the ice," You joked, nodding at the television. You eyed his soft, grey sweater once again and decided that, even though it looked absolutely stunning on him, you needed it more.

"Um, would it be alright if I borrowed your sweater?" You asked nervously. He looked mildly surprised but quickly pulled it off and handed it to you. "Thanks," You said quietly. The past couple weeks you'd realized you had developed a minor crush on your new best friend. You didn't say anything, however, for fear of ruining said friendship. "It smells like you," You chuckled, pulling the jumper close around you. Loki blushed brightly and apologized.

"Sorry, so sorry. I can-I can get a new one from the wash." He went to get up, face still flushed in embarrassment.

"Loki, it's fine," You replied, stopping him. "I don't mind. Thank you for lending it to me." He smiled sweetly at you in reply.

"You're welcome. After all, what are friends for?"

~ 1 Year Later ~

"He's too pretty for his own good, Nat!" you complained, throwing quick punches at your sparring partner.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if he knew what's good for him, he would be so perfect all the time!" You blocked three punches and landed one of your own. "If he doesn't I might have to take matters into my own hands."

"Meaning you'll finally ask him out instead of driving us all crazy pining over him like you have been for the past year and a half or so?" She retorted with a smirk, flipping you to the ground and pinning your arms behind you. You groaned and rolled out from under her, standing and holding your hands up in defeat.

"No! Of course not! It means I'd have to ugly him up a little." Natasha rolled her eyes and laughed.

"Like you'd ever have the guts! C'mon! Be honest with yourself! You liked him since New York. Just put on your big-girl pants and tell him! And if you can't find yours, I can lend you mine," She teased, playfully slapping your butt.

"Watch it, Widow!" you snapped. "I'm going to the conference room if it's not in use. I don't want to be disturbed, ok?"

"Fine, just let me know all the juicy details when you finally have the guts to go back to your floor, ok?" You rolled your eyes and walked out.

"Finally alone," you sighed, tossing your gym bag in a chair and slumping down in another. "FRIDAY?”

"Yes, Miss Y/N?" The AI replied.

"Please shut the blinds and lock the door. Emergency override only."

"Yes, Miss." You closed your eyes, tears threatening to slip through.

"FRIDAY, shuffle Linda Eder from my library."

"Of course," The AI replied. When I Look In Your Eyes started playing and you leaned back in the chair, closing your eyes and tuning out the rest of the world. You were so focused on your music and trying to figure out your own feelings that you didn't hear the door open. The next song started and you chuckled humorlessly.

"This one's for you," You said to yourself, thinking of your best friend. You sang along as Unusual Way played.

“In a very unusual way, one time I needed you

In a very unusual way, you were my friend

Maybe it lasted a day, maybe it lasted an hour

But somehow it will never end

In a very unusual way, I think I'm in love with you

In a very unusual way, I want to cry

Something inside me goes weak, something inside me surrenders

And you're the reason why, you're the reason why

You don't know what you do to me

Don't have a clue

You can't tell what it's like to be me

Looking at you

It scares me so that I can hardly speak...

In a very unusual way, I owe what I am to you

Though at times it appears I won't stay, I never go

Special to me in my life, since the first day that I met you

How could I ever forget you, once you had touched my soul

In a very unusual way...

You made me whole”

When you finished you thought you heard a noise behind you but when you turned around there was no one there. You shrugged it off as your own overactive imagination and got up, gathering your stuff. When you got back upstairs, you found Loki in the kitchen. "Thought you might like some lunch," He explained.

"Oh, thanks," You replied, sitting down and letting him serve you. After a few minutes of silent eating you decided you needed to say something. "Loki, I-"

"Y/N, I-" You both laughed, having spoken at the same time.

"You first," You both said. Laughing again, you shook your head and motioned for him to go on.

"Y/N, I must confess something. I-" He paused, taking a deep breath. "I wasn't going to say anything because I was afraid of how you'd respond but," He chuckled nervously. "I believe I've fallen in love."

"Oh!" You gasped. You set down your fork, losing your appetite quickly. "So who's the lucky lady? Do I know her?" You asked, taking a sip of water trying to look casual.

"Yes you do," He replied, smirking. "She's very beautiful and talented. She's kind and helpful to everyone. And most importantly she-"

BZZT BZZT

"Uh, sorry," you said, looking at your ringing phone. "I should take this. It's Steve." Loki looked upset but nodded. "Hello?"

"Y/N? We've got a problem. Is Loki with you?"

"Uh, yeah, he is. Cap, what's wrong?" Loki got up and moved closer to listen in on the conversation.

"We just got intel on a new Hydra base. This one's different though. They have too many defensive procedures in place for us to just attack. We need someone on the inside. That's where you and Loki come in."

"You're sending us to work undercover in a base?!" You screeched.

"Yes, pack a few things and be on the helicarrier in an hour. I'll finish briefing you then."

Working on the inside was, of course, much harder than you'd expected. Thankfully no one here knew you from your actual Hydra days so that made it easier. You just hadn't expected being separated from Loki for so long. Especially after your interrupted conversation, you wanted to talk to him again. Steve assured you, though, it would be a quick mission and you could get back to your normal life within a few weeks.

~ 6 Months Later ~

"You have exactly 2 minutes to get out before this whole place blows, you got that?" Cap yelled through your comms. The mission had gotten complicated and had extended to 6 Months for you both. But now you and Loki had apparently collected enough info for Cap and the others to finally come and blow it all open. Although, none of you had expected a literal explosion. You grabbed the last of the information you needed and booked it out of there. Once you made it into the clearing where the others had regrouped, you looked around frantically as Cap took a head count. "Loki's not out yet!"

"What!" You exclaimed. "There's only 30 seconds!" Suddenly your comms crackled to life.

"Found...girl…trapped," Loki said. The static made it impossible to understand the sentence fully but you understood what he meant.

"Loki! Get out!" Steve yelled.

"I'm going in," You said. Steve yelled to stop you but you were too quick. You teleported in and found the two, trying to shelter themselves in a corner. "Loki!"

"Y/N?" He exclaimed, turning to see you. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to rescue you, you idiot! Now hold on." You reached out and grabbed Loki's and the girl's hands and teleported out just as the building exploded. Cap immediately went to help the girl, leading her back to the helicarrier.

"So," Loki said, looking at your hand still gripping his. You impulsively gave him a hug, the thought that you could have lost him starting to sink in. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," You replied, pulling away quickly. "I just-"

"Loki! Y/N! C'mon!" Cap called out. You were interrupted once more but ran to the helicarrier and rode back home in silence. When you landed back at the tower, you rushed to your bedroom and flung yourself on the bed face first.

"I need a life," You groaned. You heard Loki calling out for you so you rushed into the bathroom and quickly turned on the shower hoping that he would think you were in there and leave. Once you didn't hear him anymore you decided it actually was a good idea to take a shower so you adjusted the temperature and got in. A few minutes later you found yourself lost in the magical world of shower thoughts. Not wanting to get upset again, you decided on music. "FRIDAY, shuffle my library," You said.

"Right away," It replied. As you were dressing a few songs later, Unusual Way started playing and you thought back to the day you'd left for the mission. You sang along sadly, once again thinking of the man you loved who, apparently, loved someone else.

"You don't know what you do to me

Don't have a clue

You can't tell what it's like to be me

Looking at you"

You opened your door to go to the kitchen and Loki stumbled in. "Were you leaning on the door?"

"Maybe," He admitted, blushing. You stared at him, gesturing for him to explain. FRIDAY paused your music since you were talking and he glanced up at the ceiling. "I wanted to talk to you but I heard the shower start so I was going to leave but then I heard you singing and-"

"I don't like performing," You snapped, quite embarrassed that he'd heard you singing that song especially.

"But I want to hear you sing. Especially that song, you sing it so beautifully."

"How would you know? You heard me through a door," You scoffed. Pushing past him you walked out into the hallway, pulling your door shut behind you.

"Not six months ago I didn't." That stopped you in your tracks. Spinning around on your heel you marched back up to him.

"You heard me when?"

"In the conference room, the day we left for the mission. I'd gone to watch you practice and see if maybe you wanted to practice with me a little but Natasha said you'd left already. She told me where you were and that you didn't want to be disturbed but," He chuckled softly. "Has that ever stopped me?" You laughed and shook your head. "Well, I heard you singing and I decided to leave you be."

"Oh well, thanks I guess," You said, smiling softly, still embarrassed but not as mad anymore.

"May I ask, who were you singing to?"

"What do you mean?"

"When the song started you said 'this one's for you'. Who did you have in mind?"

"Oh," You said, surprised. You blushed brightly and shook your head. "Just someone I care for very much I suppose."

"You suppose?" He teased.

"Ok! I do care about him! Geez! You're as bad as Nat sometimes!" He laughed loudly and you could help but smile wider. You loved when he laughed like that, a real laugh that reached his eyes and filled the room. As you walked into the kitchen and sat down at the counter together, you quickly remembered your conversation at lunch that day though and frowned. "Unfortunately I don't think he quite thinks of me the same way."

"Why's that?" He asked, brows furrowing.

"I am quite sure he has his eyes on another girl."

"Is it the Captain?"

"Oh goodness no!" You immediately replied. "No, definitely not." His eyes suddenly lost their joy and he seemed almost scared to ask his next question. He got up and went to the window, putting quite a bit of space between you.

"Is it my brother?" He asked quietly.

"No! No no no! Never!" You exclaimed. You actually shuddered at the mental image. Realizing what needed to be done you teleported yourself in front of him with your back to the window. He startled and jumped back quickly. You smirked and stepped closer. "I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not a fan of blond's."

"Perhaps Banner then?" He stammered, trying to come up with an idea. You could not believe how clueless he could be.

"What? Ew! No!" You pretended to gag. "I like someone more fun, more mischievous," You grinned.

"Misch-oh," He breathed, finally figuring it out. You looked away, feeling embarrassment set in again. "Well, Y/N, I-"

"Look, I know you were trying to tell me before we left that you're in love and I couldn't be happier for you and I wish you all the best but I just needed you to know, ok?" You cried.

"But Y/N! You don't-"

"I'm sorry," You said, trying to run past him to lock yourself up in your room.

"Not so fast," He said, grabbing your arm.

"Wha-" You were cut off by a pair of lips meeting yours. He quickly pulled away, grinning like mad.

"You don't know what I've been trying and wanting to tell you! The girl I love is you, Y/N! I love you!"

"Me?" You squeaked, smiling giddily. He nodded and you laughed. "I cannot believe it. We've been idiots haven't we?"

"Most certainly," He agreed. He gave you another quick kiss and looked in your eyes. "I think I've loved you since we met but you know when I fell in love with you?"

"When?"

"When you borrowed that grey sweater and never gave it back." You gasped, eyes widening in surprise.

"I didn't realize I never returned it!"

"Oh sure! You wear it all the time!"

"I do no-oh," You paused, thinking about your closet. "Maybe I do," You chuckled. "Well, I actually liked you from the first time I saw you."

"When I scared you coming off the elevator?"

"No, 2012," You whispered. Loki stared at you, quite surprised. "I knew what you were doing was wrong but," You sat down on the couch, having wandered into the living area. "Somehow I understood you."

"Y/N, I don't know what to say. I, well, I was a very different man then and-"

"And you were pretty," You deadpanned.

"Ah, so my irresistible charms strike again." You both laughed and he sat beside you. "Y/N, I think we've been fooling ourselves for far too long. Now, you love me, right?"

"Yes!" You said emphatically.

"And I love you, right?"

"I sure hope so!" He grinned and you wondered where this was going. He stood up and took your hand in his.

"Well then, I should wish to officially court you if that should please you and have your approval," He said, bowing slightly.

"I accept," You replied immediately. You stood up and gave him a big hug. "Oh, Loki, thank you."

"You're welcome, my love. But I hope you know what this means."

"What?" You asked, pulling away just in time to see his smirk.

"It means you're no longer allowed to hog the popcorn bowl on skate night!"

"No," You retorted. "It means that as your girlfriend I can now officially tell you to get your own!" He gasped, playing offended.

"Why! I'm wounded!" He cried, holding his hand over his heart.

"Does this help?" You teased, placing your hand there instead.

"No," He smirked. "But this might," He said, pulling you in for another kiss. "I will never tire of that."

"Nor I," You sighed contentedly. "But we must stop for now."

"Why?"

"It's skate night and I need to get the popcorn ready!"

"Go sit down," He smiled. "I'll get it ready."

"Aw! How sweet!" You squealed. "Alrighty then." You walked back to the couch as settled in. "Loki, dear?" You called out towards the kitchen.

"Yes, darling?"

"Remember, 2 bowls!"

Loki Taglist

@lucywrites02

@delightfulheartdream

@serpentargo

@khena

@nyx2021

@kaz11283

@weasley-main-lover

@up-to-mischief

@lokislittlesigyn

@darkacademicfrom2021

@lokiwhxre

@loki-laufeyson965

@eclipsedplanet

Marvel (all characters) Taglist

@bartv21

@another-crazy-fangirl

@whatafuckingdumbass

@ladylulu143

@lokislittlesigyn

@gaitwae

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@kind-of-crazy-butthatsokay

@thoughts-and-lovely-illusions

@for-hearthand-home

@lokistoriesblog

[beheworthy]

Star Wars Broke The Mandalorian

PIC: Visual representation of The Mandalorian single-handedly carrying the Star Wars franchise

[In this essay I will discuss in detail how the fan service moments in Season2 of The Mandalorian came at the expense of Din Djarin's character. Please DO NOT READ if you do not agree with that vein of criticism.

Paging @ig--unit​​ @plainrea​​ @adrieunor​​ @starwarslovermando​​ @asunachinadoll​​ and everyone who feels this way. Though I understand if you don't wanna read a 4.5k word long thing.

Read on Wordpress]

--

Nearly every review, discussion and assessment of any sort of The Mandalorian Season1 had concluded that it owed it massive success in a fanbase as tricky as Star Wars to telling a simple linear story set in the galaxy far, far away while not relying on it in any way. They also predicted that it successfully forging its own path most certainly means that the subsequent season will be weighed down by lore crossovers and springboard other shows and movies. It is a testament to how money-hungry The Mouse is that that’s exactly what happened.

However, this time was different.

To the show’s credit, it did the crossovers and the Fan Service moments extremely well. Which is high praise because we are still burnt from Chewie receiving his medal 40 years later. In fact, it did them so well that that’s all people are talking about, and it has somehow flooded everything else out of the discussion. Suddenly no one cares about character arcs and story structure (something other shows would get critiqued into oblivion for). You have YouTube videos about ‘how to do fan service right’ detailing how this show triumphs over the sequel trilogy. And reviews of the season saying how it’s so packing in every way and so very satisfying.

Somehow, Disney got its way – both critics and fans love it AND it successfully spun off a bunch of its stuff. It doesn’t really matter to them that it all came at the price of The Mandalorian himself, Din Djarin. And it’s almost hard to detect at first. He is, after all, the King of Mandalore by the end of Season2 and going to be pivotal in reclaiming his home world. He had a mission, an arc and is in virtually every scene. He and Grogu have plenty of bonding scenes as well.

It still doesn’t change the fact that the show achieved all of Disney’s corporate mandates at the expense of his character DESPITE him being front and center. Which is shockingly commendable, but also why we might not notice him getting the short end of the stick right away. And you have all the people who loved the season because it did their favorite character from the lore justice, insisting as an afterthought how the season was great for Din too. “Luke Skywalker was so awesome! The Mandalorian was there also.” But I am one of the few people who was solely here for babysitting adventures and I noticed how my green bean and his daddy got shafted for Fan Service™.

S1 vs S2

As I stated in the intro, one of, if not the biggest thing that sets The Mandalorian S1 apart is the fact that it doesn’t give a hoot about Star Wars. It’s admirably ballsy to have the two leads be kinda sorta related to two fan favorites of the Original Trilogy and not have anything to do with them. Din is not Boba Fett and Grogu is not Master Yoda. They are vaguely related to them by creed/species. Other than that, they are completely original characters who struck with the audience solely on their own character traits, and not Nostalgia™.

Creator Dave Filoni stated the very reason they created an original character in Din and not have it be Boba was specifically to have a blank slate to work with and not a character with years of backstory already behind him. This gave him and co-creator Jon Favreau freedom to explore the world with a fresh outlook without the constraints of the Star Wars lore. It’s evident in how EVERY SINGLE named character in S1 is an original one. The protagonists, the antagonist, the love interests, the allies, the enemies – you name them.

It was nice to not have to consume hours of documented history across various media as soon as a character showed up and just enjoy the show! In fact, this is the tally of all the Fan Service in S1:

Here is how S2 fared:

I’d like to reiterate that in isolation all these were done in the best possible way. Even if they were, they didn’t feel forced. The makers did a great job explaining as succinctly as possible who and what was in the limelight, how they intertwine with Din’s story and you are totally fine to not dig up on them beyond what they mean for the show. That’s all fine and dandy. The problem only arises when it stops being in service of Din, and starts overshadowing him. In other words, Din starts being in service of the Fan Service.

I evaluated each episode on 3 criteria: fan service while stepping on Din; how much does he contribute; his character arc.

Episode 1 ‘The Marshal’ dir. Jon Favreau

We are all set for Din and Grogu’s search of the Jedi. It leads them to a town terrorized by the Krayt Dragon. Din not only liberates them with some amazing heroics, he also helps them resolve their issues with the Tusken Raiders. Cobb’s character does not overshadow Din at all, Boba’s armor contributes to the plot. And the Raiders, a group long vilified in the Star Wars lore is humanised here.

Directed by the show’s creator, the episode focused on Din’s growth and confidence, drawing a deliberate parallel to when he got smashed by the Mudhorn in Chapter2 and tearing apart the much bigger Krayt Dragon here. Just the fight scene in the cold open alone is worth it.

The episode fairs exceedingly on all three criteria. Special shoutout for casting a hearing impaired person as one of the Raiders and taking their help in developing the Tusken language. This is the way.

Fan Service: ✓ Din’s contribution: ✓ His arc: ✓

Episode 2 ‘The Passenger’ dir. Peyton Reed

The only episode of the season that had 0 fan service, an actual original character and a plot exactly like S1, and what do you know it got criticized for being ‘filler’. Since when did Din and Grogu’s journey – the whole point of the show – become filler? It wasn’t boring in any way – had an interesting chase with our beloved Razor Crest and turns into a horror show halfway though with that giant spider! It had Din and Grogu moments. And Din gets called out on his Mandalorian beliefs, contributing to his arc for the season. But months of speculation about appearances from Bo-Katan and Ahsoka Tano would make you feel like it was an episode wasted if wo don’t get at least a reference to them.

Fan Service: – Din’s contribution: ✓ His arc: ✓

Episode 3 ‘The Heiress’ dir. Bryce Dallas Howard

Din gets tricked by some goons and he and Grogu are trapped and about to die when Bo-Katan Kryze arrives to save him. Was it really necessary to undermine him for her introduction? If you are going to say that was how Kuiil was introduced too or Din has had help from others plenty of times in S1, I’d argue that it’s okay when you are introducing original characters and plot points. When your fan service arrives on the high horse of saving the protagonist, we have a problem.

Then she drops the biggest revelation of his life on him that his covert is a actually a cult. His whole life was a lie. And how does Din process this information, how does it affect him? We never find out because she then recruits him on her quest to take an Imperial Cruiser. I mean I processed the information more than he did, thinking about how the so very complicated feelings he would have about the people who saved his life, but were also a terrorist group. Who is he now? He thought the world of these people. They can’t really be bad, they gave up their secrecy for him. They died to save him.

I can’t emphasize this enough: this revelation was huge for Din. I kept waiting for him to sit the heck down and process all this but it never comes. Even though the culmination of this arc comes through in the final episode. So it feels like the arc happened off screen. He did process all that info, we just never saw it. How hard is it to have a scene of him staring at his helmet at the beginning of the next episode while Grogu sleeps in the background? It would have conveyed that he is questioning things, something we later learn he in fact, did.

PIC:  I actually really enjoyed Bo’s character. She is not straight-laced but morally grey and complex. She keeps the audience guessing. I hope we see more of her.

And the quest that she takes him on, she didn’t even need him for it. Her group was more than sufficient for it. She only asked him because he is a Mandalorian and she wants to reunite their kind. This quest would help familiarize him with her cause, strike a camaraderie between the two, and she will have an ally if she ever needs him in the future (she never thought he would go on to become Mand’alor is all!). She doesn’t give him the information he seeks unless he freakin’ dies for her.

Fan service at the expense of Din, his contribution being that he just heroically dies at the end on a mission he wasn’t needed on anyway, and his arc happening entirely off screen. How did we get here in just one episode?

Fan Service: ✘ Din’s contribution: ✘ His arc: ✘

Episode 4 ‘The Siege’ dir. Carl Weathers

It would have well been a filler episode to the critics if it wasn’t for Din finding out that Moff Gideon is alive and still hunting Grogu. This is a huge revelation for him! And how does Din process this information, how does it affect him? We never find out because he just Fs off to get Grogu from his preschool and is NOT SEEN for the entire long ass action sequence. He of course returns at the end to heroically save the day because the makers must have remembered he is the protagonist, they gotta give him something to do as well. Then he just bids his farewell from the air itself. So he is missing from both the action AND the wrap up sequence.

Yes, Din wasn’t undercut for direct fan service, but for Cara and Greef. Cara’s scenes especially, now we know, were to establish upcoming Disney Star Wars Disney + show Rangers of the New Republic (because Lord knows we need a show about space cops in the current climate). So that still counts. Once again, he gets sidelined, gets a huge revelation but no scenes to process it, still somehow coming to a conclusion (that he needs to keep moving) i.e., has his arc entirely off screen. And has his contribution reduced to heroically saving the day at the end. Just like last episode. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

Fan Service: ✘ Din’s contribution: ✘ His arc: ✘

Episode 5 ‘The Jedi’ dir. Dave Filoni

Din’s mission was to deliver Grogu to the Jedi, he just happened to get roped into saving a town. Classic Din, yes. But all he did was free one (1) prisoner and take out the villain’s right hand man. The villain and her entire platoons of SEVERAL soldiers were taken out by Ahsoka. He didn’t even get to save the day by dying or something. Just like Bo’s side quest, Din was not needed here at all. All so fan service of the week can have her moment.

However, it was great in regards to his arc. We learn that Grogu’s name is Baby Yoda + his backstory. I loved how Din and Grogu’s bond is both shown and vocalized by the characters: “I carry it around for luck” “I want to see if he’ll listen to you” “he’s formed a strong attachment to you” “wake up buddy, it’s time to go” “you’re like a father to him”… wonderful, wonderful stuff! It’s now very clear that Din and Grogu have come to love each other so much that their inevitable goodbye is going to hurt like a sting when it arrives. (spoiler alert: it hecking did)

Fan Service: ✘ Din’s contribution: ✘ His arc: ✓

Episode 6 ‘The Tragedy’ dir. Robert Rodriguez

I have an axe to grind here. I get that Din doesn’t understand the force. I also get that he would go down to investigate the one ship he sees land and the one person he sees coming out of it because it is obvious they are after him and Grogu. It is also okay for him to forget about his jetpack in his panic and run to Grogu at the sight of more ships. But why the heck does he run back down when he can’t penetrate the force field? He had a much better vantage point to help Fennec, he could have just taken those bad boys out from the top of the mountain there.

And he could have called his jetpack back to him as well (we know he controls it from his gauntlet). I just don’t understand why he would leave Grogu alone when he knows they are surrounded by a big number of stormtroopers, specifically coming for Grogu. That’s just stupid. And then of course Din and Fennec get overwhelmed so Boba can have his moment. AND THEN. Din still doesn’t think of his jetpack when Razor Crest gets demolished and he knows Grogu is about to be taken.

It’s not that he doesn’t contribute like previous episodes, he actively goes in the opposite direction to create problems. Very, very poor from the makers! This is not the way. An easy fix would have been to have him call his jetpack, fly to them and get his ass handed to him by the dark troopers very quickly. It would establish how much of a threat they are and raise the stakes when he faces off with one of them in the finale. Just saying.

But it gets worse. We see no reaction from Din upon Grogu being taken. Fennec and Boba react more and do more to save the child than him. He just stands there. Maybe he was in shock, but I can’t see that because of his helmet. All I see is him standing motionless. There should have been an urgency to his actions. Once again, Boba and Fennec care more than him, as they offer to help this random ass dude get his son back. Even then, his dumb ass says that “the child is gone” and there is nothing that can be done!!!! Really, Din? What happened to “put one mark on him and there is no place you’ll be able to hide from me”? What happened to the Din who went berserk on the client’s men to get the child back in Chapter3?

All in all, a frustratingly bad episode in all three departments. Making your protagonist a bumbling idiot so the plot can happen is bafflingly bad writing.

Fan Service: ✘ Din’s contribution: ✘✘ His arc: ✘

Episode 7 ‘The Believer’ dir. Rick Famuyiwa

Easily my favorite episode of the season as it was about *gasp* Din! I know, weird, right? Once again, it got criticised for being a filler episode. Once again, I ask, how the heck is the protagonist having his BIGGEST moment ever a filler? I’m starting to think y’all don’t care about Din and Grogu at all and only here to see your fan favorites be done justice.

The theme of the episode is Din’s Mandalorian faith; more precisely, how it defines his entire existence, and that he effectively cannot function without it. When he dons on the stormtrooper outfit, you can see how uncomfortable he is. He has never been chatty, but he just shuts down here. Mayfeld’s speech hits hard given the situation. His fight with the pirates is even more evidence that he is just used to beskar protecting him.

But beneath it all, he is still a fighter. He improvises (I can’t believe he can think fast after the last episode!) and keeps fighting them even though he is outnumbered toward the end. He doesn’t give up, for Grogu. Luckily the TIE Fighters came in at the right moment and saved our hero. Wait, did they really make us cheer for the Empire? Also, I loved the cheery entry Mayfeld and Din get afterward!

Din had previously chosen to die over breaking his creed. But losing Grogu forever is worse than death for him. So here, he CHOOSES to break his creed in an act of selfless, unconditional love for Grogu, and that is what makes him a true ‘believer’ of the Mandalorian faith (the title also goes for Mayfeld and his beliefs). What started when he met Bo-Katan culminates here: he learns that his Way™ is not the only one, grows more accepting of other Mandalorians such as Boba Fett, and finally makes the leap of putting the child’s safety above everything else, even his creed.

Now, I love what this episode does in a bubble of its own, but this moment needed more leg work from the previous episodes to be fleshed out. As I explained above, previous episodes do absolutely nothing to establish Din’s existential crisis in the face of the new information he keeps receiving, even though it exists, as evidenced by his big moment here. He still gets to the conclusion, we just don’t see the journey. And this tarnishes the helmet removal scene a bit.

There have been ardent discussions about Din being “freed” from his beliefs vs him reorganizing them as the essence of the scene. I believe it is the latter, but a huge moment like this should not be left for debate. It should be clear as day what it meant. At the same time, Rick Famuyiwa, who also wrote the episode, did a fantastic job with it and cannot be faulted for the character arc Din did not receive in the previous episodes.

He also nailed the fan moments. The Operation Cinder name drop makes the world feel lived in, while also meaning something to the hardcore fans. A casual viewer might not even pick up on it, and miss nothing. Did the Slave-1 need to drop the Seismic charge? No. But do I mind Boba being extra? Also no.

Fan Service: ✓ Din’s contribution: ✓ His arc: ✓

Episode 8 ‘The Rescue’ dir. Peyton Reed

Okay, so in the S1 finale, Din gets knocked out and is legit on his death bed. Cara saves him, Grogu saves them all, then IG-11 saves his life, and then later in their escape, IG-11 sacrifices himself for them. Only then does Din defeat Gideon. So he both saves the day and gets help in his most vulnerable moments. A true collaborative effort.

S2 finale follows the same beat until Luke Skywalker shows up. Boba takes the TIE fighters w him. Charlie’s Din’s angels, aka Fennec, Konsa, Bo and Cara take out the entire Cruiser. Din has a showdown w one (1) Dark Trooper, flushing the rest of them out and then the showdown w Gideon, winning the darksaber and becoming Mand’alor (accidentally, Classic Din!). Great collaborative stuff. But then they are surrounded by the Dark Troopers in a situation similar to when IG-11 had to sacrifice himself in S1.

No one needs to die here though, we got Fan Service to save us. So of course, a legacy character shows up, smashes through the troopers like nobody’s business and takes away the child to his destiny. But wait, Grogu had sent the signal on Tython and Luke showed up a good few days later to not Tython but this discreet cruiser whose coordinates Din literally had to break his creed to get. How did Luke know this location? I guess the answer is force, and not bad writing.

Look, I am a huge Luke Skywalker fan and it made me so very happy to see him in all his Jedi Master glory. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how this too was at the expense of Din. His previous contribution in the episode just got evened out. Once again, they had to create a situation where he was overwhelmed to be saved by Fan Service of the week. I am not even going to touch on the horrible CGI but I will point out that Mark Hamill said he kept it a secret for over a year yet the Behind The Scenes of S2, a 1 hour program dedicated to “getting the fan moments right” does not even mention him.

Imagine if in the final battle against Voldemort, Harry was completely overwhelmed by his Death Eaters and at the last moment, a resurrected Dumbledore (like Gandalf the White) showed up, killed everyone and saved the day? Wouldn’t that be a disservice to Harry’s character? You cannot have a Dues Ex Machina saving the day. That’s an embarrassingly rookie mistake. I can’t believe I have to spell this out.

If a completely unknown character had showed up, we would have genuine grounds for distrusting them because we know “not many Jedi are left”. Heck, they could be Sith for all we know and luring away this gifted force sensitive child away for their evil schemes. It would hold so much intrigue going into S3 about Grogu’s safety and story. But now, that arc is essentially done because we know it’s Luke Freakin’ Skywalker, the greatest hero of the galaxy far, far away. All the tension and intrigue is deflated because they had to get Luke Skywalker “right” on an obscure Tv show no one watches for Luke Skywalker.

PIC: Him closing his eyes like that, quivering lip and all…

And oh yeah, Din removes his helmet for Grogu. Grogu sees his daddy’s face for the first time and both our bois bid farewell to each other in a tear-jerker of a scene. Now, the creed is obviously broken. No matter what Mayfeld says, Din has shown his face to living beings. That can’t be undone now. But we know that he is comfortable in his armour and helmet, so he won’t walk around helmetless either. He’ll do it as when he feels like it, feels comfortable doing it. And so he did for Grogu. However, the punch in the gut was Din and Grogu’s separation… being presented as a happy end!

I am of the belief that their goodbye is framed as a narrative conclusion to their relationship because the show is from Din’s POV and that’s how he sees this relationship. No matter how much he loves Grogu and secretly wants to keep him, his mission was to deliver him to the Jedi. So even though he objected at first that Grogu doesn’t wanna go with Luke, even though he has tears in his beautiful brown eyes, and he knows he cannot live without his baby, he STILL does the right thing. He’s so good, it hurts!

Fan Service: ✘ Din’s contribution: – His arc: ✓

The Messy, Messy Aftermath

The end of S2 leaves Din a broken man. He’s lost literally everything in his life – his home, his creed, his baby… all while gaining a prestigious power – being the ruler of his people – that he never wanted. That is actually an interesting point to explore his character in S3 – if he doesn’t get buried under heaps of fan service, that is. However, I do take umbrage with the fact the season just ends with 0 wrap up. Could we get a moment to have people like his close friend Cara, and the woman who initiated all this, Bo react to seeing his face, or talk about what to do with the cruiser and Gideon?

No we can’t, cause we have to tease our next show in the post credits. And that is the problem The Mandalorian suffers both in-universe and in the world of a money-hungry Disney’s empire. They had shat the bed so hard with the movies as they kept using fan service™ and nostalgia™ without a story or end goal in sight. So they turned to tv shows, and were lucky enough to get the ball rolling with The Mandalorian, a show made from scratch that does it’s own thing without relying on the name of Star Wars. And now that it’s a success, they weigh it down with the same things that ruined the movies. Wonderful!

Yes, yes, the show does fan moments right unlike the movies, but it still does it at the expense of the titular character. It still had ALL the important people show up at the protagonist’s door. It still ended up tying everything to the damned Skywalkers. I see the ever expansive world it promised narrowing bit by bit, one fan favorite at a time. There is nothing wrong with Bo saving Din at her introduction, or him being a sidekick to Ahsoka, or him turning into a panic-stricken idiot so Boba can shine, or him being overwhelmed by Dark Troopers so Luke can be a badass. IF IT WAS JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS. The problem is that all of these happen one after the other, constantly undermining him so others can have the limelight.

Yes he gets an arc, but we only see the absolute bare minimum of it, the highlights needed to get to the next checkpoint. We never see the introspection, reflection and questioning needed to get there. All so precious screentime can be devoted to “getting the moments right”. And this manhandling of the show has well wormed its way to the real world. Disney has so quickly turned their only show on their streaming service into a spin off hub for future projects.

Right before the second-last episode dropped, around a dozen Star Wars projects were announced, few of them having had their test run on The Mandalorian already. S3 was announced for Christmas Day 2021, already late by a near 2 months (both previous seasons premiered around the start of November). And the finale “surprises” fans with the December thing to be “Book of Boba” implying Mandalorian S3 being pushed to early 2022 at the very least.

The galaxy brains at Disney really thought that the fans of the show would love the surprise of having their show being pushed back even more for something else right after they saw Din and Grogu be separated… Let that sink in. Literally no one has come out and clarified anything at all in clear words, as if no one gives a hoot about this show that carries their stupid franchise on its back. In any case, delaying the only show they have for shows that haven’t even come out and can and might flop like their movies (because this is literally the same thing happening again) is the stupidest thing they do.

But what can I say, The Mouse wants that money! Din and Grogu sadly got crushed in all that corporate grind. Star Wars has really, truly, broken The Mandalorian.

[cryptic-flash]

"Polygon Wave EP" created by the change in the production system and the relationship with Yasutaka Nakata who came closer to Perfume (Natalie Interview Sep 2021)

Page 1 - about live show

Page 2

Which was the most memorable performance of this concert for you?

Kashiyuka: The first performance of "Polygon Wave (Original Mix)". Originally, we were going to perform the version that was released earlier, but when we were deciding which song to include on the EP, Yasutaka Nakata said, "This is the one!" About two weeks before the concert, I asked MIKIKO-sensei, "I'd like to change the song to this one, can you do the choreography in time? "I'll do my best at ......! (laughs).

I'll do my best." (laughs) That's pretty sudden.

 "Polygon Wave" is also the title of the show, and this song was the concept that ran through the entire show.

Nocchi: But I didn't just say, "Let's record a song that will be important for the live performance. When I had a chance to talk with Mr. Nakata last December, he said, "Let's just record a song without thinking about what it's for. If it's good enough, you can use it for something else." He suggested that we go to the studio and record the song after it was written, and the first song we wrote was "Polygon Wave. The first song that came out of that process was "Polygon Wave." I think that kind of rough, uncomplicated feeling is easier for you now. All the songs we recorded this time have a different and new atmosphere. Among them, it seems that "Polygon Wave" was the first song that Nakata felt was appropriate for everyone to hear, and from that point on, we started talking about various things.

Kashiyuka: The songs "∞ Loop" and "Android &" that will be included in the EP were also recorded at that time. When we were recording, we hadn't talked about an EP yet, but since "Polygon Wave" was chosen as the theme song for "The Masked Singer," we decided to release a single. He said, "I want to put a lot of 'Polygon Wave'! I thought, "That's new" (laughs).

Nakata-san also likes this song a lot, doesn't he ?

Nocchi: I think Nakata-san had a clear idea of the world he wanted to show us. We also thought it was a great song, so we thought, "If that's the case, why don't we just release this one song first?" Then Mr. Nakata said, "If we make an EP, we'll make another version. We said, "If you're going to make another version, we'll do it live."

Kashiyuka: We've never had so many different mixes of the same song before, so we'd talk about things like, "Which 'Polygon Wave' should be the first song? We talked about it. I thought it was unusual for you to have such an opinion on the song order. It's always easy to decide, but we had many discussions.

"A closer relationship than that between "producers" and "singers.

Kashiyuka: In the past, we'd record songs after we'd decided on a release or a tie-up, but this time we were free to write and record without thinking about whether we'd use them or not, so the pace was faster than usual. When we were recording, people would say things like, "We might not use this song," but since we've already sung it, we've grown to love it (laughs). (laughs) So I sang it, thinking, "I hope it doesn't disappear. (laughs) So I sang the songs while thinking "I hope they don't disappear". In fact, I recorded songs that were not on the EP.

A~chan: Mr. Nakata's mode was different. He's always been a fast songwriter, but what happened to him?  It was so fast. I think he had a clear idea of what he wanted.

Nocchi: You and Nakata-san talked a lot before and after the recording, didn't you? We talked about our old music, our stance when being interviewed, what we hope Perfume will be like in the future, and what we want to do.

In the last interview, you said that there were only two songs that you made demos for and rejected (see Perfume "Perfume The Best "Cubed"" interview). That's a big difference.

What was the recording process like?

A~chan: we talked for hours.

Your relationship with Nakata-san is completely different from what I've heard from everyone.

Nocchi: Yes. Before, we used to talk about such things only in the occasional discussions. Nakata-san used to only reveal a little bit of what he was thinking, but this time, he was overflowing with it on .......

Kashiyuka: This time, I was happy to feel that we were working together at a closer distance than the previous relationship of "producer" and "singers". "I thought, "Oh, it was easier for Mr. Nakata to work this way. I'm not sure why I didn't realize that until now (laughs).

I'm curious to know what songs you recorded but didn't include in the EP.

Kashiyuka: The song we played at the end of the live the other night is also not on the EP, but we recorded it at that time. We don't even know if that song is finished (laughs). (laughs) But I liked that song so much from the moment we recorded it that I told MIKIKO that I wanted it to be included in the live set list.

 It's rare to play a song in its current state in a live performance. In rock bands, they sometimes show off songs that they are still working on.

Kashiyuka: That's true (laughs).

Nocchi: But we wanted to sing that song at this live, because it expresses the message that Perfume wants to convey to the fans now. It might not be released for a long time, or it might not be released at all, but we were aware that this live performance would remain as a video for a long time.

Page 3

`A desert world where all organic matter is made up of digital bits.`

So, I felt that both "∞ Loop" and "Android &" selected for this song are similar to the world view of "Polygon Wave".

Nocchi: I like both of them very much. The music is stylish and light without being mechanical, but "∞ Loop" is about the scary feeling of living in a world where time loops, and "Android &" is about falling in love with an android.

A-chan: Nakata-san told me the meaning of the lyrics. The main character of "Android &" is actually an android who thinks he's completely human. That's why the title of the song ends with "&", but it's supposed to be like "Android & Human". It's interesting, isn't it?

Kashiyuka: But we didn't know the titles of either "∞ Loop" or "Android &" until the songs were announced (laughs). (laughs) When we were recording, we said "loop" and "android", so we thought that was the name of the song, but when the information was released and we read the news article, it said something different. "But when I read the news article after the information was released, it said something different. "Is this "&" a typo? I thought, "Is this okay? I contacted them just to make sure. I asked him if it was okay, and he said, "Nakata-san told me it's "Android &". The other song is called "Mugen Loop" (laughs).

Nocchi: The lyrics of "Android &" are kind of harsh, looking at the world from a bird's eye view (laughs).  It's a song with a clear story, so I hope you'll write a story based on it.

A~chan: It looks like it's going to be hard to draw the CG (laughs).

Kashiyuka: But we can probably cover the motion with the data we've collected so far (laughs). I feel that Nakata-san had envisioned a total world in this EP.  He wanted to express the whole thing like a movie.

That's right. I thought it was a very conceptual composition that "∞ Loop" depicts a world that keeps rebooting at the end of the day, and the song "System Reboot", which means "reboot", is included at the end of the same work.

Kashiyuka: Nakata-san's image for this EP is "a beautiful & broad desert, but all the trees and organic matter growing there are made of digital bits. It's a world with a sense of discomfort," he said.

Director Yusuke Tanaka's signature "Wow, I'm so scared"

You made a dance practice video for "Polygon Wave", didn't you? It was the first time for Perfume to make a video focusing on the choreography, but it seems that there was a demand for a video where you can see every detail of the body movements, and the response was great.

Nocchi: I'm so happy (laughs). It's not often that I get to dance in sneakers, so it was fun to film.

A~chan: Whenever I appear on a music program, I always take a short video of myself dancing and submit it to the TV station. I can't show that kind of footage to the public, but the atmosphere of the dance practice video is similar to that. It's hard to dance in heels, so just wearing sneakers made it really easy.

I heard that you're working on a music video for this song, will there be a lot of dance scenes in the music video?

Nocchi: Basically, it's like a dance video.

Kashiyuka: But we just shot it, so I haven't watched it yet (laughs).

A~chan: It's a video with a clear world view, so I'm sure you'll understand how to listen to this song by watching it. Is this real? Is this real or is this virtual? In the music video, the three of us are driving together, and in the middle of the road, we're like, "What? It ends with Yusuke Tanaka's signature "Wow, this is so scary! (laughs). During the shooting, I was dancing so hard that my legs became sticks.

The choreography is quite complicated, isn't it?  It's a collage of past songs, updated with the skills of the three of us, and it's the culmination of Perfume's dancing to date.

A~chan: What! Is that so? I thought you were doing it consciously, but it's not like that?

Nocchi: I wasn't conscious of it at all. To be honest, I just thought, "I've never done all these moves before" (laughs).(laughs)

Kashiyuka: When I was being choreographed, I took it as "new movements for a new song", so I didn't feel anything special. But we didn't talk about such messages.

A~chan: I thought that the arrangement of the song had various old tastes. I thought, "That sound in the background is the one they used in 'Polyrhythm'! It brings back memories! I'm nostalgic!

─ Speaking of which, the newly recorded "Polygon Wave (Remix)" is a very interesting remix, with a series of tones and phrases that remind me of various Perfume songs.

A~chan: I think Nakata-san has that planned out! I mean, he said something like that, didn't he?

Oh, so that's what he said. I was listening to the song thinking that it was like a concept live "Reframe" that reconstructed Perfume with the most advanced production, and that it was like your own "Reframe" that reconstructed Perfume's history in one song.

A~chan: Yes, yes. When you've been doing this for a long time, you get to make this kind of music.In many cases, remixes are done in a way that is different from the artist's usual style, as if to say, "This could be interpreted in this way," but this remix has more of a Perfume feel to it.

Nocchi: Yeah, I was expecting it to be weirder, but when I listened to it, it sounded so much like Perfume (laughs).

Page 4 - upcoming Reframe etc.

src : https://natalie.mu/music/pp/perfume17

[felassan]

Highlights and insights from the MELE launch cast & crew reunion panel

[rewatch link] [highlights & insights from the N7 Day 2020 reunion]

In case a text format is better for anyone (in terms of accessibility for example). Cut for length.

Some paraphrasing.

If anyone’s interested in just the line-reading session, it starts at timestamp ~1:04:45.

In addition to the cast and crew from the N7 Day reunion, at this reunion also in attendance were: 

Mac Walters (Project Director for MELE, Lead Writer of the og MET)

Melanie Faulknor (Lead Producer for MELE)

Crystal McCord (Producer for MELE)

Fred Tatasciore (Saren)

Seth Green (Joker)

Kimberly Brooks (Ash)

Ash Sroka (Tali)

This was the biggest reunion / meetup of the cast so far, and some of the cast and crew were meeting for the first time here.

It’s been so long since the og MET that PW & KW are getting to watch their kids experience playing it for the first time

JHale doesn’t play but since MELE she’s been sneaking around Twitch jumping into peoples’ MELE livestreams to lurk, watch and comment a bit

What drew Seth to the character of Joker? The whole concept of the game. He likes games and MET’s mechanics (different trees of adventure, stacking reputation, choices carrying between games) at the time were the most sophisticated that he’d ever heard pitched. He thought this was new and exciting and wanted to be a part of it. For the character they cast him based on his personality traits (i.e. he sounds quite similar to Joker personality-wise)

Would Seth ever want to play Joker again if the opportunity presented itself? Sure, he loves the character, and if the writers ever had more things to explore/expand with Joker he’d be down for it. 

Seth said that it’s a different kind of fan that approach him about this project. The fans have spent many many hours in an intimate exchange with “him” that he hasn’t been a part of, but they experienced it nonetheless. “I’ve hugged a lot of strangers, you know what I’m saying? It’s great, you get an interaction with fans that you never get as a performer in any other experience”

Seth has been a space guy since he was little, it inspires him

With the state of the world the way it is now [covid, masks etc], does Ash think Tali’s story will be more impactful now than it was before? Ash hopes so, and that anything they do here will have a positive impact on a bigger level. Ultimately that’s why most of them do what they do, they want to reach people in deep ways. She hopes Tali is an inspiration in courage, bravery, standing up for what’s right and thinking about the greater good

The [MELE I think] dev team had a last team meeting with Greg Zeschuk, one of the founders of BioWare, who they had invited to it. He was regaling them with stories of the inception of Mass Effect. “You would imagine this sort of well-laid out, drawing boards everywhere... [but] it was basically just a napkin sketch in a Greek taverna with him and Casey going ‘We wanna do a space opera’, and then it took off”

The process of creating lore through development is very organic. A lot of it comes from character and story development. It builds up over the course of the game’s development. They did the codex entries at the end, the idea being that if they saved them for as late as they could, then they could pull from the story, characters and meaningful moments, and build them from there

PW wrote a bunch of the codex entries, elevator banter & lots of little bits of lore. They describe their time on the og MET as being a “baby writer”. They originally came in after Mac had back surgery and a junior writer was needed to fill in. “It was really fun, it was us sitting in a room together going ‘What do you think a hanar or a krogan thinks about this or that’?” For a first project for them this was an amazing experience - the world building itself creatively with all these awesome people

They tried to add multiplayer in every game but only got it to work in ME3

They had a lot of plots laid out in ME1 that they called “global plots”. These were outside the core critical path and would take players from planet to planet, and were sprawling stories. They pulled out a lot of really interesting concepts and ideas from these that did make it into the game, but all of the global plots ended up getting cut due to time. Mac still has old diagrams and spreadsheets which detailed how all of these would have come together

Q. If you all had to take a long-distance road-trip with two squadmates, who would you take and why? PW: “Jack and Mordin. Mordin because the drive would never lack for things to talk about at length quickly, Jack because you know you wouldn’t pay for the room. You wouldn’t know how you’d get the room, but you wouldn’t be paying for it.” Courtenay: “I’d take Mordin because there’d be singing, and FemShep just to have this thing - happen. In the room that I get for free.” JHale at this point fistpumped while saying “Yeess” [then I think what she said was “steaming hot”]

Seeing as asari are long-lived, how open is Ali to one day reprising her role as Liara? “She’s a character very close to my heart, it was such a great opportunity. In some games that we work on the character has already been created or voiced by someone else, but this was really a group effort. When I first went into the booth, the only thing I’d seen of her was a sort of like, rendering, and we slowly kind of came to her voice and presence. I would love to bring Liara back any time... hey, she can live a really long time guys. :D”

Caroline and people who do what she does (Creative Performance Director) are so critical to the quality of games. Caroline: “This group of people are extraordinary. We were lucky to have such an extraordinary cast. Every [recording] session was new and challenging. It was a labor of love. I’m tearing up right now thinking about it. I’m remembering my last session with Jen, she was the last session, just sobbing and sobbing”. When JHale was trying to say the lines of Shepard’s goodbye with Garrus, a line hit her like a tonne of bricks and she was in tears and was like “Shepard does not cry”. “It took me a second, I got it out and took another run at it, it was in there but stuffed down as it should have been, and I finished the line [and there was silence in the booth when usually Caroline would have been talking to give direction or instruction] Did we lose her? Did Skype crash?” and it transpired that what had happened was that Caroline was in floods of tears

ME was the first time Keythe had ever come across branching dialogue. “Normally when we work on a script and it’s from page 1 to 100. In this it was get to page 5, then go back to page 2 and play it a little differently. The skill and the fun and joy of it was to be able to go back and play a scene in a different way, with different writing, with different outcomes. This was not only a challenge but a real treat. So to all the writers who dreamed up how this build-your-own-adventure plays out, you have my undying respect. It was a real pleasure”

VEDA is a proprietary system that BW use to record the dialogue, which is the closest way of having it feel like having people in the booth together (it’s all digital and VAs get to hear the line someone else has done in that scene). Caroline really pushed for this because of the amount of time etc that was wasted due to lack of this sort of thing on ME1. William: “It was a god send for me, thank you, getting to hear a cue from Jen or Mark.” Ali: “Us being able to bounce off each other helps make it more real. This for me was the most real acting experience on a game I had ever had - the writing being so good, Caroline helping us through, being able to hear each other.” JHale was always early coming in to record relative to the others so only got to use VEDA a few times - a bit of Liara content and the scene with Anderson towards the end. “Those two times, oh my god it was amazing”. VEDA being a thing also helps from a scheduling standpoint

Seth and Tricia Helfer (EDI) only got to be in the booth actually together 1 time, to record/shoot a piece of promotional video. “We actually got to record a scene together and we were like ‘oh my god this is the best thing ever’. It was great, even though I had to stand on a stool. She’s the best”

Seth: “As an actor, the kind of opportunity to do this kind of material in games just didn’t exist.” Fred: “Oh, never! I had never had a villain part that was complicated like that. In a game? Never before, it was really interesting”

Raphael always goes back to the fact that ME brought more women into gaming than any other game before it. “The writing and the complexity of the relationships gave us so much ballast”. “This set this apart from running, shooting, gunning, looting”

JHale: “What I noticed in the times before when I got to be around fans, there was a huge hunger among women in the gaming world for something they could really jump into. They were starving for something which fed them what they deserved and needed”

Mac: “[praising Caroline] Caroline would often come to us as writers and challenge us and say, as an example, ‘Do we really need another male character to do this? Why are we writing another male character for this?’ She pushed that very early and to the betterment of everything we created”

PW: “Karin and Cookie and all of the editors across the trilogy, [were critical in] making sure that Shepard sounded consistent - [especially since] we had a large writing team, writers came and went, Mac is the only one with a significant writing contribution on each of the games”

PW: “[on game dev] It’s a process of getting hundreds of people pointed in the same direction, all believing that this is something worth doing”

Ash: “Having all the different possibilities and avenues, going back to play them all out in the different ways [really helped to round the character of Tali out and make her feel like a natural person]”.

VAs only get paid for the original recording sessions, not again (as in they don’t any royalties or anything from something like the remaster)

In MELE, they left all the original credits at the end of each game in

Fred: “It’s creating in five dimensions [because of all the outcomes and relationships etc]”. Seth: “The cool thing is that the audience feels that. They’re immediately struck by how dense, thought-out, prepared and planned the entire universe is”

How was it for the new MELE devs coming onto this? Crystal: “I knew it [the series and fans’ love for it] was big, but I didn’t know it was BIG! Working on MELE there was this infectious excitement. Being part of it was so exciting.” Melanie: “I came on at ME3, I had a 3 or 4 year honeymoon period with BioWare. Coming onto MELE, I’m getting really emotional. One of my first meetings originally was going into a cinematic review for an epic Tali scene in ME3”. Crystal: “On MELE, we had an hour or 2 every day where the team came together to play the game. In those reviews, a lot of the devs who worked on the original would tell all these stories. It was really fun to hear all the inside stories on ME’s creation and be a part of that”

DC: “Should this unit get vaccinated?” Ash: “Of course”

How do they think ME will be viewed in the next 10-20 years, what do they think its legacy will be? A piece of history, ground-breaking. It broke down some barriers and opened doors for people. It’s a powerful, powerful community. It’ll continue to age quite well and be enjoyed by a new generation, it’s original and evergreen and there’s a lot in it that people go back to. There’s a lot of universal things in it (personal experiences, like there will always be love, people fighting to belong, trying to make sense of their pasts etc)

JHale and Alix did the “I love you Shepard, now go save the world again” Shep-Sam exchange and both got teary. It was then Seth’s turn to line-read: “Jesus Christ, now that I’m good and choked up, fucking mess”. Ali was also actually crying from it

Seth: “It can’t be overstated, this community is so large and global, it is one of the most powerful fandoms that I’ve ever been greeted with. Thank you”. Ash: “It’s the most amazing group of fans ever. We’re all so grateful”

Some funny anecdotes/stories:

PW didn’t realize that Alix could do different accents. They remember a time when they were listening in the booth and an Alliance soldier was complaining about the gear had been given. They said “Wow that’s really good, who is that?” and the VO producer said “That’s Alix, Patrick”, “because she wasn’t doing her [normal British accent but was doing a Californian accent instead]. Alix roasted me later for not recognizing her voice and never let me heard the end of it”

Alix: “[on Sam’s toothbrush] Caroline’s like, ‘So then she pulls her toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘What? Sorry? A toothbrush?’ and obviously it’s funny now as everyone knows that Sam’s thing is her toothbrush. Caroline’s like ‘Yeah, you’ve gotta like, flirt, over the toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘Who wrote this - a frickin toothbrush, are you kidding me? Really guys?’ ANYWAY. I was wrong and it worked. :D”

Fred: “I remember a 12 year old kid coming up to me and being like [flat tone] ‘Oh yeah. I killed you’.”

Keythe: “The other assasin I play is Kellogg in Fallout 4. People come up to me like ‘Omg. I love you so much. And then I fucking KILLED you!’”

Courtenay once went out to dinner in NZ with a few prominent people from the Game of Thrones cast. “Everyone around was making a big deal out of it like ‘Omg, it’s so-and-so from GoT’. I was feeling a bit like ‘Hi, I’m here, just nobody’. And I looked around in the restaurant and there's one guy in the corner and he’s got an N7 shirt on and he’s just looking at me like [knowing look, does a peace sign]. And I’m like ‘I got one! I love you guys!’”

PW: “I have a question for the cast members, because I don’t know if JHale has done this to all of you or if she just does it to the devs. Show of hands if Jen has ever made you do push-ups.” JHale: “It’s just you guys”

Karin: “One of my favorite editing files that I ever had was a ME file. It was before Seth was coming in for a session. I opened it up and it was just 20, 25 lines with the word ‘Shit’, over and over again, and I was like, ‘This file is perfect, I don’t need to do anything to it, have fun!’”

Seth: “Didn’t we do a track that’s like 60 seconds of laughing? Escalating laughing? I don’t know about other actors but for me getting into a laughing fit is kind of like trying to get into a crying fit, it takes the same level of commitment, you start to follow a path until like you’re hysterically uncontrollably laughing. I remember looking through the glass, and I’m deep in it at this point, and I make eye contact, and I can see from the other side of the booth and they’re like [making ‘okay you can stop’ now gestures] - ‘Like that’s plenty, we got it’ and I was like ‘okay, okay [dying]’”

JHale: “The craziest thing Mark and I had to deal with was how many times we had to say ‘I should go’”. Mark: “We also, Caroline and I tended to use that as short hand when I needed to go to the bathroom”

The panel host: “The first time I interviewed Ali was a decade ago. She did the ‘I’ll flay you alive with my mind’ line halfway through, it was my first interview and I literally fell out of my seat [from being star-struck]”

Ash line-read Tali’s drunk omni-tattoo scene and in response DC said “I totally get why people wanna romanticize all these characters :D”. Karin: “We’ve had more than one person come up to us and show us actual tattoos that looked like that”

[source]

[senju-sekhmet]

The Leash (Part 9)

Summary: Your rescue was supposed to be as smooth as these missions can be. However very quickly, Tobirama faces off against an enemy that has no form, color or smell - and time is running short, very fast. Unless he figures out what truly holds you hostage, your life will be lost. Warnings (for the finished work): Blood, illness, descriptions of heavy injuries and graphic violence, torture (both depicted and implied), needles, morally grey territory, human experimentation, panic attacks, character death, angst with a happy ending ~6000 words (this chapter, finished work: 80.000) Previous: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8 Read on AO3!   Disclaimer below the cut! more updates. is it really a disclaimer still, i wonder lmao

DISCLAIMER! we are nearing the grand finale of this fic!! please stick until the very end okay?! i know this chapter might be a little bit of a drag - it’ll get better, promise. <3 Other than that: enjoy my very self indulgent work, filled with my own headcanons and angst galore. Let me know what you think and thank you so much for reading!!!! ________ Leaving you had been a real test of will. Not only were you in such a deplorable state overall, but also your request - it was quite obvious you were putting on a brave face, but the truth of the matter was you weren’t faring well, at all. It was the little signs that gave you away - the slight tremor in your voice sometimes. The gallows humour. He didn’t want to think about what the withdrawal had been like for you. But he could well imagine. And as per usual, he was helpless except to unravel how to produce more of this damned leash. He couldn’t even heal you or alleviate some of your exhaustion at this point. 

By the time he had reached the laboratory he was frustrated beyond measure, sick from guilt and his heart was aching that if he didn’t know better, he might as well think he was sick. He wasn’t, of course. But eliciting such bodily responses due to his emotional state was something entirely foreign to Tobirama. He was - always had been - subject to his moods, sure. And the people around him would know his sour moods, especially. But would he carelessly act on them, or physically feel them like this? No. Luckily it was the middle of the night and there had been nobody around to witness the somber scowl he was wearing. Not that he cared, anyway.

In the grand scheme of things, that was the least of his concerns.

He had contemplated testing his newest result on another prisoner, but ultimately decided against it. The best he could hope for was a prolonged time of muting the victim’s chakra. What he really needed to start working on now was to weave the second component in, the disruption. And since he had four vials available, that offered a variety of options. He’d leave one untouched, to be safe - and work on one for now to start with that.

The first problem was to imagine how he’d want the disruption to kick in. He knew from examining your blood and also the reaction you’ve shown that it took some time for the disruption to kick in. He had deduced it must be because of the chakra muting component - it covered the disruption up to leave a timeframe in which a victim was not threatened by it. When it faded, only the disruption remained, the lethal withdrawal kicked in. Therefore, the chakra needed for this would need to last longer, adhere to the victim almost like a brand and be intense enough to cause these effects. He did have a vague idea how to achieve this - but to compress it into such a small vial was… daunting.

What’s new, he somberly figured to himself.

And just as he imagined, this proved to be even more complicated than weaving the first component in. Not only did he have to treat delicately, but also be extremely careful to not destroy the structures he had worked so hard to get into that vial in the first place. He didn’t quite succeed in that - partly, the muting component took damage. The whole process felt as though he needed to weave chakra inbetween what was already in the vial - as if he was transplanting it onto the already delicate structure he had created. It was endlessly frustrating. Frankly everything about this was so demanding, at times he wondered if there really was no other option to get a cure.

Like torturing the prisoners to a maximum.

The more time he spent threading the more he became convinced there must be some trick to it. That, or it required an intense amount of training. If it was the latter, then he’d be facing a new problem. 

He’d deal with that when it came to it. His plate was full as it was. 

Once he got a hang of how to weave it in without wrecking the delicate structure of the first pattern, his gaze swept to the clock. It was long past midnight. Time for a small break. As much as he hated it, he didn’t want to use his clones yet again - he needed to figure this out more, firstly. If he had no real idea where to truly go with this, his clones’ works would just ramp up more exhaustion. More he needed to sleep off. Besides, this would not be so much of a break - though you were stable, he simply didn’t like the thought of leaving you alone. Not after your request - not after seeing you in your frightfully weak state. He had to check on you, as he promised.

He teleported back into your dimly lit room. Briefly, he gazed out of the window - the sky was clear, the moon shone bright and there were a million stars alongside it. It was beautiful. Silently, he walked to your bedside again to find you had your eyes closed. Finally - finally your face seemed peaceful. Gaunt, for sure, but not in pain. Tobirama settled down into his chair and laid his hand on yours, as lightly as he could to not wake you up. Very slowly he let his chakra skim over your network to find it dormant as well, pleased you still were asleep. Equally slow, he increased the connection to examine you as softly as possible. As usual, the injuries, microscopic tears, tissue damages and healing bits were too numerous to count. And there also was the general lack of reserves overall - a result from the strain put on you by the stretching of the interval no doubt. Even so, your cardiovascular situation was superior and no organ showed any sign of dysfunction. A pleasant surprise - compared to before, you were doing even better. Seems that aside from the exhaustion you had recovered well from their first stunt. He withdrew quickly before you could notice his presence and leaned back in his chair.

Had they gone by their normal schedule, you’d be left with four and a half days now. And Tobirama hadn’t even yet produced something that was anywhere near the leash. For all the grief it had put you through, it was a small victory. Admitting this felt wrong, though - despicable. It was the method. And he wasn’t sure how much time they’d gain from this, overall. His medical expertise wasn’t comparable to his brother’s, but he didn’t think you’d keep up lengthier intervals. Maybe if you’d been in peak physical condition.

He groaned slowly, rubbing a hand over his face.

Part of him didn't want to think anymore, now. He felt stretched out, thin. Spent. But of course, his mind wouldn't stop.

He vividly remembered the first time you went into withdrawal. The torment you had been going through. Just because you hadn’t been writhing or screaming now didn’t mean it was more bearable - no. You had been sedated this time. Tobirama was quite sure the whole procedure was hell for you, nonetheless, and all that kept you together was your unbreakable will to live.

If that ever faltered…

An ice-cold shiver ran down his spine. He closed his eyes. Already his heart pumped painfully against his ribcage, he had expected it. The all too familiar ache, the grief. The guilt.

I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you.

It was all he could do. Though he caustically surmised, so far he had done a less than stellar job.

He returned to the lab as soon as his concentration felt up to the maddening task yet again. Having seen you again quite possibly helped a great deal to spur him on again despite the hour and how daunting it all felt - he just  had  to produce some kind of breakthrough now. He knew it. He could feel it. This is the way. He didn’t allow himself another break from the delicate weaving process until finally he inspected a vial containing both components now. Using his sensory skills he sent a weak, short-range chakra pulse through it.

The substance was not like the leash, no. If the leash was shining like a beacon, his copy was a torch, at least. It was progress, compared to the last time. He silently wondered if adding the second component had done this. Then came the next test - examining it directly. Again, the result was that his vial seemed inferior: while the chakra swirled in it in a quite complicated pattern, finely woven, he did distinguish the two different components after a little bit. The liquid made it difficult as it stayed ever in motion, but it was as though he was seeing two different colors.

It was a step forward, at least. He’d be testing this soon. Based on that - and the test subject’s blood work - he’d draw new conclusions. Still, there was more time to work on this vial further. The weaving itself was becoming something of a craft - with each moment he’d learn new tricks to it. A taxing one that seemed entirely focused on details, tiniest nudges and using small amounts of chakra at a time, but a craft nonetheless.

Had he not been so pressed for time, he might’ve actually found it interesting. But right now, all he felt was your torment breathing down his neck, wrenching his heart around and stealing his breath.

He wanted this over with.

It was early morning when he finished his work - not that he’d call it that, but he decided there was more merit to testing it out now. Even so, he’d check up on you again first. The world lurched with the use of his hiraishin seal, and a moment later he was in your room.

The first rays of dawn filtered in already, drenching the wooden hospital furniture in red hues once more. Low rustles were coming from your bed. Tobirama stepped over swiftly to find you stirring under the sheet irregularly, your head tilting from side to side. Briefly, he wondered if you were having a nightmare - but your eyes were open.

And recognizing him. “Tobirama,” you breathed, surprised.

“What’s wrong, Y/n?”, he inquired, wasting no time to step closer even, the worry already growing. 

“Just … trying to get more comfortable,” you whispered, attempting a weak smile. “Looks like my strength returned a little bit more.”

He frowned slightly. “Don’t force it.” He couldn’t have prevented the sternness from seeping into his voice if he wanted to.

You sighed. “No,” a light shake of your head, “Just help me get on my side. Please?”, you extended your left hand for him to take, which he did with a small sigh. At least that way you wouldn’t try to do it yourself. And while he was extremely  adamant, as Hashirama had eloquently put it, about your rest, it still tormented him to see you lacked the strength to turn on your side by yourself. Of course he knew it was common for patients in your condition - but this was you. He placed his right hand around where your hip and the small of your back would be under the blanket after his left had grasped your hand and pulled you towards him very slowly and gently so you tilted onto your side. You groaned a little, but sighed once you had adjusted to your new position.

“Thank you,” you hushed, meekly almost. The lack of strength was just as obvious to you. Tobirama took his seat at your side again and shook his head dismissively.

“Of course.” He still frowned, though. “How are you feeling?”

You closed your eyes and sighed again. “It’s… starting again. I can feel it. I’m feeling dizzy and… weaker.” Your voice shook from a slight tremble. Fear, Tobirama concluded.

He clenched his teeth and breathed through the tight feeling in his chest. “Y/n, we don’t need to stretch the interval as much-,”

“No,” you interjected firmly, eyes snapping open, giving him a sharp look. “We do. You know it. I know it.”

Now was Tobirama’s turn to close his eyes. “I don’t want you to suffer,” he whispered, his baritone voice near breaking again just from uttering these words and yet firm all the same. The tight feeling became worse

“I know,” you replied, haunted. “I know.” Your gaze was sorrowful. Knowing. Tobirama leaned forward to grasp your hand again and enclose it in his, letting his chakra coat your networks in the familiar, warm way. He didn’t know what else to do for your comfort. “Thank you,” you muttered again, forming yet another weak smile.

His head hung low as he simply basked in feeling you like this. The small nudge you were giving his sensitive network made him gasp slightly. 

The moment was interrupted by the door swinging open. Tobirama’s head shot up to find his brother standing in the doorway. Looking more rested than he himself did, most likely. When he had reapplied his face paint after washing himself, there definitely had been dark rings under his eyes.

“Good morning,” Hashirama announced warmly, rounding the bed to stand beside Tobirama when he realised you were on your right side. “How are you?”

As you explained your condition to him, Tobirama gently grazed over your chakra network once more before drawing back slowly to free your hand. He’d be on his way soon, anyway.

Hashirama nodded. “Very well. I singled out a few medications that should help us stabilize you, as I mentioned. It’d be best to take them while you’re still, ah, responsive.”

“You mean when I’m not spitting it back at you?”, you deadpanned. Tobirama near froze at the image. All he could think of was how his hand had forced your mouth open, then poured the torture drug in and forcefully constricted your airway to make you swallow it.

Hashirama cleared his throat. “Well, you haven’t managed that so far.” Tobirama snorted in quite a cynical way then, earning him an arched eyebrow from you. Hashirama shot each of you a meaningful glance before continuing slowly. “Still..., it might be necessary to draw additional seals to release the medications transdermally.”

Tobirama’s head whipped to the side to stare at his brother. “That will aggravate the overload.”

Hashirama held up his hands defensively already. “The seals I have in mind for this purpose only add very, very little of the user’s chakra to the patient.” Tobirama wasn’t quite convinced yet as his scowl indicated. But then forcing things down your throat wasn’t gentle, either. 

“And we’re also going to modify your nutrition, accommodating for the duress you find yourself in,” he added softly, but no less serious.

That made you snort now, but in a disgusted way. “Oh, I know what that’s going to taste like.” Every shinobi in the field on long missions knew that, in fact.

Tobirama wasn’t having any of it though. Already, he became riled up. “Y/n, we're not going to discuss-”

“I know, I know,” you already deflected exasperatedly, waving your free hand to calm him down. He leaned back in his chair then and crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow.

“Alright. Now that that’s out of the way,” Hashirama sighed, stepping closer to you. “May I?”, he extended his hand to take yours.

That was Tobirama’s clue. He wasn’t of any use here right now. He leaned closer to you yet again, expression mellowing. “I’ll be back soon, Y/n,” he promised for the lack of a better phrase. Anything else - anything mundane like ‘take care’ - just seemed wrong at this point. You nodded, trying another brave smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. Tobirama hoped his did.

He left the hospital to head straight for the interrogation and information headquarters, then, after having picked up his latest experiment with him.

It was already bustling with activity despite the early hour. Perhaps another mission finished. He didn’t dwell on it, really. Instead he headed to where he knew to find Ikuro; nodding towards the few familiar faces he made out. Apparently news about his task had made the round since nobody stopped him on his was through the small corridors past various offices. For a group that was euphemistically described as ‘interrogators’, everything seemed awfully quiet here. The walls must be thick. 

Ikuro indeed was behind the desk in the sparsely decorated office that adjourned the cell block holding the six prisoners. He greeted Tobirama with the oddly warm smile and a nod. “Back again,” his voice was quiet, deceptively soft.

“Back again.” Tobirama repeated, raising an eyebrow. Exchanging pleasantries was something he really had no time for - given his - your - predicament. Any waste of time felt like a crime at this point. And then again, he never liked chitchat much. “Any news?”

Ikuro shook his head. “Not regarding your problem, I’m afraid, given we know Zenji is the only one to interrogate about that. I take it you made progress, however.”

That was unsurprising. Despite all that happened, it had only been a day. A single day. “Something to test out, yes.”

Ikuro’s smile spread slightly. Tobirama wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but quickly decided he didn’t care enough to form an opinion just yet. “There is one question though,” his smile faded. Tobirama frowned. “Now that we know Zenji is the only one who knows how to make the leash, do you want to use it on him again? I know we did the last time, however, if we permanently injure him…” He trailed off, but Tobirama well caught the implication.

He crossed his arms then. A fair point that he hadn’t considered yet. Since there were six prisoners in total, he had more than enough test subjects to choose from. But picking Zenji had the additional possible merit of gleaning more information about the leash during the interrogation, at the cost of, well, risking him. It all boiled down to whether Tobirama was confident enough in his work to not harm a person permanently, or not.

He hated it. But, “The substance I brought with me today will be more aggressive than the one I used last time. So, no. Let’s pick someone else. If it works well, we’ll focus on him again.” He was set on giving that man hell until he gave up his secrets. Or Tobirama had figured it out himself. Either way.

Ikuro nodded then. “Alright. We’ll pay a visit to Kimi.” The smile was back again.

Tobirama instead scowled, his tone was dripping with sarcasm. “Why do I get the fleeting notion that is the loony one from the far end?”

Ikuro bellowed a sudden laugh that startled him, both eyebrows rising. He wouldn’t figure this man’s humour out, really. “You are as perceptive as they say, Tobirama.” Then he rose to full size and Tobirama followed with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. The walk down the cell block was accompanied by the well-known feeling of eyes on him. Not that Tobirama cared for those, either. Except for one pair. 

Zenji’s. His scarlet eyes darted to the side when they passed the middle cell. Tobirama was satisfied to find his black-bruised jaw was swollen. The look the man gave him was nothing short of hateful. He never broke his stride and followed Ikuro, surprised Zenji didn’t holler anything after him. Perhaps the jaw just hurt too much, hm.

Finally they reached Kimi’s cell. Like all the others, she also was chained up and sealed away. Her gaze seemed empty, staring a hole into the ceiling. That would soon change, Tobirama knew. Ikuro unlocked the cell. “Kimi,” he greeted warmly, like she was a friend.

“Go fuck yourself,” she shot back instantly but perfectly nonchalant. Tobirama’s eyebrows shot up. So much for friends. Her blue eyes locked with Tobirama’s. “Oh,” suddenly, her tone was infused with a shrill kind of adoration. “A high visitor!” Tobirama had to refuse the urge to cover his ears. “Tell me, tell me,” she chanted, swinging back and forth in the chains that held her. “How’s Y/n, how is she? Mhm?”, she exposed surprisingly bright teeth in a grotesque smile.

Tobirama didn’t even find her worth talking to; he could only roll his eyes and sigh exasperatedly. Enemies like this he knew to take serious - erratic behaviour covered up some of the most impressive techniques. But this wasn’t a fight. And he wasn’t about to try and converse with the likes of her. Not even in a cynical banter. He gazed at Ikuro. “Shall we?”

Kimi moaned loudly. “Awh, come on!”, it was an obscenely wanton sound. “Gimme a shred, please, please, please? I’m missing Y/n so, so much!”

Tobirama started to wonder if he had to break another jaw here. The ire that started to burn in his veins again surely provided enough fuel. His head tilted forward slightly as his stare narrowed, darkening.

Ikuro was already next to Kimi, shaking his head. He must’ve guessed at Tobirama’s thoughts - not that his body language wasn't enough of a giveaway. 

Kimi wasn’t helping her situation. “Tobirama Senju doesn’t find me worth talking tooo!”, she screamed then in a most offended way, loud enough for probably everyone in this building to hear. Not that she was wrong in any way. This woman would be better off without her vocal chords.

“Kimi,” Ikuro began, still sugary sweet. “You’re going to help us a little.” His hand seized the back of her head already, grasping her brown hair firmly.

She stiffened immediately, but the smile that spread over her lips now was nothing short of malicious. Typical, Tobirama figured - completely mad behaviour, but far from idiotic. “Oh.” It was a sharp sound. “My turn to get your itty-bitty-wannabe-leash?”

Tobirama’s mien remained completely impassive. “Are you going to open your mouth or are we going to have to force you, like your compatriot?”, entirely unfazed by threatening her with violence.

Not that she was fazed, either. And smart enough to know better than to put up a fight now. “I always wanted to taste the stuff, mhm,” she tried to nod her head, but Ikuro’s grip was iron already. “No need to break my jaw like dumb Zenji’s. Show me what y’got, Tobirama Senju, show me,” she then moaned again, lasciviously almost.

Tobirama’s lips drew into a disgusted scowl. “Good grief, how do you work with these people,” he scoffed. Ikuro was grinning widely. “I should’ve picked Zenji,” he added almost inaudibly. Kimi opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out, licking over her lower lip in distasteful ways. Still, he didn’t trust her for one second. And the contents of this vial were too precious for this maniac to spit back at him, which he was sure she would. His free hand seized her jaw tightly so that if she bit down, she’d seriously injure her cheeks. Kimi already spluttered. The moment Tobirama felt she wanted to speak more, he simply applied more pressure. He had enough of this nutcase.

Swiftly, he poured the contents of his vial into her mouth and in a well practiced move pressed down harshly on her nose and mouth to force her to swallow. Her eyes became glassy - luckily, he had been wise enough to keep her mouth shut, because he was perfectly sure she’d have licked his hand or done something equally disgusting had he not.

Not that much was needed. Obediently, she swallowed.

Followed by a shrill scream. Tobirama’s patience was a candle that burned on both ends at this point. He didn’t even put it past Kimi that this was precisely what she was aiming for but by all that he believed in, it worked. The woman let out a heavy tirade of sexually loaded metaphors about what she was seeing and feeling that might have turned a more innocent person bright red on the spot.

It elicited nothing but fast growing annoyance out of Tobirama, however. And Ikuro was grinning as he closed his eyes. He gave him a dark glare. The man had known, for sure. This better yielded good results. When he reached for her throat to examine her, his hand grasped so tightly Kimi’s voice got stuck in its tracks and all that remained was a small rivulet of obscenities at Ikuro, who had begun to invade her mind again. Squeaks, no more.

Much more bearable.

Now to examine her. He made no effort to be gentle about this whatsoever. Ikuro’s work was marvellous as before. Unsurprisingly, Kimi’s mental defense was nothing short of impressive. Perhaps Tobirama was imagining it, but Ikuro’s methods seemed different here - more brutal. More smothering. Akin to what he had done to Akio - less thought to the risk he was running. Was Ikuro himself fed up with her? The thought darkly amused Tobirama.

Kimi stayed completely stable throughout the whole procedure. Her chakra flow was almost as muted as yours was after indigestion of the leash, however it picked up again during the session. Tobirama had expected it, but with the additional experience in the whole weaving process, it gave him clues on how to improve on that. Briefly he stopped monitoring her to take a blood sample. Not an easy task as there was no patch of skin exposed save for her neck and head, so he had to go for the jugular artery as the veins would be collapsed. It bore a slight risk - but none that Tobirama even cared about. Unceremoniously he stabbed the needle in where he felt the pulse after having released his choke hold on her throat - an opportunity she used to gargle out profanities at both him and Ikuro, but the mental assault heavily impaired her ability to form coherent sentences. What was coherent by her standards anyway, Tobirama figured. After he had gotten what he needed from her neck, he continued to monitor her. The half-frozen state of her chakra remained steady for a while before it dropped more.

Ikuro began to retreat then, slowly. 

“Wait,” Tobirama instructed. His presence lingered then, still keeping Kimi in a mental choking hold.

As her chakra became less and less mute, the disruption kicked in more. And with it, for the first time there seemed to be genuine distress in the prisoner, indicated not by crude insults, but a genuine groan of pain. 

“Interesting,” Tobirama muttered, smugly, almost. Kimi whimpered while Tobirama took time to thoroughly investigate how her chakra tried to repel his disruption, over and over again - and each time, the reaction became worse for it, accompanied by a never ending stream of pained expressions. Watching the agony unfolding inside of her.

He felt no satisfaction, no. But he was pleased. A success, finally.

After a while of monitoring, he took another blood example. Ikuro was frowning now. “I’m not sure how much more she’ll take, mentally,” he announced.

“Well, physically, she’s well off. I won't say anything about her mental state, that has been debatable to begin with," Tobirama grunted. This was nothing compared to what you went through. The plight they ultimately had put you in.

Ikuro withdrew then, but Tobirama had to stay. After all, the disruption first had to fade at some point. He knew it would - this wasn’t the leash,  yet . But it was the right way. Slowly, Kimi’s body started to clear out the disruptive components alongside her chakra - another fascinating realisation that was different to when he had examined you. In you, the leash stuck - no matter how much your unmuted chakra and body battled it, it just kept on disruption and repelling it, thus causing the detrimental health effects. But Kimi’s cleared Tobirama’s out.

He withdrew then. Ikuro raised an expectant eyebrow. “She will be fine,” Tobirama announced, turning on his heels to leave the cell. He had new material to work with.

Ikuro followed swiftly after locking the cell containing the now limp Kimi.

The glare Zenji gave Tobirama now was decidedly murderous. Tobirama grinned back, darkly. Arrogantly. Zenji might as well know he was on their heels. His threats have not been empty. He almost had passed the cell, when Zenji’s strained voice echoed through the cell block: “Four more days, Tobirama fucking Senju,” the pain was obvious. Good. Nobody had healed the fracture, then. “Don’t think for a second you’re anywhere near perfection yet! Y/n’s gonna die so fucking miserably!”

Tobirama kept on walking, ignoring the new flare of ire in his veins. The urge to turn on his heels and break his jaw in new ways. Hell, rearrange his damned face. No, Zenji was beneath him he kept telling himself as he ground his teeth so hard his own jaws hurt. Back in the office, Ikuro closed the door. “I’m impressed, Tobirama.” His gaze was appreciative. For a split second, he believed this to be about reigning his temper in and was about to reply in a most impolite way to such a condescending remark, but he quickly realised this was not the case.

“Thanks.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. The praise for his work was hollow when he reminded himself why he was doing this - and that it was far from perfect yet. “I’ll be back soon. I trust you didn’t learn anything pertaining to my task?”, not that he thought so, but he had to ask anyway.

“Sadly, no. It was a fruitful session, especially considering it was Kimi, but it seems Zenji’s slip up was not a false lead. She really does not seem to know about the leash’s creation.” Then, he frowned. “But, she adamantly guarded anything relating to the leash. Perhaps there is more to glean from her.

Tobirama’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Well, then we know to build up more pressure.” 

Ikuro nodded, surprisingly somber now. “Indeed. I’ll inform you if anything from the other prisoners might come up.”

Tobirama bowed slightly. “Thank you.” Ikuro was a good man to work with. 

A second later, the world lurched and the hiraishin seal transported him back to your room, where the little victory he celebrated dissipated swiftly.

The mood was dreary - and the innate hum he felt due to his sensory skills had picked up from the last time. It could only mean one thing. By now it was high noon and the sun’s light reflected off of the room’s pale furniture. Hashirama’s back was turned to him but the blanket was pushed aside - revealing your marred legs. On them, more seals, which he couldn’t make out precisely at this distance. Instantly, Tobirama rounded your bed swiftly, to find Hashirama working on the heart seal. Still, he couldn’t help but gasp when he saw your whole form revealed like this: a shadow of your former self and almost no part of you that didn’t bear a barely healing mark of torture. It didn’t deter him from analysing the situation, but it’d never fail to drive a proverbial blade through his heart.

Your breaths were quick and shallow again and Tobirama was sure to hear a rumble in there. Not good. Your lung was affected. Combined with the fact your body definitely was paler than before and the sheen of sweat that covered your skin, the situation was obvious.  You didn’t move - and in your face, the grimace of pain was etched into your skin.

It was worse than before. And they hadn’t stretched the interval as much as before, yet.

Hashirama’s gaze swept up to him when he had finished what Tobirama guessed was strengthening the seal that supported your heart. His mien was grave. “We can’t wait much longer.” He gave Tobirama a quick rundown of what had happened: the withdrawal had kicked in again as before, but the symptoms developed faster, and more severe. As he had guessed, your lung was starting to suffer damage not just on the slight, microscopic level Tobirama had witnessed during the first stretch but in a greater margin. Your cardiovascular system required more support as your heart struggled, too. He still hadn’t intervened directly, yet.

Tobirama swallowed finally and nodded and nodded. Then, he looked down on your legs. Each bore another seal meant for transdermal release of the agents the seal in the middle was soaked in. “You drew more seals?” he inquired, terse again.

“We had to,” Hashirama explained, his hand back on your arm and his eyes closed. “Her lucid intervals are too short to ensure her taking the medication by herself. This is more effective and safer.”

“Safer?”, Tobirama shot back, sternly. “There are six seals on her now. Which means we barely have any room for additional chakra based options, if any, without overloading her.”

Hashirama clicked his tongue. “I am well aware, Tobirama,” a slight hint of strain had snuck into his voice now. But instead of angering him, it did the opposite - Tobirama realised how serious your condition was for his brother to even let a sliver of exasperation slip into his tone. And besides. He didn’t say any more.

All they were doing here - it was all dangerous. Too dangerous. They were running into dead ends, either way - be it the leash or the withdrawal of it. And to make you suffer, for a few precious hours? Tobirama swallowed hard against the shortness of breath that gripped this thorax tightly suddenly. “Anjia, I don’t think we should continue. Y/n is suffering and I -,” he swallowed again as his scarlet gaze swept to your face and the hurt in his heart was near unbearable again, “I cannot condone this.”

Hashirama’s eyes flew open and he gave Tobirama a deep frown. “She doesn’t want us to stop. So don’t.”

His gaze wandered to his brother, frowning himself now. “If she dies from the withdrawal, then it was pointless,” he nearly growled, voice stern again, if just to cover up for the gaping hole that the ache was boring into his chest in a most agonizing way.

“She’s not dying. Have more faith in me, Tobirama - and most importantly, her,” he gazed back at you then, voice becoming softer, fonder. Tobirama would never fail to be amazed by his brother’s optimism.

In a very sarcastic way.

“I’m not doubting you or her, anija,” and the sheer notion of him doing so did well enough to distract him from the terrible heartache simply for how furious it made him, “What I am doubting is what we’re up against - effects of something I haven’t fully understood yet or been able to recreate!”

Hashirama took a sharp breath. “On the other hand, we can evaluate her condition, react accordingly and adjust the figurative sails. We will not run a risk. You said so yourself. That, we do know.”

Tobirama looked back on your tormented form. Then he closed his eyes slowly. He hated it - he hated all of this - but he knew, deep down, he knew it - they’d need to continue down the path they had chosen. All of this - it would end soon. Either way. All he could do was to ensure it ended favourably, swiftly. And for as long as it lasted he’d need to remind himself of the promise he had made to you. No matter what. If Hashirama found your condition stable enough to continue - he’d trust him. He had no other choice but to.

“How much longer until the next dose?”, Tobirama asked then, the numb feeling spreading again. He welcomed it. The numbness muted all of the grief, of the ache. His focus returned.

“Not much. Might as well prepare it.” Hashirama instructed, politely refraining from commenting on Tobirama’s falter further.

He nodded and made for doing just that. Not twenty minutes later, they administered it - again, you were stirring from the force with which Tobirama had to pry your mouth open to pour the hated liquid in. The pained way in which you groaned echoed quietly in the sparsely furnitured room as he focused on not spilling a drop while gripping your jaw with vice strength again and holding it open. Uttering apologies he knew you couldn’t hear but he made nonetheless. After he made you swallow it you stilled again.

It had whatever brief respite - if it could’ve been called that - they had gained by stretching the intervals and thus making for more time null. Impressively, it had been shown you paid the price in proverbial blood and if it continued, literal blood might follow.

Tobirama’s only rest would be when he literally crashed, now.

[whump-town]

Hand In Unlovable Hand

Part 2, lads. Is this reaction sort of... shall we say dramatized? Maybe, I’m not a medical professional. Am I going to fix it? ugh, fuck no. Let Hotch be a little dramatic, it’s a treat for being so damn cute 

Part One

Warnings: snake shit. oh and hospitals

There doesn’t come far too many opportunities for Spencer Reid to admit it but he really wishes he would have listened to Hotch this morning. The older man had made that face -- one Reid wasn’t accustomed to by way of his childhood but he’d certainly seen it before -- the one that expresses fond disapproval. With a shake of his head, Hotch had advised in that very unique way of his that Reid should likely cut back on the coffee. The way that makes Morgan roll his eyes and gets Hotch called the “mom” to Rossi’s “dad”. Reid has grown up for far too long by himself to ever really listen to the helpful advice he’s given the first time. He’s not used to people looking out for him.

Crouched down beside Hotch’s side, close enough to watch the deep purpling of the skin around the bite on his hand, Reid can feel that morning’s six cups of coffee settling poorly in his stomach. The acid crawl of sick as Emily frantically taps at Hotch’s pale cheek trying and failing to properly rouse him. Her hand curled around the back of his neck, supporting his limp head in her palm. Derek queasily grunting as he takes a pen, supplied by Dave, and traces around the bite. Marking it as instructed by the 911 operator still shrilly speaking on the other side of the line.

How does shit like this happen to them?

“There he is,” Emily’s voice comes out far more convincingly nonchalant than she has the capacity to actually feel at this moment. More striking than the amount of time it’s taken to get Hotch responsive, even if it’s just raspily wheezing a soft complaint about Emily’s proximity to him, is his glassy, vacant eyes. Busily brushing his sweaty hair from his eyes, she smiles reassuringly down at him and looks up to Morgan. “How long until they get here?”

Derek has his phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder, manipulating Hotch’s hand to work as he’s being told. He glances up in acknowledgment of Emily’s question but doesn’t answer just yet. Nodding his head he grimaces, scowling when Hotch tries to pull his hand from Morgan’s grasp. “The ambulance is on its way,” he says. “Fifteen minutes.”

Shivering, eyelashes hovering just hardly open Emily is concerned fifteen minutes is a little too long to wait. “Where’s the nearest hospital?” She looks up to Reid, watching and seeing just how removed he is right now. His eyes cast to Hotch but having left them, dissociated someplace else. She wishes to go with him but she needs him here and now with their ugly truth and not the safe place he’s conjured. “Spencer,” she says, brisk, loud. He snaps to attention, flinching. “How far away is the closest hospital?”

Reid parts his lips as he thinks, eyes moving as he thinks. “Ten minutes.” They passed it coming into the county so he’s relying on the relative math of stoplights and traffics lights. He realizes, of course, that what they really are fighting is not someone’s eighty-year-old grandmother in a beaten-down sedan but the pharmacists who are going to have to rush anti-venom to them. Before it kills Hotch. The stats are about 5 to 7,000 to 8,000 -- it’s unlikely the strike will kill but someone has to defy the odds. Pulling his eyes away from Hotch’s painfully drawn rigid body, he acknowledges Hotch has always been one for defying odds.

Emily can feel Hotch’s muscles clenching, jaw tight to keep from making a sound as he writhes on the ground. He’s managed to get his hand back from Morgan and cradles it protectively to his chest. She’s close enough to see the purple of his thumb, the dark deathly bruise swelling. The joint looks awful and she shirks at thought of what damage this is going to do. His hands give him hell as is. Beating Foyet hadn’t come without consequence and the frequent instability and pain they cause him is well hidden but it’s not exactly a secret.

Dave hears Emily’s idea forming, fifteen minutes by an ambulance which is saying they’re on time. Hotch pale, sweat drenching his white-dress shirt, and shaking despite the summer heat weighing the rest of them down. “If Derek drives, you’ll be there in five.” There’s a moment of silence their eyes flickering between Derek and Hotch as what’s said is processed.

“What do you think, Aaron?”

His eyes are off to the side, watching the river rage on below them. Hitched, choked breathes coming from his desperately parted lips. The shock has taken its hold, leaving him distanced, and cold. The fuzzy, lightheaded daze is cut with a sharp sting, a pulse of pain up his arm. His thoughts feebly constructed, only brief moments of clarity. Until he has nothing, just the trembling lack of control over his body.

Derek rises to his feet and it’s settled. In a flurry of movement, Derek is informing, not asking, the operator that they’re going to drive Hotch themselves. Again, Emily pats at Hotch’s cheek growing desperate with his inability to answer her. Derek crouches down beside them, walking Hotch through his plan while Spencer runs to get the SUV and bring it as close as he can. He receives no answer but slowly Hotch’s eyes move to them. To Emily, to Derek.

“Up on three, okay?”

He’s nearly dead weight between them but they stop -- Morgan holding his half of Hotch up while Emily bows under her own share. Hotch just needs a moment, spitting out the bit of stomach acid that crawls up his throat. Shakily he manages to get his feet underneath him.

“Just to the car.”

Emily slides into the front seat, opening her phone to find GPS directions to the hospital. The name of which Reid is shouting out to her. JJ slides into the back seat, allowing Derek to help maneuver Hotch’s head into her lap so she can usher her body to brace the shock of Derek’s driving. They leave Spencer and Dave behind,  Reid watching the ground cautiously in fear that another snake might pop up. Dave shakes his head.

The tires kick up dirt and Hotch grunts as the cab rocks and his hand is jostled painfully between his own chest and JJ’s. “Hey, hey.” He doesn’t even feel himself slipping but he peels his eyes open and looks up at JJ’s concerned face. She’d smacked him, his cheek absently stinging from the impact. At least she looks sorry about it. When Emily reaches back to hit him -- distinctly that kind of hit that is harder than necessary but jarring and seems to force some life into him -- she bites out “stay awake, you bastard”.

The car stops, screeching and jerks, and JJ apologizes quickly, terrified as a pained grunt leaves his mouth. His body tensing and his shaking intensifying as he strains in pain. She looks up from him for only a moment, watching Emily and Derek throw the door open to try and work Hotch out. When she looks back down his eyes are closed. “Aaron!” His breathing is coming too quickly, too shallow.

They’re met at the car by staff. People pulling and JJ lets them take Hotch, doing her best to cup his head so it doesn’t hit the door. Derek dutifully rattles off everything he can think of even more details than they need.

“How long has it been since his bite?”

Derek shrugs shaking his head, he doesn’t know. “Uhm.” There wasn’t that much disorder in face of everything but getting that damn snake away took time and then there’s the time they wasted before calling 911. “Maybe… half an hour. Maybe more but not an hour.” He can’t remember. It feels like only two seconds. Hotch was on the ground and Morgan was running at that snake then --

“You saw the snake?”

Emily nods, “he -- he said it was a rattlesnake. He thought it was. I don’t know, none of us do. He just -- He grew up in Virginia but that doesn’t exactly make him a snake expert, you know?”

Shears tear through his clothing like butter. Buttons are forgotten as his shirt is cut wrist to elbow and without a word, just a wince of sympathy, onward. JJ can’t even flinch in preparation as Hotch’s shirt melts away and he’s exposed to them. Pale, thin chest hitching as he draws in short, shallow pants. The scars of Foyet’s attack pink and raised across his chest. It threatens every preconception any of the three of them have had about him.

There are the nine scares they are expecting but there are just so many more. Derek can recognize far too many. A large jagged cut from shrapnel, running from his sixth rub to under his pants at his hip where it curls nastily into a surgical scar. Some thin and straight, others curved and thick. Too many to count. Scars from chest tubes, slices from Unsubs a little too families with knives, and one he can remember holding together with his own hands.

The doctor turns back to them, “any known medical conditions?” She needs to know the complicated bits as quickly as possible. There’s no way any bastard with this many holes in him has managed to get away free. “Surgeries? Traumas?”

Like a kick to the chest, Derek finds his head spinning and heart-dropping through the floor. “He has a clotting problem because of a severe stabbing a few years ago. He -- He takes blood thinners.” He flinches, genuinely afraid now as several staff members stop. They look at him and then at one another. It just had to be Aaron. No one can sniff out trouble like him.

Again, no words communicated. They aren’t good ones, anyhow. Not the kind to be voiced with family so near but things have just gotten far more complicated. “Strip him,” is the only warning given and nods are exchanged as doctors and nurses move around Hotch.

Emily bites her tongue as they poke roughly at Hotch’s body, palpitating his abdomen and manipulating the fingers on his swollen hand. He gives a grunt of pain, eyes opening for just a moment before sliding shut. The harsh overhead light makes his skin seem nearly translucent, paling him in ways that he needs no help in doing naturally. Someone calls his name, a stethoscope joining the EKG lines being stuck to his bare chest.

“His O2 on room air is 92.”

Hotch’s pants are removed completely removed, even his belt is cut through in a clean swipe still in the belt loops. They avert their eyes until a sheet can come down over his pelvis but they’ve seen one another like this far too often. Naked on stretchers as trauma doctors hover and push and pull until they get a response. They each have someone whose knowledge of their body extends what is normal, the kind of knowledge that knew partners in their lives always find odd but someone has to know these things.

“Get him on the mask. Five liters but don’t let him drop to eighty, the last thing he needs is to tubed.” Flashing a penlight in Hotch’s eyes yields another grunt. He raises himself a  little, going back down as his shoulders are redirected to the gurney. His other hand, trembling and loosely flexed, raises to protect his eyes from the light above him. A doctor pulls his arm back down, pinning him in place as someone else preps to place a subclavian central line. It’s quick work -- sped up by their racing hearts. A few swipes at the skin with a wipe, a visible resistance that hurts and Hotch turns his head from it. Grimacing but no longer fighting just supine and limply allowing his limbs to be further mutilated.

The line is taped into place and names of medicines are called out -- none of which any of them have heard of. The gurney becomes mobile, clicks sounding through the room as they pull the guard rails up and place machines and placed around Hotch’s legs and sides. Emily smirks as she sees his feet hanging off the edge, his ankles at the cut-off. It’s a bitter moment and she’s not even sure it’s worth smiling over, she just can’t help it.

JJ steps up the gurney as they pass, grabbing his hand. “We’ll be right here,” she promises. He just looks at her. Unable to move his fingers, he watches her behind his cracked eyelids. She’s the last thing he sees, three passing roofing panels, JJ keeping pace beside him, and the chilling emptiness of unconsciousness.