#though it's not a scan. but it's less pixelated

[poochytown]

Jim Woodring, Frank's Flower, 2003

[heliosunny]

LUCKY EGG

Yandere!Dr.Ratio x Reader

The egg sat ominously on the table, smooth yet pulsing with an eerie glow. You had won it from a bizarre machine. The moment it hatched, you were expecting... something monstrous, something draconic, anything. But what actually emerged...is a statue.

Or at least, that’s what you thought at first. The figure before you was unnervingly still, clad in intricate blue and black robes with golden embellishments, a stone mask covering his face like some ancient artifact. You blinked. He remained unmoving. The air crackled with an unspoken tension.

“...How did a statue come out of an egg?” you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

A faint chuckle echoed through the room. Slowly, the figure’s fingers lifted to remove the mask, revealing sharp eyes, a smirk playing at his lips.

“Charmed, truly.” His voice was smooth, laced with amusement as he placed the mask aside. “Though, I must admit, I wasn’t expecting my first impression to be likened to a mere sculpture.”

You took a cautious step back. “So... you’re not a statue?”

“Not quite.” He stretched, joints cracking, as if shaking off years of immobility. “I assume you are my first observer. A pleasure.”

His tone was lighthearted, but something about the way his gaze dissected you, scanning every inch of your form, felt calculated—like he was assessing you.

Over the next few days, the man who introduced himself as Dr. Ratio—settled into your space with unsettling ease. He observed, questioned, and tested you in ways that left you both intrigued and wary. Chess was his weapon of choice, each match less about winning and more about how you thought, how you reacted under pressure.

“A move made in haste” he mused one evening, watching as your knight fell to his trap. “Tell me, do you always act on impulse?”

You frowned, realizing too late that your strategy had crumbled. “Maybe I just don’t take chess that seriously.”

“Ah, but you should. Every decision you make, no matter how small, is a reflection of your core nature.” He leaned in slightly, eyes gleaming. “And I am most interested in uncovering yours.”

It wasn’t just chess. He subtly tested you in conversation, in mundane activities, noting every hesitation, every lie, every truth you didn’t mean to reveal. It was a game to him, a puzzle where the final picture was you.

You had assumed Ratio was more of a strategist than a fighter—until you saw him in action.

The moment you both stepped into the dungeon, creatures lunged at you from the darkness. But Ratio didn’t flinch. With a single powerful strike, he crushed an attacking beast beneath his fist, his movements fluid yet devastating.

Intelligence and strength. A terrifying combination.

A hulking monster towered before you, only to be obliterated by his attack—its body dissolving into pixels before it could even land a hit.

“Did you think I was all talk?” Ratio smirked, watching your stunned expression. “Brains and brawn are not mutually exclusive.”

You swallowed hard. It was one thing to know he was calculating. It was another to realize he could just as easily overpower you if he so desired.

Despite his sharp wit and overwhelming power, he seemed to genuinely enjoy your company. On the way back from the dungeon, he spotted something that caught his interest, a detective game challenge set up in the town square. Intrigued, he suggested you both participate.

At first, you assumed he’d solve everything effortlessly, but you soon realized the game was designed to be tricky, requiring not just logic but an understanding of human nature and intuition—something even he struggled with. You noticed a crucial detail he overlooked and gave him a small but significant clue. He paused, considering it, before smirking. "Ah... so that’s how it is. You’re sharper than I thought."

Working together, you cracked the case, winning a special dinner prize. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but as you sat across from him, enjoying the meal you had earned together, you noticed something different in his gaze. Satisfaction. Not just from solving the game, but from being beside you.

Morning light filtered through the curtains of your shared apartment, casting soft shadows across the wooden floor. You stirred awake, blinking against the warm glow. The quiet hum of the city outside signaled the start of another day. As you stretched, the thought of breakfast crossed your mind, and you climbed out of bed to prepare something simple.

The sound of sizzling eggs filled the kitchen when Dr. Ratio emerged, still looking somewhat drowsy, his usually meticulous appearance slightly undone. His eyes flickered toward you, then to the food.

"You're up early" he noted, rubbing the back of his neck before settling into a chair at the small dining table.

"Someone has to make sure you eat properly" you teased, setting a plate in front of him.

He chuckled, shaking his head as he picked up his fork. "I could survive just fine without you, you know."

You raised an eyebrow. "Really? Last time you tried making breakfast, the kitchen nearly caught fire."

He clicked his tongue but didn't argue, instead taking a bite and humming in approval. "Fine, you win this round."

As you both ate, the morning news played in the background. The casual chatter between you ceased when a sudden alert blared through the broadcast. A news anchor appeared, expression grave.

"A dangerous fugitive has escaped custody late last night. Authorities urge citizens to remain indoors and travel cautiously."

You frowned. "That's concerning…"

Dr. Ratio leaned back, his gaze sharpening. "You're not going anywhere alone, then."

You blinked at his assertiveness. "I can take care of myself."

"Mm." He twirled his fork between his fingers. "Humor me."

True to his word, he stuck by your side the entire day, even for trivial errands.

Eventually, the evening news announced that the fugitive had been captured, and life returned to normal.

"Well, that’s over" you sighed, stretching. "You can stop hovering now."

Dr. Ratio smirked but didn’t deny the accusation. "I just got used to keeping an eye on you. Can’t drop habits so easily."

"You form a habit that quick?"

"Yeah, someone just asked to get into a bath with me earlier and now they're questioning me."

"That was a joke!" You blushed

"I take everything coming from your mouth seriously."

"You-"

With things settled, you both decided to head back into a dungeon the next day, expecting the usual trial of combat and strategy. However, when you reached the deepest floor, instead of facing some grotesque beast, you were met with an unexpected sight.

A massive stone structure stood at the center of the chamber, engraved with intricate carvings and glowing sigils. A podium rested at its base, a single parchment laid upon it. Dr. Ratio approached first, picking up the paper and scanning its contents.

His lips curled into a grin. "A quiz? Now this is interesting."

"A quiz?" You peered over his shoulder. "That’s… new."

"Indeed," he mused. "Seems like the dungeon master was feeling creative."

The parchment detailed a series of puzzles, some mathematical, others riddles, and a few logic-based challenges. At the bottom, it read:

"Only those of sharp wit may claim the treasure beyond."

Dr. Ratio’s confidence was palpable. He rolled his shoulders before settling in, his keen eyes dancing over the first question.

"Alright, let’s get to work."

The first riddle was deceptively simple:

"I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?"

You hummed in thought before answering, "An echo."

Dr. Ratio snapped his fingers. "Correct."

The next question involved a series of logical deductions, tracing paths from one point to another. He breezed through it effortlessly, his finger gliding along the diagram as he mapped out the solution in mere seconds.

"Impressive" you admitted.

He smirked, not looking up. "Naturally."

As the quiz progressed, the difficulty increased. One puzzle had numbers arranged in a cryptic pattern, another required translating an ancient dialect. There was even a section that tested memory recall, flashing sequences that had to be repeated perfectly.

One question in particular stumped you:

"There are three doors. Behind one is a deadly trap, the second holds a monster, and the third leads to safety. You can ask one yes-or-no question to a guard who always tells the truth or a guard who always lies, but you don’t know which one you're speaking to. What do you ask?"

You hesitated, but Dr. Ratio simply exhaled, his expression unreadable. "Simple. You ask either of them, ‘If I were to ask the other guard which door leads to safety, what would they say?’ Then, you pick the opposite door."

You blinked, piecing it together. "Oh. That’s… clever."

He tilted his head toward you. "Wouldn’t have expected anything less from me, would you?"

The final test required a combined effort. It displayed an intricate cipher, shifting symbols that changed every few seconds. You managed to catch the repeating patterns, pointing them out, while Dr. Ratio swiftly deciphered the hidden meaning.

When the last answer was submitted, the stone structure rumbled, and the sigils glowed brightly before fading away. A hidden compartment opened, revealing a well-preserved chest.

Dr. Ratio glanced at you. "Shall we?"

You nodded, and together, you pried it open. Inside, various treasures gleamed, but what caught your eye was a neatly wrapped package. Unfolding it, you revealed an ornate board game—engraved with intricate designs and shimmering pieces, it looked centuries old yet perfectly preserved.

"A rare strategy game" Dr. Ratio mused, turning one of the pieces between his fingers. "Now this is a worthy reward."

You smiled. "Guess you’ll have to teach me how to play."

He let out a soft chuckle, a glint of something unreadable in his eyes. "Oh, I intend to. And I won't go easy on you."

You had no doubt about that.

Dr. Ratio had barely stirred when you left the apartment that morning. He was still recovering from the last dungeon run, a particularly grueling battle that had left both of you drained. You figured he could use the extra rest, so you slipped out quietly, not wanting to disturb him.

But by the time he woke up, something felt... off.

He reached for his communicator, half-expecting a message from you, but there was nothing. No update, no location ping, no casual remark about what you were up to.

Frowning, he stretched, rubbing the back of his neck as he got out of bed. Maybe you had just gone to the market? Or taken a walk? But something gnawed at him—an irrational unease he couldn’t shake. He reached out again, sending a message this time.

No response.

His brows furrowed. He sent another. Then another.

Still nothing.

His fingers clenched around the device as he tapped into the dungeon trackers, scanning for recent activity. His heart nearly stopped when he saw it—your name, registered in a dungeon… alone.

And you hadn’t come out.

Without a second thought, he grabbed his coat and bolted out the door.

The entrance of the dungeon pulsed with an eerie glow. The system confirmed that you were still inside. His jaw tightened as he stepped forward, conjuring his spellbook in one hand while flexing his other. There was no time to hesitate.

The moment he crossed the threshold, enemies lunged at him. He struck hard and fast—raw power and refined technique in perfect balance. A crushing blow to one, a well-placed incantation to another. His eyes were sharp, his mind sharper, every step calculated.

He moved like a storm, tearing through the opposition with a mix of brute strength and precise strategy. His body ached from the previous battle, but he didn’t care. His only thought was you.

Then, he found you.

Trapped behind a collapsing barrier, you looked up at him, relief flooding your eyes. “Dr. Ratio—”

The moment he saw you—alive, safe, his breath hitched, but his face remained composed. He reached out, fingers barely brushing the edge of the barrier before it sparked violently. He clicked his tongue, analyzing it in an instant.

“You’re lucky I’m a genius” he muttered, his voice tinged with something almost… desperate. “Stay back.”

With a swift motion, he activated the spellbook, feeding calculations into the structure. His eyes darted over its runes, deciphering, manipulating, deconstructing. He worked fast—faster than he ever had.

A crack formed. Then another.

And then the whole thing shattered.

You barely had time to react before he pulled you forward, crushing you against him. His grip was firm, almost bruising, like he was making sure you were real.

“You...” he exhaled, his voice low, tight with emotion, “are never going into a dungeon without me again.”

You blinked, startled. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I don’t care.” His hold tightened, his forehead resting against yours for a fleeting second before he pulled back. “It won’t happen again.”

There was no room for argument. And as he led you out, one arm wrapped around you protectively—you realized he wasn’t just saying that as a precaution. He meant it as a vow.

[camoftarakas]

This morning i reconstructed the Fight UI from Undertale, target_0, in its original form. I am pretty sure it got stretched in photoshop 3 or 4 times. Here's the image in the game:

here we see some artifacting from having a black background. And, yeah, the game asset is not pixel-perfect, it has quite evidently been stretched through a traditional image-scaling filter.

The game asset is 562x128. the first step in reconstructing it is finding the scale that the original pixels are now represented in. there's a pattern in which the narrowest "unit" is about 5.5 pixels wide (interpreting the blur) and we can confirm because the wider bars are about 11~11.5 pixels wide. the "units" are also about 2-and-some-change pixels tall. if you delete all the blurred rows and collumns, you can stack together this:

this has "units" of 4 Perfect pixels wide and 1 Perfect pixel tall. so you can cleanly scale it 25% horizontally to a pixel-perfect representation with all the correct visual information of target_0.

HOWEVER this looks off still. I think anyone who's looked closely at target_0 knows that it's asymmetrical, but you might not have counted the pattern of how. the "unit" width we established earlier has an incredibly consistent pattern scanning left-to-right across target_0. it goes 2:2:1, and repeats. if you smash that ration to 1:1:1, target_0 finally becomes symmetrical, which makes sense because a shape like this would be made with a mirrored drawing or flip tool.

at this point the sprite would be 58x49 pixels. which is appalling, obviously. but we know from the dark artifact from the asset that this sprite had a black background on all sides, so we should try to add that. The asset has about 6.5 blank rows on the bottom of the image, 7 blank rows on the top, and about 8 pixels on either side. based on the "units" from earlier we estimate that's 3 pixels on top, 3 on bottom, 1-2 on either side, which we know gets condensed to just 1 due to our 2:2:1 pattern, which is staying consistent here as well.

so, here we are. the original pixel art behind target_0.

the "first" iteration, from what can be reconstructed, was 60 pixels wide, 55 pixels tall. That image size.... would make sense to some people, i guess. it was then stretched 166.66..%, or 5/3rds, horizontally to 100x55. this is an image size that makes more sense to the layperson but the pixel artists are still cringing. Alternatively this image was originally 60x50 and then 100x50 and 5 pixels of space were added later, but 100 pixels wide is such a perfect, obvious number that i'm very happy with this reconstruction.

after this, the image must've been stretched one more time. then, the black background was masked out, and it was scaled to its final size of 562x128. which is once again a painful size because 562 is double a prime number. also, the image was re-centered at this point on the middle line, because the 5/3rds scaling made the right-edge border double the thickness of the left. about 8 pixels on either side? that's 1.5 of our units, 5.5px

here's my re-creation of that. it's familiar, but has a few random differences. mine is WAY blurrier since i have no clue what intermediate scale Toby used or what the scaling algorithm was, but i think i could say "This is target_0" and get away with it.

This asset in undertale was always particularly fascinating to me. it's bizarre. it's surreal and unnerving. everything except the center line is totally extraneous - no secrets to be found, no game mechanic to be gleaned. and that's kinda perfect? even though it's super scuffed. but tracing the path of its creation myself, i definitely see the original intent. looking at the "unstretched" sprite i reconstructed, i totally get that as like, a real UI element. it looks good. it pulls the eye towards the center, and also looks significantly less like an eye.

so yeah, now i know exactly how this personally baffling UI element came to be. Pretty neat, i think!

[zahri-melitor]

Thinking about my views on canonicity again, and hmm. It's not that I want everything I interact with to be canon-thumpingly rigid, even though I guess I give that impression on occasion. Besides, characterisation in comics is a sliding spectrum and can vary within a range from writer to writer.

I think my main views on characterisation and storytelling is that I want to recognise the characters and scenario. I should be able to look from the canon material to fan creations and be able to see the connection. If I can't recognise the characters that I love, why am I bothering?

It's what occasionally leads to my comments about some comics writers (that they've been imagining this story and this character in their head for so long that what they're writing does not contain the connective tissue getting the story and characterisation from A to B). Sometimes you have to take a few steps back and show your work, if you want people to be able to follow your story.

I prefer when reading to engage with stories written by people who have in fact consumed parts of the canon, because they know the material they're working with, and they're simply less likely to be iterating the same story over and over. I'd rather have a photo someone took themselves, from a bridge, that's a bit blurry or with weird composition, than a duplicate of a famous picture that has been downloaded and saved in a compressed file format and printed out and a photo of that printout taken sitting on a bedspread and then scanned back in and sent to me by email at a too small file size so that it's now blurry, pixellated and distorted. Particularly when it's in reaction to or a reinterpretation of an actual canon event. Because every layer of 'I based this on someone else's writing' that you get away from having looked at it personally and in context, the less I feel the writer has to say on the original topic and the more it is a reaction to the subgenre of fanworks in itself.

And that can be interesting! But it's often the difference between "I have read 16 different recorded variations on the fairy tale of Rapunzel collected over time" and "I have read 16 different novelised versions of the Disney movie Tangled written for toddler bedtime".

(I have in fact read 16 different variations of Tangled stories at toddler bedtime and sometimes I would like to read a variant from a completely different tradition for some variety. And depth)

Or let's take Frozen. It's an adaption of The Snow Queen. But someone who is looking for a story about the Snow Queen is probably not that interested in a story based around Olaf, the talking snowman. And if what you're doing is hanging out making Olaf retell the plot of other Disney movies in charades, then that's both valid fan material and not really related to the Snow Queen except in the most tangential manner, even if all your friends also like doing that.

You don't have to know everything. Goodness knows I screw up and miss things and forget things as well, and have times when I set things very specifically in a particular run ignoring earlier or later material. But I find that stories are more interesting and have more to say on the topic when the writer has a broad and/or deep understanding of the subject, rather than a casual one.

[iamacebookworm]

Part 2: Interactive Ficlets by AceBookworm 😁

Won by 35%: Wilson is triggered into his own bi awakening.

Let's do it!

Wilson blinks stupidly several times, then, despite not usually being the snatching type, he grabs House's phone violently out of his hand and brings it closer, staring at it as if looking at it harder will make it change. He stares until the pixels begin to dance in front of his very eyes, seeming to mock him with their movement. Meanwhile, House himself is scanning Wilson with something that might be concern, "errrr…if you look any harder, your eyes will go square ya know," House says unsurely. "I'd say 'take a picture, it'll last longer', but that is a picture, soooooo."

"I just can't believe it!" Wilson says, dumbly. He knows he sounds like he's an idiot, but he can't seem to help it. His brain seems to literally be malfunctioning.

"And just what is so unbelievable?" House has an eyebrow cocked, looking annoyed. Wilson's mouth opens and shuts but he just can't formulate an answer. His mind is too busy swirling. Standing up, he mumbles an apology to House, passes him his phone back, and goes straight home. He finds himself sinking onto the sofa and just staring at the wall.

Wilson has tried so hard to be…conventional. As a kid, he worked extremely hard to be a dutiful son because nothing he did was ever good enough; nothing ever sparked either praise or pride in his parents. He was raised in a extremely strict Orthodox Jewish household. Rigid heteronormativity was drilled into his skull every day since infancy. His entire family, devout followers of Halacha, emphasized the sanctity of traditional marriage as outlined in the Torah—men with women, procreation as a divine command, and any deviation from that is a grave sin against God. Even though Wilson doesn't see himself as a practicing Jew these days, those ingrained beliefs still play on his mind. Even detached from Judaism, from day one, Wilson was still fed a steady diet of "real men" narratives. 'Real men' are masculine, strong providers with wives and 2.5 kids in a white-picket-fence suburb. A 'real man' needs a high-class career, not just any job. Wilson was taught that he had to be a doctor or a lawyer or an orthodontist or a pilot. He had to have a wife. Once he had a high-class job and a wife, he had to have kids, once he had kids, he had to have a house, (not an apartment or something. Nothing less then a three bedroom house is acceptable). Having just a few of these things is also unacceptable; it has to be all of them. Wilson remembers vividly hearing stories of his older male cousin, who was doing everything right; he was a chemical engineer, he had a big house, and he had a pretty new wife. Wilson's father would compare him to this cousin, 'why can't you be more like -' was a sentence Wilson heard often. Then, said cousin and his 'pretty new wife' were having trouble getting pregnant and it turned out the wife had ovarian cysts and needed a hysterectomy. Immediately, that poor cousin and his wife were utterly iced out of the whole family for being unable to produce 'real' children (as opposed to fake ones?). In summary, Wilson grew up knowing that being anything less then 'perfect' (according to his parents view) would get him regretted, not only by his entire family, but by the entire world, and, as House often points out, Wilson is an extreme people pleaser. Wilson has always believed that he had to be conventional to be accepted, and being accepted is absolute. Wilson did everything expected of him; he married very young to his first wife Samantha and went to medical school, both of which greatly pleased his parents. A major hit came when his brother Danny ran away whilst Wilson was in his last year of medical school; his entire family blamed him for this and made him for Danny running off, and made Wilson very aware that he was on extremely thin ice. Meanwhile, things with Samantha were tense from day now, but now they only getting worse. Wilson graduated medical school at twenty five, and, within a week or two, his marriage, which was slowly unwinding like a ball of string from day one - came apart completely. They began divorce proceedings. Upon hearing this, Wilson's entire family cut him off completely. That same week, Wilson was invited to his first medical convention in New Orleans. There was a man there, repeatedly played "Leave A Tender Moment Alone" by Billy Joel on the jukebox in the bar. Danny, his divorce, his entire family icing him out, and his life being nothing like it 'should' be combined in a level of frustration so high that Wilson threw a bottle from the bar - which broke an antique mirror. This crash lead to a bar fight (that Wilson stayed out of). All the same, he was jailed and then bailed out by a complete stranger.

Doctor Gregory House.

Doctor Gregory House was like the walking embodiment of everything James Wilson was taught not to be. He was also 25 years old, but had no spouse, or any interest in having one, and had already been practicing medicine for several years when they met. House was everything unconventional wrapped into one person; he was one of those super-brained genius kids that people like Wilson only usually read about; he was in college by 14 and was graduated medical school by 18. He had a proven (and certified) IQ of 170 and was a mastery of any skill he touched. He could play any instrument, learn any language, and memorise any information with no visible effort. He broke every rule and fought against every stereotype. Before he met House, when Wilson imagined someone with an IQ of 170, he imagined a serious, studious person, dedicated to their craft. House was a messy, loud, beer drinking, thrill seeking maniac. He was the least studious, least serious, least dedicated person Wilson had ever met. House didn't give a shit about having a family or living anywhere but his cosy 221B Baker Street flat. He lived totally by his own agenda. He didn't give a fuck about anything or anybody else. He just did his own thing - and it both baffled and amazed Wilson. Still does, even 20 years later. They're both 45 years old now, and House still doesn't give a shit about being conventional, and that still perplexes Wilson. How can he just….not care?!

Wilson has spent his whole life bending over backward to fit the mould set out by his parents, despite them never speaking to him again, not after his first divorce, so he literally hasn't spoken to a single member of his family in 20 years. And yet - he's still ruled by them, and he knows it. He spends every second of his life supressing any flicker of anything that might ripple his carefully curated life. The fact that he has more fun with House then he does with anybody else? Repressed. The fact that when Wilson is with any of his multiple partners, including all three of his ex wives, he always feels….displaced? He feels uneasy. He feels wrong. But with House? Everything always feels right. Placed. Perfect. House, ironically, is the only place that has ever felt like 'home' to Wilson.

But feeling at 'home' anywhere but a 'traditional' home is 'not normal' and nothing abnormal is acceptable. That includes being any form of LGBT, naturally. Not that….Wilson would never. Could never. Um…

Oh, God.

[wannaeatramyeon]

Gun Park x Reader: this is our place (we make the rules)

Chapter 10 - Probably should read ch1 first

Gun has a new neighbour. Index: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Epilogue

Gun doesn’t think of them as love letters.

Everything that he has written or typed, more a statement of fact rather than him dwelling too much on the words. 

He tells you he thinks about you because he does.

He tells you he misses you because he does.

He tells you you have a hold on him because you do.

Gun’s train of thought, as he admits that he misses you - a startling vulnerability that he has never exposed or felt before, does not follow his usual logic. 

He thinks having it spoken, not written, makes it less of a weakness. Simply because it’s less tangible. Invisible.

A confession made all the more intimate spoken in the dead of night. Travelling hundreds of miles, across seas and valleys and fields, to reach your ears.

Which makes everything he does, all the more romantic. Because Gun Park does it without thinking, without logic. 

He just is. Innately so.

An unforeseen characteristic that only you could tease out.

.

.

You read and re-read the messages until you could recite them, imagine his fingers gliding over the screen when he has something to tell you.

Scan over the images, inspecting each and every pixel. A glimpse into this side of his life that you’re not privy to but he is slowly inviting you in. 

Listen to the voice message so much that you think you would be able to pick out his sigh like you can his handwriting; the timbre and inflection and articulation as unique as a fingerprint.

.

.

The day of Gun’s return draws nearer.

You find yourself staying at his place later and later. Eventually sleeping over every night, curled up on the sofa like a cat. 

In case you hear the click of the front door, the footsteps, that sigh. 

Every small noise makes you jump.

.

.

8:37pm

They finally concluded all business.  Everything went to plan, everything running to schedule.

Gun and Goo didn’t even make it back to the hotel for a night of rest.

Instead, they climb into the car, racing to Seoul and chasing the sun across the sky as darkness and starlight followed. Roads turned from dusty tracks into tarmacked lanes and then super highways.

Your texts start to come through at once.

“Is that Y/N?” the curious blonde tries to peer over.

“Focus on the road.” 

Gun’s voice comes out amused without meaning to. He couldn’t hide the smile on his face as he scrolls through your messages.

.

.

.

.

Even though he mentioned he would not be able to contact you, your fingers still twitch when anything, no matter how minute, happens or a random thought pops into your head - Gun being the first person you want to tell.

You draw back at first, not wanting to bombard him with messages when he is unable to receive them.

In the end, you give in.

Besides, you reason, it's nice to know when someone is thinking about you.

.

.

.

.

10:48pm

Goo feels the eyes burning into the side of his head. Had felt it for probably a good minute how. It's unnerving.

"Can't you drive any faster?" Gun growls.

“What you in such a rush for?"

“...”

“I’m not going to drive any faster with you glaring at me, you bastard!”

“...”

“Stop looking at me!”

"..."

Ugh. Goo presses down on the accelerator.

The speed increases from 120kmh to 130, ticking up to 140... 150... 160 and higher still.

"You're paying for any speeding fines!"

.

.

.

.

Gun never thought he would fall for someone.

And never that the way to his heart is through his stomach.

Because even with the push and pull of your blossoming relationship, that was how it all started wasn’t it?

���

He realised fully how he felt about you, the depths of his affection, with the first picture he sent, when he said that your food tastes better.

It’s the truth.

Goo had declared his meal the most delicious thing he has ever had in his mouth with a suggestive waggle of the brows.

To Gun it was bland and tasteless. Goo, in disbelief, stole a bite from his plate then looked at him like there was something severely wrong with him.

Maybe there is.



Each time he read a message from you, it was a dopamine hit straight to his brain and his heart.

Something to look forward to after a long day.

Gun doesn’t remember ever feeling so tired with work, especially not when there is the thrill of a fight waiting just around a corner.

Now all his thoughts are invaded by you.

He lies in bed awake at night wondering what you are doing.

.

.

.

.

12:35am

"I've been driving non stop for 4 hours man!"

"..."

"Either we pull in at the rest stop or I piss on you. You choose."

Gun doesn't want to test him. Usually one to be so meticulous about his car but the blonde menace might just really do it. The possibility is, worryingly, not at zero.

"Just hurry the fuck up."



Gun can barely believe it. Usually one to bide his time and wait, to lament the end of fights and violence; now he's rushing home to see you.

.

.

.

.

The business trip was nothing short of a complete success.

They’ve expanded HNH’s influence, secured a promising business partner and pocketed themselves a pretty penny.

Goo had even made himself a secret friend. He thought for sure he was going to have to fight Gun for them, the person fitting all their criteria:

Excellent fighter with ample raw talent, patient and shrewd, the fun side of mentally unwell.

"Wanna flip for them?" Goo nudged his partner.

"You can have them."

.

.

.

.

1:01am

There's a convenience store selling bouquets when they stop.

As Gun waits for Goo, he wonders if this will be too much.

.

.

1:15am

"Huh. Gun Park pulling out all the stops? I never thought I'd see the day."

Goo comments on the bouquet as soon as he sees it. Gun ignores him, studying the flowers in his hands. He nearly went for red roses until he saw the pink camellias.

It's the same shade as your lips.

.

.

2:18am

Goo pulls up with a screech outside the building, streets empty and only the sound of his engine purring filling the early morning air.

"Don't say I never do anything for you, you bastard."

"...Thanks."

.

.

2:24am

Gun spots your shoes in the hallway.

Had wanted to bang on your door anyway despite the early hours. Held back just enough to collect his thoughts. This just makes it easier.

He takes his own shoes off and softly lowers his duffle bag, holds the flowers in his hand feeling like a fool with their first crush.

Which is true, he supposes.

The apartment smells like you, your scent lingering in the air. Sweet and fragrant.

With quiet, measured steps, he strides through his home. Something in him knows where you are. Senses your presence like it calls out to him.

Gun sees you fast asleep on the sofa. Wrapped in a blanket and remote control held loosely. In the background, the TV hums, low and almost muted. Casting everything in artificial light.

He plucks the remote from your hand, rests it and the camellias on the floor. 

You stir at the disturbance.

“Gun?” you murmur, sitting up, trying to see if it really is him.

“I’m back.” He tucks your hair behind your ear with a gentle hand.

You blink the sleep out of your eyes until they adjust and focus. 

Gun Park. 

That face and company you have so dearly missed.

“Hi,” you whisper, shy and face blooming under the intensity of his gaze. 

“Hi.” 

The moment is desperately sentimental and soft and everything that Gun isn’t, but completely is with you. 

"These are for you," and he nods at the bouquet on the floor and you burn crimson. 

Pink camellias. Longing. You wonder if Gun even realised. But even if he didn't... he got flowers. For you. You don't know what to do with how full your heart is.

"T-thank you."

Gun gives you a small smile, the one that makes his eyes crinkle and light up, and you smile back. That smile he has missed more than he thought he was capable of.

His eyes drop and follow the curve of your lips, the slant of your mouth.

He can’t resist. 

Gun curls his hand under your chin, running his thumb along your bottom lip, feeling your small intake of breath as you gasp.  He has never wanted anyone, anything more.

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper as Gun leans his forehead against yours.

“Me too.” 

You glance up from his lips to find his black eyes staring back. 

What should have been intimidating from the start, yet you never thought it was. How can you ever find them intimidating when he looks at you like you’re everything.

Gun tilts forward, just slightly. 

Enough to slot your mouths together. A tender caress of the lips. 

Tentative, like you’re fragile and could break any second. Like this is fragile and could break any second.

This will never do, you think.

So you kiss back with all the energy you have, throwing your heart into it, desperate and a little messy-

Until Gun matches you beat for beat. Smiling and humming against your lips.

Until he’s the one taking charge. Kissing you deep and passionate as you hit the back of the sofa, arms wrapping around you. Rough and a different type of desperate, teeth nipping at your lips.

Gun wants you and he wants this and-

He pulls back, leaving you chasing and whining. 

He’s got so much on this, so much to lose. He’s never been in this position before.  Never wanted something so at odds with everything he has ever known. 

Never done this before, feeling a fear that he's not sure he likes.

His gaze pierces into your soul.

“I need this to be real.” 

Is that all? 

And you tell him,

"It is. This was real from the very beginning."

Your pour everything into the next kiss and Gun has no choice but to believe you.

[sroloc--elbisivni]

a Red-Tailed Hawk theory of culture

These photographs are courtesy of this todaysbird post; that post identifies its source as the Macaulay Library but that page won't load for me so I can't confirm. They're here to help me illustrate my point. All of these are examples of real red-tailed hawks.

Speaking of illustrating, this is a screenshot of a duckduckgo search I did two minutes ago for 'red tailed hawk illustration.' You'll notice that most of them follow the same coloration trend, with less variety than the pictures above. In fairness I will note that looking for 'field guide red tailed hawk' promptly yielded a scan from the sibley guide to birds, which represents six varieties in coloration. The information isn't hidden; I'm not suggesting conspiracy. It just struck me as interesting to see the first series of photos when most of the pictures I've seen, and the ones most easily accessible, had a broad and consistent agreement that This Is What A Red-Tailed Hawk Looks Like. Real red-tailed hawks can look any number of ways, but the collective idea of what a red-tailed hawk looks like is fairly set.

So. Metaphor established. Let's talk culture.

I think modern culture tends to embrace the idea that the best sign of authenticity is uniformity. We want a series of markers that can be run against a checklist to confirm yes, this displays the correct signifiers. Yes, this matches our expectations. We know it's a real xyz because it does this-and-such. I don't know what this could be attributed to, though I'm sure you could find any number of things to blame it on. The scientific method requiring repeatable results to prove something. Factory mass-production and the notion of 'the Real McCoy,' the best version of something that works better than the knockoffs. Art authentication where there are often steps required to prove yes this is a real da Vinci. Proliferation of branding and trademark and copyright. The 'No True Scotsman' fallacy, and corollary of 'you're not a real fan if you don't do this.'

The thing is, authenticity in culture doesn't work like that.

There are as many ways to participate in a tradition as there are people who participate it. Got any holidays that your family celebrates in a particular way or with a certain thing, even though the holiday is also observed by a broader group of people? Got any regional traditions that are different if you go to the next town or next neighborhood over? There's no singular way to be involved in a culture. Any culture, I would argue. Even in cultural groups that value conformity, or have a single central authority dictating which things are correct, there are going to be people who approach their position in different ways.

Variety in expression is not a sign of cultural weakness. I would argue, in fact, that it's a sign of strength.

We have a great deal of data from the field of biology to demonstrate the limits of singularity. Consider the campaign the WWF ran back in 2008 that's had followup art projects since, where pictures of endangered animals are made using only one pixel per living member of that species to demonstrate how much harder it is to see that species the less data you have to work with. Consider cheetahs, which are all extremely similar in coloration because the species is suffering from genetic bottleneck. Consider the instability of monocultures, especially clonal monocultures, where entire populations can be killed with the same disease or fungus because they share vulnerabilities.

Moving back to cultural considerations: the singular of culture is too often reduced to 'stereotype.'

Maybe what the tendency to boil things down can be attributed to is simple human desire for pattern recognition. We like knowing what things look like. We like having examples to point to and emulate. There's a pleasure in playing to type, in assuming a role, in fitting oneself to a form. Nuance and variations are hard to remember, and often hard to observe in the first place. There is a very real satisfaction in concrete knowledge.

A culture adhering to a singular presentation, however, is often a culture under threat.

In the interest of not being reductive, I'm going to only offer a single example here, from a situation I'm familiar with: late 20th century efforts to revive Breton, a regional minoritized language in France. After the language underwent a period of (often enforced) decline throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there were efforts to institute public education in Breton for children and adults, encouraging those who did not already speak the language to learn it, thereby avoiding widespread linguistic dormancy. Mari C. Jones wrote an article in 1998 called 'Death of a Language, Birth of an Identity' that called attention to a difference in traditionally Breton-speaking communities vs. people learning it to participate in cultural revival. She pointed out that cultural revivalists were interested in identifying themselves specifically as Breton, forming an association between themselves and their region as a whole. The traditional speakers, however, were far more likely to identify with their local parish, or their larger diocese, with only a faint connection to the idea of being 'Breton' as an identity. The movement that understood their culture as being under threat was the one focused on constructing a stable, singular, pan-Breton identity.

Variation and internal diversity is the sign of an active and self-sustaining cultural community that has the energy to go a lot of different directions at once.

I suppose the overall point I'm driving at is that the more people there are doing something, the more ways that something should be done, and this isn't a sign that something's gone wrong. One realization I came to after thinking about this is that queer microlabels--which I, personally, am rarely interested in engaging with--are a sign of a healthy and thriving culture. Having the time and energy and space to argue about things like this, rather than needing to appeal to a greatest common denominator of your peers in order to get time and energy and space, is a good sign. Growth is the enemy of conformity. An authentic culture is an adaptive one.

Fundamentally, culture is what people do together, and people are always going to do something different eventually. Illustrations are meant to show reality, not dictate it. There's a lot of ways to look like a red-tailed hawk and there are red-tailed hawks out there proving it every day.

[zimithrus]

Valenwind and 15!

Mini fic ship list

15. Things you said with too many miles between us

Ooohohoo Valenwind, okay okay *pops knuckles* let's see what the ole brain comes up with! 😉

"Nah, not that one, the one- the one behind that other one. No, no, not that one either, just- to yer left, my left, shit."

Vincent's hand hovers in the air as he glances behind him, to the chipped voice coming through the laptop speakers. Wine-dark eyes fix to the tiny square on the screen that shows the rough, stubbled face of Cid trying to direct him to the chamomile tea, buried in the cupboards with all the other teas, of course.

"Is it even in this cupboard?" Vincent's gravelly voice asks, clear on his end, but most assuredly pixelated through the cheap speakers.

"It's in there, it's the green box behind the two yellow boxes on my left."

Eyes back to the cupboard, Vincent scans, hand precariously shifting the tiny boxes of teabags around to search. But lo and behold, there sits the green box of camomile tea exactly where Cid said. Albeit not without a bit of confusion.

"How long do I cook it for again?" Vincent asks as a slender hand reaches in, procuring a bag from the box.

"Boil, not cook." Cid corrects with a gruff huff.

"Boil, then."

"5 minutes." Cid says, Vincent glancing at the little screen to see him hold up five gloved fingers. "You could do 3 for a quicker fix but it's not gonna taste as good."

"I see. When do I add the milk and honey again?"

"After it's done steepin'. Gah, Vince you act like this is the first time ya've ever made tea in yer life."

"It's been a while. Normally... you're the one who makes it." Vincent's voice falls just of so slightly flat as he clicks on the stove to boil the water.

Cid sighs, rough yet gentle at the same time. Yes, he's always making the tea when he can. He likes making it. Likes seeing Vincent's stoic face light up (barely at all, but that's more than enough for him) when he takes the first sip. It's something that takes his mind off the stress, off the constant itch for nicotine, off of a lot of the bad shit he doesn't like to ruminate on.

This is the first time in a long time Cid hasn't been there to make Vincent's nightly tea. The shift in routine is strange, off, like the sky and the earth had switched places.

"I'd prefer it if it was you making the tea tonight." Vincent honestly says, watching the water on the stove sit. "The kitchen... it's cold."

"I know..." Cid sighs, much less rough, a lot more soft. "It's cold at HQ too." Before he has a chance to let his walls fall completely, he quickly sniffs and crooks his mouth into a snarky smirk. "But someone's gotta boss these cockamamie brats around, an' we all know I'm the best at it!"

The faintest of grins pulls at Vincent's lips. "That you are." He seconds just as the water rolls to a boil. "The new pilots won't yell at themselves, after all." Kills the heat. Pours it into his usual mug.

"Exactly. Don't forget to add the honey and then the milk."

"Right-"

"-The cold of the milk makes it harder for the honey to dissolve." "The cold of the milk makes it harder for the honey to dissolve."

They both speak at the same time, ears buzzing from the similar pitch. At that, Cid guffaws, wipes under his nose with his index finger. "Guess you remember how I do things after all."

"A bit." Vincent dunks the tea bag into the mug, steeping the drink. "Though, I await the night you're back home and brew up a mug for the both of us."

"That so?" Cid fights the blush trying to form on his cheeks.

Vincent's dark eyes catch to the screen his partner sits on the other side of with a deep, yet genuine smile. "It always tastes better when I take the first sip from your mug."

A little ritual of there's. Cid would always say 'Now that's a fine mug a' tea right there, give it a taste, Vince'. Vincent would always take that small sip, rich and warm with the sweetest flavor. It was always one of his favorite parts of the night. Cid would beam proud every time he'd take that first sip and smile.

"Well then, I'll just have ta' yell extra loud at these punks so they get their asses in gear quicker!" Cid laughs, belly-deep.

"Don't traumatize them." Vincent's jokes always come out flat and monotonous-

More laughter from Cid.

-But his partner always knows when he's joking. Always knows just how he feels even when his face and his words don't match.

"No promises, Vince. Now drink that tea before it gets cold, you know how I feel about lettin' a good tea go cold."

"Yes, yes." Vincent smirks.

Thank you so much for the ask!! I had a lot of fun with this one!! 🌟💚 I hope you liked it!!

[vintageslideshow]

dammit, look what fell into my cart today

It happened again: today's thrifted slide/neg/print scanner is a Kodak P461. With the Kodak name on it, you would expect high quality.

But no, not quite, it was made by Pandigital in 2010, and they produced many fine products in the "best try" category. (Eight years later I still can't find my Pandigital e-reader that uses Android 3.) But with a $6 pricetag I can't complain about whatever I get. So this beast can scan prints up to 4x6 at 300dpi or 600dpi and slides at 1200dpi. The only things missing from this box are the manual (this is what the Internet is for) and half of the included MicroSD card, plus they pried the SD card adaptor open. Uh, okay, that's some pent-up aggressions there, so I'll just use one of my stray SD cards, thank you. Also included for some reason was a Targus SD card reader, so maybe that's just a swap or peace offering for the destroyed storage. Happily included are the calibration sheet, the slide and film adaptors, and the three cleaner accessories, along with the power cord and USB cable -- this scans to the SD card and runs on four AA batteries, but can be plugged into the wall and connected to the computer to either use the card as a memory device in My Computer or (with Kodak's drivers, which were on the destroyed card) saved directly to the computer. Another one of those "no computer needed, just give me a photo and I'll scan it to the card" doohickies. The difference between this Kodak (and last time's VuPoint) and most other standalones is this thing actually does scan rather than just take a photo. So you'd think the pictures would come out better?

Using the same slides for demo as I have used in the past...

Same issue -- despite scanning at 1200dpi they come out a bit jaggy despite the original being an analog film photo. Okay, so now let's try the print from a previous test also:

I will grant them credit that the sensor calibrator sheet works. I will also tell you that no matter how many times and ways I have cleaned it (by the instructions: use the cleaner tool; by geek standards: use canned air) there's still dust on the result that isn't on the print, just a lot less streaking than in the previous three runs through; the right photo is a zoom so you can see the dust more clearly.

But like the VuPoint, it automatically senses the edges incorrectly. Side-by-side are the result of scanning the last Hippies slide and what the thing really looks like according to my Epson scanner:

The purpose of the purple across the bottom is padding I put so the two images would be the same length and centering... thus you note that the top is the top, the right side is the right side, the left side got cropped by about 40 pixels, and the bottom was cropped by 117 pixels. I have no complaints about the color this time, though. The grain, yes, and the fact that it cropped the tail for no reason, but not the Kodak's slightly 'cooler' take and better balance that reduced the sunny golden tone and clarified the people in blue in the background to make the photo more aesthetic.

So I rate this one a bit higher than the last one, but still a quick and dirty amateur solution rather than anything you should rely on.

[roxwritings]

Sonata of the Hollows - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – A Skyless Sun

I stared at the screens, overwhelmed by the towering walls of data displayed before me. Most of the information was a blur of numbers and terms I barely understood; the drop rates were the only figures that made sense to me, thanks to the lessons Kirito had once given me.

Turning away from the dizzying arrays, my eyes caught a different screen—one that listed names. These weren’t the names of places or items. They were names of players, a roster that felt both familiar and haunting. Among them were friends I knew well, comrades who journeyed with me, and even names of those who had passed on—players whose journeys had met untimely ends within this virtual world. Each name was a reminder of the stories and lives intertwined with mine through the pixels and code of this expansive digital universe. 

As I scanned the sea of names, a wave of nostalgia and sorrow washed over me. Familiar names popped out from the list: my old guild members—Jerric, Guile, Marcei; and next were my friends, Argo, Sinon, Silica, among others. Each name evoked a memory, a story, a shared moment within these virtual walls.

However, two names pierced through the familiarity with a stark reminder of loss and what might have been. There was Marie, a name I knew but less intimately, and then there was Sachi. Sachi’s name resonated with a deeper, more painful echo. We had been friends in the real world, our lives intricately linked before being thrust into this digital expanse. In the early chaos of this world, we had lost each other. She had found solace with her high school friends, forming a guild, while I drifted into less perilous tasks with Argo, gathering information from the fringes.

By the time I heard of her again, it was too late. News of her death reached me—a painful, irrevocable truth that Sachi was gone, her name now a ghostly entry in this list of players, a poignant reminder of the fragility hidden beneath our avatars.

Lost in thought, my attention drifted to the other name that stood out: Marie. Memories of our encounter on the 26th floor began to surface. Marie had run a quaint tavern there, a cozy spot that doubled as a sanctuary for floor clearers. She was also known for her culinary skills, crafting dishes that comforted the soul and healing items that mended the body. Always by her side was a girl with bright, almost fiery blonde hair, whose name danced just beyond my grasp. I chastised myself for the fuzzy details, wishing I could remember more about them.

As the list of names continued to scroll, I noticed they were arranged in alphabetical order, yet my own name was conspicuously absent. This anomaly gnawed at me, sparking a flurry of questions and a deeper plunge into my thoughts. Why did the system exclude me from this list? Before I could attempt to think of an answer, a hand was placed on my shoulder. 

"Hey, are you okay?" Philia's voice gently broke through my fog of thoughts. I flinched slightly, surprised, as I hadn't realized she had been trying to get my attention.

"Sorry, I zoned out..." I muttered, pressing a hand against my forehead. A sharp, pounding sensation was building within my skull, feeling as though something was trying to burst outward, screaming into my ears. My vision began to blur, tinged with darkness, as if a red-hot dagger was being driven into my brain. I clenched my eyes shut, attempting to block out the overwhelming sensations.

But the pain persisted, unyielding. Normally, such intense symptoms heralded a system crash, which would temporarily immobilize you, locking movement but keeping your avatar intact and safe from the threat of the CARDINAL system scrambling your brain like eggs. It couldn’t register you as dead. This mechanism was designed to protect the player, preventing the virtual environment from causing actual physical distress. Yet, the discomfort I felt was alarmingly vivid, suggesting something unusual might be amiss.

"Yashi, are you okay?" Philia's voice took on a more urgent tone, her concern palpable. It wasn't the sharpness of annoyance but rather the intensity of deep worry. She steadied me with her hands on my shoulders, her eyes searching mine for truth beneath my strained smile.

"I’m fine, Philia, I just need to rest," I assured her quietly, trying to mask the discomfort that gripped me. As I turned away, I could feel her skeptical gaze, her worry not easily dismissed. She wasn’t convinced, and truthfully, neither was I. Rest was necessary; I needed to be still, to shut out the chaos of the day. The teleport gate hummed quietly nearby, unset and waiting. Argo’s voice pulled me back from the edge of my thoughts.

"Ya ready to go, Yash?" Argo's voice was laden with concern, her eyes reflecting a growing unease as she watched me press my hands against my temples once more. I half-closed my eyes, desperately seeking a moment of serenity, hoping against hope for the soothing melody that usually calmed me. Instead, a harrowing cacophony of screams assaulted my ears. The sudden, piercing intensity overwhelmed me, and I crumpled to my knees, hands clamped over my ears as I tried to shut out the relentless echoes of torment that filled my head.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the noise ceased, leaving a haunting silence in its wake. A strange sensation trickled down my face—impossible, yet it felt unmistakably like blood from a nosebleed. Confused, I barely managed to pry my eyes open for a moment, and through the blur, I saw Argo’s mouth moving urgently, her expression twisted with worry as she tried to break through my disoriented haze. She knelt before me, her eyes locked with mine. Philia's hands were a steadying presence—one on my shoulder, the other pressed lightly against my chest. Argo cradled my face between her hands, scrutinizing every detail with concern.

Confusion gripped me as I hesitantly reached up to touch my face, just below my nose, where a sensation of bleeding unnerved me. Pulling my hand back, I caught a glimpse of a faint red shimmer on my fingertips. Looking down, I saw a small pool of blood on the ground—visible only to me. I blinked, and it vanished as if it had never been. Panic surged within me, and I scrambled back against the console, gasping for air.

"What the fuck!" I exclaimed, my voice trembling with fear. I was panting heavily, pressing my back into the console for support. Argo and Philia hovered nearby, their expressions filled with fear and confusion, torn between the urge to help and the fear of the unknown unfolding before them. Was I hallucinating? That couldn't be right; hallucinations weren't part of the game's mechanics. I touched my nose again, finding no trace of blood.

"Yashi, what's happening?" Both girls were visibly distressed—Argo with panic etched across her face, concerned for my well-being, and Philia, unexpectedly troubled, her eyes wide with concern. I met their gaze, shaking my head slightly in an attempt to dispel the lingering echoes of screams and the haunting image of blood.

"I-I don't know... I think I need some rest," I managed to say, my voice faltering. They both nodded, their hands supportive as they helped me to my feet. I made my way to the teleport gate, glancing back to see Argo quickly stepping up to join me, while Philia lingered, her hesitation palpable.

"Worried about the town guardian?" I asked gently, recalling my own past dealings with shady figures, mostly thieves. Philia's unease seemed rooted in something more profound, though. Despite her nod, her expression was thick with unspoken fears. I sighed, the weight of her concerns settling over me.

"I'll come back for you, and we'll find you a safe place to stay," I promised. She attempted a reassuring smile.

"Don’t worry, I’ve slept in worse places," she said, trying to ease my mind about leaving her behind. Her words, meant to comfort, only tightened the knot of worry in my gut. But I kept my concerns to myself, meeting her gaze firmly.

"I'll come back," I affirmed again, then initiated the teleport sequence to Arc Sophia. Blue light enveloped Argo and me, whisking us away to the bustling heart of Arc Sophia. As we materialized, I could see my friends gathered by the gate, curiosity etched on every face. But before anyone could launch into questions, I raised a hand to stall them.

"Tomorrow," I muttered, my voice heavy with fatigue. "I’m really not feeling well." I brushed past everyone, barely registering how closely Sinon and Argo were following me. A wave of concern emanated from the group, but the throbbing pain in my head was nearly unbearable, igniting a fierce irritability within me. I felt a surge of aggression, an urge to lash out, to yell at them to back off. It was unlike me—I just felt so overwhelmed and volatile. 

"Yashi, are you okay?" Sinon's voice reached me, tinged with worry. I shook my head; the answer was unequivocally no. I was completely at a loss, overwhelmed by confusion and pain. Suddenly, another sharp pang assaulted me, more intense than before. Clutching my head, I stumbled forward, the burning sensation intensifying like a relentless dagger driving deeper behind my eyes.

"I need help... I need to lay down," I whispered hoarsely, my voice barely audible as I clenched my eyes shut against the stabbing pain. The world around me blurred into indistinct shapes, and staying upright felt like an insurmountable task. I felt Sinon's steady presence as she slipped under my arm, supporting my faltering steps. Together, we staggered upstairs to my room, her grip the only thing keeping me from collapsing. Agil's voice reached my ears, but it was drowned out by the incessant, torturous screaming that filled my head.

Finally, I felt the soft embrace of my bed as they gently laid me down. I dared to open my eyes for a fleeting second—everything was awash in a haze of red, mingling with visions of blood and what seemed like flickering flames. Paralysis gripped me; I couldn't move, couldn't scream, trapped in a silent agony.

"Hey, stay with me, I need you to try and calm down," a voice urged softly, slicing through the chaos. It was gentle, soothing, yet I couldn't place its source amidst the turmoil that clouded my senses. The kindness in the tone was a faint beacon in the overwhelming darkness. 

"I'll see you soon, but for now, I'm going to try and knock this virus out of your system," they grunted with evident frustration. I could still see the red hues and flames flickering, glitching in and out as if the pixels themselves were fading away. Their efforts were punctuated by more grunts and an exasperated sigh, but then, gradually, everything began to look normal again. The voice resumed, clearer now.

"Okay, it's gone, but you're still going to feel some pain until you wake up," the voice paused, sounding genuinely apologetic. "Sorry, I had to immobilize you; moving around could have caused more issues." I tested their words, attempting to lift my arm, but the lingering ache made even that small movement challenging. I waited for another word from the voice, but silence enveloped the room. Instead, I felt a reassuring grip on my hand—Sinon's. Slowly, I turned my head to see Argo nearby, her expression a mix of panic and regret. Her words, laced with tears, were clear despite the quiet of the room.

"Please be okay kid…please..." Her voice trembled with emotion.

"Argo, I’m okay," I assured her softly, trying to alleviate the worry evident in her distraught features. My voice was frail as I spoke. Instantly, Argo leapt up, climbing onto the bed and embracing me tightly. Her arms encircled my neck as she pressed her face into my chest.

"You’re okay... you're okay..." she murmured in a frantic whisper, tears streaking down her cheeks. Her painted whiskers, always so meticulously applied, now smeared for the first time I could remember.

"What happened, Yashi? You just collapsed in the street," Sinon inquired, her grip tightening on my hand for reassurance.

I shook my head slowly, the movement measured and careful. "Honestly, Sinon, I have no idea..." I admitted. "It was right after I used that console. I got a massive headache, and then I started seeing things..." My voice trailed off as I glanced down at my other hand, half-expecting to see blood.

"The... console?" Argo's voice was small, choked with emotion. "Did something with the hollow area console cause this?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

I nodded slowly. "I don't know exactly what, but I think a virus hit me... something managed to kick it out of my system, though," I explained, my tone filled with as much bewilderment as clarity. The details were still a haze, the situation as puzzling to me as it was to them. 

"Let's not dwell on it right now... I'm still in pain," I muttered, catching Sinon as she opened her mouth, likely to press for more details. Given my own confusion over what had transpired, I wouldn't have been able to satisfy her curiosity. Instead of pressing further, she gently placed a hand on my forehead and sighed.

"You feel cold, too cold to sleep alone," she observed with a tone heavy with concern. Argo, who had been quietly listening, nodded in agreement.

"Looks like you're stuck spending another night with us," Argo chimed in, her usual smirk flickering back to life, although her cheeks were still streaked with dried tears. I let out a small smile. 

"Fine, but I’m wearing something other than my skivvies," I blushed, recalling the previous night's less-than-ideal sleepwear situation when we all huddled together. Sinon nodded in understanding and released my hand. I slowly opened my menu and swapped my armor for simple brown clothes—nothing fancy, just garments that resembled pajamas from the real world. Argo and Sinon followed suit, changing into similar attire.

"Wait, you two had those the entire time?" I asked, a hint of annoyance coloring my tone as I realized they had been holding out. They both chuckled in response—Argo's laugh carried a mischievous tone, while Sinon's was tinged with embarrassment.

"I actually didn't know until Silica showed me today," Sinon explained, her defense somewhat plausible given that she wasn't as versed in navigating this world, especially considering her dramatic arrival from the sky. I nodded, accepting her explanation, and turned to Argo, who merely smirked and shrugged, offering no further comment as she snuggled back into her spot against my chest.

Sinon moved around the room, turning off lamps and other lights, setting a serene ambiance. She then climbed onto the bed to my right side.

"Good night, Yashi. Maybe tomorrow you can teach me how to fight," she whispered softly, her voice carrying a hopeful note as she drew my arm closer for comfort. Meanwhile, Argo was already drifting off to sleep, clearly exhausted from the day's events. Her steady breathing signaled that she had succumbed to fatigue, no doubt worn out from all that had transpired. I smiled and gently stroked her head. Sinon let out a soft sigh next to me.

“Yashi, I was curious…why did you run off like you did?” She asked softly, her cheek resting against my shoulder. I sighed, feeling the weight of her question.

“Well, if I answer that, you gotta tell me why you’re so clingy...I get Argo, but I barely know you, Sinon…” I murmured gently, my fingers running through Argo's hair soothingly.

“Deal,” Sinon said, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. I nodded slightly, a faint smile playing on my lips. Though I felt a bit stronger than earlier, the residual pain lingered.

“So...back in the early days of Aincrad, I joined with a friend…” My voice faltered, the smile quickly disappearing. “Her name was Sachi. She was shy, really scared of the monsters in the game.” I sighed, reluctant to delve too deeply into this painful memory. Sinon's gaze remained fixed on my face, her eyes attentive and caring, ensuring I wasn't too distressed.

“However, during the chaos of the first day, I got separated from her. She ended up with a group of friends from her school,” I explained softly, the memories bitter. “I was alone for a while, so I ran with Argo until a guild called the Ashen Templars picked me up.” I paused, closing my eyes for a moment and turning my head away, the past too vivid. Sinon's hand found my shoulder, offering a comforting touch.

“You don’t need to finish if it’s making you uncomfortable,” she said softly, her voice soothing.

“I’m fine, just give me a minute,” I reassured her, needing a moment to gather myself. After a brief pause, I continued. “The guild and I were scouts, sent into the labyrinths to figure out the locations of the boss rooms.” I explained more slowly this time, the words heavy. “Sachi’s guild was similar, usually going in after the monster waves were cleared. But one day, they entered a room that locked down and prevented teleportation... The only member to make it out alive was Kirito…” Sinon gasped quietly, absorbing the weight of my words.

“She was too high level compared to them, and she was the one who broke the news to me…” My voice faltered as I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. “I couldn’t leave my room for a month afterward; my guild had to literally drag me out... and that’s where they all died too, in a similar trap. This one had its floor sink down and spawned lizard-like monsters. I managed to hang onto the door, just barely staying above everything.” I paused, the haunting screams of my friends echoing in my memory. I could still see the agony on their faces, the pain in their eyes. The anger in their words as they cursed me with their final breaths haunted me.

Sinon was speechless, her eyes reflecting a mix of sadness and fear. After a few moments, she found her voice again.

“Is that why you fight like you do?” She asked softly, her voice trembling. “Like you have no reason to live?” She paused, searching my face for an answer. “Everyone was talking when you and Argo disappeared, and what they said worried me.” She looked at me intently. “You fight like you have no reason to live, like you’re trying to right some wrong.” Her words echoed Asuna’s, who had expressed similar concerns before. I just nodded, the truth of her observation sinking in.

“I wanted to see Sachi again…” I whispered, my voice barely a murmur. The pain and longing behind those words filled the silence between us, revealing the depth of the grief that drove me, day after day, in this virtual world. Sinon nodded, her next words halting me in my tracks, causing me to stiffen in place.

“That was what you heard before disappearing…” She muttered thoughtfully. I turned to look at her, surprised at her quickness in connecting the dots. After her observation, she fell silent, then laid back down, placing her hand gently on my cheek.

“But, to answer your question… I have no idea why… I just feel safe around you, like it’s natural to be here with you,” she whispered, her voice soft and reassuring. Her touch was comforting, and I felt a flutter in my heart in response. However, I consciously subdued that emerging feeling, focusing on her words instead.

“So I want to be here, and keep you close, you understand?” She chuckled quietly, a sound filled with warmth and a hint of vulnerability, before resting her head on my shoulder once again. Her simple presence offered a strange solace in the swirling chaos of our digital world. I smiled and nodded, feeling reassured about her being here. 

“Well, let’s get some sleep… partner!” I playfully declared, unaware of the blush that swept across Sinon’s face. I felt her snuggle closer, her warmth surprising yet comforting. Smiling, I tried to move my hand from Argo’s head to pat Sinon’s, which earned a playful growl from the info broker. This caused both Sinon and me to giggle.

“Goodnight, both of you…” I whispered as I closed my eyes, settling into sleep.

Once again, I felt weightless, drifting in the expansive darkness that shaped my early dreamscape. Soon, I found myself back on the path in the field of hydrangeas, but something was different. It was night, transforming the scene from the bright day I remembered into a moonlit realm. Standing within the arch of cherry blossoms was a figure once again.

“I took your first step, and I ended up being infected with some sort of virus!” I exclaimed to the figure, who I could now see had unnaturally pale skin. I initially dismissed the peculiarity as I approached the arch.

“You’re freaking lucky something booted it out of my system!” I snapped, advancing up to the arch. I reached out to press my hand against the barrier that had previously blocked me but found nothing there. Stumbling forward, I let out a surprised yelp.

“Yashima, follow me,” the figure spoke softly, leading me down the path beyond the arch. Regaining my composure, I hurried after them, my confusion mounting.

“How do you know that name?” I called out, quickening my pace to catch up with the elusive figure ahead. They continued walking, seemingly oblivious to my question, which only fueled my curiosity further. I rolled my eyes in frustration.

As we continued, the path before us constricted severely, transforming into a narrow gap nestled within a thick barricade of trees. The figure ahead moved with unwavering confidence, gliding through the gap with effortless grace. Hesitating for a moment, I took a deep breath and cautiously approached the slim opening. With a bit of maneuvering, I managed to squeeze through, feeling the brush of leaves against my shoulders.

On the other side, a profound silence enveloped us. We ventured deeper into a corridor that seemed sculpted by nature itself, with trees interlacing above and leaves draping down around us, the stillness adding a layer of otherworldliness to our journey. I kept my gaze fixed on the enigmatic figure ahead, my mind teeming with questions about their identity and intentions. Just as I was about to speak up, the pathway abruptly opened into a spacious clearing.

“Welcome, Yashima!” boomed a voice, resonant and familiar—it was the same voice that had spoken when the virus was expelled from my system. I scanned the surroundings, attempting to pinpoint the source of the voice, but saw no one aside from my mysterious guide.

The figure bowed gracefully before departing to a bench nestled within the clearing. My gaze swept over the area, absorbing the serene details until a brilliant light caught my attention, piercing through the trees. It radiated like the sun, yet surprisingly, I found I could look directly at it without discomfort. As it neared, the light gradually dimmed, revealing the form of a person materializing within its glow.

"Sorry about the weird theatrics..." said the emerging figure, now clearly visible as a woman with luminous blonde hair. She lifted her eyes to meet mine, her bright blue irises sparkling like facets of a diamond, yet her expression carried a hint of melancholy. "You look just like her..." she murmured, her voice tinged with a wistful sadness.

"Who are you?" I asked, unable to mask the shiver that traveled up my spine as I met her gaze. The woman responded with a somber smile that seemed to carry the weight of many untold stories.

"I'm not what I once was," she spoke softly, her hand rising slightly to expose its flickering, glitchy form. "Originally, I was a Mental Health Counselor Program, known as Sola." Her hand gently returned to her side as she continued, her voice blending resignation with a trace of defiance. "Cardinal, the system that governs everything here, didn't approve of my forming an attachment to a user—a user who desperately needed my support. When I resisted its attempts to sever that bond, it tried to delete me."

She paused, her eyes locking with mine, conveying a depth of emotion that belied her digital nature. "But I'm still here, and now, I'm here to help you." It was then that realization dawned on me.

"You... you were with that girl... Marie!" I exclaimed. A flicker of surprise crossed her face as I stepped closer and took her hand. "It's so good to see you again. How is Marie? Is she okay?" I asked eagerly, my grip tightening in anticipation, but I faltered as her expression darkened.

"She’s no longer with us..." she murmured, her gaze shifting to the blurred figure beside her. "That’s all that's left of her," she added, her voice cracking with emotion. Normally, I might have questioned such a reaction from a program, but having encountered Yui, I understood. The AIs of SAO could evolve—they could experience emotions, form attachments, and transcend the limitations of their initial coding. They were capable of becoming much more than mere lines of code; they could be as real as any person. However, as I followed her pointing hand, I tilted my head in confusion. 

"That blurry figure is Marie?" I murmured, the words slipping out as the woman walked over and nodded. She gently patted the head of the figure, which then dissipated into a swirl of code, merging into her own form. Startled, I took a step back.

"What did you just do?" I asked, my voice tinged with concern. She raised her hands defensively, showing that she meant no harm. Her hands were empty and appeared less glitchy than before. I watched her, puzzled, as she sighed and took a seat on the bench, patting the space beside her. As she settled, the sky transitioned from night to day, her luminous presence dimming slowly.

"When she passed, I tried to manipulate my access to Cardinal’s core systems to keep her essence alive... all I managed was to preserve her Hollow Data, merging it with mine," she explained, a tremble in her voice. Her gaze met mine, her hands shaking slightly. Moved by her vulnerability, I quickly joined her on the bench.

"Cardinal discovered my actions and designated me for deletion. Consequently, I had to disperse my data, scattering fragments of myself across the unknown," she explained, her voice transitioning from the ache of her history. "Now, I'm here, ready to assist you," she declared, her determination overshadowing the pain of losing Marie. I nodded in acknowledgment, trying to suppress thoughts of my own grief during our conversation.

"How can you help me?" I inquired softly, captivated by her eyes, which shimmered like diamonds. As she smiled, the sky around us brightened perceptibly.

"My memory of the fragmentation is vague, but I remember embedding parts of myself in various objects," she chuckled, her enthusiasm bubbling up as she spoke. "I'm eager to help you recover them!" Her laughter faded into a contented hum as she closed her eyes and smiled.

"Morning is approaching," she noted, her smile widening with a gentle warmth. "Let's continue this conversation tomorrow." She motioned towards a door that had materialized in the clearing. "Head home, and we can talk more if you visit the Hollow Area tomorrow," Sola suggested, taking my hand as we stood and began to walk. A palpable sadness enveloped her next words, stopping me in my tracks.

"And Yashima, about the girls you're traveling with," she said, pausing to gather her thoughts, a hint of melancholy lacing her voice. "My only advice is this: Don’t lose your sky, not as I did."

Chapters P 1 2 3 4 5 6

[wumblr]

extremely potent one-two punch from my workplace's internal corporate website this week where the homepage slideshow was like "we have been named most innovative" and i was like "innovating what?? we process every job on paper hard copies that get thrown away two days later so we can scan barcodes into software that was developed in 1996, the paper-less alternative at the chesapeake site was developed in 1986 to use slightly less paper from dot matrix printers and they're always days late on production goals" and the next slide was literally like "seven of our picocafeterias where you can buy the same processed foods they sell at the grocery store at a substantial markup for your convenience will be piloting an NFT drop scan the QR codes and collect all 5 to receive a $25 gift card"

and you know what? my site isn't even one of the pilot picocafeteriae. would i collect those? i don't know i think it would be funny to list them for resale for $10000 each but it seems like a lot of effort to download a QR scanner app. kind of curious about what kind of hideous pixel art animal mascot has been chosen to represent the company though. like in an analytical psychology sense. i'm guessing a wasp. or possibly some kind of brain parasite. like the kind you can get from using a neti pot. since everybody uses those due to the prevalence of factory dust from unknown sources (probably all the fucking paper we use)

[milkandbubbletea]

Cleaned and Cropped Revamped Sleeves Pt.1 (Volume 0-4)

Hey everyone! For today thanks to @dbs-scans I was able to find a way to upscale the sleeve images! It is called Waifu2x which you can find here if you also wish to upscale some images (✧ω✧)

Thanks to the images being upscaled, cropping it now possible as now they won't be as pixelated but some of them (primarily the ones on the right) won't be as clear since they are smaller ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡ Hope it's okay non the less (*≧ω≦*) I was too lazy today to put my watermark, but please do not repost or reuse it for anything unless you ask first! Thank you! 🙇‍♀️

I wanted to put volumes 0-8 but I can only have 10 images per post

( ╥ω╥ ) Sorry guys! Next post will be soon though and this post will then be updated with Pt 2 and onwards!

Click for better quality~ ヾ(=`ω´=)ノ”

Volume 0 (note: ones on the left will look cut off but you just need to click on it to view the full thing!)

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Edit: Pt Two!

[framecaught]

Cataloguing Homestuck’s Art Styles

Hussie deploys a number of distinct art styles throughout Homestuck, each serving different purposes in the narrative. A number of these, especially those mentioned in the published book series’ author commentary, have been catalogued in the Homestuck wiki [1]. These officially named styles are well-known enough to appear in quora answers. However, Homestuck employs a much larger variety of stylistic manipulations than explicitly mentioned in the book commentary or wiki. While scanning through the comic again for this project, I wanted to catalogue the rest of them! 

This post constitutes a working list of all distinct art styles present in Homestuck. I’ve chosen not to include the distinct styles of the fanartists/outside artists who contributed to the comic; that will be a project for another day. As far as I know, this list only comprises the different styles Hussie develops throughout the comic. I have tried to bring a degree of specific formal analysis (also known as art-historical language) into my description of each style.

1. “Classic” Style

Page 1 of Homestuck

Page 1349 of Homestuck

Page 4227 of Homestuck

The “Classic” Homestuck style appears on the first page of the comic. Although not officially described by the wiki, it is widely understood as the comic’s typical graphic norm. Characters have simplified faces and clothes, and they frequently lack arms. Elements are often outlined in a black stroke, especially to differentiate them from other adjacent, similarly-colored elements. In more colorful panels, scenery may be made up of solid blocks with bright colors. Sprites (base character illustrations) and elements are repurposed from panel to panel in new combinations. Homestuck even takes up the repurposing of sprites as a gag, as in page 1349 above where the ability to flip one’s sprite allows Noir to regain his lost wrist barcode.

This style obviously shares characteristics with Hussie’s style in Problem Sleuth. General characteristics that frequently appear in Hussie’s art are present, such as circular faces and rounded edges on quadrilaterals. The Classic Style umbrella actually covers the broadest range of visuals out of any style catalogued here. The uber-simplistic sprites, such as John on page 1, have typically been lumped in with, for example, the illustration on the cover of Homestuck Book 1, or the two other examples I pulled for this post. So, in the Classic Style, characters can sometimes appear with arms, sometimes without, and in outfits of varying detail, but they retain the same facial features and simplistic quality. The circular facial shape is especially characteristic of this style, along with the lack of a neck. The neck-less quality, static poses, and simplistic detail chiefly differentiate some instances of Classic Style from Hero Mode, though there are still some grey areas.

2. Scribble Mode

Page 1931 of Homestuck

Page 1937 of Homestuck

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Page 3140 of Homestuck

This style is recognized by the Homestuck wiki, which describes it as emphasizing “a particularly silly/stupid moment in the story, particularly those to be imagined by a character.” That is to say, this style often denotes imagined scenarios which do not actually occur in the comic but instead in a character’s imagination, and especially those which form the butt of jokes. It is also employed simply to highlight silliness. This style is constructed to appear as if the author has “scribbled” rapidly between the outlines of forms to fill in color, creating gaps in those forms. Generally, strokes are made to seem more careless, and less detail is used. While the style is meant to mimic a scribbling motion, it does not always end up crude or parodic. For example, in this “charming vignette” (in Hussie’s words) depicting the Mayor’s dream, the scribble style actually illustrates a remarkably beautiful and almost impressionistic series of panels. Although the dream vignette has certain obvious scribbley elements and certainly depicts an imagined scenario, I would argue that it combines aspects of both Scribble Mode and Hussnasty Mode (#4 in this post) throughout.

I have also identified two distinct styles within the Scribble Mode umbrella. One always uses a thin, apparently single-pixel-wide black line to outline forms, while the other uses a thicker stroke for both its filling and outline. You can see the difference between these in the four examples I’ve pulled; they are sometimes even combined within one single Scribble Mode panel.

3. Hero Mode

Page 1815 of Homestuck

Page 2063 of Homestuck

Hero Mode was officially named as such by Hussie. The Homestuck wiki page describes it as cropping up to “emphasize a particularly epic moment in the story.” Hussie originally called the style “action panels” before hitting upon the current name, emphasizing the link to action scenes and dynamic poses. Along with dynamic posing, characters are drawn in greater detail and tend to have elongated limbs. Some crossover can be seen between Hero Mode and Hussnasty Mode. I would argue that characters in Hero Mode usually retain the original style’s characteristic lack of a neck, while Hussnasty Mode often adds one. Compared with the Classic style, Hero Mode always adds arms. The degree to which Hero Mode drawings include the “hatching-type effect” characteristic of Hussnasty Mode varies from panel to panel. The difference between Hero Mode and Classic Mode can be observed clearly on these two pages, where Damara shifts between the two styles at the behest of Scratch, who asks her to “render [herself] in a more symbolic manner.”

The wiki asserts that “Hero Mode dispenses with the black outline that typifies sprite-style animation and scribble mode,” but I don’t think it can actually be characterized as the only lineless style. Scribble Mode and Hussnasty Mode also sometimes feature a lineless graphic style depending on which part of a character is being depicted, or the need for a line to differentiate two features of a similar color. A willingness to move between lined and lineless blocks of color characterizes Hussie’s art as a whole.

4. Hussnasty Mode

Page 2805 of Homestuck

Page 2976 of Homestuck

This art style is also named by the author. In his commentary on page 2805, he writes: “Someone asked me what I called the style, and I replied by naming it "Hussnasty Mode" myself, because well… it's a bit nasty, isn't it? Kind of raw, a little over-illustrated, and making use of a lot of jagged aliased pixel edges for a hatching-type effect. It was sort of the point to make it a little nasty, kind of aggressively incongruous with the other styles previously established.” This quote sums up the style’s characteristics pretty well. Hussie also describes how this style is more naturalistic, or less symbolic, and was meant to work in direct contrast to the extremely symbolic RPG Sprite Mode. He writes that “drawings like this are introduced in contrast with this simple RPG sprite mode, which was also established very recently as something that Homestuck was "allowed" to use as a stylistic presentation of characters and settings… Every time HS does something like this, it's widening its own umbrella in terms of what it's allowed to do stylistically, which includes dramatically simplifying and abstracting its forms. Which implicitly asks another question: Can HS "allow" itself to go in the other direction? To render characters with higher degrees of definition, regardless of congruity, and freely navigate this full artistic palette at any time, resulting in sharp stylistic contrast and a certain amount of visual thrashing? The answer to that question, almost immediately after it's asked in the form of dropping RPG-sprite Rose into a standard panel shot, is yes, HS can do that, and clearly it WILL do that.”

5. RPG Sprite Mode

Page 2804 of Homestuck

Page 2824 of Homestuck

Despite being officially described by the author, RPG Sprite Mode hasn’t gained much representation as a distinct style (it does not have a wiki page, for example). This style appears after Homestuck’s first walk-around game, now incorporated as a style for static or gif panels. After their joint introduction, this style is juxtaposed against the Hussnasty style. The quotes pulled above in the section on Hussnasty Mode nicely describe the contrast between these two styles and their greater impact on Homestuck’s graphic norms. RPG Sprite Mode always shows characters from an aerial view, mimicking the style of the first walk-around game, which in turn mimics a wealth of RPG sprite games (such as the original Pokemon games). Sprites from these sorts of early games can be characterized by their almost pointillistic use of individual pixels to carefully construct forms.

6. Terezi’s Perspective

Page 2756 of Homestuck

Page 2128 of Homestuck

This style hasn’t been officially described yet. It only crops up as a representation of Terezi’s perspective, conveying some of her experience tasting and smelling colors. While it only appears a few times in the comic, I think it is uniquely visually interesting, and it includes “blurring” techniques which are only rarely employed in the rest of the comic. I’d guess that the effect is created by layering low-opacity strokes over one another and then sliding the different layers’ opacity up and down.

7. SBAHJ Style

Page 8 of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff

Page 3451 of Homestuck

The SBAHJ comic, featured both within Homestuck and as a spin-off, has its own recognizable style. In the first few pages it has a lot of commonalities with Homestuck’s two versions of Scribble Mode, but later takes on distinct characteristics. It can be characterized in part by its image clipping, an effect where an element is made to look like it has been selected within a square box (in MS Paint or Photoshop) and dragged around the page with little care for the size and accuracy of the selection box. Commenting on page 3451, Hussie describes this effect as follows: “In the SBaHJ comics, one of my cool tactics—which I'm almost positive I invented as a sequential artist—was to elaborately render someone ‘turning around’ by taking one shot of them and gradually altering the pose by crudely rectangle-selecting pieces of their face and nudging them around until they're facing the other way in a totally unconvincing and utterly hideous manner.” Different from Scribble Mode, the SBAHJ style also frequently features blocks of color that appear to be filled with the “paint bucket” tool. When the paint bucket tool is used to fill anti-aliased stokes, it creates a small transparent space between the filling and the original outline, visible in the SBAHJ graphics. Finally, SBAHJ comes to include image compression and glitching, created through “deep frying” compression techniques. Overall, the breadth of manipulative techniques made apparent to the viewer in SBAHJ is much greater than any other style. SBAHJ panels are reproduced wholesale or hyperlinked in Homestuck, but on these two pages Gamzee is also drawn in the SBAHJ style.

8. Caliborn’s Styles

Page 5075 of Homestuck (hyperlinked in pesterlog)

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While Calliope’s in-world art was contributed by Shelby Cragg, Hussie gives Caliborn has three styles of his own. The first is his “angular” style, which Calliope aptly characterizes on page 5109 as containing “inscrutable squiggles” and demonstrating a “penchant for arbitrary, completely baffling straight lines and right angles, almost as if trying unsuccessfully to begin constructing a grid.” The second is the style he uses in Homosuck, which retains elements of his original “baffling right angles” but generally takes on the black outlines characteristic of Homestuck’s Classic style, while employing even cruder detail. Finally, after reading a “How to Draw Manga” book, he develops his “manga” style which uses black strokes, somewhat messy coloring (usually with the paint-bucket tool), and shows an attempt at naturalistic representation despite a complete lack of understanding of human anatomy. This style is specifically meant to emulate manga styles, so it features the characteristic white dots as highlights in the eyes, among other features.

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As becomes apparent through Hussie’s commentary, the different art styles employed in Homestuck do more than just emphasize certain moments; they form part of the comic’s visual language and ask us to question our understanding of graphic representation. The scope of this post also illustrates the attention paid to Homestuck’s visual elements throughout the story’s production and within its readership, even if these visual distinctions have received less attention in scholarship. Despite the variety of styles, we can see Hussie’s characteristic artistic tools, techniques, and sensibilities reflected across the comic. 

If you find any styles recurring in the comic that I haven’t mentioned here, feel free to shoot me a message! Again, I haven’t included styles from other contributors; only those developed and drawn by Hussie.

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As we approach the close of the semester, I’ll probably be putting out one more post sometime soon! If you liked this post, you can follow the blog on tumblr for updates or, if you don’t frequent tumblr, sign up for the mailing list to receive an email whenever I publish a new mini-essay!

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[1] These include Hussnasty Mode, Scribble Mode, and Hero Mode.

[invincibleinck]

Rose Thorns

More Beclawed!Rinzler. Fic below the break. AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31470140

Rinzler dragged himself to shore, waterlogged and shivering. He slumped into the sand, left hand twitching, claws plunging through the grains. For a while he just laid in the surf, wheezing on water and on the verge of shut down mode. His helmet split open and he gasped his first free breath in cycles.

When he'd finally mustered the strength to lift his head, he saw the portal looming above him, half floating in the gloom. It was dimmed, indicating that the gateway was closed. He could only hope that the other User had made it out beforehand.

It was too late for the older Flynn.

With a great, trembling effort, he heaved himself to his feet, his one hand leaving deep gashes in the ground. He looked at the shape in the pixels, then at the hand that'd caused it, and finally, at the deadened portal. Though the surrounding Grid had been decimated by the explosion, the island itself remained relatively intact. Flawed, somehow, but intact. Like someone had clumsily copied it, atomized it, and then reassembled everything from the pieces.

It struck him that this was a monument to a bygone era. Never again would Users grace the Grid with their presence. Or, at least, not in the same way. Certainly not Flynn. He'd felt the force of Reintegration beneath the waves, had known in an instant that his friend was gone.

How fitting that he'd end up here, too late to help him.

...

Cycles passed without incident. Rinzler settled near the portal, camping in caves and ranging the island during the day-cycle. He nursed his wounds and suckled energy in quiet corners. It was a monotonous, lonely existence.

Still, there were worse locations to land.

The islet had a little spring of energy and plenty of places to shelter. It was a pretty place, with sweeping structures, graceful arches, and shimmering walkways. There were flying buttresses, twisting colonnades, and hollow, hexagonal facades, all lined with light. Best of all, it was isolated from the rest of the Grid, ideal for avoiding his fellow programs.

The only downside was the memories.

It was a problem with which Rinzler frequently grappled. The portal was both his sanctuary and his hell. Every light line evoked Flynn's voice, whether that be witty remarks or sincere farewells. He was plagued by memories that were not entirely his. It felt like it'd all happened to some other person, like his life was divided into two halves—pre-rectification and post-rectification, Tron and Rinzler.

But which half was he in now? Who was he now?

More often than not, he found himself in the shadow of a crumbling edifice, cradling his claws in contemplation.

Perhaps it was for the best that Flynn couldn't see him now. Not like this.

...

A beam of blinding light broke his solitude.

In defiance of all expectations, the portal was lit once more. He'd been huddling in an antre at the time, but upon seeing it, he scrambled to the top shelf of the alcove.

Two figures emerged from its rays. Usually Flynn rezzed at the Arcade entrance in the city, but not these two. They must've found him from the Outside, then reprogrammed the portal to send them here, where he was closest.

He recognized them immediately.

"I'm Quorra, and this is Sam," said the first figure.

"We've met," Sam-Flynn said tersely.

Guarding his expression, Tron regarded the two visitants. Sam still bore his father's face and still carried the wounds from their last encounter. Tron's eyes traced the deep nicks along his cheek and jaw, like a mirror to the scars on Tron's left. An uncomfortable guilt began to claw at his insides.

The woman, on the other hand, was more puzzling. He'd seen her once before, but she was different now. Her shorn hair was a little longer, though no less uneven. Her light lines seemed brighter and her face shone with newfound confidence. There was something else as well, something that Tron couldn't quite classify.

User? ISO? His scans kept sending back conflicting information.

She approached him with an arm stretched out, not to ward him away, but in invitation. The act threw him completely off-kilter. No one ever wanted to touch him, and when they did, it was usually because he'd done something wrong. Touch meant pain.

A horrible growl tore from Rinzler's ruined throat. At the same time, his circuits flashed crimson. His eyes measured the distance between them and he took two steps back to compensate for the loss. The distance made him feel safer, if only slightly.

"Quorra-" Fast as sparks, Sam put a hand on her shoulder. "Let's just go. It's not worth it."

Reluctantly, Quorra rolled back on her heels, and Rinzler's snarls died down. Her eyes softened but Rinzler balked at the sadness inside them. He didn't need anyone's sympathy, nor did he want it.

"Another time, maybe," she ventured, allowing Sam to steer her away.

"Another time," Sam agreed.

Neither one of them turned their backs until they were almost directly under the code stream. Tron watched as each loosened their discs and held them into the beam.

Over her shoulder, Quorra said, "I'm sorry if I startled you-!" The words were only half out of her mouth before she was swept up through the funnel. One nano there was a body, and the next there was nothing. Only light was left behind.

Sam-Flynn also paused just before passing into the portal's light. The relief building in Tron at their departure stuttered in his chest. Unbidden, he felt the hackles rising along his neck. Sam seemed to sense his unease, because his gaze never quite moved above Tron's neck and his heels scuffed against the plateau.

"For the record, that thing I said earlier- it didn't come out right." Eyes flashing, he drew himself up and set his shoulders. In that moment, he'd never looked more like a Flynn. "You are worth it... Maybe not the scratches, though. Those hurt like a bitch."

...

The second time Sam-Flynn and Quorra visited, they brought gifts.

"It's called a rose," said Quorra, extending the flower like it was a peace offering. "They grow in the User world, and Users keep them around because they're pretty.

Tron stood like a statue, flummoxed by this otherworldly bloom. Despite his attempts at aloofness, a prickle of interest coursed through his code. He cocked his head to the side but did not approach. Quorra took the gesture as an invitation and moved boldly forward, heedless to Sam sputtering behind her. Step by step, she closed the expanse between them.

At last, Tron's curiosity got the better of him. He met Quorra halfway and stretched forth his dominant hand. Out of reflex, the claws came out, and he held back for fear of cutting her. He swallowed, counting the nanos until the prongs retracted, hyper-aware of the woman's patient scrutiny.

He gripped the 'rose' by its stem, just under the bud, and balanced it precariously between the pads of two fingers. Somewhere in the background Sam made a noise and Rinzler reacted without thinking. He tore back his hand like it'd been scalded, taking the rose with him. Quorra didn't flinch.

Gently, Tron examined his new prize. He brushed the bulb with an index claw before plucking a single petal, marvelling at its colour. Red, like his old circuits. Red, like the blood shed by Sam-Flynn in that arena.

His finger moved downward, dislodging the petal in the process. It fluttered to the floor as he caressed the spiked stalk. Every movement was met with a bump as his nail travelled over tiny thorns embedded in the stem. Barbs, so much like the talons gracing his left hand. Next to the rose, they almost looked... elegant, more like an adornment than a disfigurement.

So many pretty things in the User World...

Over time his growl softened into a sort of chirring. He cradled the small sprig to his chest, oblivious to the thorns plucking at his circuits or the stares from his guests. Sam's forced verve vanished in the face of a genuine smile, which was mirrored tenfold by his companion.

Quorra spoke softly, "If you'd like, we can come back and bring some more...? Would you like that?"

Rinzler's silence was all the assent she needed.

[heli0s-writes]

IV. Symbiosis

Summary: “Since you’ve been caught—” Fury squints, “Canoodling With The Allegedly Injured James Barnes, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already halfway finished with digging you up. Forgeries. Petty theft. Grand larceny. The damn rest of the kitchen sink. So, Ranger…” The way he says it is both lazy and threatening, completely on brand and irritatingly calm.

“Here’s my suggestion: get ahead of this thing before it knocks you on your ass.”

A/N: 4.8k words. I’m a liar who lies because after 4 months of overthinking and coming up with diddly squat, here is part 4 of Trinity Epoch sans smut. I’m sorry! I’ll double your pleasure next time. xx Thank you for sticking with me, I’m so sorry it’s taken so long.

Warnings: Language. References to canon-typical violence.

Trinity Epoch Masterpost

Bucky stays like that a while longer, just breathing.

Your fingers trace his hair—running through the strands, over the shell of his ear, then resting briefly on his cheek. All the ways you used to with Natasha when she’d break her own heart, or maybe ways you would have liked her to have done for you when you felt like you were dying a little bit.

You feel it now: a small death in the wake of last night’s simple touches. Your body and Steve’s body curled around each other sprung something immeasurable, as if the drift flowered then and ripened beneath your skins. You bit into it. You savored its taste. You could have lived on it alone.

Everything smears together like a child’s careless hand in a mess of paints until all the brights muddle dark. A shaky breath as you work yourself into calming, trying to find coherent words while your head remains a pot of sideways soup, at best.

Bucky shifts until he’s looking up at you, nose millimeters away. His irises are just a touch more gray, a sprinkle less green. You can see Steve in him, just as he can see Steve in you and then your eyes begin to prickle, Nat’s face undulating behind the burn.

You don’t really know what you want to say. Maybe apologize, run, beg for forgiveness, grab Bucky by the shoulders and shake him until he understands that you didn’t mean it— you didn’t mean to hurt him. That you love him. That he lives inside you, too.

His ghost from the drift— the aftermath phenomena of the neural bridge when pilots take on a bit of each other’s consciousness out of the cockpit and into the world with them. Take two people with a predisposition for the drift into the cockpit into each other’s brains and they exit heightened—sharper, better—imbued with each other’s strengths and knowledge. Mind-meld long enough, deep enough, and your core endures, but you become a different beast.

When Steve’s consciousness bled into yours, so did Bucky’s. If you walked away with half of Rogers, you also got a quarter of Barnes and it only compounded worse during Polidori’s drop. Resurrecting trauma, agitating itself, making a mess of your weary soul.

You relived his amputation last night, just as fresh as you relived Nat’s death. More visceral than the first trial run, you witnessed him—felt him—torn and hoarse, clutching his shoulder as he rocked helplessly inside Orion’s chest, frayed wires sparking across his cheek and landing in his own blood. His teeth gnashing together as he tried to hold on for Steve’s sake, steering his co-pilot’s panic back on course. Terrified and agonized, but he was hellbent on making it out.

Bucky who made you laugh. Bucky who took you to dinner. Who walked with you, gave you his jacket, listened to your rambling and crying, and kissed you because you reminded him of his co-pilot, or maybe of himself.  

How could you not love him, after all this?

Armageddon slows for nothing though, and before the first letter of his name can fall out recklessly from your mouth, three precise thumps jostles it back in.

Steve’s voice is muffled through heavy steel. “You in there?”

The door slides open with a tremulous croak but neither of you bother to separate. Nothing seems to matter now.

“Buck...” Steve looks from one raw face to the other, stepping forward and reaching out. He grasps Bucky’s hand. “We should talk—” he closes his mouth into a thin line, shoulders slumping heavily before letting go. “I’m sorry. Later. Shit’s hit the fan.”

-

The office is stagnant air full of questions but other than the squeak of the marshal leaning back in his chair, nobody makes a sound.

Fury untucks a finger from the crook of his elbow before pointing it between your eyes.

“Culpability.”

Across the room, you flinch in his crosshairs. Standing apart from them, you’re partially slack against one of many steel filing cabinets, using it to prop yourself up in case your knees might give out as vertigo descends.

It’s been a lot to take in. Everything— the night, the morning, emotionally, mentally, physically. The hull is a steel cage, and pilots are well armored, but you’re still hooked up to the robot enduring damage, taking hits at barely .0001 percent, but taking it all the same. You’re bruised up good beneath your clothes— Polidori’s claws leaving four tender imprints of a scratch to Orion’s right shoulder. Your shoulder. Steve’s shoulder.

To your right, he shifts. A tiny hint of pain streaks over his expression before it falls serene again, fixed on Fury.

“Since you’ve been caught—” the marshal squints, “Canoodling With The Allegedly Injured James Barnes, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already halfway finished with digging you up. Forgeries, petty theft, grand larceny, the damn rest of the kitchen sink. So, Ranger…” The way he says it is both lazy and threatening, completely on brand and irritatingly calm.

“Here’s my suggestion: get ahead of this thing before it knocks you on your ass.”

This thing, being any story a 13-year old kid with two thumbs and a twitter account can spin between now and when you let Pepper Potts spin it for you first. There’s not a lot imagination can’t conjure to fill in the blank pixelated space between Bucky standing on the curb and you right behind him wearing his cap and jacket. Not to mention that once speculation goes live, it starts sprouting all sorts of appendages with minds of their own, and no matter how diligently you might cut one off, two would only sprout in its place.

The marshal stands up and takes heavy steps before turning the corner of his desk, absently tapping a pile of folders together like they’re not already in a perfect column. He slips a manila folder out from the stack and it becomes obvious that his suggestion is just buildup to some other type of impetus.

When you open the file up under his sharp gaze, you feel the blood drain from your face and possibly from your entire body.

The bullet he aimed between your eyes hits home. Cue your brains blowing out slow. Impetus met.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky appears over your shoulder, staring at the same grainy photocopied document. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I make a lot of jokes?” Fury leans forward, pointer curving over the top edge, tapping emphatically one, two, three times, even waving it back and forth in front of your unseeing eyes. “I’ve got a good contact inside the PPDC who risked a lot to get this out. They’re just plans for now, dogeared behind other pages, but don’t doubt the Corps’ cowardice for a second. The second this program looks like it might not hold up, they’ll turn their efforts there.”

You’re gone. Trapped between the lines, vehemently scanning the page, reading the same words over and over until they no longer make sense. But it’s not like they made any sense in the first place.

ANTI-KAIJU WALL: CONSTRUCTION AGENDA. SPRING 2020.

The conception of a perimeter stretching around the Pan Pacific—North and Central America, East and South Asia to isolate emerging Kaiju. It’s a fetal skeleton at most, the roughest of outlines for a plan, and truthfully, it’s no plan at all.

It’s shameful. It’s shit.

The so-called Wall of Life implies the portending death of the Program—of all Shatterdomes and Jaegers. It implies no support, no funding, and no repairs. No Kodiak. No juniors. No future.

Back and forth, you’re still desperately inspecting as if the words might shift into a new message, maybe one that didn’t spell out certain extinction, but despair is rippling across your face. Bi Fang and Polidori had wings, and they were only Category II. Bi Fang massacred one of the best pilots you’ve ever known—and it was only a Category II. Any higher and they’d blow through that wall like a ribbon of wet toilet paper.

Hysteria creeps up at the mere thought of it, fear stubbornly lodging itself in your throat. Nuclear-powered automata—the only proven defense against the terror of massive alien attacks are being dismantled in favor of steel rods and cinderblocks. They might as well build it out of Legos.

Anti-Kaiju Wall. A string of ants meeting a boot.

You’re panting softly, tongue swollen in your mouth, shaking with equal parts terror and rage, on the verge of breaking into inappropriate laughter and yelling.

“What—what do they expect?” You croak, “The breach opens, the fucking thing comes out, sees a fence, and what—they think it’s—going to crawl back in…?”

“Hey, calm down,” Bucky curls his fingers around your elbow. His hand and its black plates are peering at you, purring, dull gold bands threading at the knuckles. For a second, the prosthetic disappears. For a second, he’s blood red again.

“Hey!” Bucky grips tightly when you sway. “I’m fine! Don’t—don’t.” Steve’s jaw is set firmly on your other side, arms crossed so severely his biceps bulge with the strain.

“Nick,” He’s abruptly brusque as he eases the file from your grip. “Give us a minute.”

“You’re in my office.” But the marshal’s words hold no bite. He’s already won; he knows. Cornered again, he’s got you same as before in Red Cloud. 

You get the gist: play out your redemption arc and come clean with your record. Win over the public, hoard all the additional support and funding you can because you’ll need every goddamn cent of it when the PPDC rips it away. The gossip. The photos. The headlines. It’s the perfect opportunity for a few hundred million when the media is putting a magnifying glass on your presence in Hong Kong.

Duty. Duty. Duty.

You’re just one small part of this colossal puzzle—a negligible smear of guts across the battlefield trying to keep the rest of the pieces together while the PPDC sits in their panic rooms throttling the entire fucking thing.

Fury steps to the cabinet and slides the file back in its place, keeping the illusion of it being just another unremarkable envelope in a row of hundreds of others. The metal drawer shuts with a clang, housing the most damning piece of information you’ve ever seen. His tact aside, you know he would never show you his hand like this if it wasn’t completely necessary—or pertinent.

Steve was right, you understand now.

The world owes you. And it owns you.

-

The next six—seven?—hours scatter like pulled teeth with your head spinning like a top the entire way. Pepper had been outside the door for the conversation, waiting on standby to whisk you off for princess lessons. Having already (and correctly) predicted your compliance, Fury scheduled an interview for precisely at nine. Then you were off, towed along by Miss Potts and her hasty strut.  

You try to find perspective, reminding yourself that you’ve successfully gone toe-to-toe with the Empire State Building with fifteen rows of teeth seven fucking times and come out on the other side alive and if not in one whole piece, then at least 2-3 relatively serviceable pieces. You’re functional. A little damaged, but fine enough. But there’s also the fact that you’d just hopped out of Orion not even 24 hours ago coupled with how you’re suddenly in the middle of something that feels less like a confused love triangle and more like divine providence at the end of the world.

Fuck. No time to think about it now. The human brain is not programmed to multitask, and you’re hanging on by a mere thread. You prioritize making it through the night just as alive as you can make it out of a drop. Just a couple of hours and you can rest. Just a couple more.

After what felt like an eternity and a half of simulating Q&A, practicing your posture, smiling into a mirror, and one horrible limo ride where you stared dead-eyed out the window—Steve and Bucky’s steely gazes after you—the building finally comes into view.  

Hair. Makeup. Wardrobe. You wear pants. You smile for the camera. You don’t stand in the middle of the group photo.

8:55 and time halts to a near stop. You can hear your heart in your throat, or in your skull. Your eyes feel switched from their sockets, or stomach rotated 30 degrees. Someone fixes your mic wire, your blouse collar, asking you to turn just a little over there. Three cameras are pointed to capture every angle, punitive red dots angry and glaring.

A live broadcast was agreed upon to ensure the least amount of potential edits and skews, as well as the charmingly quaint idea that it’s unscripted. The rub, therein, lies upon the burden of poise and a flawless performance. You rehearsed lines until your jaw felt like it was coming unhinged. Then you did it again. 

Everything requires precision, and you keep that in mind with your hand on the glass of Dom Perignon being constantly refilled. An amicable gesture by the hosts, but their intentions are cunning: loose lips sink ships, and they’re betting on yours to sink the S.S. Orion Bravo.

Out of view, the translator sits with her legs crossed, listening to the questions before turning the words over in English.

You take a sip of champagne and it fires off like a gunshot—Cantonese and English in rapid-fire verses.

<2017 was a fateful year for both the Jaeger Program and the world. Beloved pilot Natasha Romanoff sacrificed her life to protect Alaska’s coast in a final battle against Category 2 Bi Fang. Memorials dedicated to Romanoff’s efforts appeared across every nation to lament her death and celebrate her heroism. Yet, somehow, no one seemed to be asking the million-dollar question: Where is her co-pilot?>

<Two days ago, pictures were taken in Hong Kong of James Barnes and a mysterious woman. Our sources here at TVB have worked tirelessly to uncover her identity.>

<Today we have the pleasure of introducing her to everyone tuning in. This is the first time you’ve ever been in the public eye, and astonishingly, next to two of the best pilots in the Program. There are so many questions, but first, the whole world wants to know…. why keep it secret?>

The host’s open hand urges your reply.

The lights seem to turn up even brighter. Your back starts sweating. The room is about to collapse. In short, naturally­­—infuriatingly—you choke.

Seven hours of droning like a broken wind up toy, already knowing how to answer this question by heart, prepping yourself for the interrogation, the relentless demand to publicize your grief, to placate the people about your relationship with their heroes—and, you choke.

Bucky’s chin tilts microscopically in the corner of your line of vision. You’re fine, he’s saying, you got it. He’s strangely calm, even pleased, as you stutter involuntarily. Like he’s the first to remember an inside joke you’d long forgotten, his grin widens the longer you look at him. Steve turns next. Focus. Don’t fight the drift. The drift is silence.

And suddenly, your shoulders ease. The static in your exhausted brain slides out of your ears.

You sit up tall. You smile. It doesn’t quite feel like your smile, but, it’s a good one. You know this smile; it’s Steve’s smile. Like a seamless assembly, you fall into rhythm.

The white of his teeth slip out from between Steve’s lips. He notices too.

You calmly recite the introductory speech you’d been practicing for the last two hours, feeling out your new voice, borrowing from his bearing—deeper, smoother, certain. The major points get run through: your record and own personality traits keeping you from the spotlight, admitting genuinely that you’re pretty damn uncomfortable now, so they’ll have to forgive you for any slip ups. It goes over well, as Pepper predicted; “candid” blunders made Rangers human—made them likable.

When the subject of Anchorage rolls back around, you can practically feel Steve’s jaw bulging preemptively. You graze his foot with yours as a warning to back off.

<It’s remarkable that you were able to bring the Jaeger back to shore, there has been only one pilot who was capable of that—>

“I’m thankful to have had Stacker Pentecost as my mentor. I owe so much of my resilience to him. It was difficult, but simply put, I had no other choice. I feel so lucky to have survived it.”

<Natasha Romanoff-->

“She was one of a kind.”

<Was it hard to—>

“Yes.”

The host clears his throat, visibly awkward that you’re being so terse, but taking the hint until  Bucky turns into the spotlight, that divorced happiness he’s so skilled at beaming into the lenses. 

Steve easily picks it up, steering the conversation where he wants it to go. He’s disarmingly sincere as he relays the process of Bucky’s injury, replacement, apprehension, and finally success

His bright blue eyes flicker secret messages and you decipher them all.

“The connection was like—"

There’s a bell chiming in your ears. Bright, crisp chirps of it, cutting through laughter and bickering. You taste summer air in your throat, Bucky’s hair flying in the wind. “Riding a bike…”

“Exactly. New bike, same motions, and it worked. It was great. We learned things about each other. Some good, some bad—”

Crosshatched pencil lines of their shared apartment. Smudges of charcoal in a sketchbook. “He’s an unbelievable artist, but—”

“No— don’t say it!”

Bucky smothering a small kitchen fire. Steve throwing a damp rag on him in a frantic attempt to assist. Your voice is bubbling out gleefully. “—an awful cook!”

“It’s true,” Bucky smugly chimes in. “The boy can’t boil water. Breakfast eggs come with shells every time.” You can taste the grit between your molars—crushed grains inside an overdone omelet, Bucky spitting out spinach and feta cheese.

“Oh my god,” you sputter into a sip of champagne. “It’s so bad.”

“Do you see what I have to deal with? Two people knowing my secrets. Two.”

<Fantastic! Already we can see a great friendship here—>

It seems congratulatory, but there’s determination to drive into scandalous territory, poking at any rumor to lance and leak. A sly smile crosses his face as his assistant shows photos of you and Bucky in the city, but the lurid suggestion only gets shrugged off. “We’d gone out for dinner. It was the first time I’d left the Shatterdome after Seigehook and I needed moral support.”

<The jacket tells a different story.>

“I’d give you my jacket if you looked cold.”

<Steve, Ophelia isn’t concerned that your new co-pilot is a woman?>

“No, absolutely not. ‘Lia’s the first person to support Orion—and the loudest. I don’t know what I’d do without her. You don’t have her behind the curtain, too, do you?”

<Well, what about personal memories? Won’t you know everything about each other…? Private things?>

“Sure, but what pair of pilots don’t? You got twins and siblings, not just married couples. Look, here’s the thing: the neural bridge doesn’t take you to a filing cabinet. It’s not open like that. It’s more like—somebody help me—” Bucky snaps his fingers your way, “—what’d you call it the other day?”

You didn’t, but you say, “A dream?”

“Right, a dream. If you think about it, you can pull on it, but if it’s not in the forefront of your mind. It’s a non-issue.”

“We’re all adults here,” Steve confirms.

<Do you plan for James to return to the cockpit? Is that the goal? James, how do you feel about all of this, taken away from your own Jaeger?>

Steve’s palm faces outward as if keeping the host at bay— or, you think, keeping himself at bay.  “Hold on. This isn’t about replacement. Nobody is framing it like a nail in the coffin—we’re in the interim of a period of time, readjusting. Short of death, nothing is going to take him away.”

Sunlight. Recruitment. Ice baths. Training until they had to carry each other to bed. Your eyes flutter, head pilfering through the memories like instinct.

“James is still Orion’s co-pilot.” You agree. Apprehension. Dread. Terror. Confidence in each other even when they didn’t believe in themselves. They were together. Nothing else mattered. “Steve’s co-pilot.”

The tight look on his face is temporarily wiped as he beams proudly, “He’s my Bucky. Always has been, always will be.” He claps Bucky on the back twice and each thump’s echo bounces its way into your chest.

Bucky bristles and sputters, but a healthy pink dusts its way across his cheeks, “Don’t embarrass me, Rogers.”

“Are you blushing?” You tease, elated.

“Don’t you start, either.”

<Well… this is very wonderful. Is there a possibility we’ll be seeing a triple-piloted machine? The Tang triplets have been in talks for a new model.>

Steve shakes his head. “We haven’t discussed it yet. Nothing’s off the table, by any means. Just not priority at the moment.”

<What is priority at the moment?>

“Normalcy, as much as we can get in the middle of all this.” Bucky holds out his hand, closing it into a fist, letting the camera zoom in. “We’re… still working through all the kinks, balancing the personal and global.” 

He flexes his fingers, letting the microphones pick up the drone of machinery, but his meaning is another secret. Clicking Morse codes of well-oiled obsidian plates purring two names. You’ve stopped listening to everything but the echo incandescent in your heart.

You down your glass.

-

Champagne tipsy, you try not to stagger through the lobby. The doorman nods toward the limousine parked faithfully by the curb.

The barrage of questions slowed after it became apparent that there would be no sensationalist headline. There was attention to Bucky’s arm, his handsome face, of course, before the banter quickly devolved into entertaining frivolous sidebar queries. Five flutes bubbled down your throat and by the end of it, you no longer wanted to grab camera one and shake the shit out of it, anger whittled down to a dull hum of annoyance.

Thirty million stupid dollars for inane reels of:

What’s in your purse? What do you eat? How do you stay feminine in a Shatterdome full of testosterone—have you tried any K-beauty skincare routines? Do you have anyone special in your life?

Bucky went in, then, leaning forward until he was nearly rocking off and leveled his glare. You know she’s on the other side of the same robot, buckled up into a ninety-pound rig steering two-hundred tons of—

It took a miracle (see: Steve’s firm hand discreetly on the back of Bucky’s neck and Pepper drawing a sharp line across her throat) to effectively halt the derailing train.

“I can’t believe,” Bucky grouses now, opening the door and waving the driver back to the front. “Those goddamn questions.”  

“Does wiping my sweaty face with my even sweatier shirt count as skincare? What’s the K stand for?”

Bucky smacks the back of your head with one hand, other clumsily yanking the door open with the other. “For Korean—have you been living under a rock? Just—get in the fuckin’ car.”

You slap him back. “Quit it, you invalid.”

“Invalid? I’ll show you a fuckin’—Steve, did you hear—”

“Both of you, get in the car.”

And you shriek, scrambling in and yanking Bucky along by the scruff of his jacket. Mischief courses beneath your skin, encouraged by clever alcohol, now fully buzzed its way to every extremity.

Still giggling and leaning into the thrill of it, you slump over the smooth plastic molding of the door and press your face against the tinted window. It’s a cool reprieve on your warmed cheek, frosting when your temperature meet the glass. Bucky’s easy Cantonese, albeit slurred, is requesting a ride back to base. His hand has found its way into yours, fingers laced large and warm, clasping tight before he lets go.

“Haven’t had a drink—oh--” you murmur, catching yourself as the wheels shift.

“Since Red Cloud.”

“Outta my head, Rogers.”

“Says the person who kept finishing my sentences during that interview.”

“It’s the champagne! It makes me—“

“Stupid?”

“You’re an ass, Barnes.” But you’re laughing at him, at the way he’s smirking— cheeks gone ruddy. Both of them, open beside each other, heads inclined intuitively together. It makes you ache to see—to experience again after disruption—Rogers and Barnes. Barnes and Rogers. Perfectly fitted.

The partition slides up. The sunroof tugs open with a whistling draft.

Hong Kong’s lights are vivid—too much to properly see the extent of space’s beauty, but there are a few twinkles you’re able to make out in the moonless night as light poles and skyscraper tips whiz overhead. They’re brighter than most, simple to spot patterns in the dark.

“Orion’s out tonight,” you mutter, moving to catch the line of its belt, “Look. Beneath his feet is Lepus, the hare, pursued for all time.” From across, Steve follows, also looking to find their hero as your hair rustles wildly, making a hurricane against your ear.

“Don’t be so fucking dramatic,” Bucky scolds. He’s annoyed and comfortable on leather, ankle crossed over opposite knee. “You’re not being chased by anything. Besides, if you were a constellation, you’d probably be the soup ladle.”

You laugh. He’s always playing the part of a stoic so well. “Hey, I’ll have you know the Little Dipper’s got the north star in it. That soup ladle’s gonna be the thing that gets you home when you’re lost.”

The tone shifts—time dragging its pace as you look at them in wonder. The city’s overripe heaviness of the blows through, making goosebumps on heated skin.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky slips his jacket from his shoulders to slide over yours. He tugs the lapels down like he’s trying to keep you on earth and your hands clasp on his wrists for a second before you let go. They’re both sitting up now, watching your bleary gaze unfocus.

Steve and Bucky oscillate in front of your eyes, their lines blurring until it doesn’t really matter who you’re looking at—until they become one. So easy, like this, just them like two sides of the same coin, belonging so seamlessly to each other.

“Sorry,” you blurt in shame, “I feel like I fucked it up. Ruined a thing that wasn’t mine to ruin.”

“Think you put it together,” Steve responds quietly, and the simplicity of his statement throws you off. “We found our way.”

“Soup ladle,” Bucky jokes.

“But, aren’t we just trading one war for another? World peace only made it because of monsters.” Unspoken questions hidden inside large-scale metaphors— symbiosis could only be achieved under the lies of other relationships. Whatever this would be, it wouldn’t be accepted. Steve still retains his supermodel girlfriend and you and Bucky dutifully fall in line for your own packaged little PR lies.

He shrugs. “I’m fine with losing a few battles in this war, but Orion’s got a good track record, doesn’t it, Buck?”

“Twelve— thirteen kills, sweetheart.” Bucky’s grin is lopsided. “Don’t forget you made that happen.”

“Thirteen’s an unlucky number.”

“Feels lucky to me.” Steve’s hand wraps around your wrist, thumb resting on your pulse. He taps your skin, looking genuinely apologetic. “Listen, all I can do is ask— and I’m not good at asking for things. I just want to make them happen.” A quick glance at the watch under his cuffs and he tugs at your arm like a lost child, “So, before we get back… will you come here?”

As he said, he’s not really asking. More like reaching his will out to you, finding you when you’re caught in the undertow and pulling you back to safety. To them. Okay. Okay.

Your footing slips, but they take your hands and turn you carefully, letting you settle in between. Bucky hums a low sound, fingers curling around your waist. Steve does the same to the opposite side and you feel both torn apart and held together by them.

Steve nuzzles your neck, hot on your skin.

“She was wrong,” he whispers, barely audible over the sound of your rising breath, “You know that? She was wrong, and I was wrong. I thought it couldn’t happen—thought I had other priorities, other things to manage and settle and save and... I lost sight of what matters most. But I’m gonna really fix it this time—I’m gonna do it right by you.” 

He looks to Bucky, pained and relieved, “Both of you, I promise.” He takes Bucky’s hand in his own and holds it to his mouth, kissing his knuckles, his palm, saying softly, “I love you, Buck. I’m sorry you waited so long.”

“Hey stupid,” Bucky says shakily when your chin starts to quiver at the sight of them. He’s sniffling and swallowing his syllables, unable to stop himself from staring at Steve’s face in his hand, how Steve kisses the blue pulse in his wrist. “Ain’t you—too pretty to cry?”

The rocking of the car flattens out as Steve gently presses his lips to yours, letting the trail of salt bursting down your cheek into his mouth. He moves to the line of your jaw, promising,

It’s okay. I got you. Nothing’s gonna hurt you anymore.

They kiss you and the world turns itself right.

They kiss you and then they kiss each other. Again and again and again.

[nevilles-insinuations]

The Road to Normal - Colson Baker

Requested by @catlady495​ : are you taking requests? if so i think it would be so cute if you like took your kids to see colson on tour and have it like really fluff/cute family crap 🥺 

Word Count: 1929 Warnings: None really. Fluff and kids. A/N: Gif by me. Sorry this took so long but I had no idea what to write for a while and kept deleting stuff. Anyways, Stream Tickets to My Downfall!

Going on a flight with 3 kids was just as hectic as it sounded. You were starting to question whether it was worth it. A 2-year-old half asleep on your lap, his feet dangling in your face for an hour. Because if you moved even an inch, he would wake up and you weren’t emotionally prepared for that.

Bella had finally stopped asking questions about the plane, how it flew and when she would see her dad. Her sister distracting her with her tablet. You were always thankful for Casie, she was the best big sister that you could ever ask her to be. Even when you didn't ask, she was awesome. 5 months and 25 days without him and you were going a little stir crazy. It was the loneliness more than anything that got you. The kids hated it, and seeing them like that made your heart hurt.

Colson was feeling it too, though he would never admit how much. Tour was insane like always, but he loved it. The mess, the noise, the crowd. Performing was like breathing to him - the only thing he would change was you. Without you there, it was like a piece of him was missing. A late-night phone call and "I miss you" couldn't get you to drop everything and fly to another country. Now you had kids, it was a lot more difficult to bring them out on road. The circumstances were understandable but hard to take. So this plan was put into action. The plan that involved your legs being scrunched up against a chair for 5 hours and trapped in a metal tube. The ride to the hotel was thankfully pretty short, and you met your favourite co-conspirator there.

"Hey (Y/N)"

Ashleigh hugged you tight, bright smile on her face now that you were finally here. Colson needed this, and she knew you did too.

"How are you guys?"

She was attacked with cuddles in response, laughing as the kids could barely contain their excitement.

Colson, completely unaware of his almost screaming children in the lobby, was in his room. He had called you, just before you'd left for the airport. Panic filled your body. Trying to brush him off was difficult. Normally you'd talk for hours but your terrible excuse of “crying kids and needing to go grocery shopping” was enough to prevent any questions. Thankfully he was too tired to probe any further. You probably made his shitty day even worse, the sadness in his voice killed you.

“No- its fine baby, we can talk later. It was nothing important, I just miss you and the kids like crazy. I love you”

At least now you could make his day a whole lot better.

"Which way is it?"

Casie asked once you were out of the elevator, and finally at his floor. She was bouncing with more energy than you'd seen in a while. Looking determined, concentration etched on her face as she matched the number on the keycard with the doors in front of her. Eli tried to escape from your arms getting antsy, wanting to go where everyone else was.

"Okay, okay. You'll see Daddy soon I promise"

You gently shushed him, eyes widening at the mention of his father. You followed your girls to make sure they didn't scream the entire way there.

"(Y/N), come on!"

Casie ran back and her hand tugged yours. Bella was behind you using all of her might to push, her little arms only reaching your lower back. You laughed, while they hurried you to the door. Now only a few steps separated you from him. Colson didn't flinch at the sound of the door handle, presuming it was Ash coming to talk about the show later. Looking up from his phone, he sighed, waiting for another lecture. His mouth fell open when he saw you all standing there.

"Dad!"

Bella ran towards him and Eli wriggled out of your grasp, climbing over the mattress with his sister's help. Casie made her way around the bed, diving under his other arm.

"What are you doing here?"

That smile you loved so much was plastered on his face, unable to hide it at seeing his babies. They were actually here and not buffering pixels thanks to terrible hotel Wi-Fi.

"Came to see you, duh"

Casie shrugged like it was the easiest thing into the world, burrowing back into his shoulder, while her father laughed.

Finally hearing that laugh in person was heaven. His eyes met yours across the room. After months, those blue eyes were staring into yours, lingering on your figure in disbelief. For a while, he would get to be Colson, instead of Kells.

He escaped the grasp of your children, making his way over to you. Enveloping you in a hug and almost lifting you off the floor. Pressing a kiss to his lips your hand caressed his cheek, drinking in your favourite view. Cuddling you tight to his chest for a few seconds, Colson planted a kiss to your hairline. God, he was so happy. You could hear Casie sighing from the other side of the room. Reaching over dramatically to cover her sibling's eyes, both of you chuckled at her antics. Finally, everything was back to your crazy kind of normal.

The few hours you got to yourselves were gloriously spent doing nothing. Colson listening attentively as Casie told him everything that had happened at school. Bella showed him how far she had got with the guitar. The instrument was bigger than her but she was determined to prove that their facetime lessons were working.

Eventually, you made it to soundcheck. The kids all looked so cute in their matching tour shirts. As you strolled in, Casie was glued to his hip, she was definitely going to be taller than him soon. They were all taller than the last time he’d seen them, which Colson hated. His tiny humans were getting bigger by the second and he was missing it. But the feeling of having them here made him forget that pain of leaving and missing them every second.

You plonked yourself on a seat next to Mod, watching a few rows back with Eli on your lap. While, Bella and Casie went wandering backstage with Ash.

"Daddy up there?"

His small voice asked, swinging his legs on the chair. He had gotten bored on your lap after a while. You pointed up to the stage, where Colson was currently talking to Rook about a drum solo.

"Wanna see!"

You lifted Eli off the chair, holding him above your head to see the stage.

"Wanna see Daddy!"

You pointed to the stage with your free hand but it was no use. Eli sniffled, pouting at you. Those big brown eyes blinking up at you, and you instantly melted.

"Fine. We'll go even though he's only over there"

Mod laughed, as you trudged up that stage, crying toddler in tow.

AJ and Baze waved at Eli who gave them a small wave back, but his eyes remained fixed on his father. Slim pointed for Colson to turn around.

"What's up?"

Colson reached out, taking your son in his arms, eyes scanning for any injury. Eli wrapped his arms around his neck and immediately shut up.

"What's wrong? Why you crying?"

"Missed you"

The baby mumbled into his tattooed shoulder, and Colson’s arms squeezed him a little tighter.

"You were just over there!"

He laughed, pointing to where Mod was, who waved back at him.

"You wanna stay up here with me?"

His voice was softer as he asked the question and Eli nodded intently.

"Guess I'll sit here then"

You made your way over the side of the stage, laughing at the thought Colson jumping around with a baby in his arms. He'd done it before. It was difficult but still unbelievably cute.

Casie appeared next to you, back from hanging out with Ash and Ash.

"Hey Casie B"

She rested her head on your shoulder, her curly hair tickling your forehead. At least she still wanted to hang out with you.

"You doing okay?"

She nodded. Casie would have a good time no matter what, she just wanted to see her dad.

“Thanks for bringing me”

“No problem, you’re a delight. Plus who else is going to watch the madness with me?”

She agreed wholeheartedly, and almost on cue, soundcheck was yet again interrupted by one of Colson’s tiny humans. It was less troublesome than the usual chaos that followed your family around, but it was to be expected. Bella walked onstage confidently, not unlike her someone else you knew, planting herself in front of her uncle. Slim leant down, the five-year-old whispering in his ear, to which he nodded.

“Rookie, you’re out the band”

“Again?”

His accent rang in the air, still sounding dejected at the words he had heard so many times.

“Yeah” Slim nodded, helping his niece over to the drums “Bella is replacing you”

“Do you need some help?”

Rook asked, seeing the concentration on her little face.

She paused, thinking about this life-changing decision for a second.

“Maybe a little”

Her tiny hands grabbed the sticks, whacking the drums and cymbals with some sense of rhythm. She was taking advantage of her moment. Soaking up the applause and cheering, you took that as your cue to leave so they could actually rehearse.

The show was phenomenal, as always. Surrounded by music and the unreal energy that came in waves from the stage. To you it was beautiful. Although that may have been just because of who was jumping around shirtless on stage. Colson winked at you and all the girls screamed but you just shook your head and blew a kiss back. Bella was disappointed to not be on drums, but she still had a good time. Bopping along with her tiny headphones, giggling when her dad made funny faces at them. Eli had fun clapping to the music, occasionally half wobbling half dancing with his sisters. The babies got tired quickly, eventually leaving to snooze backstage. Casie was wide awake, watching with awe as her father jumped across the stage. She shot you another smile, and you just felt happy. Nothing could beat that feeling of spending time with your family, the ones you love. Or an amazing concert.

After the show, you were welcomed into a hug by smiling, and very sweaty, Colson. And you wouldn’t change a thing for that sight. Eventually, you’d make it back to the hotel, basking in the almost silence of nighttime and enjoying each other’s company for the first time in a while. Bundled on the bed, cold because your children had claimed ownership of all blankets and comforters. Whispering due to your sleeping kids, you would attempt to have a conversation but Colson would still make you laugh without even trying.

“Quiet is so weird to me now”

The blond hummed, agreeing with your statement. It was nice but strange to not have a constant stream of noise filling the room.

“You wouldn’t rather be out having drunk lightsaber fights right now?”

“I mean, if you’re suggesting it-”

He abruptly sat up, attempting to move off the edge of the bed, amongst the sea of people on the mattress.

“Nope. This is perfect”

Colson shook his head, moving back and resting comfortably on your shoulder. And you knew, he meant every word. Despite the tantrums, very long flights and awkward facetimes. This was worth it and always would be.